< Previous | Contents

‌Chapter title: Direction a non-ending process‌

26 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall Archive

code:

7606260

ShortTitle:

BELOV106

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

98

mins

The first question:

Question 1

YESTERDAY YOU SAID THAT AN INWARD TRAVELLER HAS ONLY

DIRECTION AND NOT DESTINATION. WILL YOU PLEASE FURTHER CLARIFY

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE TWO?

THE DISTINCTIOIN IS VERY SUBTLE, but it is the same distinction as there is between the mind and the heart, as there is between logic and love, or even

more appropriate, as there is between prose and and poetry.

A destination is a very clear-cut thing; direction is very intuitive. A destination is something outside you, more like a thing. A direction is an inner feeling; not an object, but your very subjectivity. You can feel direction, you cannot know it. You can know the destination, you cannot feel it. Destination is in the future. Once decided, you start manipulating your life towards it, steering your life towards it.

How can you decide the future? Who are you to decide the unknown? How is it possible to fix the future? Future is that which is not known yet. Future is open possibility. By fixing a destination your future is no more a future, because it is no more open. Now you have chosen one alternative out of many, because when all the alternatives were open it was future. Now all alternatives have been dropped; only one alternative has been chosen. It is no longer future, it is your past.

The past decides when you decide a destination. Your experience of the past, your knowledge of the past decides. You kill future. Then you go on repeating your own past -

- maybe a little modified, a little changed here and there according to your comfort, convenience; repainted, renovated -- but still it comes out of the past. This is the way one loses track of future: by deciding a destination one loses track of future. One becomes dead. One starts functioning like a mechanism.

Direction is something alive, in the moment. It knows nothing of the future, it knows nothing of the past, but it throbs, pulsates here and now. And out of this pulsating moment, the next moment is created. Not by any decision on your part

-- but just because you live this moment and you live it so totally, and you love this moment so wholly, out of this wholeness the next moment is born. It is going to have a direction. That direction is not given by you, it is not imposed by you; it is spontaneous. That's what the Bauls call SAHAJA MANUSH, the spontaneous man.

The spontaneous man is the way to the real man, to the essential man, to the God within.

You cannot decide direction, you can only live this moment that is available to you. By living it, direction arises. If you dance, the next moment is going to be

of a deeper dance.

Not that you decide but you simply dance this moment. You have created a direction: you are not manipulating it. The next moment will be more full of dancing, and still more will be following.

Destination is fixed by the mind; direction is earned by living. Destination is logical: one wants to be a doctor, one wants to be an engineer, one wants to be a scientist or one wants to be a politician, one wants to be a rich man, famous man

-- these are destinations.

Direction? -- one simply lives the moment in deep trust that life will decide. One lives this moment so totally that out of this totality a freshness is born. Out of this totality the past dissolves and the future starts taking shape. But this shape is not given by you, this shape is earned by you.

One Zen master, Rinzai, was dying; he was on the death-bed. Somebody asked, "Master, people will ask after you are gone, what was your essential teaching? You have said many things, you have talked about many things -- it will be difficult for us to condense it. Before you leave, please, you yourself condense it into a single sentence, so we will treasure it. And whenever people who have not known you desire, we can give them your essential teaching."

Dying, Rinzai opened his eyes, gave a great Zen shout, a lion's roar! They were all shocked! They couldn't believe that this dying man could have so much energy, and they were not expecting it. The man was unpredictable; he had always been so. But even with this unpredictable man they were not in any way expecting that dying, at the last moment, he would give such a lion's roar. And when they were shocked -- and of course their minds stopped, they were surprised, taken aback -- Rinzai said, "This is it!" closed his eyes, and died.

This is it.…

This moment, this silent moment, this moment uncorrupted by thought, this silence that was surrounding, this surprise, this last lion's roar over death; this is it.

Yes, direction comes out of living this moment. It is not something that you manage and plan. It happens, it is very subtle, and you will never be certain about it. You can only feel it. That's why I say it is more like poetry, not like

prose; more like love, not like logic; more like art than like science. Wake, and that's its beauty; hesitant, as hesitant as a dewdrop on a grass leaf, slipping, not knowing where, not knowing why; in the morning sun, just slipping on a leaf of grass.

Direction is very subtle, delicate, fragile. That's why everybody has chosen destination.

Society tries to fix a destination for you. Parents, teachers, culture, religion, government: they all try to give you a fixed pattern of life. They don't want you to be free, left alone, moving into the unknown. But that's how they have created boredom. If you know your future beforehand, it is already boring. If you know that you are going to be this, it is already boring.

In the Koran, Mohammed talks about paradise, but he makes it so predictable, so much like a destination that it already looks worthless. The word 'paradise', or the Muslim equivalent of it, FIRDAUS -- they both come from a single root which means a walled garden -- and in that walled garden of God everything is fixed, almost every detail.

Nothing is left to imagination. Streams are there, streams of wine; and people are sitting in the shade. Of course, Mohammed must have suffered too much from the heat and the desert. People are sitting in the shade, enjoying their wives -- not wife, but wives --

because Mohammed had nine wives. What else do they do? There is nothing else to do but drink wine from the springs, sit on couches under the shade of big trees, enjoy their wives.

But then he was disturbed, because when you die your wife will be old. So what to do? --

he made an arrangement for that also: that for good people, those who had lived according to religion, God would make their wives young again. So remember, if you are not good you will have to remain with your old wife. Then you will be stuck with her forever and ever. Be good! Everything...and servants are there to fulfill any desire. But just think of it!

But it is so ready-made, manufactured, predictable: it loses all meaning. Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists, are more subtle. Buddhists are the most subtle. They don't talk

about NIRVANA. They say: one has to know it to know it; one has to be in it to know it -- there is no other way. They don't describe. They don't give any description because all descriptions will be dangerous. All words become definitive and the mystery is lost.

Future should be a direction, not a destination. It should be more like NIRVANA. The word Buddha uses means: all that you know will not be there. That's his definition clf nirvana: all that you know will not be there, all that you have experienced will not be there, all that you are will not be there -- SOMETHING TOTALLY NEW, something that you cannot understand because you don't have the language to understand it, you don't have the experience to understand it. Something absolutely new; it cannot be talked about. NIRVANA is a direction. FIRDAUS, paradise, Christian and Mohammedan, are destinations, very clear- cut.

The mediocre mind demands clear-cut goals because he is so insecure -- he cannot trust his own awareness, and he cannot trust life. The mediocre mind is very afraid of discovery, and discovery is the greatest secret in life. To be ready to be surprised, to be always ready to be surprised means that one is innocent, trying to discover. And life is such that you can go on discovering. The more you discover it, the more you come to know that much more is still left. It is a non- ending process. Direction is a non-ending process. Remember, it is a process, movement; destination is a dead thing.

Destination belongs to the ego; direction belongs to life, to being. To move in the world of direction one needs tremendous trust, because one is moving in insecurity, one is moving in darkness. But the darkness has a thrill in it: without any map, without any guide you are moving into the unknown. Each step is a discovery, and it is not only a discovery of the outside world. Simultaneously, something is discovered in you also. A discoverer not only discovers things. As he goes on discovering more and more unknown worlds, he goes on discovering himself also, simultaneously. Each discovery is an inner discovery also. The more you know, the more you know about the knower. The more you love, the more you know about the lover.

I am not going to give you a destination. I can only give you a direction -- awake, throbbing with life; and unknown, always surprising, unpredictable. I'm not going to give you a map. I can give you only a great passion to discover. Yes, a map is not needed; great passion, great desire to discover is needed. Then I

leave you alone. Then you go on your own. Move into the vast, into the infinite, and by and by, learn to trust it. Leave yourself in the hands of life, because life is God. When Jesus says, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done," he's saying this...a great trust. Even if God brings death, there is nothing to be afraid of. It is He who is bringing death, so there must be a reason in it, there must be a hidden secret in it, there must be a teaching in it. He's opening a door.

The man who trusts, the man who is religious is thrilled even at the gate of death

-- he can give a lion's roar. Even dying -- because he knows nothing dies -- at the very moment of death he can say, "This is it!" Because each moment, this is it. It may be life, it may be death; it may be success, it may be failure; it may be happiness, it may be unhappiness.

Each moment...

... this is it.

This is what I call the real prayer. And then you will have direction. You need not worry about it, you need not fix it; you can move with trust.

The second question:

Question 2

HOW IS IT THAT THE INSCRIPTION ON THE GREEK TEMPLE TO DELPHI SAYS: KNOW THYSELF, AND NOT: LOVE THYSELF?

The Greek mind has an obsession with knowledge. The Greek mind thinks in terms of knowledge, how to know. That's why Greeks produced the greatest tradition of philosophers, great thinkers, logicians, great rational minds. But the passion is to know.

In the world, as I see it, there are only two types of minds: the Greek and the Hindu. The Greek mind has a passion to know, and the Hindu mind has a passion to be. The Hindu passion is not too concerned about knowing, but about being. SAT, being, is the very search -- who am I? -- not to know it in a logical way, but to drown in one's own existence so one can taste it, so one can be it -- because there is no other way to know, really. If you ask Hindus, they will say there is no other way to know than to be. How can you know love? The only way is to become a lover. Be a lover and you will know. And if you are trying to

stand outside the experience and just be an observer, then you may know ABOUT love, but you will never know love.

The Greek mind has produced the whole scientific growth. Modern science is a by-product of the Greek mind. Modern science insists on being dispassionate, standing outside, watching, unprejudiced. Be objective, be impersonal. These are the basic requirements if you want to become a scientist: be impersonal, don't allow your emotions to color anything; be dispassionate, almost not interested in any hypothesis in whatsoever way. Just watch the fact. Don't get involved in it, remain outside. Don't be a participant.

This is the Greek passion: a dispassionate search for knowledge.

It has helped, but it has helped only in one direction: that is the direction of matter. That is the way to know matter. You can never come to know mind that way, only matter. You can never come to know consciousness that way. You can know the outside, you can never know the inside -- because in the inside you are already involved. There is no way to stand out of it. You are already there. The inside is you -- how can you get out of it? I can watch a stone, a rock, a river, dispassionately because I am separate. How can I watch myself dispassionately? I am involved in it. I cannot be outside it. I cannot reduce myself to being an object. I will remain the subject, and I will remain the subject.

Whatsoever I do, I am the knower, I'm not the known.

So the Greek mind shifted, by and by, towards matter. The motto, the inscription at Delphi's temple: Know Thyself, became the source of the whole scientific progress. But by and by, the very idea of dispassionate knowledge led the Western mind away from its own being.

The Hindu mind, the other type of mind in the world, has another direction: the direction is of being. In the Upanishads, the great master Udallack says to his son and his disciple Swetketu, "That art thou" -- TATWAMASI Swetketu. That art thou -- there is no distinction between that and thou. That is your reality; thou is the reality -- there is no distinction. There is no possibility to know it as you know a rock. There is no possibility to know it as you know other things; you can only BE it.

On the temple of Delphi, of course, it was written: Know Thyself. It is expressive of the Greek mind. Because the temple is in Greece the inscription is

Greek. If the temple had been in India then the inscription would have been: Be Thyself -- because that art thou.

The Hindu mind moved closer and closer to one's own being -- that's why it became non-scientific. It became religious but non-scientific. It became introvert, but then it lost all moorings in the outside world. The Hindu mind became very rich inside, but the outside became very poor.

A great synthesis is needed, a great synthesis between the Hindu and the Greek mind. It can be the greatest blessing for the earth. Up to now it has not been possible, but now the basic requirements are there and a synthesis is possible. The East and West are meeting in a very subtle way. The Eastern people are going to the West to learn science, to become scientists, and the Western seekers are going, moving towards the East to learn what religion is. A great mingling and merging is happening.

In the future, the East is not going to be East and the West is not going to be West. The earth is going to become a global village -- a small place where all distinctions will disappear. And then for the first time the great synthesis will arise, the greatest ever --

which will not think in extremes, which will not think that if you go outside, if you are a searcher after knowledge then you lose your roots in being; or if you search in your being you lose your roots in the world, in the scientific realm. Both can be together, and whenever this happens a man has both wings and he can fly to the highest sky possible.

Otherwise you have only one wing.

As I see it, Hindus are lopsided as much as the Greek mind is lopsided. Both are half of the reality.

Religion is half; science is half. Something has to happen which can bring religion and science together in a greater whole, where science does not deny religion and where religion does not condemn science.

"How is it that the inscription on the Greek temple to Delphi says: Know Thyself, and not: Love Thyself?"

Love thyself is possible only if you become thyself, if you be thyself. Otherwise

it is not possible. Otherwise the only possibility is to go on trying to know who you are, and that too from the outside; watching from the outside who you are, and that too in an objective way, not in an intuitive way.

The Greek mind developed a tremendous logical capacity. Aristotle became the father of all logic and all philosophy. The Eastern mind looks illogical -- it is. The very insistence on meditation is illogical because meditation says: you can know only when the mind is dropped, when thinking is dropped and you merge yourself into your being so totally that not even a single thought is there to distract you. Only then can you know. And the Greek mind says: you can know only when thinking is clear, logical, rational, systematic. The Hindu mind says: when thinking disappears completely, only then is there any possibility to know. They are totally different, moving in diametrically opposite directions; but there is a possibility to synthesize both.

A person can use his mind when working on matter; then logic is a great instrument. And the same person can put aside the mind when he moves into his meditation chamber and moves into the no-mind. Because mind is not you -- it is just an instrument just like my hand, just like my legs. If I want to walk I use my legs, if I don't want to walk I don't use my legs. Exactly in the same way you can use the mind logically if you are trying to know about matter. It is perfectly right, it fits there. And when you are moving inwards, put it aside. Now legs are not needed; thinking is not needed. Now you need a deep silent state of no- thought.

And this can happen in one person. And when I say it, I say it from my own experience. I have been doing both. When it is needed, I can become as logical as any Greek. When it is not needed, I can become as absurd, illogical as any Hindu. So when I say it I mean it, and it is not a hypothesis. I have experienced It that way. The mind can be used and can be put aside. It is an instrument, a very beautiful instrument; no need to be so obsessed with it. No need to be so fixed, fixated with it. Then it becomes a disease. Just think of a man who wants to sit but cannot sit because he says, "I have legs -- how can I sit?" Or, think of a man who wants to keep quiet and silent and cannot keep quiet and silent because he says, "I have a mind." It is the same.

One should become so capable that even the closest instrument of mind can be put aside and can be put off. It can be done, it has been done, but it has not been done on a great scale. But more and more it will be done. This is what I am

trying to do here with you.

I talk to you, I discuss problems with you; that's logical, that is using the mind. And then I say to you, "Drop the mind and move into deep meditation. If you dance, dance so totally that there is not a single thought inside, your whole energy becomes dance. Or sing, then just sing. Or sit, then just sit -- be in ZAZEN, don't do anything else. Don't allow a single thought to pass through. Just be quiet, absolutely quiet." These are contradictory things.

Every morning you meditate and every morning you come and listen to me. Every morning you listen to me and then you go and meditate. This is contradictory. If I were just Greek, I would talk to you, I would make a logical communication with you, but then I would not say to meditate. That is foolish. If I were just Hindu, there would be no need to talk to you. I can say, "Just go and meditate, because what is the point of talking? One has to become silent." I am both. And this is my hope: that you will also become both --

because then life is very enriched, tremendously enriched. Then you don't lose anything.

Then everything is absorbed; then you become a great orchestra. Then all polarities meet in you.

For the Greeks, the very idea of 'love thyself' would have been absurd, because they would say, and they would say logically, that love is possible only between two persons.

You can love somebody else, you can even love your enemy, but how can you love yourself? Only you are there, alone. Love can exist between a duality, a polarity; how can you love yourself? For the Greek mind, the very idea of loving oneself is absurd: for love, the other is needed.

For the Hindu mind, in the Upanishads they say: you love your wife not for your wife's sake; you love your wife just for your own sake. You love yourself through her. Because she gives you pleasure, that's why you love her -- but deep down you love your own pleasure. You love your son, you love your friend, not because of them but because of you. Deep down your son makes you happy, your friend gives you solace. That's what you are hankering for. So the Upanishads say: you love yourself really. Even if you say that you love others, that is just a via media to love yourself, a long roundabout way to love yourself.

Hindus say that there is no other possibility: you can love only yourself. And Greeks say there is no possibility to love oneself because at least two are needed.

If you ask me, I'm both Hindu and Greek. If you ask me I will say love is a paradox. It is a very paradoxical phenomenon. Don't try to reduce it to one pole; both polarities are needed. The other is needed, but in deep love the other disappears. If you watch two lovers, they are two and one together. That's the paradox of love, and that's the beauty of it: they are two, yes, they are two; and yet they are not two, they are one. If this oneness has not happened then love is not possible. They may be doing something else in the name of love. If they are still two and not one also, then love has not happened. And if you are just alone and there is nobody else, then too love is not possible. Love is a paradoxical phenomenon. It needs two in the first place, and in the last place it needs two to exist as one. It is the greatest enigma; it is the greatest puzzle.

If you have loved somebody, you will understand what I mean. You know that the other is other, and yet deep down you feel something has been bridged. It is as if travelling in a sea you come across an island. It is separate from-the continent, yes. But deep down, underneath the sea, the land is one. It is joined with the continent; it is not really separate.

It is separate yet not separate; that's what love is.

So if you ask me, I will say it is possible to love yourself, but then you will have to divide yourself in two. Then you will have to become the lover and the beloved both. And it is also possible to love somebody else, but then you will have to become one. Love is something that happens between two persons, but when it happens they are no more two, they become one.

The third question:

Question 3

THE SAME DAWN, THE SAME DUSK, THE SAME CHASING, THE SAME

THOUGHT OF AWARENESS, THE SAME TALK OF AWARENESS, THE SAME

AND THE SAME.…

It depends.…

In a way it is the same. How can it be otherwise? The same sun, the same sun rising every morning, and the same sunset, yes -- but if you watch closely, have you ever seen two sunrises exactly the same? Have you watched the colors in the sky? Have you seen the cloud formations around the sun?

No two sunrises are the same; no two sunsets are the same. The world is a discontinuous continuity -- discontinuous because every moment something new is happening, and yet continuous because it is not absolutely new. It is connected. So both proverbs are right.

There is a proverb which says: there is nothing new under the sun; and the other proverb which seems contradictory to it which says: there is nothing old under the sun. Both are true.

Nothing is new and nothing is old. Everything goes on changing and yet somehow remains the same, somehow remains the same and yet goes on changing. That's the beauty, the mystery, the secret. You cannot reduce it to any category: you cannot say it is the same, you cannot say it is not the same. You cannot reduce life into your categories; your pigeon-holes are just worthless. When it comes to life, you have to drop all your pigeon-holes, your categories. It is bigger than your categories, transcendental to all categories. It is so vast that you cannot find its beginning or its end.

The questioner says, "The same dawn, the same dusk, the same chasing, the same thought of awareness, the same talk of awareness, the same and the same."

Yes, in a way it is the same; and in another way, nothing is the same. Yesterday also I was here, but I am not the same. How can I be? -- so much water has flowed down the Ganges. I am twenty-four hours older, twenty-four hours of experience are added to me, twenty-four hours of intense awareness. I am richer; I'm not the same -- death has come a little closer. You are also not the same, and yet I look the same and you look the same.

You have to see the point. This is what I mean when I say life is a mystery: you cannot classify it, you cannot say definitely that this is so. The moment you say, immediately you will become aware that life has falsified you.

Are these trees the same as they were yesterday? Many leaves have fallen, many

new leaves have come up, many flowers are gone. They have risen higher. How can they be the same? See, today the cuckoo is not singing. It is so silent. Yesterday the cuckoo was singing. It was a different silence: it was full of song. Today's silence is different; it is not full of song. Even the wind is not blowing -- everything has stopped. Yesterday there was great wind. Trees are meditating today; yesterday they were dancing. It cannot be the same, and yet, it is the same.

It depends on you -- how you look at life. If you look as if it is the same, you will be bored. Then don't throw your responsibility on somebody else. It is your outlook. If you say it is the same, then you will be bored. If you see the constant change, flux-like, the great whirlwind-like movement all around you, the dynamism of life, each moment the old disappearing and the new coming in; if you can see the continuous birth, if you can see God's hand continuously creating, then you will be enchanted, thrilled. Your life will not be bored. You will be continuously wondering, "What next?..." You will not be dull.

Your intelligence will remain sharp, alive and young.

Now it depends on what you want. If you want to become like a dead man, stupid, dull, gloomy, sad and bored, then you believe that life is the same. If you want to become very young and alive, fresh, radiant, then believe that life is new each moment.

Says old Heraclitus, "You cannot step twice into the same river.''

You cannot meet the same person twice and you cannot see the same sunrise twice It is up to you. And if you understand me, I will say, don't choose. If you choose the idea that everything is old, you become old. If you choose that everything is young and new, you become young. If you understand me, I say don't choose; see that both are true. Then you transcend all categories. You are neither old nor young. Then you become eternal, then you become God-like, then you become life-like.

I have heard an anecdote:

A Judge Dunne was seated in court in New York, or rather in Brooklyn, while a very, very stupid witness was being interrogated. The attorney said, "Were you at the corner of Fourth and Elm the day of the accident?"

The witness said, "Who? Me?"

"Yes, you," said the attorney. "Did you notice whether or not the ambulance came to care for the wounded woman?"

"Who? Me?"

"Yes, you! Did you notice whether or not the woman was seriously injured?" "Who? Me?"

By this time, the Prosecuting Attorney was exasperated. He said, "Certainly you! Why do you think you are here?"

The witness said, "I came here to see justice done." Judge Dunne said, "Who? Me?"

If you believe that everything is the same, then this will be a constant thing -- Who? Me?

-- and you are going to be bored. The repetition will kill you. To be sharp and alive one needs something which is not repetitive. Something new, constantly happening, makes you alive, keeps you alive, keeps you alert.

Have you watched a dog sitting silently? A rock is Iying down just in front of him; he will not be worried. But let the rock start moving. Just have a small thread connected to the rock and pull it, and the dog will jump. He will start barking. Movement makes you sharp; then all dullness is gone. Then he is no longer sleepy. Then he is no longer dreaming about flies and other things. Then he will simply jump out of his slumber.

Something has changed.

Change gives you movement, but constant change also can be very uprooting. As constant no-change can be very deadening, constant change can also be very uprooting.

That is happening in the West; people are changing. The statisticians say that in America the average limit of a person doing a job is three years. People are

changing their jobs, changing their towns, changing their spouses, trying to change everything -- changing their car every year, their house -- the whole value has changed. In England they make Rolls Royce. Their idea is so that it lasts forever, life-long at least. In America they make beautiful cars, but stability is not the quality to be bothered about -- because who is going to keep a car for his whole life? If it lasts for one year, enough. When the American goes to purchase a car, he does not bother about stability; he asks about exchangeability. The English still ask about durability, stability, whether the car will be durable because he purchases once, and finished. He's very old-fashioned. He does not know any divorce, even with a car. Once married, married. He's very monogamous even with a car. He's very sincere. The American lives in a world of change -- everything is changing -- but then the American has lost the roots.

In my old village where sometimes I used to go, I was surprised. Everything remains the same. The same coolie would greet me at the station -- because there is only one coolie --

and the same TONGA, and the same road, and I would see the same people moving around. Everything remains almost the same. Rarely somebody dies; rarely somebody is born -- otherwise everything remains almost the same. And even when people die, they are replaced by their sons, and they look almost the same. Nothing has changed. The houses are the same, the gossip is the same. It seems time does not exist.

I was always surprised going back to my town. That was the first thing that I would see: that in this town time does not exist. Everything seems to be eternally the same. But then people have roots. They are dull but they are very rooted. They are very comfortable, happy. They are not alienated. They don't feel strangers. How can they feel strangers? --

everything is so similar. When they were born it was the same; when they die it will be the same. Everything is so stable. How can you feel a stranger? The whole town is like a small family.

In America everything is uprooted. Nobody knows where one belongs. The very sense of belonging is lost. If you ask somebody; "Where do you belong?" he will shrug his shoulders -- because he has been to so many towns, to so many colleges, to so many universities. He cannot even be certain of who he is because the identity is very loose, fluid. In a way it is good because the man remains

sharp and alive, but roots are gone.

For me, both things have been tried: stability, rootedness, nothing new under the sun --

we have tried it in the past, for many centuries. It rusted the human mind. People were comfortable but not very alive.

Then in America, something new has happened and it is spreading all over the world, because America is the future of the world. Whatsoever is happening there is going to happen everywhere, sooner or later. America sets the trend. Now people are very alive but unrooted, don't know where they belong. A great desire to belong has arisen. A great desire to be rooted somewhere, to possess someone and to be possessed by someone: something durable, something stable, something like a center -- because people are moving like wheels and there seems to be no rest. And it is great stress: continuously changing, continuously changing. And change is accelerating every day, becoming faster and faster. Now they say that big books cannot be written because by the time you write a big book it is out of date. Knowledge is changing so fast, so only small booklets are possible. So they reach -- before knowledge changes, they reach to people. Otherwise, before they reach the market, already the books will be out of date and useless, rubbish.

Everything is in such a great change and turmoil and chaos, and man feels deeply stressed, great strain and tension. Both have their benefits and both have their curses.

To me, a synthesis has to be made between these two orientations. One should be aware that life is both the old and new together, simultaneously -- old because the whole past is present in the present moment; new because the whole future is potentially present in the present moment. The present moment is a culmination of the whole past and the beginning of the whole future. In this moment, all that has happened is hidden, and all that is going to happen is also hidden. Each moment is past and future both, a convergence of past and future. So something is old and something is new, and if you can become aware of both together, you will have sharpness and roots both together. You will be at ease, without any stress. You will not become dull, and you will be very conscious and alert.

I have heard.…

Mistress MacMahon went beserk one afternoon. She broke every dish and cup and reduced her usually spotless kitchen to shambles. The police arrived and took her to the city's mental institution. The head psychiatrist sent for her husband.

"Do you know any reason," asked the shrink, "why your wife should suddenly lose her mind?"

"I'm just as surprised as you are," answered Mr. MacMahon. "I can't imagine what got into her. She has always been such a quiet, hardworking woman. Why, she has not been out of the kitchen in twenty years!"

Now then, one is going to go mad. It is as simple as two plus two make four. If for twenty years one has not been out of the kitchen, it is maddening. But the opposite is always maddening. If you have never been to your home for twenty years, and have just become a vagabond, always arriving and never arriving anywhere, always reaching and never reaching anywhere; if you have become a gypsy and you don't have any home, then too you will start going mad.

Both are dangerous taken separately. Taken together they make life very rich. All polarities make life rich: yin and yang, man and woman, dark and light, life and death, god and devil, saint and sinner. All polarities taken together make life rich. Otherwise life becomes monotonous. Don't choose a monotonous life. Become richer.

The fourth question:

Question 4

AFTER EACH CAMP, I AM LEFT DEEPLY FRUSTRATED AND ANXIOUS, AS IF

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN THAT NEVER

HAPPENS, AND I SAY TO MYSELF: HEERA, YOU ARE BACK IN THE SAME

BOAT AGAIN. PLEASE COMMENT.

Let me first tell you one anecdote.

The newly-arrived convict was complaining to the warden, "I don't like the food here, I don't like the quarters, and I don't like your face."

"Well," said the warden, "is there anything else you don't like?"

"That's all for the time being," said the convict. "I don't want you to think that I am unreasonable."

Heera, you are very unreasonable.

First, for hundreds and hundreds of lives you have never meditated. Not to meditate has gone deep into your bones, into your very heart -- it has become a hard pattern. Now, suddenly you meditate and you start expecting too much. It is unreasonable.

In fact, all expectations are unreasonable, but when one expects something out of meditation it is ABSOLUTELY unreasonable. Because the very base of meditation, the very foundation of meditation is to understand that expectation has to be dropped; otherwise meditation never starts. It is expectation that keeps your mind continuously spinning thoughts. It is expectation that keeps you tense. It is expectation, when not fulfilled, that makes you feel frustrated, miserable. Drop expectation and meditation will flower, but it can flower only when you are not expecting. You can go on expecting for many lives; you will not allow meditation to flower. That is not the way.

I have heard.…

Lanahan's hair kept falling and he complained to his barber. "That stuff you gave me," he cried "is terrible. You said two bottles of it would make me hair grow, but nothing has happened."

"I don't understand," said the barber, "that is the best hair restorer made." "Well," said Lanahan, "I don't mind drinking another bottle, but it better work!"

Now, with expectation, doing meditation is like drinking a bottle of hair restorer. It is not going to work. It can even be destructive, it can be dangerous.

It is better not to meditate than to meditate with expectation, because at least you will not suffer the frustration. Don't meditate. But if you have decided to

meditate, then be clear.

Meditation does not guarantee anything to you. Not that nothing happens out of it; it happens, but there is no guarantee. Tremendous possibilities open but you cannot expect them. If you expect, doors remain dosed. It is your expectation that blocks the way.

Two friends met on the street.

"I'm so unhappy I could cry," said the first. "Why?"

"Two weeks ago, my uncle died and left me one million dollars." "That's no reason to cry," said the second.

"That would make you happy, that's true," said the first, "but last week another uncle died and left me two million dollars."

"But why are you so unhappy then?" The man said, "I only had two uncles!"

Expectation is very, very dangerous. With expectation, even if something happens you will not feel fulfilled, because expectation is almost insanity. You go on expecting more and more -- now the man is miserable because he had only two uncles. Whatsoever happens is not going to make you happy if you start with expectations. Drop expectation -

- that is not the right thing to bring into meditation -- and immediately things will start happening.

Next camp, or from tomorrow, just meditate. Enjoy it intrinsically. There is no need to look for any result. Let it happen. Let the future come of its own accord. Don't make a destination out of meditation -- just simple direction will do. Enjoy it. Celebrate it. Be festive about it.

The very act of meditation is a great joy. Just to be able to dance, just to be able to sing, just to be able to sit silently and breathe and be, is more than enough.

Don't ask for anything else. Because of your asking you are corrupting your being. You have tried that way, now listen to me and try my way. You simply meditate.

"After each camp, I am left deeply frustrated and anxious..."

The problem does not arise after the camp, it arises before the camp. First you sow the seeds of expectation, then who is going to suffer? You will suffer. You will have to reap the crop.

"... as if I have been waiting for something to happen that never happens..."

That is never going to happen. Whatsoever you are waiting for, you are waiting in vain. It is not going to happen, and what is going to happen has nothing to do with your expectations and your desires. You just let it come in; don't block the way. Remove yourself out of your own way. This time, with no expectations, no desires, no hopes, just meditate.

"... and I say to myself: Heera, you are back in the same boat again."

If you listen to me you will never again be in the same boat. It is the boat of expectation.

Frustration is a by-product. You want to get rid of the frustration but you don't want to get rid of the expectation. Then it is impossible.

Buddha is reported to have said, "If you want to get rid of death, get rid of birth." There is no other way. If you want to get rid of misery, get rid of the lust for happiness. And when there is no misery, there IS happiness. But it is not because you desire it; it is because you don't have any desire. In a deep desireless state, you are full of bliss.

The last question:

It is from Parijat. Question 5

YOUR CONTRADICTIONS USED TO THROW ME INTO SUCH UNHAPPY

EMOTIONAL STATES. NOW I LISTEN TO YOU BUT WITHOUT THINKING, REMAINING TRANQUIL. HAVE I ESCAPED BEFORE THE POT CAME TO THE

BOIL?

First, one anecdote.

A mother was examining a new mechanical toy at the corner shop and wondered if it were not too complicated for a small boy.

"Oh, no," the salesman beamed, "it is an educational toy. It is especially designed to teach the child something about our current civilization: no matter how he puts it together, he's wrong."

Don't try to put me together, otherwise you will be wrong. It is designed that way. To contradict myself is my way. To never allow you to settle anywhere is my way. To go on goading you on and on, is my way.

But now, Parijat has learned the trick: listen in deep tranquility. Don't be bothered about whether I am contradicting something that I have said before. Listen to me this moment; don't bring the past in. If you don't bring the past in there is no contradiction. If you bring the past in then there is contradiction. Just don't bring the past in: that is what tranquility is. You just listen to me this moment; then where is the contradiction? And that's my whole effort -- to go on contradicting. One day or other you will decide that if you have to listen to this man, you have to forget all about what he has said before. That's a way to make you alert that the past has not to be brought in. If I go on saying very consistent things you will stop listening to me -- because there is no need: "He is saying the same thing." Even if you sleep you will not miss anything. But I will not allow you to sleep because you can miss, you can never rely.

There was one advertisement in a newspaper: a nightguard was needed by a rich man. He had three conditions: one, he should be very tall, strong, violent- looking; second, he should not be addicted to any sort of alcoholic beverages, he should be alert; and third, he should be reliable.

Mulla Nasrudin applied. He was called, but the rich man was surprised because he is a very small man, not tall at all, and not violent-looking, a very meek fellow.

The rich man said,' I am surprised why you troubled yourself to come here, and why you answered my advertisement. Can't you see? These are the three conditions: first, that the man should be tall, at least six feet. You don't seem to be more than five. The man should be violent looking; I have not seen such a simple, almost simpleton, type man. You look so meek. Why have you come? Do you drink or not?"

Nasrudin said, "I drink too much.''

"Then why are you wasting my time? Why have you come?" Nasrudin said, "I have come only to say that I am not reliable either."

I also am not reliable. I completely go on forgetting what I have said to you yesterday. I am a drunkard. That's why I can contradict so easily, otherwise it would be very difficult.

It never comes to my mind that I am contradictory. Whatsoever I am saying, this is it! I don't bother about what I have said before. I'm not concerned with it. That was the truth of that moment, this is the truth of this moment, and I'm not reliable. I am not saying anything that I am going to say again tomorrow. Who knows? I don't know myself. If you really listen to me, by and by you will listen to the moment. That's the whole effort.

I am not trying to give you a philosophy, a doctrine, a dogma. A dogma has to be consistent, a creed has to be consistent. I am not trying to convert you to a certain belief; a belief has to be consistent. I am trying to give you a vision, not a belief. I am trying to help you to come to my window to see the sky, to see the truth. That truth cannot be described. And that truth cannot be made a dogma, and that truth contains all contradictions -- because it is so vast. So I go on giving you glimpses, aspects of it: one aspect is contradictory to another aspect. But in the whole truth, all aspects meet and mingle and are one.

The right way to listen to me is this: where Paritosh has arrived. Everybody has to arrive if you want to listen to me. If you want to be with me, you have to arrive to that tranquility where you don't pay any attention to the past. You forget what. I have said as deeply as I go on forgetting. You are simply to listen to this moment. Then there is no contradiction because there is no comparison. And then you don't cling to what I say. It becomes just a direction and not a destination. It just helps you to become more alert and aware. It does not give

you a philosophy. Rather, it gives you a very subtle milieu, a totally different vision of life. It imparts my eyes to you.

A salesman walked into a busy executive's office and asked, "How about buying some of the latest styles in ties?"

"I don't need any," said the executive. "Scram!" "They are pure silk," continued the salesman.

"Look, I said beat it, and I mean it." Then, his patience exhausted, the executive picked up the salesman and tossed him out; sample cases were scattered all over the place. The salesman, undaunted, picked up his wares, brushed off his clothes, and walked back into the office.

"Now that you have got that off your chest," he said, "I am ready to take down your order."

The same I say to Parijat: now that you have got that off your chest, those contradictions, and getting troubled by them and emotionally disturbed about them -- because you were seeking a philosophy, you were seeking a mental belief, you were trying to find something to cling to and I will not allow -- now that it is off your chest, I am ready to take down your order.

Now, the really last question:

Question 6

I WANT TO TELL YOU, TO THANK YOU FOR ALL THE MIRACLES AND BLESSINGS, BUT I CAN'T FIND A WAY BIG ENOUGH. IT IS ALL SO OVERWHELMING.

A little anecdote.…

A hippie-type hobo wandered into a church and on the way out told the vicar, "Man, you were swinging daddy, like way out, man."

"I beg your pardon?" said the vicar.

"I mean, man," said the hippie hobo, "I really dig your jive, man. I read you loud and clear. I put a little cash in your old plate there, daddyo."

"Aha!" beamed the vicar, grasping the down-and-out's hand. "Cool man, cool!"

That's what I say to you -- cool man, cool. There is no need to express your gratitude; it will be difficult. If you can express it, it is not of worth. If it is of worth, you cannot express it. If you are just giving me a formal thank you, then you can express it. But I know, I know the person who has said this. Something is really happening. It is overwhelming, but there is no need to express it. I know it.

In fact, I know it before you come to know it. Whenever it is happening to somebody, I am the first to know here. You will be the second, even if it is happening to you --

because it will take a little time to reach your mind. It has to travel a little longer. It travels to me more fast. I know it is overwhelming, but there is no need; just cool down.

Become more cool. And I will know it, and everybody else will know it, and the whole world -- even the trees and the rocks and the rivers will know it.

When it really happens, there is no need to say it. The whole existence immediately feels it: something has happened. Somebody has opened, some flower flowered, a lotus bloomed.

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #7

Chapter title: Dying with death, You must live to seek 27 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7606270

ShortTitle:

BELOV107

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

91

mins

COMMIT YOURSELF TO THE EARTH WHILE ON THE EARTH,

MY HEART,

IF YOU WISH TO ATTAIN THE UNATTAINABLE MAN. PLACE AT HIS FEET

YOUR FLOWERS OF FEELINGS AND THE PRAYERS OF TEARS FLOODING YOUR EYES.

THE MAN YOU SEEK IS EARTHED

IN THE EARTH, DECEASED WHILE BEING.

DYING WITH DEATH,

YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK.…

THE RELIGION OF THE BAULS IS THE RELIGION OF THE EARTH. It's

radical, because it pertains to the very roots of being. When I say it is the religion of the earth, I mean many things: it is the religion of the body, it is the religion of nature, it is the religion of reality. The Bauls don't believe in fantasy and they don't believe in some heavenly paradise; they don't believe in far-away goals, they are not utopians. They are very realistic people, down-to-earth. This is something very special in the world of religions, because ordinarily religions are nothing but wish-fulfillments, dreams of a suffering humanity. Because humanity is suffering it substitutes for reality by dreaming.

A poor man can console himself that at least in the kingdom of God he will be the first.

He can console himself with sayings like: Blessed are the meek because they shall inherit the earth; the poor in spirit are the people of God; those who are last will be the first in the kingdom of God. The poor man needs all these consolations.

Man is afraid of death. He needs to be again and again reassured that he is a soul, deathless, immortal; only the body dies, not you. Man is suffering a thousand and one complexities. The whole life is almost an oceanic sadness, suffering, sorrow. It is difficult to bear it. Dreams are needed, hopes of a better future, of a better world, are needed.

Maybe it is beyond death, but just the idea that it is there waiting for you and the suffering is only for today, you pass it somehow; you believe in tomorrow. Sooner or later you will be relieved of it. Ordinary religions are the religions of tomorrow. They simply indicate that because man lives in suffering, man needs dreaming.

The religion of the Bauls is very down-to-earth; it believes in the here-now. It does not say that paradise is somewhere else; it is here, and you cannot postpone it, and all postponement is dangerous, suicidal. If you cannot discover it here- now, you will never discover it anywhere else because you will remain the same. And whenever you will be, life will always come in the form of here-now. So the only door to reality is here, this very moment.

The Bauls say, "This is the reality and there is no that." They don't divide reality into two: they don't say illusory and the real, they don't say MAYA and BRAHMA, they don't say this and that. They say, "This is all." This moment is total, and all division is dangerous because reality is nowhere divided; it is indivisible.

Hence, they don't talk about a God somewhere sitting in the seventh heaven. They talk about a totally different God -- rooted in you, rooted here in the earth, rooted in this body, rooted in these emotions, lust and love, rooted here in tension and stress. The God of the Bauls is a very real God. You can touch Him, you can love Him, you can embrace Him, you live with Him, you can live Him. It is not far away, it is very close; closer than close, because it is you. They don't use the word 'God' at all. Their word for God is ADHAR

MANUSH, the essential man. Man himself is divine. If you enter yourself you will be entering God. If you enter this world you will be entering God.

This does not mean that there is no God. This is a radical standpoint, but not negation. It is a very revolutionary attitude, but not negative. It does not mean that God does not exist. In fact, it means that God exists here, now, and the responsibility is yours to discover Him. And there is no alibi, there is no excuse to postpone.

In Chinese, Taoists have reached to the same viewpoint: they dropped the very word

'God'. They started using the word, 'CHI'LAN'. CHI'LAN means nature; that is God.

CHI'LAN means that which happens of itself, that which is already happening, that which has always been happening and will go on happening. That is the meaning of the word

'Tao' also. In the Vedas, Hindus have a beautiful word: they call it RITAMBH. That is exactly what Tao or CHI'LAN is. RITAMBH means nature, not God -- because whenever you say 'God', somehow it is always somewhere else, not here; at least not in you, not in your neighbor. The earth seems to be not worthy enough for God to be here.

Jainas and Buddhists use the word DHAMMA -- that exactly means nature. The

Sanskrit word DHARMA also means nature. It is not equivalent to the English word 'religion'; no, not at all. In fact, both are polar opposites. Religion means that which binds you, gives you a certain organization -- a church -- gives you a certain belonging. DHARMA means that which frees you from all churches, from all organizations. DHARMA is individual, religion is social. Religion belongs to the collective crowd, religion does not belong to the individual. Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, are all religions; they are not DHARMAS. DHARMA has no adjective to it. Everybody has to discover his own DHARMA; everybody has to discover his own nature.

The Bauls' attitude that God is here in you has to be understood as deeply as possible, because there is no other God. In fact, because religions have been talking about a God somewhere else, that's why the world has become more and more godless. Because the God that is not here and cannot be touched and cannot be seen and cannot be lived with, cannot be very appealing. As man grows to be mature, that God will start disappearing, withering away. Whenever man becomes very mature, those gods of the dreams will disappear and man will be left without God. That's what has happened to this age. It is not because of atheists that man has become godless, it is because of a wrong notion of God.

Marx could condemn the God of the Christians, Marx cannot condemn the God of the Bauls. Scientists can deny the God of the so-called religious, but scientists cannot deny the God of the Baul -- because he never proposes anything dreamlike. He is simply realistic.

I have heard a beautiful anecdote.

A commissar in Russia asked a peasant how the new potato-crop-production plan was coming under their glorious leader.

Said the peasant, "Our potato crop has been miraculous. If we were to put all the potatoes in a pile, they would make a mountain reaching to the feet of God."

'But you know there is not any God," said the commissar.

"I know," said the peasant, "but there are not any potatoes either."

A God in the sky is a false God. Not that the sky is without God, no; the sky is as full of God as the earth. But the first understanding of God is going to be rooted in the earth.

The first understanding has to be of the roots, and out of those roots your understanding will grow and spread to the farther corners of existence. But the journey starts at home. It starts deep within you. The first glimpse of God has to be in the innermost shrine of your heart. If you have not seen Him there, you can go on talking about Him, but you will not ever be able to see Him anywhere. The first encounter has to happen within you. Once it happens, you will be surprised that you start seeing God everywhere. Once you have seen Him within your heart, how can you miss Him. -- because everywhere the heart is throbbing with Him. The tree is full of Him and the rock also, and the river and the ocean, and the animals and the birds, everywhere. Once you have felt His pulse, once you have felt Him circulating in your own blood, once you have had an experience in your own marrow, then everywhere, wherever you look you will find Him. But, it cannot happen otherwise. If you are empty of His experience, you can go to the farthest corner of the world; your travelling will be in vain. You will never reach His temple because you missed the very root of it. You missed Him at home. If your own house does not become His temple, then no temple can be His abode. If your own house has become His temple, then all houses are His abode.

When the Bauls say that one has to be very earth oriented, they don't mean that the sky is empty of God. But they say, "If the earth is not full, then the sky is absolutely empty. If even the earth is not full, how can the sky be full of Him? If He is not here, how can He be there? If He is not this, how can He be that? If He is not today, how can He be tomorrow? If He is not in this life, how can He be in the next?" Their logic is simple and irrefutable.

But man has created a God in the skies. Why? This God is not a real God, it is a substitute -- because you are missing Him here, and you are missing Him so tremendously that you have to put Him somewhere or other. Otherwise you will feel very alone. You will feel so lonely that you will miss the meaning of life. And it is good to put Him very far away, because then there is no hurry. The journey is so far that you cannot complete it today. Even this life is not enough, so enough space to postpone, enough space to say, "Yes, one day I will do," enough space to pretend that you are interested in Him and continuing to be of the world, and going on talking at the same time about God.

This is the double-talk, the double-bind of ordinary humanity. People talk about God and live according to the devil. They go to the temple but they never reach. They read the Bible, they read the Koran, but they never listen. These are

pretensions, only on the surface. This is how the hypocritical humanity is born -- a false, pseudo-humanity.

I have heard.…

Mulla Nasrudin went to his psychiatrist once and said, "Doctor, I wonder if you can split my personality for me?"

"Why? Why would you want to do that?" asked the doctor, surprised. "Because," said the Mulla, "I am so lonesome."

Man feels very alone without God, and to find the real God is arduous. It is very easy to create a pseudo-God which looks like God, which appears like God. It at least gives consolation that you are not alone. Have you watched your concept of God? Has it arisen out of the experience of your own being, or has it arisen out of your experience of your loneliness? This is the criterion: if you believe in God because you feel lonely, your God is going to be false; if you believe in God because you have experienced Him in your aloneness, if it has come out of your own being, then the God is real. Then let Nietzsche declare that God is dead; your God can never be dead. Your God is alive in you. How can Nietzsche declare that God is dead? But he could declare, and not only declare; his declaration became a prophecy. Within a hundred years, his declaration has become a reality. The God of the churches is dead, the God of the temples is dead, the God of the books is dead. Nobody has ever been so prophetic as Nietzsche has been. God is disappearing; the very word has become ugly.

Just the other day I was reading a Christian priest's book. I was surprised, because I have heard about cases in which, particularly in India, people, if they want to read Playboy, hide it in their Gita or in their Bible and read it. That I have heard. But that Christian says that he was so afraid to read the Bible that he was hiding his Bible behind the cover of a Playboy magazine! It has come to happen in the West. So when he would go every Sunday to his beauty parlor, he would take his Bible. But afraid that others might see that he was reading the Bible, so out of date, he would hide it in a Playboy magazine and would read his Bible there.

One day in the Bible he came across Jesus' saying: If you deny me, remember, at the last day of judgment I will also deny you. So he became afraid because this was a sort of denial -- reading the Bible behind the cover of Playboy. He became

so afraid that he started perspiring, because Jesus says, "If you deny me, then before God I will not recognize you." So he threw away the Playboy magazine and he felt so good. He went to his priest and said, "Today I have done a great deed. I gathered courage to let people know that I read the Bible."

God IS dead, MUST be dead. Have you watched yourself? -- if you are carrying a Bible you feel a little awkward. Or, if you are going to the temple you start finding excuses: that you are going because your wife has gone and there is some work to be done, or your father is there, or you are just going for formality's sake; it is just social. Have you watched how things change?

I was reminded when I was reading this of a beautiful story.

One dacoit, a great robber, became interested in the American ways of dacoity.

Everybody has to be interested now, because everybody in his own profession is trying to go to America. Doctors are going, engineers are going, so the dacoit thought, "Why not us? We can also learn the modern techniques." So he went to America, he joined a gang, and he was watching and observing what they were doing, the modern techniques. He was surprised, because first they kidnapped a beautiful woman, and then they wrote. But he said, "This is okay, because we also do the same in India: we kidnap a woman and then we write a letter to the husband that if within three days he doesn't give fifty thousand rupees, then we will kill his wife." So he wondered, "But what is new in it?"

Then he looked at what they were writing in the letter. He was surprised; he said, "What are you doing?" -- because in the letter they were writing, "If within three days you don't send us fifty thousand dollars, we will send your wife back."

The world has tremendously changed. People used to read Playboys hiding them in their Bible covers, but now they are hiding their Bibles in Playboy covers. Nietzsche was right

-- God is dead. But the real God cannot die; that is impossible. To say that God is dead is to say that life is dead. If God means life, then the statement 'God is dead' is simply stupid, meaningless, contradictory -- because life is that which lives, that which goes on living.

The Bauls would laugh. They would say, "Then you have not understood the real God.

Yes, your God is dead because he was false, but the God of the Bauls is not dead, cannot be dead, because we never talked about God -- we talk about life, love. If all the temples were destroyed and all the mosques and GURUDWARAS were burnt, nothing would happen to God. Because the God enshrined there is not the real God. The God enshrined in you is the real God, and that cannot be destroyed. Life cannot be destroyed; life goes on. It is an eternal river."

But man feels lonely. In his loneliness he creates fantasies, dreams. Man has become so lonely that he finds solace in any way, anywhere. It is unfortunate. But this is no way to find the real.

I was reading one anecdote:

Ira quit college, got himself a backpack and began hitchhiking around the United States.

After he had been gone more than a year he telephoned home. "Hello, Ma, how are you?"

"Just fine, son. When are you coming home? I will fix you some chopped liver and chicken soup and a beautiful potroast. "

"I'm still pretty far away."

"Oh, son!" cried the desperate woman.''Just come home, and I will fix your favorite --

oatmeal cookies."

"I don't like oatmeal cookies," said the boy. "You don't?" asked the woman.

"Say," said Ira, "is this Century 5-7682?" "No."

"Then I must have the wrong number."

"Does that mean you are not coming home, boy?" asked the woman.

People are really lonely. Even if it is not your son, at least somebody is coming. You can pretend, you can believe, you can console.

The God that exists in the temples is not a real God. That God that exists in the sky is your projection; the real God is within you. That which you are seeking is not somewhere else, it is in your very seeking. It is in the very seeker -- the sought is in the seeker. You are the truth, alive, in flesh. God is reborn in you, God is incarnated in you, God has taken a body in you. Where are you seeking, where are you going? The Bauls say, "Wait, listen, go within."

They sing,

The God is living in man, wholly intermingled.

Oh, my unseeing heart, your eyes are unwise! How then can you locate the treasured man?

The unseen man

dwelling in the brilliance of light hides his identity

from those blinded by stupor. He is stationed in man, appearing and vanishing

as the eyelids blink.

They go on singing again and again: All of us in different ways

think of God

beyond senses and feelings.

And yet it is only

in the essence of loving that God is found.

On the other shore of the ocean of one's own self

quivers a drop of fluid as the origin of all.

The root of all is based in you.

Explore the base

to reach the essence,

release the sensation of taste on your tongue,

open the doors of feeling for the Beloved.

Nectar, showering on the lotus of spontaneity, lust and love are housed in one single place,

where sorrows and joys do not exist.

They believe in man. They believe in the tremendous potentiality of man. They believe that man is the shrine of God. They believe in the body. No religion except Tantra has ever endeavored to understand this miraculous happening of consciousness located in the body, of consciousness residing in the body. All the other religions have remained anti-body, anti-life, life-negative, body-negative -- as if the more you destroy your body, the more you become divine, or the more you come close to God. Bauls say, "If you destroy the body, you destroy the very base. If you destroy sensation, you destroy sensitivity. If you destroy your senses, then how will you taste Him, how will you hear Him, how will you see Him? If you destroy your love, how will you love Him? If you destroy your passion, then you will be impotent."

They have a really revolutionary religion to preach to the world. They are very illiterate people, but of great insight. Maybe that's why they are so full of insight, because they are illiterate...because they don't know much about scriptures, and they don't know much about philosophy and metaphysics. Because they cannot read the books they read their own bodies; because they cannot understand conceptualizations they try to find out who they are; because they cannot be very learned -- poor beggars moving from one village to another, singing and dancing, enjoying -- they have come very close to reality.

They are very authentic, uncorrupted by nature, society, education. They are very innocent people. And this is their understanding: that body is divine. Body is sacred, because everything is sacred. But this word 'sacred' is not very good. In the Old Testament, the word 'sacred' comes from a root which means the separate. God is called sacred in the Old Testament because He is a separate reality from this reality.

Bauls would laugh. They will say, "You have gone insane! There is no separate reality.

God is THIS reality." Bauls make the whole reality sacred, holy, divine. Their vision is so vast that even matter is no longer thought of as matter. Even matter, in their vision, becomes luminous. Even body is not just body -- it is of the earth, but it carries the divine within it.

I have heard about a Hassid rabbi: Rabbi Bonum was his name. When he was dying he left this last message for his disciples. He said, "Everyone must have two pockets, so that he can reach into one or the other according to his needs. In

his right pocket are to be the words: For my sake was the world created; and in his left: I am nothing but earth."

Beautiful it is. He is saying: Man is nothing but earth -- keep this message in one pocket; and in the other: The whole world is created for me. I am the God of the whole world --

keep this message in the other pocket. Both messages are true because one shows the reality, the other shows the potentiality. One shows the fact, the other shows the truth.

The fact is that we are made of earth; the truth is that we are made in His image. We are both -- God enshrined in earth. We are of the earth, and yet, there is a great passion inside us to rise to the highest sky. Look at the trees -- what are they doing? They come from the earth, they belong to the earth, they are rooted in the earth, and they are trying to reach to the sun, trying to reach to the stars. Rooted in the earth, they move towards heaven. That is the Baul symbol: the tree rooted in the earth, reaching towards heaven; rooted in the body, reaching towards the soul.

Then these two are not contraries; they are both of one process, of one dynamic force.

Just before the Zen Master, Baso, was dying at the age of sixty, he sat up in the lotus posture, and to those gathered around him said, "Don't be misled. Look directly. What is this?" He repeated it loudly, and calmly died.

Let me repeat what he said: "Don't be misled. Look directly. What is this?" He repeated it loudly, then calmly died. THIS conveys the whole meaning; the very directness of it.

There is no THAT. THIS is THAT! This is so vast, there is no need for any that to exist.

This implies all that.

"Don't be misled," he said -- because the greatest misguidance comes from people who separate God from reality, who separate truth from fact, who separate spirit from body, who separate lust from love, who separate mud from the lotus. They are the great misguiders of the world.

They are the poisoners, because once they have made it clear to your mind, conditioned your mind that the lotus can never be of the mud, they have destroyed the very possibility of the lotus. Then you can have a plastic lotus; but a real lotus, never -- because the real lotus is always rooted in the mud. It is part of the mud, it is a flowering of the mud. It is earth come to its glory; it is earth's essence. Once you can see lust and love as one, passion and compassion as one, body and soul as one -- maybe two rhythms of the same energy, two formations of the same force, two concretizations of the same stuff, but the stuff is the same

-- if you can see the world and God just like mud and lotus, lust and love, you have the vision of the Baul.

If you don't have that vision, there is every possibility that you will be misled. And the misguiders are very cunning; they are great rationalizers. They can convince you, they can argue for their standpoint.

I have heard.…

Mistress Goldfarb walked into a kosher butcher shop, asked the owner for a fresh chicken, and immediately began inspecting it. She lifted the wing, stuck her nose underneath and dedared, "Phew! It smells!" Then she pulled up a leg, sniffed and said,

"Phaugh!" After smelling the hind end, Mistress Goldfarb held her nose and exclaimed,

"It stinks! You call this a fresh chicken?"

"Tell me, lady," said the butcher, "you could stand such an inspection?"

These people who go on condemning the world, condemning the body, condemning everything, just ask them, "Will your God be able to stand all this inspection?" Then nothing is left, because all reality is condemned. Then just a concept, an abstraction is left. Yes, abstraction cannot be condemned because then God will not stink. Then He will not perspire because He will have nothing to do with the earth. Then His hands will not be muddy; then He will be just an abstraction.

Have you noticed the fact that all religions have tried to convince the world that their founders were almost unreal? Jainas say Mahavir never perspired, because how can a man of God perspire? Ordinary humanity perspires, not Mahavir.

They say that Mahavir was hit, but blood never came out of his body. What came out of his body?. -- milk. How could blood have come out Mahavir's body, this ordinary humanity? Now they are trying to put Mahavir on such a pedestal that he is bound to become unreal. Then if people come and they say, "We don't believe in your Mahavir, he seems just a myth," they are right.

How can he be real? Reality you deny, you condemn.

The same has happened with all the great Masters of the world: followers try to make them unreal. Followers are always afraid because if the hands of their Masters look dirty.…'Dirty' is not a dirty word, remember; it comes from 'dirt'. It simply says earthly, earthy. A gardener works in the garden; his hands are dirty -- not dirty, just dirt is there --

but dirt is good. We are made of dirt, we are made of dust. The word 'human' comes from HUMUS; HUMUS means the earth. The word 'Adam' also comes from ADAMUS; ADAMUS means the earth. "We are made of earth"; that's what Bauls say. We are made of earth but not made only of earth. We are made of earth, but deep inside is enshrined the divine.

You must have seen earthen lamps in India. They are made of earth, but the flame is not of the earth. The lamp is of the earth, the lamp belongs to the earth, and the flame is continuously running upwards, upwards, and upwards, towards the divine. Man is an earthen lamp -- made of earth, yet enshrining the divine flame.

The Bauls are very down-to-earth realists. They have a beauty in their great vision. They are not denyers: they don't say no to the world. Remember, if you say no to the world too much, sooner or later your God will be just an abstraction -- because the very no to the world will go on reducing God's reality. Whatsoever you say no to will be a reduction of your God. By and by, when you have said no to the whole world, God is nothing but a concept, a word: empty, impotent, just a container without any content. The reality is earthly.

The world has been denied and God has been put as if He is an opposite force, as if He is against the world. Now look at the absurdity: these same people go on saying, "God created the world." He cannot be against it, otherwise why should He create it? The creator cannot be against His own creation. The very creation is a proof that God loves it

-- the creation is His appreciation, the creation is His play, the creation is His love, His vocation. God creates the world because He loves it.

Gurdjieff used to say that all the religions are against God because they are against His creation. How can you be for the poet if you are against his poetry? How can you be for the man if you are against his character? How can you be for the painter if you are against his painting? Gurdjieff seems to be very logical, absolutely right: religions seem to be against God. They talk about God, but they are against Him because they are against His world. They teach you to deny the world; but you cannot deny it because you are rooted in it. Then what happens? -

- you become pseudo, you become false, you become a pretender, you become double faced. You have one face to show to the world, and another face to live with. This is an emergency measure; man could not do anything else.

What to do? You cannot deny the reality, and you cannot allow it, and you cannot accept it -- because your religions teach you to be against it. So, man has found the golden mean: don't deny it in reality, just go on denying it in words. Show that you deny it, that's all. Pay your respects to God and go on living reality.

Religions have not helped man to become sane. They have helped man to become insane, neurotic, split.

It happened in a church:

A man was confessing. "And how much of that stack of hay did you steal, Kavanagh?"

the priest asked at confession.

"I might just as well confess to the whole stack, your Reverence," said Kavanagh. "I am going after the rest of it tonight."

He's confessing, and yet he's planning to do the same thing again this night. Then why confess? No, he is putting himself at ease because people say 'this is bad' and 'this is sin', and people have made a virtue of confession -- as if confession in itself is a virtue. Unless it is authentic, it is meaningless.

It happened on a road:

A Protestant minister was given a brand new car by his congregation, and he was driving it through downtown Dublin. Suddenly the car in front of him came to a screeching stop, and the minister crashed into it. The furious clergyman climbed out and stormed up to the car in front of him with murder in his eyes. Then he noticed that the driver of the other vehicle was a Catholic priest.

"Your Reverence,'' said the minister through clenched teeth, "were it not for the fact that I am a man of the cloth, I would be tempted to thrash you within an inch of your life."

"Your Reverence," said the priest, sticking his head out the window, "were it not that I too am a man of the cloth, and that it happens to be a Friday, I would be tempted to bite your balls."

This is how the whole effort of all religion has made man just pretentious, hypocritical.

Their reality is something different; their masks are absolutely different. Bauls are against it. They say, "Love the world and find your God through that love, so that there is no division created in you. "

Man had to become a hypocrite; it became just a safety measure. Religions have not left any possibility, any way for him to be real. Now look at the absurdity: they go on teaching 'be true', and their whole teaching creates untruth. On the one hand they teach you to be true, to be authentic, and on the other hand their whole teaching creates such a situation that if you want to be true you will have to commit suicide; you cannot live.

Either commit suicide if you want to be true but then what is the point of being true if you commit suicide? You will not be here to be true. If you want to live, you will have to be untrue. But the fault is not with you; the fault is in the whole program that has been fed into your brain. The whole program is faulty.

Man has to be real, real to reality. Whatsoever the reality, man has to accept it and live it in deep gratitude, and live it with such reverence, respect -- because it is God's reality. It is His temple.

When Moses reached on the mount where he encountered God, he saw a fire burning under a bush. And the bush was not burnt; the bush was as green as ever and flames were coming out of it. He could not believe his eyes. He started

moving towards the bush; he was almost magnetized by what he saw. Then suddenly God shouted, "Moses! Take your shoes off! You are walking on holy ground."

I have always loved that parable. But I say to you, not only on Mount Sinai, but wherever you are walking, you are walking on holy ground -- because all is His ground, because all is He.

The Beloved is present in so many forms. Lust is also His, love is also His. Bauls say,

"Don't deny anything because denial is an irreverence. It is a rejection of God."

One day I saw that Mulla Nasrudin was teaching his son to be able to defend himself, so he taught him the finer points of boxing.

I asked him, "But suppose, Mulla, he comes up against a bigger kid who also knows how to box? Then what?"

"I have already thought of that," said Nasrudin, "so I am teaching him how to run too."

On one hand we go on teaching people to be true, and on the other hand, in a subtle way, we go on teaching them not to be true. Each child is made neurotic by the parents, by the society; and we know that we are doing it, and we know that others have done the same to us. Stop doing it to yourself and stop doing it to others. Become alert. Just be real. I emphasize reality more than truth. Because truth has been used by the anti-life people so much, it has wrong associations. Be real. If you are real, one thing will start disappearing from your heart, and that is guilt.

One psychoanalyst and therapist, Shepard, has coined a word:'unguilting'. I like the word.

Real religion is always a process of unguilting; false religions are always a process of guilting. They try to make you more and more guilty: anger is there, lust is there, sex is there, greed is there, attachment is there, hate is there, love is there -- and everything is condemned. You become guilty, you start feeling wrong; you are wrong, you start feeling condemned, you start hating yourself. If you start hating yourself you will never be able to find God, because He is

hiding in you.

Unguilt; drop all guilt! Whatsoever you are, whosoever you are, wheresoever you are, God has accepted you. When God has accepted you, why be worried?. -

- accept yourself.

Start living your life not through concepts; start living your life through your feelings, emotions, your body. Start living life as if you were never corrupted by any society, as if you have just come new into the world directly from God's hands and nobody has taught you anything. Start living: that life is the real life. Then you listen to your own heart, you listen to your body. You don't repress, you try to understand; and through understanding is transformation.

The Bauls sing the song for today:

COMMIT YOURSELF TO THE EARTH WHILE ON THE EARTH,

MY HEART,

IF YOU WISH TO ATTAIN THE UNATTAINABLE MAN.

Commit yourself to the earth -- don't be committed to some heaven somewhere else, be committed to the here and now, to the reality that is your surround. Be committed to your humanity, to the earth that is just below you: commit yourself to the earth while on the earth.

Bauls say, "We will think -- when we have moved to heaven and gone to the other world, then we will see. Once you have learned how to be committed to the here and now, there also you will be committed." Because whenever future comes, it always comes as the present. Even the other world will come as this world. Have you seen that you move from one shore of a river to the other, and when you reach closer to the other shore, the other shore becomes this shore, and the first shore that used to be this shore becomes that shore? So wherever you are, you are surrounded by this-ness.

I have heard.…

Once Mulla Nasrudin drank too much, and was walking on a road, zig-zagging from this side to that. He was asking people, "Where is the other side of the road?"

Somebody said, "The other side is there."

He went there and he asked people, "Where is the other side of the road?" And they said,

"The other side is there."

He said, "These people seem to be very foolish. When I go to that side, people say the other side is there. When I come here, people say the other side is there. Are they mad?"

The other side is always there. And wherever you are, you are always here; this- ness surrounds you.

Just the other day I quoted one very great saying of Udallak to his son, Swetketu

-- ''That art thou"; TATWAMASI SWETKETU. The Bauls would like to make a little change in it. They would say, "THIS art thou" -- not that, because THAT gives a far away idea of God. THIS is more earthly.

COMMIT YOURSELF TO THE EARTH WHILE ON THE EARTH,

MY HEART,

IF YOU WISH TO ATTAIN THE UNATTAINABLE MAN.

That unattainable man, the ADHAR MANUSH, the essential man; if you want to attain it, then be committed to the here and now. Be committed to the present, be committed to the reality that is available to you in this moment. There is no other commitment.

PLACE AT HIS FEET

YOUR FLOWERS OF FEELINGS AND THE PRAYERS OF TEARS FLOODING YOUR EYES.

They are very real people. They say 'the flowers of feelings'. Ordinary flowers won't do.

You can pick flowers from the trees and go to the God of your temple and put those flowers there, but the God is abstract, the flowers borrowed. In fact, they were more in tune with God on the trees. They were more in tune with God on the trees -- at least they were alive. You have not made them closer to God, you have killed them.

When I used to live in Jabalpur I had a very beautiful garden, and I was a victim, a continuous victim of religious people. Because there used to be two temples just close by, so any worshippers would come, and without asking they would start picking flowers. In that part of the country it is thought that if somebody is picking flowers for his God, it is not good to prevent it. So I had to put up a notice, because if I prevented them they would say, "These are for religious purposes." I had to put up a notice: You can pick for any other purpose, but not for religious purposes -- because, as I see it, the flowers are more surrendered to God on the plants, alive. You will kill them. Your God is bogus and you will kill the flowers. This whole worship is pseudo.

The Bauls say 'your flowers of feelings place at his feet': your love, your compassion, your understanding, your lived experiences, your visions, your taste, your richness.

"Place at his feet your flowers of feelings and the prayers of tears'-' -- because words won't do. How can words become prayers? Words are dead things: they don't mean much. Yes, there is much noise in them, but they don't mean much. Silent tears would be better. So you can find Bauls standing by the side of the road crying, and if you ask,

"What are you doing?" they will say, "Praying." And you don't see any shrine, no temple, not even a tree-god. They are just standing on the road, crying. You will ask, "Where is your God?" and they will say, "Everything! Everywhere He is. Whenever the right moment is available to pray, whenever I feel in a receptive

moment, that is the right moment to pray. I'm praying." With tears they pray, with dance they pray, with singing they pray, but their prayer is very alive.

The Bauls say,

With a beggar's humility

I have come to your doors.

No one is ever turned away

from your home of unending stores. You have all the riches,

and so much have you given without my demand.

No more do I need any wealth, O my Master,

give me your feet!

"No more do I need any wealth, O my Master, give me your feet" -- just your feet are enough, so I can cry, so my tears can wash your feet.

PLACE AT HIS FEET

YOUR FLOWERS OF FEELINGS AND THE PRAYERS OF TEARS FLOODING YOUR EYES.

THE MAN YOU SEEK

IS EARTHED IN THE EARTH, DECEASED WHILE BEING.

DYING WITH DEATH,

YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK...

The man you seek is earthed, is incarnated in the body. The body is your earth. And the man you seek is here, enshrined in the earth, enshrined in death: the flame of life enshrined in death...so don't be afraid of the earth, and don't be afraid of death; they make it possible for you to live. Life is possible only because of death, soul is possible only because of the body. The tree is possible only because of the roots, so don't be afraid of the roots, and don't be afraid of death. Don't be afraid of the body. Accept this reality.

DYING WITH DEATH,

YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK...

Live when life is there. Be committed to the earth while on the earth; die when death comes. Move with life and move with death. Dying, don't cling to life. Dying, don't resist death; dying, die. Living, live; dying, die. Let the moment be total. Float with it, be committed to it. When death comes, then don't be sad. Then accept death. Then accept it with such totality that even death cannot kill you.

A total person cannot be killed, and a divided person never lives. A total person is already beyond death. Totality is beyond death. Divided, separated, falling into parts, not together, you just look alive but you are not alive. Dying, die; surrender to death. Now it is God who has come as death.

For the Baul everything is divine -- life, death. Nothing is undivine. The devil does not exist.

You must have heard the parable in Jesus' life that when Mary Magdalene came to see him, she was possessed by seven demons. He touched her and all the seven demons rushed, ran towards the sea and drowned themselves there. Now this parable is very significant. The word 'demon' comes from a root which means division. If you transiate this parable into psychological terms, it simply means Mary Magdalene was divided into seven parts. Jesus touched her, she became total, unpossessed; the demons disappeared.

Demons mean divisions.

The Baul lives an undivided life; he never divides. He is not against anything, he is not for anything; he simply lives. Whatsoever comes in the moment, he lives it. He is surrendered to reality; that is his prayer. Death comes, he yields beautifully, gracefully.

He dies. He cooperates with death. There is not a little bit of resistance, not even a little bit. He is not fighting; he embraces death.

DYING WITH DEATH,

YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK.…

And then he goes on and on. His search is unending. God can never be totally known because He is infinite. We can go on knowing Him more and more and more. We go on coming closer and closer and closer, but God is not a goal. Nobody can say, "I have arrived." If somebody says it, then something is wrong. The Upanishads say the one who says "I have known God", has not known -- because how can you know the eternal? Yes, you can live Him, you can love Him, you can be in Him, but you cannot know Him --

because knowledge will become a definition, knowledge will make Him finite. That which is known totally becomes finite, but God remains unknowable. The more you know, the more doors open, the more mysteries open. Then each death is a closing of the past and a new vision of the future.

DYING WITH DEATH, YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK.… and one goes on

seeking. The pilgrimage is eternal. The Bauls sing,

SHUT THE DOORS ON THE FACE OF LUST,

ATTAIN THE GREATEST, THE UNATTAINABLE MAN, AND ACT AS THE LOVERS ACT:

MEET THE DEATH BEFORE YOU DIE.

To die with death is possible only if you have met death before you die. Otherwise it will be difficult. You need some acquaintance. If death comes and

you are not acquainted with it, it will be difficult for you to surrender. That is what meditation is all about: meeting death before you die; making a few acquaintances, a few encounters with death, so you start loving the beauty of it, so you start falling in love with it, so you can see the divine face even in death. Only a meditator can die without fighting, otherwise fight is unconscious. It is not that you will fight; you will find yourself fighting, and it will be almost impossible for you not to fight. Resistance is unconscious, it is built in.

Meditate or love, because these are the two ways to be acquainted with death. If you love, it is a small death. If you love very deeply, it is a great death. If you are really in love, you are no more the same as you were before. Something has disappeared; you are reborn. Love is a rebirth. So, many times in life, through meditation and love, you should become acquainted with death so that when death really comes you know the guest so well that you are not afraid. You can welcome the guest, you can receive the guest with great love, with great rejoicing, celebration.

The Bauls say about the ADHAR MANUSH, the essential man: Poison and ambrosia

are one and the same to him. He is dead while wholly living.

If you become acquainted with death through love and meditation, by and by you will see that life and death are two aspects of the same coin; poison and ambrosia are two aspects of the same coin; matter and mind -- two aspects of the same coin; good and bad, all dualities -- two aspects of the same coin. Then you are not worried. Then you don't choose. Then you live a life of choiceless awareness. Then all is the same. If you choose life you have chosen death. If you avoid death you will avoid life -- so there is no point in choosing, and there is no point in avoiding. One simply waits and accepts whatsoever gift comes from God's grace.

This is what Bauls call: He is dead while wholly living. He is absolutely alive and yet, in a sense, dead, because all dualities have come into him and become a synthesis. He is wholly dead and wholly alive. You are neither alive nor dead; you are in a limbo.

The perfect man is both together. In him, all dualities are transcended. He is

tremendously enriched because life goes on pouring into him, death also goes on pouring into him. Whatsoever life can give, he accepts; whatsoever death can give, he accepts.

Whatsoever happiness gives he accepts, and whatsoever unhappiness gives he accepts.

And remember, there are treasures hidden in unhappiness also, as there are treasures hidden in happiness. If you have known only treasures of happiness, then you have not known much. If you have known only treasures of joy you have not known much; there are treasures of sadness also. There are a few treasures which only sadness can give to you. There are treasures of laughter and treasures of tears.

The Bauls say that one should be so capable that one allows all dualities to merge and come into oneself. Then only is the essential man revealed. And the essential man is the God of the Bauls.

COMMIT YOURSELF TO THE EARTH WHILE ON THE EARTH,

MY HEART,

IF YOU WISH TO ATTAIN THE UNATTAINABLE MAN. PLACE AT HIS FEET

YOUR FLOWERS OF FEELINGS AND THE PRAYERS OF TEARS FLOODING YOUR EYES.

THE MAN YOU SEEK IS EARTHED

IN THE EARTH,

DECEASED WHILE BEING. DYING WITH DEATH,

YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK.…

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #8

Chapter title: The body is an abode 28 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall Archive

code:

7606280

ShortTitle:

BELOV108

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

93

mins

The first question:

Question 1

THE BAULS CELEBRATE THEIR LIVES IN THEIR BODIES. COULD YOU

SAY

MORE ABOUT THIS? AMERICANS CHERISH THEIR BODIES WITH HEALTH

FOOD, ROLFING, MASSAGE, ETC. BUT I DON'T THINK THIS IS THE SAME AS

THE BAULS. COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

THERE IS A LOT OF DIFFERENCE, and the difference is not only quantitative, it is qualitative. The modern world, the modern mind, knows only the empty temple. It has completely forgotten about the one who is enshrined in the temple. So we go on worshipping the temple, but the God is forgotten. Not knowing anything about the center of life, we go on moving and indulging on the periphery. The American cherishes his body as the body, Baul worships his body as the shrine of God. Body in itself is nothing.

It is luminous because of something that is beyond the body. The glory of the body is not in the body itself -- it is a host -- the glory is because of the guest. If you forget the guest, then it is sheer indulgence. If you remember the guest, then loving the body, celebrating the body is part of worship.

The Baul has a great vision. In that vision body is the lowest part, the most visible part, the most tangible. But it is not the all, it is just the beginning. You have to enter through the body; it is just a gate. It leads to deeper mysteries. The Baul cherishes the body because the body is a vehicle, and through the body one can know that which is embodied, that which is not body itself. The body is the earthen lamp and God is the flame. The lamp is worshipped because of the flame. Once the flame is gone, who worships the body, who celebrates the body? Then it is nothing; then dust unto dust, it returns back to the earth.

The body is throbbing with God, pulsating with God. If you can see that pulsation, then even dust becomes divine. If you cannot see that pulsation, then it is simply dust. Then there is no meaning in it.

The American worship of the body is meaningless. Hence, people go after health food, massage, Rolfing, and in a thousand and one ways they somehow try to create meaning in their lives. But look into their eyes; a great emptiness exists. You can see they have missed. The fragrance is not there, the flower has not

flowered. Deep inside, they are just desert-like, lost, not knowing what to do. They go on doing many things for the body, but it is missing the target.

I have heard an anecdote:

Rosenfeld walked into the house with a grin on his face. "You will never guess what a bargain I just got," he told his wife. "I bought four polyester, steel-belted, radial wide-tread, white-walled, heavy-duty tires, on sale yet!"

"Are you nuts?" said Mistress Rosenfeld. "What did you buy tires for? You don't even have a car."

"So," said Rosenfeld, "you buy brassieres, don't you?"

If the center is missing, then you can go on decorating the periphery. It may deceive others, but it cannot fulfill you. It may even deceive you sometimes, because even one's own lie repeated too many times starts appearing like a truth. But it cannot fulfill you, it cannot give contentment. The American is trying hard to enjoy life, but there seems to be no rejoicing. The Baul is not trying at all to enjoy life. There is no effort in it; he simply is enjoying it. And he has nothing to enjoy; he is just a beggar on the road, but he has something of the inner, some glow of the unknown surrounds him. His songs are not only songs; something from the beyond descends in them. When he dances, it is not only that his body is moving; something deeper has moved. He's not trying to enjoy.

Remember it: whenever you are trying to enjoy you will miss. When you are trying to achieve happiness you will miss. The very effort to achieve happiness is absurd --

because happiness is here: you cannot achieve it. Nothing has to be done about it, you have simply to allow it. It is happening, it is all around you; within, without, only happiness is. Nothing else is real. Watch, look deep into the world, into trees, birds, rocks, rivers, into the stars, moon and sun, into people, animals

-- look deep: existence is made out of the stuff of happiness, joy, SATCHITANANDA. It is made of bliss. There is nothing to be done about it. Your very doing may be the barrier. Relax and it fulfills you; relax and it rushes into you; relax, it overflows you.

The Baul is relaxed; the American is tense. Tension arises when you are chasing something, relaxation arises when you are allowing something. That's why I say

there is a great difference, and the difference is qualitative. It is not a question of quantity -- that Bauls have more than Americans, or Americans have less than the Bauls. No, the Americans have nothing of happiness that the Bauls have; and what the Americans have -

- the misery, the tension, the anguish, the neurosis -- the Bauls don't have. They exist in a totally different dimension.

The dimension of the Baul is here-now; the dimension of the American is somewhere else -- then-there, but never here-now. The American is chasing, chasing hard, trying to get something out of life, trying to squeeze life. Nothing comes out of it because that is not the way. You cannot squeeze life; you have to surrender to it. You cannot conquer life. You have to be so courageous to be defeated by life. Defeat is victory there, and the effort to be victorious is going to prove to be nothing but your final, UTTER failure.

Life cannot be conquered because the part cannot conquer the whole. It is as if a small drop of water is trying to conquer the ocean. Yes, the small drop can fall into the ocean and become the ocean, but it cannot conquer the ocean. In fact, dropping into the ocean, slipping into the ocean is the way to conquer.

Dissolve yourself.

The Baul is one who is dissolved in life. He has said an absolute yes to life. He's not trying to squeeze anything. He simply waits -- passive, alert, available. When God knocks on his door the doors are always open, that's all.

He is not chasing God. How can he chase? Where, in what ways, on what paths can we find Him? Either He is everywhere or He is nowhere. You cannot address your life towards God; you cannot make a target out of Him. He is the total; the total cannot be made a target. Wherever you look, He is. Whatsoever you do, you do in Him. Even when you are miserable, you are miserable in Him. Even in your misery you don't lose Him. He cannot be lost. That which can be lost is not God.

That's why Bauls call God ADHAR MANUSH -- the essential man, the essential consciousness. It is so essential you cannot lose it. It is your very ground, it is your being.

He celebrates his body because he knows that someone who is of the beyond, the

stranger, is residing in the body. The body is an abode. It is a temple, but not empty. It is full of light, it is full of life -- God is there. Realizing this, he dances; realizing this, he sings; realizing this, he smiles and cries and weeps, and tears roll down his face. Seeing the miracle: "I have not earned Him, and He is here; I have not even sought Him, and He is here; I have not even begged, and He is here," a great, tremendous gratitude arises. The Baul dances because of it.

Now let me say this: the American is trying to find happiness, hence his overconcern with the body. It is almost an obsession. It has gone beyond the limits of concern, it has become obsessive: continuously thinking about the body, doing this and that, and all sorts of things. He is making an effort to have some contact with happiness through the body.

That is not possible.

The Baul has ATTAINED it. He has already seen it inside himself. He has looked deep into his body, not through massage, not through Rolfing, not through sauna bath. He has looked into it through love and meditation and he has found that it is there, the treasure is there. Hence he worships his body; hence he is careful about his body because the body is carrying the divine.

Have you watched how a woman walks when she is pregnant so careful, because a new life is enshrined in her. Have you seen the transfiguration that comes to the, face of a woman when she becomes pregnant? Her face is luminous, hopeful, throbbing with new life, new possibility. Look at Prafulla; she is pregnant now. Look at her face -- how transfigured, how happy she looks. She is carrying a treasure, a great treasure. A new life is going to be created through her. She walks carefully, moves carefully. A grace has arisen in her because she is pregnant. She is no more alone: her body has become a temple. This is just to make you understand.

What to say about a Baul? God is there. He is pregnant with the divine. He glows, he is luminous, he dances and sings. Possessing nothing, he possesses all; having nothing, he is the richest man in the world. In one way he is just a beggar on the road, and in another way, the emperor. Because of this that has happened inside -- that he has become aware --

he is happy with his body, he takes care of his body, he loves his body. This love is totally different.

And secondly: the American mind is competitive. It is not necessary that you may be really in love with your body; you may be just competing with others. Because others are doing things, you have to do them. The American mind is the most shallow, ambitious mind that has ever existed in the world. It is the very basic worldly mind. That's why the businessman has become the top-most reality in America. Everything else has faded into the background; the businessman, the man who controls money is the top-most reality. In India, BRAHMINS were the top-most reality -- the seekers of God. In Europe the aristocrats were the top- most reality -- well-cultured, educated, alert, in tune with subtle nuances of life: music, art, poetry, sculpture, architecture, classical dances, languages, Greek and Latin. The aristocrat, who had been conditioned for the higher values of life for centuries, was the top-most reality in Europe. In Soviet Russia the proletariat, the downtrodden, the oppressed, the laborer is the top-most reality. In America it is the businessman; VAISHYA, one who controls money.

Money is the most competitive realm. You need not have culture, you need only have money. You need not know anything about music, anything about poetry. You need not know anything about ancient literature, history, religion, philosophy -- no, you need not know. If you have a big bank balance, you are important. That's why I say this is the most shallow mind that has ever existed. And this mind has turned everything into commerce.

This mind is continuously in competition. Even if you purchase a Van Gogh or a Picasso, you don't purchase it for Picasso. You purchase because the neighbors have purchased.

They have a Picasso painting in their drawing room, so how can you afford not to have it? You HAVE to have it. You may not know anything -- you may not know even how to hang it, which side is which. Because it is difficult to know, as far as a Picasso is concerned, whether the picture is hanging upside-down or right-side up. You may not know at all whether it is authentically a Picasso or not. You may not look at it at all, but because others have it and they are talking about Picasso, you have to show your culture.

You simply show your money. So whatsoever is costly becomes significant; whatsoever is costly is thought to be significant.

Money and the neighbors seem to be the only criterion to decide everything: their cars, their houses, their paintings, their decorations. People are having

sauna baths in their bathrooms not because they love their bodies, not necessarily, but because it is the 'in'

thing -- everybody has it. If you don't have it you look poor. If everybody has a house in the hills, you have to have it. You may not know how to enjoy the hills; you may be simply bored there. Or you may take your t.v. and your radio there and just listen to the same radio you were listening to at home, and watch the same t.v. program as you were watching at home. What difference does it make where you are sitting, the hills or in your own room? But others have it. A four- car garage is needed; others have it. You may not need four cars.

The American mind is continuously competing with others. The Baul is a non- competitor. He is a drop-out. He says, "I am no more concerned with what others are doing, I am only concerned with what I am. I am not concerned with what others have, I am only concerned with what I have." Once you see the fact, that life can be tremendously blissful without having many things, then who bothers? That's one of the basic differences between other renunciates in India and the Bauls. Bauls are beggars, Jain monks are also beggars, but there is a great difference: Jain monks have the American mind. They have left the world with great effort, they have renounced the world with great effort -- because they think this is the only way to achieve the other world, to earn virtue. But they remain businessmen. The Jains are the top-most businessmen in India. That's why I say they have the American mind. Their sannyasins remain the same.

The Baul's renunciation is totally different. He has not renounced for any other world. He has renounced seeing the foolishness of possessions, seeing the unnecessary burdening.

He has renounced seeing the fact that you can be so happy without many things. Then why carry them? Carrying them creates anxiety, burdens you and destroys your blissfulness. The Jain monk is thinking of another world: his MOKSHA, his heaven. The Baul is not worried about any other world. He says, "This is the only world." But he has come to see the fact, a simple truth: that the more you have, the less you enjoy. Can't you see it? It is a simple arithmetic of life -- the more you have, the less you enjoy, because you don't have any time to enjoy. The whole time is occupied by having. If you have too many things, you are occupied by those many things; your inner space is occupied. To enjoy, you need a little space; to enjoy, you need a little unburdening; to enjoy, you need to forget your possessions and just be.

The Baul loves life, hence he renounces. The Jain monk hates life, hence he renounces.

So sometimes the gesture may appear the same, but it need not be the same. The inner significance may be totally different.

I have heard.…

Old Luke and his wife were known as the stingiest couple in the valley. Luke died and a few months later his wife lay dying. She called in a neighbor and said weakly, "Ruthie, bury me in my black silk dress, but before you do, cut the back out and make a new dress out of it. It is good material and I hate to waste it."

"Could not do that," said Ruthie. "When you and Luke walk up them golden stairs, what would them angels say if your dress ain't got a back in it?"

"They won't be looking at me," she said. "I buried Luke without his pants."

The concern is always the other -- Luke will be without pants so everybody will be looking at him. The American concern is with the other. The Baul's concern is simply with himself. The Baul is very selfish; he is not worried about you, and he is not worried about anything that you have or anything that you have done. He is not concerned at all with your biography. He lives on this earth as if he were alone. Of course, he has a tremendous space all around him -- because he lives on this earth as if he were alone. He moves on this earth without being concerned with others' opinions. He lives his life, he is doing his thing, and he is doing his being. Of course, he is happy like a child. His happiness is very simple, innocent. It is not manipulated, it is not manufactured. It is very simple, essential, basic, like a child's.

Have you watched a child just running, shouting, dancing for nothing at all -- because he has nothing? If you ask him, "Why are you so happy?" he will not be able to answer you.

He will really think that you are mad. Is there any need for any cause to be happy? He will simply be shocked that the 'why' can be raised. He will shrug his shoulders and will go on his way and start singing and dancing again. The child has nothing. He is not a prime minister yet, he is not a president of the United States, he is not a Rockefeller. He owns nothing -- maybe a few shells or a few stones that he has collected on the seashore, that's all.

That's all that Bauls own: a few seashells, a few stones -- they will make a MALA of those stones, they will wear the MALA; a little instrument to sing, bells to ring for their innermost God, a small AEKTARA, a one-stringed instrument -- that too one-stringed, because that is enough; a small DUGGI, a small drum -- that's all. A Baul sleeps unconcerned with the world. He lives, moves unconcerned with the world. And his God is always within him so wherever he is is his shrine. He never goes to the temple -- not that he is against it; he never goes to the mosque -- not that he is against it. He has come to the real temple, and now there is no need to go anywhere. He worships, he prays, he loves, but his love, his prayer, his worship, is of the essential reality that he is.

The Baul's life does not end when life ends; the American's life ends when life ends.

When the body ends, the American ends. Hence, the American is very afraid of death.

Because of the fear of death, the American goes on trying any way to prolong his life, sometimes to absurd lengths. Now there are many Americans who are just vegetating in hospitals, in mental asylums. They are not living; they are long since dead. They are just managed by the physicians, medicines, modern equipment. Somehow they go on hanging on.

The fear of death is so tremendous: once gone you are gone forever and nothing will survive -- because the American knows only the body and nothing else. If you know only the body you are going to be very poor. First, you will always be afraid of death, and one who is afraid to die will be afraid to live -- because life and death are so together that if you are afraid to die you will become afraid to live. It is life that brings death, so if you are afraid of death, how can you really love life? The fear will be there. It is life that brings death; you cannot live it totally. If death ends everything, if that is your idea and understanding, then your life will be a life of rushing and chasing. Because death is coming, you cannot be patient. Hence the American mania for speed: everything has to be done fast because death is approaching, so try to manage as many more things as possible before you die. Try to stuff your being with as many experiences as possible before you die, because once you are dead, you are dead.

This creates a great meaninglessness and, of course, anguish, anxiety. If there is nothing which is going to survive the body, then whatsoever you do cannot be

very deep. Then whatsoever you do cannot satisfy you. If death is the end and nothing survives, then life cannot have any meaning and significance. Then it is a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing.

The Baul knows that he is IN the body, but he is not the body. He loves the body; it is his abode, his house, his home. He is not against the body because it is foolish to be against your own home, but he is not a materialist. He is earthly but not a materialist. He is very realistic, but not a materialist. He knows that dying, nothing dies. Death comes but life continues.

I have heard: The funeral service was over and Desmond, the undertaker, found himself standing beside an elderly gent.

"One of the relatives?" asked the mortician. "Yes, I am," answered the senior citizen. "How old are you?"

"Ninety-four."

"Hmm," said Desmond, "hardly pays you to make the trip home."

The whole idea is of bodily life: if you are ninety-four,; finished. Then it hardly pays to go back home; then better to die. What is the point of going back? -- you will have to come again. It hardly pays...if death is the only reality, then whether you are ninety-four or twenty-four, how much difference does it make? Then the difference is of only a few years. Then the very young start feeling old, and the child starts feeling already dead.

Once you understand that this body is the only life, then what is the point of it all? Then why carry it on?

Camus has written that the only basic metaphysical problem for man is suicide. I agree with him. If body is the only reality and there is nothing within you that is beyond body, then of course that is the most important thing to consider, brood, and meditate on. Why not commit suicide? Why wait until ninety-four? And why suffer all sorts of problems and miseries on the way? If one is going to die, then why not die today? Why get up again tomorrow morning? It seems futile.

So on the one hand the American is constantly running from one place to another to somehow grab the experience, somehow not to miss the experience. He is running all around the world, from one town to another, from one country to another, from one hotel to another. He is running from one guru to another, from one church to another, in search, because death is coming. On the one hand a constant, mad chasing, and on the other hand a deep-down apprehension that everything is useless -- because death will end all. So whether you lived a rich life or you lived a poor life, whether you were intelligent or unintelligent, whether you were a great lover or missed, what difference does it make?

Finally death comes, and it equalizes everybody: the wise and the foolish, the sages and the sinners, the enlightened people and the stupid people, all go down into the earth and disappear. So what is the point of it all? Whether it be a Buddha or a Jesus or a Judas; what difference does it make? Jesus dies on the cross, Judas commits suicide the next day

-- both disappear into the earth.

On the other hand there is a fear that you may miss and others may attain, and on the other hand a deep apprehension that even if you get, nothing is got. Even if you arrive, you arrive nowhere because death comes and destroys everything.

The Baul lives in the body, loves his body, celebrates it, but he is not the body. He knows the essential man, the ADHAR MANUSH. He knows that there is something in him which will survive all deaths. He knows that there is something in him which is eternal and time cannot destroy it. This he has come to feel through meditation, love, prayer.

This he has come to feel inside his own being. He is unafraid. He is unafraid of death because he knows what life is. And he is not chasing happiness, because he knows God is sending him millions of opportunities; he has just to allow.

Can't you see the trees are rooted in the ground? They cannot go anywhere, and still they are happy. They cannot chase happiness, certainly; they cannot go and seek happiness.

They are rooted in the ground, they cannot move, but can't you see the happiness? Can't you see their joy when it is raining, their great contentment when winds are running hither and thither? Can't you feel their dance?

Now researchers say that when the gardener comes and the gardener loves the tree, the tree feels happy and rejoices. If you love the tree and you come close to it, it rejoices, as if a great friend is coming close. Now there are scientific instruments to check whether the tree is happy or not. It vibrates in a different rhythm. When the enemy comes -- the woodcutter, the carpenter -- the tree is simply in a turmoil, anxious, afraid. And when you cut one tree, now the scientists say the other trees all cry and weep. It is not only that when you cut one tree that tree weeps and cries; other trees, all the surrounding trees, cry and weep. And not only with trees, but if you kill a bird, all the trees start weeping --

subtle tears, great anguish, agony spreads. But they are rooted; they go nowhere. Still, life comes to them.

This is the understanding of the Baul: that there is no need to go anywhere. Even if you go on sitting under a tree as it happened to Buddha; God himself came to him. He was not going anywhere -- just sitting under his tree.

All comes -- you just create the capacity; all comes -- you just allow it. Life is ready to happen to you. You are creating so many barriers, and the greatest barrier that you can create is chasing. Because of your chasing and running, whenever life comes and knocks at your door she never finds you there. You are always somewhere else. When life reaches there you have moved. You were in Katmandu; when life reaches Katmandu you are in Goa. When you are in Goa and life somehow reaches Goa, you are in Poona. And by the time life reaches Poona, you will be in Philadelphia. So, you go on chasing life and life goes on chasing you, and the meeting never happens.

Be...just be, and wait, and be patient. The second question:

Question 2

BEFORE COMING TO YOU I USED TO DO A BUDDHIST MEDITATION CALLED

MAITRI BHAVANA. IT STARTS BY SAYING TO ONESELF: MAY I BE WELL, MAY I BE HAPPY, MAY I BE FREE FROM ENMITY, MAY I BE FREE FROM ILL-WILL AGAINST MYSELF. AFTER BEING PENETRATED BY THE FEELING

THESE THOUGHTS GENERATE, THE NEXT PHASE OF THE MEDITATION

CONSISTS IN EXTENDING IT TO OTHERS: TO START WITH, VISUALIZING

PEOPLE YOU LOVE AND GIVING OUT THIS GOOD FEELING TO THEM; THEN

DOING THE SAME WITH PEOPLE YOU LOVE LESS, UNTIL YOU MIGHT EVEN

FEEL COMPASSION FOR PEOPLE YOU HATE.

I USED TO FEEL THIS MEDITATION WAS PRETTY GOOD. IT SOMEHOW

OPENED ME TO OTHERS. AND I STILL FEEL THERE IS SOMETHING REALLY

DEEP AND BASIC TO IT. BUT I DROPPED IT WHEN I CAME TO YOU BECAUSE

I SAW IN IT THE DANGER OF IT BEING SOME KIND OF SELF- HYPNOSIS. I STILL FEEL FOR THIS MEDITATION BUT I AM CONFUSED AS TO WHETHER I SHOULD TAKE IT UP AGAIN, MAYBE WITH A DIFFERENT ATTITUDE, OR

JUST DROP IT. CAN YOU PLEASE SPEAK ABOUT THIS MEDITATION? I WOULD BE GRATEFUL.

MAITRI BHAVANA is one of the most penetrating meditations. You need not be afraid of getting into some sort of self-hypnosis; it is not. In fact, it is a sort of de-hypnosis. It looks like hypnosis because it is the reverse process: you have come to me from your home, you walked the way; now going back you will walk the same way. The only difference will be that now your back will be towards me. The way will be the same, you will be the same, but your face was towards me while you were coming towards me; now your back will be towards me.

Man is already hypnotized. It is not a question now of being hypnotized or not

hypnotized. You are already hypnotized. The whole process of society is a sort of hypnosis. Somebody is told that he is a Christian, and it is so continuously repeated that his mind is conditioned and he thinks himself a Christian. Somebody is Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan -- these are all hypnoses. You are already hypnotized. If you think you are miserable, this is a hypnosis. If you think you have too many problems, this is a hypnosis. Whatsoever you are is a sort of hypnosis. The society has given you those ideas, and now you are too full of those ideas and conditionings.

MAITRI BHAVANA is a de-hypnosis: it is an effort to bring back your natural mind; it is an effort to give you back your original face; it is an effort to bring you to the point where you were when you were born and the society had not yet corrupted you. When a child is born he is in MAITRI BHAVANA. MAITRI BHAVANA means a great feeling of friendship, love, compassion. When a child is born, he knows no hatred, he knows only love. Love is intrinsic; hatred he will learn later on. Love is intrinsic; anger he will learn later on. Jealousy, possessiveness, envy, he will learn later on. These will be the things the society will teach: how to be jealous, how to be full of hatred, how to be full of anger or violence. These things will be taught by the society.

When the child is born he is simple love. He has to be so because he has not known anything else. In the mother's womb he has not come across any enemy. He has lived in deep love for nine months, surrounded by love, nourished by love. He knows nobody who is inimical to him. He knows only the mother, he knows the mother's love. When he is born his whole experience is of love, so how can you expect him to know anything about hatred? This love he brings with himself; this is the original face. Then there will be trouble, then there will be many other experiences. He will start distrusting people. A newborn child is simply born with trust.

I have heard.…

A man and a little boy entered a barber shop together. After the man received the full treatment -- shave, shampoo, manicure, haircut, etcetera, he placed the boy in the chair.

"I'm going to buy a green tie to wear for the parade. I will be back in a few minutes."

When the boy's haircut was completed and the man still had not returned, the barber said,

"Looks like your daddy has forgotten all about you."

"That was not my daddy," said the boy. "He just walked up, took me by the hand and said, 'Come on, son, we are gonna get a free haircut!' "

Children are trusting, but by and by there will be experiences in which they will be deceived, in which they will get into trouble, in which they will be opposed, in which they will become afraid. By and by they will learn all the tricks of the world. That's what has happened to everybody, more or less.

Now, MAITRI BHAVANA is again creating the same situation: it is a de- hypnosis. It is an effort to drop hatred, anger, jealousy, envy, and come back to the world as you had come in the first place. If you go on doing this meditation, first you start loving yourself -

- because you are closest to you than anybody else. Then you spread your love: your friendship, your compassion, your feeling, your well-wishing, your benediction, your blessings, you spread these to people you love -- friends, lovers. Then, by and by, you spread these to more people that you don't love so much, then people to whom you are indifferent -- you neither love nor hate -- then by and by to people you hate. Slowly you are de-hypnotizing yourself. Slowly you are again creating a womb of love around yourself.

When a Buddha sits, he sits in existence as if the whole existence has again become his mother's womb. There is no enmity. He has attained to his original nature, SWABHAWA. He has come to know the essential man. Now you can even kill him but you cannot destroy his compassion. Even dying, he will remain full of compassion towards you. You can kill him but you cannot destroy his trust. Now he knows that trust is something so basic that once you lose trust you lose all. And if you don't lose trust and everything is lost, nothing is lost. You can take everything from him but you cannot take his trust.

MAITRI BHAVANA is beautiful; you can do it. There is no need to drop it. It will be tremendously helpful. It is a de-structuring.

The ego is made with hate, enmity, struggle. If you want to drop the ego, you will have to create more love feelings. When you love, ego disappears. If you

love tremendously and you love unconditionally and you love all, then the ego cannot exist. The ego is the most stupid thing that can happen to a man or to a woman. Once it has happened it is very difficult even to see it because it clouds your eyes.

I have heard.…

Mulla Nasrudin and his two friends were talking about their resemblances.

The first friend said, "My face resembles that of Winston Churchill. I have often been mistaken for him."

The second said, "In my case, people think I am President Nixon and ask me for my autograph."

Mulla said, "That's nothing. Well, in my case, I have been mistaken for God Himself."

The first and second asked together, "How?"

Mulla Nasrudin said, "Well, when I was convicted and sent to jail for the fourth time, on seeing me the jailer exclaimed, 'Oh God, you have come again!' "

Once the ego has happened it goes on collecting from everywhere -sense, nonsense -- but it goes on feeling itself important. In love you say, "You are also important, not only I."

When you love somebody, what are you saying? You may be speaking or not, but what is really deep in your heart? You are saying, whether in words or in silence, "You are also important, as much as I am." If love grows deeper, you will say, "You are even more important than me. If there arises a situation where only one can survive, I would like to die for you, and I would like you to survive." The other has become more important. That is the meaning of 'beloved': you are even ready to sacrifice yourself for the one you love.

And if this goes on spreading, as it goes on spreading in MAITRI BHAVANA, then by and by you start disappearing. Many moments will come when you will not be there --

absolutely silent, not any ego at all, no center, just pure space. Buddha says,

"When this is attained permanently, and you have become integrated to this pure space, then you are enlightened."

When the ego is lost completely you are enlightened; when you have become so egoless that you cannot even say 'I am', you cannot even say that 'I am a self'. The word Buddha uses for that state is ANATTA: no-being, non-being, no-self. You cannot even utter the word 'I'; the very word becomes profane. In deep love 'I' disappears. You are destructured.

When the child is born he comes without any 'I'; he simply is -- a blank sheet, nothing is written on him. Now the society will start writing, and the society will start narrowing down his consciousness. The society will, by and by, fix a role for him: "This is your role; this is you"; and he will stick to that role. That role will never allow him to be happy because happiness is possible only when you are infinite. When you are narrow, you cannot be happy. Happiness is not a function of narrowness; happiness is a function of infinite space. When you are so spacious that the whole can enter into you, then only can you be happy.

MAITRI BHAVANA can be a tremendous help. The third question:

Question 3

THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID THAT BELIEF WAS LIKE A LANTERN IN THE

HANDS OF THE BLIND. MAY I KNOW WHAT FAITH IS?

Faith is like eyes: you see yourself. Belief is like a lantern in a blind man's hand: he cannot see, he cannot even use the lighted lantern. Even that lighted lantern will be just a burden to him, to be carried. And if the light goes off he will never become aware of it.

Belief is just believing what others say. It is not faith; faith is knowing. Faith is existential, belief is intellectual.

Buddha says something, or I say something; you listen to me, it appeals to your intellect.

It seems to be convincing to your reason and you start believing in it. Then it will be a lantern in a blind man's hand. But if you listen to me, something appeals to you and you don't stay with the intellectual understanding but you try to make that your own experience..

If I talk about love and Iistening to me you don't cling to my words but you move into love, you take the risk of love, you move into the danger of love, then you will come to an understanding which will be like eyes. If you just listen to me, it is very cheap. Just listening to me you can collect information and you can say, "Yes, I know much about love." Your knowing will be a deception.

I have heard.…

Mulla Nasrudin and his wife went to Israel for their holidays and visited a nightclub in Tel Aviv. A comedian was on the bill who did his whole act in Hebrew. Nasrudin's wife sat through the comic's act in silence, but Nasrudin roared with laughter at the end of each joke.

"I did not know you understood Hebrew," she said to the Mulla when the comedian had concluded his act.

"I don't," replied Nasrudin.

"Well, how come you laughed so much at his jokes?" "Oh," said Nasrudin, "I trusted him."

You can laugh at a joke without understanding it, but what sort of laughter will that be? It will not arise in you; it will be just a painted laughter. It will be just like an exercise of tne lips and the face. It will not have any center in your being. It will not be coming from anywhere -- because you can't understand the joke, you can't understand the language --

how can you laugh? But Mulla says, "I just trusted him. He MUST be saying something beautiful; others are laughing."

Buddha must be saying something beautiful -- so many people believe in him, so you believe. But you have not understood the joke; the laughter is not yours. It will tire you, it will not refresh you. When laughter happens to you it spreads from your very being, from your innermost core of being to the surface. Your

whole body ripples with it, pulsates, throbs. It gives you a sort of bath; you are new after it. But if you simply trust, believe, that is not going to help. Many people have just been deceived by their beliefs about many beautiful things. You think you believe in God, you think you believe in soul, you think you believe in this and that, and you have not known anything by your own experience. Then it is better not to believe -- because if you don't believe, if you know that you don't know, there is a possibility that you may seek and search. Your belief will not allow you even to seek and search because you already think you know.

Belief is dangerous. Even to be a sceptic, to be an agnostic, is better. To be true when you don't know is better because this honesty of accepting that you don't know will help. This honesty will grow. One day or other you will start seeking, because nobody can remain in deep ignorance for long. Everybody wants to KNOW. To know is such an intrinsic desire in man that you cannot avoid it if you are true.

Please drop your beliefs so your mind is not clouded with rotten furniture, and you can see what you know and what you don't know.

To know exactly what one knows and what one does not know is the basic step towards knowledge. To be absolutely clear-cut that this is all that you know and this is all that you don't know. You cannot remain in this state. You will start moving towards the unknown, because it is human to seek to know. Every child is born with infinite curiosity; that's why children bore you to death with their questions. They go on asking and asking. They don't bother whether you are interested in answering them or not; they go on asking. You want to keep them quiet but they go on bubbling again and again with new questions.

What is happening? From where do so many questions come? a deep desire to know. But this desire is crippled by your beliefs.

Beliefs give you an appearance as if you know. That 'as if' is very costly. I have heard.…

The nervous passenger was standing with the pilot of the river steamboat as he twisted and turned the wheel.

"Don't you worry none," said the pilot. "I have been running boats on this river so long, I know where every snag and sandbar is."

Just then the boat struck a submerged snag with such force that the whole boat shivered from stem to stern. "There," said the pilot triumphantly, "that is one of them now."

What type of knowledge is this? How is it going to help? Your whole so-called knowledge is only like this; it does not help. It simply gives you a certain egoistic idea that you know, but it doesn't help in life, it does not help you on the path, it does not help you to avoid ditches and pitfalls, it does not help you to move towards the right direction, it does not help you in any way to avoid calamities. Still you go on thinking that you know. Drop this so-called knowledge. This burden is useless; don't carry it on your head anymore. Once you drop it you will feel clean, fresh.

I have heard.…

Aldous Huxley had a very great library, his whole life's efforts. He had collected many rare books. And one day it caught fire. The whole library burnt; his many valuable manuscripts were burnt, many valuable art pieces, statues, paintings. He had really been a great seeker of beautiful things; they were all burnt down to zero. He was standing in front of the fire, and nothing could be done. And somebody asked him, "You must be feeling very very sad."

He said, "I am surprised at what I am feeling. I myself am surprised. I am simply feeling very clean, as if the whole burden is gone. I have never felt so clean and unburdened. I am surprised myself, because I was thinking I would feel sorry, I would feel tremendously miserable, for years I would not be able to forget my library and all these things I have collected, but suddenly, seeing everything going into flames, I am feeling very unburdened, weightless, clean."

When you throw your beliefs to the fire, you will feel very clean. It is just a burden. It is not yours; it cannot help.

We know what is right but we do what is wrong. We know anger is bad and we go on being angry again and again. We know what should be done, but we never do it; we do just the opposite. What type of knowledge is this? We know where the door is and we always go on trying to get out through the wall. We stumble and we are knocked down, and we hurt our own being, but again and again we try to get out through the wall. We say we know the door; is it possible that you know the door and still you try to get out through the wall, and you get hurt and

hit in the head? It is not possible. You have simply heard about the door. That door exists only in your fantasy, not in reality.

Whatsoever YOU know, you always behave accordingly. That's why Socrates' famous dictum: Knowledge is Virtue -- but it is not your knowledge. He says, "Once one knows something is right, one does it. There is no other way." When you know two plus two is four, you cannot make it five, can you? Try one day -- just sit, write two plus two, and then try to write five. It will be impossible. Even if you write it you will laugh; you are joking, befooling. Once you know two plus two is four, there is no way to forget it. The basic thing is to have known it, and the knowledge should be your experience. Otherwise, you can always find rationalizations.

I have heard a small anecdote.

A small town chorine had theatrical ambitions. Her parents finally agreed to allow her to try New York City, but on two conditions: first, no men were allowed in her apartment, and second, she had to call home at least once a week. "Remember," said her mother, "I will worry about you, so please don't forget to call."

Armed with a letter of introduction, she went to see an agent. He agreed to help her and started squiring her about town. At the end of the week she called home. It was late and mama was perturbed.

"Honey," she said, "you know the bargain we made about no men allowed in your apartment, and I hear a man's voice in the background."

"Oh," said the future actress, "that's my boyfriend. But don't worry," she hastened to assure her mother, "we are in his apartment. Let HIS mother worry.''

We can always find ways, rationalizations to avoid that which we want to avoid, and to do that which we want to do. And if your knowledge is just intellectual, just verbal, then it is not going to help in actual life. Actual life needs actual knowledge. If you want to write a book, it will be okay. If you want to give a lecture, it will be okay. If you want to discuss with your friends, it will be okay -- because a verbal knowledge is enough for writing a book, for giving a lecture, for discussing with your friends. But if you want to translate it into your life, it will be impossible. Life does not believe in that which you have accumulated very cheaply. Life believes only in that which has been earned the hard way.

I have heard about a Sufi mystic, Bayazid. He meditated for years, and it is said God was very, very compassionate towards him. He had made such great effort; arduous was his search, intense was his prayer. So God sent an angel, and the angel came and said to Bayazid, "God is happy, and whatsoever you want He is ready to give to you. You just ask. Your days of seeking and inquiry are finished."

But Bayazid said, "But no, that is not the way. I don't want to get so cheaply because I know well...in life also I was deceived because of this cheap possibility. Now you cannot deceive me. Tell God that I will earn the hard way."

But the angel said, "You are foolish! He is ready to burn the innermost light of your being. Just ask!"

But Bayazid said, "Thank you, and give Him also my thanks, but I am not going to do that because it will be borrowed; even if borrowed from God, it will be borrowed. Let me seek and search."

The angel said, "God will feel offended. It has never happened; His offer has to be accepted."

Then Bayazid looked around -- he had a small lamp and the oil was almost finished. He said, "If He really wants to light something, tell Him to light my lamp because the oil is almost finished and the night is dark, and I have still to meditate. Just this will do. You just tell Him to give me one blessing: that my oil should never finish so I can meditate the whole night."

That's all he asked for, and it is said that God was very happy and He said, "This is the right way." If he had asked he would have missed; if he had accepted he would have missed -- because whatsoever comes to you without your earning it is never yours. You possess only that which you have lived. You possess only that which YOU have known.

You possess only that which you have earned.

A young boy had been taking swimming lessons. He rushed home one afternoon and breathlessly announced that he had gone off the diving board by himself.

"That's fine, Johnny," said his father. "But I thought you told me you went off the board last week."

"I know," said the boy, "but last week somebody shoved."

Going by yourself is really totally different. When somebody shoves you, it is qualitatively different. When I give something to you, it is not the same as when you earn it. Remember it: many will be the temptations on the way. When things are available very cheaply, avoid them. Always remember that one has to go the hard way, because that is the only way. All shortcuts are false, and belief is a shortcut. Faith is a hard way.

The last question:

Question 4

MOST BELOVED OSHO, THIS MORNING I SIT BEFORE YOU FLOODED WITH

ORGASM, LIGHT AND FEATHERY, DEEP AND OVERWHELMING. I HARDLY

NOTICE YOU. THE INNER IS MORE, BECAUSE OF YOU. PARAS.

Good, tremendously good. That's how it should be. A Baul is born in Paras, and I hope that a Baul will be born in each of you. Each moment God is available. Just allow Him, don't prevent Him, don't bar the way. Just get out of your own way, and this will start happening to each and everybody.

"This morning I sit before you flooded with orgasm, light and feathery, deep and overwhelming. I hardly notice you. The inner is more, because of you."

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #9

Chapter title: It is always god who loves 29 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall Archive

code:

7606290

ShortTitle:

BELOV109

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

94

mins

WHAT DEALINGS

CAN YOU EVER CONCLUDE

WITH SOMEONE WHO IS UNAWARE OF THE FEELINGS IN LOVING?

THE OWL STARES AT THE SKY, SITTING BLIND

TO THE RAYS OF THE SUN.

MAN IS A QUEST, AN ETERNAL INQUIRY, A PERENNIAL QUESTION.

The quest is for the energy that holds existence together -- call it God, call it truth, or whatsoever you like to call it. Who holds this infinite existence together? What is the center of it all, the core of it all?

Science, philosophy, religion, all ask the same question. Their answers may differ but their question is the same. Religions call it God. Scientists will not agree with the word

'God'; it looks too personal. It looks too anthropomorphic, man-oriented. They call it electricity, magnetism. energy fields; but only the name is different. God is an energy field.

Philosophers go on giving different names to it: the ultimate stratum, the absolute, the BRAHMA. From Thales to Bertrand Russell, they have supplied many answers.

Sometimes some philosopher says it is water, liquidity; sometimes somebody else says it is fire -- but the quest has been eternal. What holds this infinite universe together?

Bauls call it love, and to me, their answer seems to be most pertinent. It is neither personal nor impersonal. It has something of God in it, and something of magnetism in it also; something of the divine, and something of the earth.

Love has two faces. It is Janus-like: one face looks towards the earth, the other face looks towards the sky. It is the greatest synthesis conceivable: it comes out of lust and moves towards prayer; it comes out of mud and becomes a lotus facing the sun.

This word 'love' has to be understood. What do we mean by the word 'love'? One thing we certainly all mean is that it has a pull in it, great energy. When you fall in love, it is not that you do something -- you are pulled in. It has a magnetic force. You gravitate towards the object of your love, you gravitate almost helplessly, you gravitate even against your will. It has a pull, a magnetic field -- that's why we call it 'falling in love'.

Who wants to fall? -- but who can avoid it? When the energy calls you, suddenly you are no more your old self. Something bigger than you is pulling you, something greater than you is invoking you. The challenge is such that one simply runs into it headlong.

So the first thing to understand is: love is a great energy pull. The second thing: whenever you fall in love, suddenly you are no longer ordinary; something miraculously changes in your consciousness. Love transforms you. Falling in love, a violent man becomes kind and tender. A murderer can become so compassionate, it is almost impossible to believe.

Love is miraculous -- it transforms the baser metal into gold. Have you watched

people's faces and eyes when they fall in love? -- you cannot believe that they are the same persons. When love takes possession of their souls they are transfigured, transported into another dimension; and suddenly...and with no effort of their own, as if they are caught in the net of God. Love transforms the base into the higher, transforms earth into sky, transforms the human into the divine.

These two things: first, love is an energy field -- scientists will agree -- second, love is a transforming force; it helps you to become weightless, puts you on your wings. You can move towards the beyond. Religious thinkers will agree that love is both God and electricity; love is divine energy. Bauls have chosen love because this is the most significant experience in man's life. Whether you are religious or not makes no difference; love remains the central experience of human life. It is the most common and the most uncommon. It happens to everybody, more or less, and whenever it happens it transmutes you. It is common and uncommon. It is the bridge between you and the ultimate.

Remember the three L's: life, love, light.

Life is given to you; you are alive. Light is present, but you have to make a bridge between life and light. That bridge is love. With these three L's you can make a total way of life, a way of being, a new way of being.

Bauls are not philosophers. They are more like poets -- they sing, they dance, they don't philosophize. In fact, they are almost anti-philosophical, because they have come to see that whenever a man becomes too head-oriented he becomes incapable of love -- and love is going to be the bridge. A man who becomes too head-oriented goes farther away from the heart, and the heart is the center which responds to the call of love.

A head-oriented man is cut off from the universe. He lives in the universe, but lives as if in a deep stupor. He lives in the universe, but lives as a tree that has lost its roots. He lives only for name's sake: the sap of life is no more flowing. He has lost contact; he's unconnected. That's what alienation is.

The modern man feels too alienated, feels too much an outsider, does not feel at home, at ease with life, existence, the world. He feels almost as if he has been thrown into it, and it is a curse rather than a blessing.

Why has this happened? -- too much head orientation, too much training of the

head has cut all the roots from the heart. There are many people -- I have observed thousands of people -- who don't know what the heart is; they bypass. The heart is throbbing but the energy no longer moves via it. They bypass it; they go directly to the head. Even when they love, they THINK that they love. Even when they feel, they THINK that they feel.

Even feeling is via thinking. Of course, it has to be false.

Thinking is the great falsifier, because thinking is man's effort to understand the universe, and love is God's effort to understand man. Let me repeat it: when you try to understand God, or existence, or truth, it is your effort -- a part, a very tiny part trying to grasp the whole, the infinite whole. The effort is bound to be doomed. It's impossible. It cannot happen in the nature of things. Love is when God has found you. Love is when God's hand is searching for you, groping for you. Love is when you are allowing God to find you. Hence, you cannot manage love. You can manage logic; you can be very very efficient as far as logic is concerned. The moment love arises, you become absolutely inefficient. Then you don't know where you are, then you don't know what you are doing, then you don't know where you are moving, then you don't know any control. Logic is controlled; love is uncontrolled. Logic is manipulated; love is a happening. Logic gives you a feeling that you are somebody; love gives you a feeling that you are nobody.

Love arises in you when you allow God to enter you. When you are trying on your own, then the whole effort is absurd.

I have heard.…

Mulla Nasrudin sidled up to a guest at one of his daughter's social evenings. He had heard him addressed as doctor, and now he said, diffidently, "Doctor, may I ask a question?"

"Certainly," he said.

"Lately," said Mulla Nasrudin, "I have been having a funny pain right here under the heart..."

The guest interrupted uncomfortably and said, "I am terribly sorry, Mulla, but the truth is I am a Doctor of Philosophy."

"Oh," said Nasrudin, "I'm sorry." He turned away, but then, overcome with curiosity, he turned back. "Just one more question, doctor. Tell me, what kind of disease is philosophy?"

Yes, philosophy is a kind of disease -- and not just an ordinary kind of disease; it is more cancerous than cancer, more dangerous than all the diseases put together. A disease can cut only one root. Even all the diseases put together cannot cut you completely from existence. Philosophy cuts you, uproots you utterly.

What is disease? When one connection is loose with existence, you feel ill. When the head is unconnected, then there is headache. When the stomach is unconnected, then there is stomachache. Somewhere, you have become autonomous; you are no more in the ocean of the interdependence of existence. There exists disease. Disease has a certain autonomy, independence. When you have a cancerous growth inside you, that growth becomes a universe unto itself. It is unconnected with existence.

An ill person is one who is unconnected in many ways. When a certain disease becomes chronic, it simply means that that root is completely destroyed; even the possibility to replant it in the earth no longer exists. You will have to remain alive only partially; a part of you will remain dead. Somebody is paralyzed -- what does it mean? The body has lost contact with the universal energy. Now it is almost a dead thing -- hanging, unconnected.

The sap of life no longer flows in it.

If this is what disease is, then philosophy IS really the greatest disease there can be --

because it disconnects you utterly; and not only that, it disconnects you with such logic that you never become aware that you are ill. It disconnects you with such justifications and rationalizations that you never become aware that you are missing. It is a very self-justificatory illness; it goes on supporting itself. Philosophy means that a man has become completely head-oriented. He looks towards existence through the eyes of logic and not through the eyes of love.

When you look through the eyes of logic, you will know a few things, but those few things will not give you the vision of reality. They will be only abstractions.

When you look through love, then you know the reality as it is. Love is falling

with the universe, together; falling in a togetherness. It is orgasmic: you are streaming, and the existence has always been streaming, and both streamings meet and mingle and are infused in each other. A higher synthesis arises: the part is meeting in the whole and the whole is meeting in the part. Then something arises which is more than the part and the whole together -- that's what love is. 'Love' is one of the most significant words in human languages, because love is existential language.

But somehow, from the very childhood, we are being crippled. Our roots with the heart are cut. We are forced towards the head and we are not allowed to move towards the heart. It is something humanity has suffered for long, a calamity -- that man has not yet become capable of living with love.

There are reasons.

Love is risky. To love is to move into danger -- because you cannot control it, it is not safe. It is not within your hands. It is unpredictable: where it will lead nobody knows.

Whether it will lead anywhere, that too nobody knows. One is moving into utter darkness but roots grow only in darkness. If the roots of a tree become afraid of darkness and don't move underground, the tree will die. They have to move into darkness. They have to find their way towards the deepest layers of the earth where they can find sources of water, nourishment.

The heart is the darkest part of your being. It is like a dark night. It is your very womb, it is your earth. So people are afraid to move into darkness; they would like to remain in light. At least you can see where you are and what is going to happen. You are safe, secure. When you move in love, you cannot calculate the possibilities, you cannot calculate the results. You cannot be result-oriented. For love, future does not exist, only the present exists. You can be in this moment but you cannot think anything about the next moment. No planning is possible in love.

The society, civilization, culture, church, all force a small child to be more logical. They try to focus his energies in the head. Once the energies are focused in the head, it becomes very difficult to fall towards the heart. In fact, every child is born with great love energy. The child is born out of love energy. The child is full of love, trust. Have you looked into the eyes of a small child? -- how

trusting. The child can trust anything: the child can play with a snake, the child can go with anybody. The child can move so close to a fire that it can become dangerous -- because the child has not yet learned how to doubt. So we teach doubt, we teach scepticism, we teach logic. These seem to be measures for survival. We teach fear, we teach caution, we teach prudence, and all these together kill the possibility of love.

I have heard.…

Doctor Abrams was called to Mulla Nasrudin's shop where the Mulla was Iying unconscious. Doctor Abrams worked on him for a long time and finally revived him.

"How did you happen to drink that stuff, Nasrudin?" he asked the Mulla. "Didn't you see the label on the bottle? It said 'poison'."

Nasrudin said, "Yes Doctor, but I didn't believe it." Doctor Abrams asked, "Why not?"

Nasrudin said, "Because whenever I believe someone, I am deceived."

By and by people learn how not to believe, how not to trust, how to become chronic doubters. And this happens so slowly, in such small doses that you are never alert to what is happening to you. By the time it has happened, it is too late. This is what people call experience. They call a person experienced if he has lost his contact with his heart: they say that he is a very experienced man, very clever, very cunning; nobody can deceive him.

Maybe nobody can deceive him, but he has deceived himself. He has lost all that was worthy; he has lost all. And what is he saying?

Then a very peculiar phenomenon happens: people cannot love persons because persons can be deceptive; they start loving things. Because there is a great need to love, they go on finding substitutes: somebody loves his house, somebody loves his car, somebody loves his clothes, somebody loves money. Of course, the house cannot deceive you, the love is not risky. You can love the car -- a car is more reliable than a real person. You can love money -- money is dead; it is always under your control. Why do so many people love things rather than persons?. -- and even if they sometimes love a person, they try to reduce the

person to being a thing.

If you love a woman, you are immediately ready to reduce her to being your wife, that is, you are ready to reduce her to a certain role: the role of a wife -- which is more predictable than the reality of a beloved. If you love a man you are ready to possess him like a thing. You would like him to be your husband, because a lover is more liquid; one never knows.… A husband seems to be more solid. At least the law is there, the court is there, the police is there, the state government is there to give a certain solidity to the husband. A lover seems to be like a dream: not so substantial. Immediately people fall in love, they are ready to get married -- such fear of love! And whomsoever we love, we start trying to control. That's the conflict that goes on between wives and husbands, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, friends -- who is going to possess whom? That means: who is going to define whom, who is going to reduce-whom to a thing? Who will be the master and who will be the slave?

Mulla Nasrudin sat moodily over his drink and his friend said, "You look pretty down in the mouth, Mulla. What is the matter?"

Nasrudin said, "My psychiatrist says I am in love with my umbrella, and that is the source of my troubles."

"In love with your umbrella?"

"Yes, is not that ridiculous? Ah, I like and respect my umbrella, and enjoy its company, but love?"

But what else is love? If you enjoy the company of your umbrella, and if you respect and like your umbrella, what else is love? Love is respect, tremendous respect; love is a deep liking; and love is sheer joy in the presence of the one you love. What else is love? But people love things -- a deep need is somehow fulfilled by substitutes.

Remember, the first calamity is that one becomes head-oriented. The second calamity is that one starts substituting love needs with things. Then you are lost, lost in the desert land. Then you will never reach to the ocean. Then you will simply dissipate and evaporate. Then your whole life will be a sheer wastage.

The moment you become aware that this is what is happening, turn the tide: make all efforts to again contact the heart. That's what Bauls call love -- to make

contact with the heart again to undo that which has been done to you by the society. Undoing that which has been done by the society is true religion, undoing all nonsense that has been done by your well-wishers. They may be thinking that they are helping you, and they may not be knowingly destroying you; they may themselves be victims of their parents and their society. I'm not saying anything against them. Great compassion is needed for them.

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples that a man only becomes religious when he is able to forgive his parents.

Forgive? Yes, that's how it is. It is very difficult. The moment you become aware, it is very difficult, almost impossible to forgive your parents because they have done so many things to you -- unknowingly of course, behaving unconsciously of course, but still they have done. They have destroyed your love and they have handed you dead logic. They have destroyed your intelligence and they have given you, as a substitute, intellect. They have destroyed your life and aliveness, and they have given you a fixed pattern to live, a plan to live by. They have destroyed your direction and have given you a destination.

They have destroyed your celebration and they have made you commodities in the marketplace. It is very difficult to forgive them, hence all the old traditions say: respect your parents.

It is difficult to forgive them; it is very very difficult to respect them. But if you understand, you will forgive them. You will say the same as Jesus said on the cross:

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Yes, exactly those are the words.

And everybody is on the cross -- and the cross is not prepared by your enemies, but by your parents, by your society...and everybody is crucified.

The head has become so dominant that it does not allow any spontaneity. It has become dictatorial. It does not allow the heart even to utter a single word; it has forced the heart to be completely quiet. You will have to listen again to the heart. You will have to start dropping logic a little. You will have to take a few risks. You will have to live dangerously. You will have to move towards the unknown, and you will have to love persons and not things. You will have to be ready not to possess anybody, because the moment you possess the person is not there.

Only a thing can be possessed.

Try to understand it as deeply as possible: the moment you fall in love with somebody, immediately your whole conditioning starts trying to possess him. Resist that temptation; the devil is tempting you -- the devil of the society, the devil of civilization and the church. The devil stands in a very religious garb, and the devil goes on quoting scriptures.

Beware!

Whenever you start possessing you are killing love. So either you can possess the person or you can love the person; both together are not possible. So this is the alternative: a man who wants to become a Baul, a lover, has to drop all possessiveness. Resist all temptation to being possessive because that temptation comes from the ego.

Once Mulla Nasrudin said to me, "It is remarkable,,sir, how congenial we are. After all, we have practically nothing in common."

"Oh yes we have." I replied, "We have one very important thing in common: I think you are wonderful and you agree with me."

The ego goes on agreeing for wrong things, because the ego can exist only with the wrong. It feeds on the wrong. So whenever you feel that your ego is fulfilled, beware! --

you have eaten something wrong, you have swallowed something wrong. Whenever you feel egoless, relax -- now you have eaten the right, something which is in tune with your nature.

Ego arises out of disturbance, but ego has its own logic. It goes on saying that you are important, that you are the most important man in the world, and you have to prove it.

And we are all trying to do this one way or the other -- somebody by possessing more money, somebody by possessing a beautiful woman, somebody by possessing prestige, power, somebody by becoming a president or a premier, somebody by becoming an artist, a poet, somebody by becoming a MAHATMA

-- but we are all trying in some way or other to prove our innermost fantasy, that we are the most important person in the world.

Then you cannot be a lover.

Ambition is poison for love. A lover is not in any need to prove. In fact, he knows that he is loved, and that's enough.

Try to diagnose it very carefully. When you are not loved -- and how can you be loved if you don't love? -- when you are not loved and you don't love, suddenly a great need arises to perform, to do something, to show the world that you are important, that you are needed. There is a great need to be needed. You feel futile, impotent, useless, if you are not needed. The need in itself is not wrong; it is a love need to be needed. If a woman loves you, you are fulfilled -- somebody needs you, you are significant. Then you don't bother about the crowd. You don't go into the marketplace and shout, "I am important!"

Then you are not ambitious; you don't collect money like an obsession. If somebody loves you, in that love you are dignified, in that love you become a sovereign. Love makes you an emperor, a sovereign. Love fulfills you so deeply and so greatly; then there is no need to perform or do anything. Ego simply does not exist with love. But if that need is unfulfilled, then you will try to fulfill it somehow: you would like to become a very famous man so many people need you.

But remember, to be loved by one and to be needed by millions is not the same. Even a single person's love, even a single glance of love is enough; and you can collect millions of people and they can all look towards you, but that will not be satisfying. That's what politics is, and what the politician is trying to do.

I have never come across a politician whose heart is functioning. The heart is totally dead

-- but the need is there to be loved, to be needed, somebody to look to. Where to fulfill it?

-- he gathers crowds. Through the crowds he tries somehow to fulfill the love need. But that crowd does not love him, that crowd is not bothered by him; that crowd is after its own needs. Because he's in power he seems to be important. They pay their respects to the chair, and the chairman is deceived. Once the chairman is not in the chair, they don't bother about him.

Have you ever observed that once a politician is out of power he is simply

forgotten?

Nobody remembers him. He may live for thirty or forty years; nobody will know about him. By and by, he will recede into darkness. Only once, when he dies, will there be a small notice in the newspapers -- that the ex-president or ex- premier is dead.

The man who ruled over Russia before Lenin, Kerensky, lived for fifty years after it like a small New York grocer, and nobody knew about him. He was the Prime Minister of Russia, the most important man -- the revolution happened and he was thrown out of power. He escaped. For fifty years he lived. Only when he died did people become aware that Kerensky had been alive for all those fifty years.

Power cannot fulfill a love need. You can possess great kingdoms -- that will not fulfill your love need. But if you possess one heart which throbs in tune with you, then you are fulfilled.

The Bauls sing, O my heart,

let us go then on a promenade to the grove of Krishna's love.

The breeze of joy will calm your life.

In that woodland eternally bloom five scented flowers --

their fragrance will enchant your life and soul,

giving them sovereign dignity.

Enter the temple of love, and you always enter it as a sovereign. Enter into the

world, the world of things, and you always enter as a beggar. The world reduces everybody to a beggar; love raises everybody to an emperor. Love is an alchemical phenomenon. Even if one heart has flowed towards you, God has reached through that heart. Somebody looked towards you with love; in that moment God looked at you. Watch the eye full of love, the hand full of love, and you will find God throbbing there -- because it is always God who loves. To love is to become God, to allow-love to happen is to become God.

Whenever you fall from the peak of love, then it is something else: you become possessive; you become a husband and a wife. Then you are no more in the grip of God.

But whenever you reach to the peak -- maybe for a single moment sometimes it happens: when two persons are in absolute harmony, no barrier, no fence even exists between them; they are not throbbing as two centers, they become one center -- in that moment, God happens. When love happens, God happens. When God descends on earth, His name is love.

Each fruit is open to two frontiers and born on a pair of trees.

Listen carefully...

Each fruit is open to two frontiers and born on a pair of trees.

Have you ever seen one fruit born on a pair of trees? One fruit is born on one tree; two trees are not needed for one fruit. Love is that fruit which is born on two trees, never on one tree.

Each fruit is open to two frontiers and born on a pair of trees.

Deep meditation reveals the knowledge beyond any doubt.

When you love somebody and somebody loves you, then there comes a moment when these two trees are not two trees; then it becomes one tree. That tree is the tree of love, and on that tree of love is fulfillment, is fruition, is flowering.

The two who are wholly present can bring forth a fruit

to offer the Master;

they are conscious and fruitful. Let me repeat:

The two who are wholly present...

In love, two persons are simply present to each other, doing nothing. Love knows nothing of doing. When two persons are deep in love, they are simply present to each other. They face each other, just present, as if two lamps are burning, illuminating each other, or two mirrors are facing each other, reflecting each other in millionfold ways. Two lovers are just in each other's presence, saturated by the other, penetrated by the other. In that state a moment arises -- the climax, the peak moment -- when the fruit is born: when they are no more two, when all distinction is lost, when the egos don't exist, when they have become pure presences. Then, the fruit is born.

The two who are wholly present can bring forth a fruit

to offer the Master;

... and that is the fruit to be offered to the Master, to God.

... they are conscious and fruitful.

In that peak of love, they are totally conscious and fruitful. Remember, love is not something like unconsciousness. Ordinarily, when you are in love, you become more unconscious. Then it is lust. Then it is the very lowest denominator. Then it is the lowest rung of the ladder. Of course it belongs to the

ladder, but it is the lowest rung. At the highest rung there is tremendous consciousness -- and if you cannot be conscious in the presence of your lover, where else are you going to be conscious? If the presence of your lover is not worth being conscious, then where else will you find the treasure to be conscious? If you love the person, if you really love, a peak of consciousness arises. You would just like to observe, to see your beloved or your lover; you would like to be with a pure presence. And they help each other to be more and more conscious -- because when the one becomes more conscious, it is immediately reflected in the other. The other becomes more conscious, and it works like a chain reaction. Higher and higher they go, and then there comes a moment when the fruit is born; that fruit is called love. That love you can offer to the Master of the world. No other fruit will do.

They are conscious and fruitful.…

And in that peak of consciousness they are fruitful. Otherwise, people live a fruitless life.

People live an unfruitful life, people live without fruition. Nothing is born out of them; they simply live and die. There is no meaning and no significance in their lives. The significance arises only when two trees have become one tree, and when on that one tree the fruit of love is born.

.…conscious and fruitful. The well never sinks into the water.

The Bauls say, "You see? Go and see a well full of water -- but it never sinks into the water.'' This is very mysterious. When you are absolutely drowned in oneness, for the first time you are. You never sink into it. You are merged, all boundaries lost, but then happens a paradox: the paradox of being lost completely and yet being, for the first time, yourself. When you are lost completely, you are, for the first time, your reality. You are full, surrounded by tremendous force, but you are not sunk in it. You are one with it, but for the first time your flame burns. Without any ego, your being is revealed.

Bauls sing,

Let ripeness appear in its own time for the full flavor of the fruit.

A green jackfruit

can be softened by blows but not made sweet.

And they say, this love you cannot force. There is no way to manipulate it. There is nothing that you can do about it. All that you can do is to allow.

Let ripeness appear in its own time...

It will come in its own time. What do you do when you watch a tree, an apple tree? What do you do? You don't pull the fruits, you don't force, you just watch. You take care, every care that is needed -- you protect the tree, you water the tree, you provide fertilizers and manure. Everything that you can do, you do; but what can you do to force? That is just helping the tree to ripen in its own time. Then the fruit comes; then you watch. One day it is ripe, sweet.

Let ripeness appear in its own time..

... so Bauls are not for any sort of Yoga. They are against Yoga. That's why I told you in the beginning that they belong to the tradition of Tantra, not to the tradition of Veda, Yoga -- no. In fact, the Bauls' tradition is more ancient than the tradition of Veda and Yoga.

Historians say that Tantra is pre-Aryan. When the Aryans came to India, Tantra was in existence here, and Shiva was their God. When the Aryans came to India they overran India, they defeated the people who were living here. Their religion was crushed, their scriptures destroyed, and by and by even their Gods were absorbed into the pantheon of the Aryans. Shiva was their God. It took very long for him to be absorbed. He was alien, but he had to be absorbed because he was very influential. And when all his followers were absorbed into the world of the Aryans, they brought their Gods also.

Tantra belongs to Shiva, and the Baul is an offshoot of the same tree. Tantra says,

"Everything happens in its own right time, you need not force it. Your force will not help.

It will be a disturbance. It may destroy, but it can never be creative. One has to be very effortless, spontaneous. One has to be in a let-go."

Let ripeness appear in its own time

for the full flavor of the fruit.

A green jackfruit

can be softened by blows but not made sweet.

The Bauls say, "We are not searching for liberation." A lover, a seeker of love, never talks in terms of liberation. He says, "It is tremendously beautiful. All that is, is already beautiful. There is no need to be liberated from it. All that is needed is how to be in it, totally absorbed." The world is not a bondage for the Baul, and there is no need to struggle against it. In fact, the Baul says, "We love the bondage of the world because these fetters are also created by you, my Lord.

The heart, a lotus, continue flowering;

age after age, you are bound to it and so am I...

The Baul says to his God,

You are bound to it and so am I --

and with no escape.

The lotus blossoms, blossoms, blossoms;

there is no end to it, but all these lotuses have one type of honey

with one particular taste.

The bee is avid and unable to leave, so you are bound and I am bound.

Where is freedom then?

It is a great play of hide and seek between the energy that God is and the energy that you are. It is the same energy in a great hide and seek. It is a great play. There is no need to end it. Let lotuses flower and blossom forever and ever. The world is beautiful: that is the basic Tantra attitude. Yoga says: one needs to be liberated. Tantra says: for what, from whom? The bondage is beautiful because it is God's. Yoga will say: drop, by and by, all your attachments; and finally, one has to go beyond love. The Bauls say: all attachments are beautiful. Go deeper into them so you don't remain with the periphery but you reach to the center. On the periphery is attachment, at the center is love.

The bee is avid and unable to leave, so you are bound and I am bound.

Where is freedom then?

For the Baul, life is not a serious thing. It is fun, it is laughter, it is joy. So you cannot find anything like the seriousness of a church-goer, or the long faces of so-called religious people in the world of the Bauls. They love laughter, they love fun. They enjoy small things with tremendous respect. Ordinarily, religions

are very long-faced, very sombre, serious, because they have to be -- they are against life.

I have heard.…

One friend of Mulla Nasrudin was amazed to see that the Mulla had hitched his prize-winning possession, his prize-winning bull, to the plough, and was guiding it across his fields.

He said, "Mulla, have you gone crazy? That bull is worth twenty-five thousand rupees!

Why are you letting him pull a plough?"

"That bull," said the Mulla grimly,' has got to learn that life is not all play."

There are people who become disturbed the moment you laugh; they would like to teach you that life is not all play. These people are themselves ill. They have missed life and they would not like anybody else to enjoy it. The priests are ill people; they would not like you to enjoy. They have missed; they are jealous of you. And they have staked too much: their egos are fulfilled only because they have been against life. They have chosen ego against life. If you choose life they will be against you. They will go on curbing you, they will go on condemning you, they will go on creating guilt in you. No greater calamity, not a bigger calamity can happen to humanity as has happened through religions. The calamity is that they have created a guilty conscience. So whenever you are enjoying, deep down somewhere you start feeling guilty, as if you are doing something wrong. Whenever you are healthy, you start feeling something is wrong. Whenever you are dancing, you start feeling something is wrong. Whenever you laugh, you can never laugh totally because deep down something goes on pulling you back: "What are you doing?" From the very childhood, whenever you were happy there was somebody to teach you that life is not all play: "Stop laughing! Be serious! When will you be mature?

Be grown up! Enough is enough! Drop all this nonsense of childhood." Somebody was always round the corner to teach you.

They have lost: they could not enjoy so they cannot allow others to enjoy. This is how, from generation to generation, diseases are being transferred.

Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it. Then you become a Baul, then you become a lover --

because love can exist only with a deep respect for fun, with a deep respect for delight.

Love cannot exist with a serious mind. With a serious mind, logic is in tune. be non-serious. I'm not saying not to be sincere. Be sincere, but be non-serious. Sincerity is something else; seriousness is totally different. Be sincere with existence, then you will be true; you will become part of this cosmic LEELA, this cosmic play.

The Bauls sing, How can you walk the ways of love

carrying stolen loot with impunity?

In the forest of Brinda loving is worshipping.

The forest of Brinda, where Krishna played with his lovers, friends, girlfriends; where he danced, where the RAAS happened.…

This word RAAS is very beautiful: it means the divine celebration, the divine dance.

How can you walk the ways of love

carrying stolen loot with impunity? In the forest of Brinda,

loving is worshipping.

As the essence of purity in the brilliance of the sky love transcends lust evolving ecstasy.

The bellows breathe into the fire of life and stabilize mercury.

Beautiful; the saying is very beautiful.

The bellows breathe into the fire of life and stabilize mercury.

Even mercury becomes stabilized. So what about lust? Don't be worried. Let there be a goal to your love, a center to your love, a target for your arrow, and love transcends lust.

Yoga will say: transcend lust, fight with lust. It is a negative approach. The Bauls say: love, and love transcends lust. It is a positive approach.

Tell me, my silent Master, O my Lord,

what worship may open me to my beloved's lotus bloom? The stars and the moon

eternally move

with no sound at all.

Each cycle of the universe in silence prays,

welling up with the essence of love.

It is what physicists call electricity, gravitation, energy field. What religious people call God, Bauls call love.

Each cycle of the universe in silence prays,

welling up with the essence of love.

Trees are in love with the earth; the earth is in love with the trees. The birds are in love with the trees; the trees are in love with the birds. The earth is in love with the sky; the sky is in love with the earth. The whole existence exists in a great ocean of love. Let love be your worship, let love be your prayer.

The song for today is very small, but a diamond -- very precious. And Bauls know how to be precise. Just the other night I was reading Digale's life, and he had a motto on his table. I loved it; Bauls would also appreciate it. The motto is: Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.

WHAT DEALINGS

CAN YOU EVER CONCLUDE

WITH SOMEONE WHO IS UNAWARE OF THE FEELINGS IN LOVING?

THE OWL STARES AT THE SKY, SITTING BLIND

TO THE RAYS OF THE SUN.

The Bauls say it is impossible to communicate.… WHAT DEALINGS

CAN YOU EVER CONCLUDE

WITH SOMEONE WHO IS UNAWARE OF THE FEELINGS IN LOVING?

It is impossible to commune with someone who has not known love. How can we talk about God? How can we talk meaningfully about prayer? How can we say anything about the truth? -- because he's completely unaware of his own heart. He does not know the language; he has lived in the head. He's like the owl: stares at the sky, sitting blind to the rays of the sun.

In Indian mythology the owl is a symbol of knowledge, learning, learnedness. People who are too learned, too much in their heads, accumulating information and data, are like owls. They cannot see that the sun has risen. They can go on looking and staring at the sun, and still they remain oblivious to the rays of the light.

The Bauls say: a man who lives in the head -- a PUNDIT, a scholar -- a man who thinks only in terms of concepts, abstract theories, doctrines, dogmas, who has memorized the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible, will not be able to understand anything about love. Even if you say, he will immediately misunderstand. If you talk about love he will make a theory out of it, and love cannot be managed in a theory. If you say something about prayer he will try to make that prayer look like a hypothesis, and prayer is not a hypothesis. A man of logic always reduces everything to his logic.

I have heard.…

A devout clergyman making a tour of the Holy Land arrived at the Sea of Galilee. His heart thrilled: "Perhaps one of these very wavelets had touched the feet of the Master Himself..." A boatman approached. The clergyman addressed him in choicest Arabic, a pocket dictionary of Arabic terms in his hand.

"What is the matter?" complained the ferryman. "Can't you talk United States?" He was an American making his living boating tourists.

"So," exclaimed the clergyman, "this is the Sea of Galilee where our Savior walked upon the waters."

"It is."

"How much will you charge me to take me to the exact spot?"

"Well, seeing as you look like a clergyman, I won't charge you anything."

After reaching the place, the clergyman glanced around with great satisfaction, consulted his texts and commentaries, and at last signalled that he was ready to return to shore.

"Cost you twenty dollars to take you back." "But you said you would charge nothing!" "That was to bring you here."

"And you charge everybody twenty dollars to take them back?" "That, or more."

"Well then," said the devout one, reaching for his pocketbook, " no wonder our Savior got out and walked."

Everybody goes on interpreting everything according to his own way. Our interpretations are our interpretations.

It happened one day: Mulla Nasrudin hailed a taxi just outside the Ashram. "Take me to the Ashram, driver," he demanded, hopping into the cab.

The disgusted hackie got out, opened the door and snapped, "You are in front of the Ashram, fellow!"

"Okay," grumbled the Mulla as he got out, "but next time, don't drive so fast."

If you are drunk, then you are going to interpret everything through your

drunkenness. If you are drunk with logic, love cannot penetrate your skull. Then you have a very thick head, dense -- it is impossible for love to penetrate. Then you are like the owl.

The Bauls say communication is possible only when there exists a common language. So if you want to understand the Bauls, you will have to love -- because there is no other way to understand love than to love. If you want to understand the man of prayer, pray.

Move into prayer, have a taste of it. Put aside all your logic. Don't try first to be logically convinced, then you will pray; then nobody has ever prayed -- because the first thing is that it is impossible, it cannot be done. Nobody can logically convince you that prayer is meaningful. The very logical framework of your mind prohibits it. So you are asking the impossible. If you say, "First it has to be proved that love is God, then I will love," then you will have to wait, and you will have to wait for eternity -- it is not going to happen.

The day it happens, it will happen in the only way it can happen, and the way for it to happen is to put aside your logic. Logic is irrelevant. You just love; have a taste of it.

Move into the world of the lover. Let his singing surround you. Have a feel, and that will become the proof, and that will become the conviction. Then you can bring your logic in and your logic will start proving it, but not before. First, the taste, the experience; then the logic. Logic is a good servant but a bad master.

WHAT DEALINGS

CAN YOU EVER CONCLUDE

WITH SOMEONE WHO IS UNAWARE OF THE FEELINGS IN LOVING?

THE OWL STARES AT THE SKY, SITTING BLIND

TO THE RAYS OF THE SUN

Love is a radical change in your innermost core of being. The head is just on the periphery. The head is just like waves on the ocean; love is like the depth. In the depth there are no waves, and in the waves there is no depth. Thoughts are like waves just on the surface. There is no way for a wave to know the depth while remaining the wave. The wave can know the depth, but then it has to disappear in the depth. It will no more be a wave, but then it can come back to the surface. But then that wave will itself become a Baul; no other wave will listen to it. Other waves will call that wave mad because she will talk about depths, and waves only know shallowness, they don't know depths.

Love is an experience -- existential, like taste. If you have not tasted salt, there is no way to explain it to you. If you have tasted it, there is no way to forget it. If you have tasted it, then too there is no way to explain it to somebody else who has not tasted it. How to explain to somebody else who has never known anything salty? What to say? It is not that you don't know; you know, it is just on the tip of your tongue. You know what saltiness is, but how to say it to somebody else? The only thing is to offer him a little salt. But if he says, "First let me be convinced that there exists something like salt, then only will I take"; if he is that cautious it is impossible. Then he will have to remain without any experience of salt.

And to remain without experiencing love is to remain dead -- because only a lover goes on dropping his dead selves, because only a lover moves, because only a lover is dynamic. Logic is dead; love is alive.

I am reminded of a saying of Browning. He used to say, "The life process is to rise on the stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things."

... the life process is to rise on the stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things.…

Logic belongs to the past; love belongs to the future. Logic is just moving in the old circle again and again and again. Love moves into new territory. Being yourself is never static, being in love is also never static. It is always ecstatic -- not static but ecstatic: out of stasis, out of standing still.

Be moving. One never arrives, though one is always arriving. The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #10

Chapter title: Truth is neither I nor you 30 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall Archive

code:

7606300

ShortTitle:

BELOV110

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

87

mins

The first question:

Question 1

WHO HAS ORIGINATED BAULS? PLEASE EXPLAIN.

PEOPLE LIKE BAULS ARE NEVER ORIGINATED. Religions like the Baul religion are more like happenings. Who originated the roses? Who originated the songs that the birds go on singing every morning? No, we never ask that question. It has always been there.

Philosophies are originated; you can find the originator. 'Isms', dogmas, creeds are originated. The Baul is not a creed, it is a spontaneous way of life. People

have always lived that way. People who have ever lived have always lived that way. People who have ever been alive have been alive in no other way. Whether they were known as Bauls or not is immaterial. The name may have some origin somewhere; I'm not concerned with it.

The word simply means 'the madman': madly in love with existence, madly in love with life -- but this madness has always been there. And it is good that a few people have always been so mad that we have not lost contact with the roots of existence. It is because of them that we haven't. They could sing and dance and live and love -- real people, authentic to the very core.

So, I don't know when they started. They must have started from the very beginning, if there was any beginning. They must have started with the first man, because their whole teaching is about the essential man. In fact, by and by, they have disappeared. They must have been more in the beginning. By and by they have lessened; their numbers have become less and less and less every day. Because the world has become too worldly, and the world has become too cunning and clever, it does not allow the simplicity of the heart to exist. The world has become too competitive and too ambitious. It has forgotten all that is beautiful, it has forgotten all that cannot be manufactured, it has forgotten how to surrender, to allow the eternal to happen in time. It has forgotten the language of ecstasy.

The more we move back, the more and more Bauls you will find. In the beginning the whole humanity must have been like the Bauls. Even now you can watch it: every child is born a Baul, then later on he is corrupted. Every child is again born as madly in love with life, but we cultivate him, we prune him, we don't allow him spontaneity of being. We condition him, we give him a certain character.

The Bauls have no character. They are men of consciousness, but not of character. In fact, a man of consciousness never has a character. Character is a fixity, character is an obsession, character is an armor. You have to do only that which your character allows.

Character can never be spontaneous. Character is always imposed by the past on the present. You are not free to be, you are not free to respond; you can only react.

The Baul believes in the SAHAJA MANUSH, the spontaneous man. The Baul says the spontaneous man is the way to the essential man. To be spontaneous is to be on the way towards being essential. Every child is a Baul.

So as I see it, in the beginning -- if there was, any beginning -- the whole humanity must have been like Bauls: true, authentic, sincere, mad, deep in love, rejoicing -- rejoicing the opportunity that God has given, rejoicing the gift.

We don't have any claim on life. Have you ever noticed it, that we don't have any claim?

If we had not been, there would be no way to be and there would be no way to appeal it.

There would be no way to complain against it. If you are not, you are not. The next moment you can disappear. Life is fragile, and without any claim. We have not earned it!

That is the meaning when we say it is a gift. A gift is something that you have not earned; you don't have any claim over it. You cannot say that you have some right to get it. A gift is something that is given to you.

Life is a gift. It has been given to you for no reason at all. You cannot have earned it, because how can you earn it if you were not? Life is a gift, but we go on forgetting it, we are not even thankful. We don't have any gratitude. We certainly complain for a thousand and one things which we may think we are missing in life, but we never feel grateful for life itself.

You may complain that your house is not good: the rains have come and it is leaking.

You may complain that your salary is not enough; you may complain that you don't have a beautiful body. You may complain that this is not happening and that is not happening -

- a thousand and one complaints -- but have you ever seen that the whole life, the very possibility that you can be, breathe, look, see, hear, touch, love and be loved, is a gift? It has been given to you because God has so much to give, not because you have earned it.

The Baul lives in tremendous gratitude. He sings and dances -- that is his prayer. He cries. He simply wonders why, for what has life been given to him, for what has he been allowed to see the rainbows in the sky, for what has he been allowed to see flowers, butterflies, people, rivers and rocks? For what? Because life is so obvious you tend to forget the tremendous gift hidden in it.

In the beginning, everybody must have been a Baul, because civilization was not there to corrupt, society was not there to destroy. Priests and churches were not there to give you a character, to give you a narrow passage. In the beginning, life must have been overflowing. Everybody must have lived out of their own beings

-- not because of any commandments, not because of scripture. There was no scripture and there was no commandment. Moses had not appeared yet. Everybody must have been a Baul in the beginning; and every child, when he is born, is a Baul. Watch a child to understand what this phenomenon of being a Baul is. See children delighting for nothing -- just shouting out of joy, just running here and there out of overflowing energy. When you become a Baul you again become a child.

To become a Baul is to become a primitive. To become a Baul is to reclaim one's primitiveness, one's primalness. One is reborn; it is a rebirth -- the child happens again.

Your body may be old, your mind may be old, but your consciousness is released from the bondage of the body and the mind. You have a past, you have many experiences, but they no longer burden you. You put them aside. You use them when needed; otherwise, you don't carry them continuously on your head for twenty-four hours. This is what liberation is: it does not liberate you from existence or from life or from flowers and love, it simply liberates you from your past. In fact, the more you are liberated, the more you fall in love with God. The more you are liberated, the more you become capable of rejoicing and loving.

So don't ask me who originated Bauls. Nobody has ever originated things like that. The whole emphasis is on spontaneity. Of course, to have a theory like Einstein's Theory of Relativity, an Einstein is needed. Without him it cannot be originated; without him it would not be in existence. A very complicated mind is needed to discover the complicated Theory of Relativity.

Bauls don't give any theories. They simply say, "All that you need be, you are already." It is not a question of being very clever, it is a question of just being

simple. No talent is needed to become a Baul. That's the beauty of it: no genius is needed. What genius is needed to be a child? Every child is born as a child. The sages and the fools -- all are born as children. No talent is needed. Childhood is simply everybody's nature.

To be a Baul nothing is needed. In fact, the moment you need nothing, you become a Baul. The moment you are unburdened and you don't possess anything, any past, you are a Baul.

No, things like that are never originated. Nobody creates them; they happen. They are part of nature.

The second question:

Question 2

SO MANY TIMES I CAN'T UNDERSTAND YOUR WORDS BECAUSE THE

SOUND OF YOUR WORDS SHOWERS ON ME, YOUR SOUND STRIKES ME

WITH ENERGY, FILLING ME, AND AS A SHOCK, I FEEL IN MY SPINAL CORD

THRILLS, WAVES AND VIBRATIONS. SHOULD I BE CAREFULLY AWARE FOR

THE MEANING OF YOUR WORDS?

Then there is no need to be careful about the meaning of the words; that will be a disturbance. If you feel in tune with my sound, THERE is the meaning. If you feel you are being showered with a new energy, if you feel thrilled, pulsating in a new way you never knew before, if you feel a sort of new dimension arising in your being because of the sound of my words, then forget all about me. Then there is no need; you have got the meaning already. That showering is the meaning, that thrill in the spine is the meaning, that vibration that cleanses you is the meaning. Then there is no need to worry about the ordinary meaning of the words. Then you are getting a higher meaning, then you are reaching a higher altitude of meaning. Then you are really getting the content and not the container. The meaning of my words is just the container.

If this is happening to you, then my words are no longer words to you; they have become existential. Then they are alive, then they have become a transfer. Then something is transpiring between my energy and your energy. Then there is happening something like what Bauls call love.

Allow it. Forget all about the words and their meaning. Leave it for foolish people who only collect words and are never in contact with the content. The words are just like shells: hidden behind them, I am sending you great messages. Those messages cannot be understood by the intellect, those messages have to be decoded by your total being. That is what is happening -- the vibration, the pulsation, the thrill, the showering of a new energy -- your total being is decoding. This is real listening. This is really to be in contact with me, to be in my presence.

Once I stayed with a friend. He had a big cage in his garden and he had one eagle in that cage. He took me to the cage and he said, "See, what a beautiful eagle." The eagle was beautiful, but I felt sorry for her.

I told the friend that this was not an eagle.

He said, "What do you mean? This is an eagle. Don't you know eagles?"

I said, "I know them, but I have known them only against the wind in the sky, in the high heavens, free, almost not of this world and not in this world, weighing themselves floating on the winds, in deep love with the free sky. I have known them as freedom. This eagle is no eagle. Because an eagle in a cage without the openness, the wideness of sky, without those high heavens, without weighing herself in freedom on the winds, is no eagle. Where is the background? -- because this is only the figure. In a cage, the real eagle has disappeared. You cannot find a real eagle in a cage because a real eagle is tremendous freedom. Where is the freedom? The soul has disappeared. The essential has disappeared; only the non-essential is here. This is just a dead eagle, more dead than any dead eagle. Release it from the cage; let it become real."

When I talk to you my words are like caged eagles; my words are in a prison. If you really listen to me, you will drop the cage and you will release the eagle. That is what is happening...the thrill. Then the freedom is released; then you become the eagle -- and higher and higher you rise. The earth is left very far behind. You can forget all about it.

The ordinary is left very far behind. The shell is left, the container is left, and you have the whole sky open to you; you, your wings, and the sky, and there is no end to it. The eternal pilgrimage has started.

Forget all about words and their meanings, otherwise you will be more concerned with the cage and you will not be able to release the eagle within you.

The third question:

Question 3

EVERY TIME I HAVE LOVED SOMEONE AND AFTERWARDS DUG INTO IT, I HAVE FOUND THAT IT WAS NO LOVE AT ALL. IT WAS SOMETHING ELSE IN

THE NAME OF LOVE. THUS I NOW HAVE NO FAITH IN LOVE. I JUST CANNOT

BELIEVE THAT WE CAN LOVE AS WE ARE.

The questioner says, and rightly so, that whenever he has been in love he has found something else masquerading as love, so he has lost faith in love.

The first part is absolutely. right: if you observe deeply, you will find something else always hiding behind love, something counterfeit. But the counterfeit can exist only because real coins exist. If there were no real coin, how could a counterfeit exist?

Sometimes it is possessiveness which hides itself behind love, sometimes it is lust, sometimes something else, jealousy.

But why do they hide behind love? -- because they feel love is a real coin, and you can pretend and hide behind it. You can be safe behind love. Whenever you hide yourself somewhere, it simply shows that somewhere that place is protective; it can become an armor around you. Why does everything seek to hide behind love? -- because love is the greatest protection in the world, the greatest reality in the world, the only energy.

Everything else is false; love is true. All that is not love is false, and whatsoever you are doing which is not love is a sheer wastage. All that is love is true, and

whatsoever you do on the path of love increases your being, gives you more truth, makes you more true.

Knowing this, everything hides behind love because love can give protection. Love is so beautiful that even ugly things can hide behind it and pretend to be beautiful.

I was reading Shepard's book, BEYOND SEX THERAPY. He relates one incident.

He was in love with a woman, a young woman. A few friends had come to see him, but the whole time he remained with the woman, talking to her, as if he was not interested in the friends. They felt a little offended, and they told the woman, "We know Shepard better than you. He has been in love with many women, and this comes and goes. So remember it: sooner or later he will get interested in some other woman. What are you going to do then?"

The woman said, "I will feel jealous, but that is my problem. But I would like my man to know every sort of love, to know all that is possible before he dies. I will feel jealous, but that is my problem. That I have to tackle, and I have to get over it. That has nothing to do with him. As far as he's concerned, this is my desire: that he should know all that he wants to know before he dies, because once gone, one is gone forever. I would like him to live as richly as possible. If problems arise, like jealousy, then they are my problems."

This is what love is. It knows the distinction between jealousy and love. It is not confused about it. The jealousy cannot hide behind it; it cannot pretend to be love.

So the first thing is right, the questioner is absolutely right: "Every time I have loved someone and afterwards dug into it, I have found that it was no love at all. It was something else..." perfectly true "... in the name of love. Thus I now have no faith..." That is wrong -- because you have not known love yet. How can you lose faith in love, which you have not known yet? You can lose faith in jealousy, you can lose faith in possessiveness, you can lose faith in anger, you can lose faith in lust, but you have not come across love at all so how can you lose faith in it? To lose faith or to have faith, at least some experience of love is essential -- and you have not come across it.

Dig a little more and you will be able to sort it out now. What is jealousy? -- you

know; what is possessiveness? -- you know. This is good; you are evolving. This is how everybody has to evolve. In the beginning, everything is mixed -- as if mud is mixed in gold. Then one has to put the gold into fire: all that is not gold is burned, drops out of it.

Only pure gold comes out of the fire. Awareness is the fire; love is the gold; jealousy, possessiveness, hatred, anger, lust, are the impurities. You are becoming more aware.

Now you see what jealousy is, and you can see it is not love. Half the battle is won; fifty percent of the battle is over -- you can recognize jealousy. But you have not yet known what love is. You are on the right track. But don't become hopeless, don't lose courage, don't lose faith, because sooner or later you will be able to know what love is. You are coming closer to home.

Don't be in such a hurry. Truth tends to reveal itself. Truth is revelatory, truth is revelation. You just go on seeking, searching, finding. There may be many errors, but there is no other way to grow. Trial and error is the only way. By and by, you go on eliminating the errors. Less and less errors happen, and more and more purity becomes available. Don't stop in the middle.

I have heard.…

Mulla Nasrudin got a job in a bank. The cashier tossed him a packet of one- rupee notes and said, "Check them to make sure there are one hundred."

The Mulla started counting. Finally he got up to fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, then he threw the packet in the drawer.

"If it is right this far," remarked Nasrudin to the man next to him, "it is probably right all the way."

Don't be in such a hurry. If it has been wrong so far, don't think it will be wrong all the way. At a hundred degrees, suddenly it turns right. One has to penetrate all the impurities.

But you are on the right track, so be happy.

And it is because of a deep desire for love that you have been able to recognize what is not love. Otherwise, how would you recognize? You can recognize that

this is not gold because gold exists. Otherwise, what is the criterion to know that this is not love? You have some tacit understanding; it is not conscious yet, it is tacit, deep down. That is the meaning of understanding, understood. You have a tacit understanding, some deep undercurrent which knows what love is. That's why you can find 'this is not love', 'that is not love'. Good, you are on the right track. Go on to the very end, all the way.

It is because of the possibility of love that you have become aware of jealousy, of possessiveness, of anger, of lust, of greed, of indulgence, of gratification, and a thousand and one things. But the central core is dependent on a tacit understanding of love.

Truth tends to reveal itself.

Let me tell you a few anecdotes.

The funeral cortege was being set up for the wife of Mulla Nasrudin. He was dressed sombrely in the appropriate black. The funeral director said to the Mulla in a respectful whisper, "And you will be sitting in the head car with your mother-in-law."

Nasrudin frowned, "With my mother-in-law?" "Yes, of course."

"Is it necessary?"

"It is essential -- the bereaved husband and the bereaved mother, the two closest survivors, together."

Mulla Nasrudin turned to look at the large and sobbing figure of his mother-in- law and said, "Well, all right then. But I tell you right now that it is going to spoil the pleasure of the occasion."

Your black dress cannot hide the truth, your tears cannot hide the truth. Deep down he was feeling happy that now he was free, now he was no more in bondage with this woman. Just on the surface he was showing his bereavement.

Truth has a tendency to reveal itself. If you just become a little alert, you will always know what is true. Truth need not be learnt; one needs just to be a little

alert, and then the truth reveals itself. Revelation is intrinsic to truth. And when truth is revealed, a thousand and one lies are also revealed simultaneously, all the lies that were pretending to be truth when the truth was not known.

It happened: Abdul Rehman was very sick, a friend of Mulla Nasrudin. Everybody was worried about the sick man. He was very sick indeed, and his friends took turns visiting him to keep up his spirits.

The night Mulla Nasrudin went he was warned in advance that Abdul Rehman was very low and he must be extremely careful to say nothing discouraging. Nasrudin was doing beautifully, and actually had Rehman chuckling over a number of funny stories. But suddenly however, the Mulla stopped and began to shake his head.

"What is that? What is the matter, Mulla?" said Rehman anxiously.

"I was just thinking," said Nasrudin, "how in the name of the Holy Prophet are they going to get a coffin down the crooked stairs in this house?"

Now on the surface he was trying to encourage the man, but deep down he knew that he was going to die, and deep down an undercurrent: how are they going to get the coffin down? -- the staircase is so crooked.

Truth has a tendency to reveal itself. Just be a little alert and your heart will show you the path. And then nothing will be able to hide behind love. Things can hide behind love because you are unconscious. It is not a fault of love, it is your unconsciousness. So don't distrust love, distrust unconsciousness. Don't lose faith in love -- love has not done anything to you. Nothing wrong has love done to you. In fact, in spite of you, it is love that is keeping you alive. I repeat: in spite of you it is love that is keeping you alive. Lose faith in unconsciousness. If you are conscious, then nothing can hide behind love. Then no counterfeit can deceive you.

"It was something else, always in the name of love. Thus I now have no faith in love."

That is absurd. The logic is incorrect. You have not come across love; how can you lose faith in love? Dig a little more, go to the very end of it: you will always find purer gold, the deeper you go into yourself.

It is just like digging a well: first you dig a well -- you just get stones, rocks, rubbish; after that layer, more pure soil; after that layer, wet soil; after that, muddy water; after that, purer water. The deeper you go, purer springs become available. And this is so inside your heart also. On the surface there is just dirt, dust, rocks, then dry earth, then wet earth, then muddy water. But don't lose faith; you are coming closer to home -- then, pure water.

"I just cannot believe that we can love as we are." That's true -- you cannot love the way you are. But there is no need to choose to remain the way you are. You can change. There is no need to cling to your structure. You can destructure it.

That's what I'm doing here; that's all that we are trying to do together: to destructure you so that you can be realigned, so that you can be rearranged, so that the old disappears and the new is born.

This is true -- that the way you are you cannot love. But there is no reason to lose faith in love. Lose faith in yourself, lose faith in your ego. If it is you who is preventing you from loving, then drop this you -- because love is worth it. Millions of you's are not as valuable as a single moment of love. Drop this structure. Choose the sky, don't choose the cage.

The you you are feeling you are is nothing but the cage given by the society. Choose the sky drop the cage.

The fourth question:

Question 4

TWO MORNINGS AGO I SLEPT THROUGH THE LECTURE AND WOKE UP AT

THE END WITH THE WORD 'SINGLE-MINDEDNESS' ON MY MIND. SO WHAT

TO DO?

Be single-minded. The message is so clear; what is there to ask? Your being has given you a great message.

Sometimes it happens after deep sleep that you have messages from your deepest

core of being. Start listening to your first thoughts in the morning; out of sleep you are very close to your being. There is more possibility, within two or three seconds of waking, to have some glimpses of your deepest being, some messages. After two, three seconds, the contact will be lost. You will again be in the world, thrown into the world. But sometimes it happens, as it happens to a few people: listening to me they fall asleep. There are different types of people.

For example, just now Sheela is fast asleep, but her sleep is really beautiful: it is a sort of trance, not sleep. She is not just asleep; her sleep is luminous. She has simply relaxed.

Listening to me deeply, she could not remain tense. All tension is gone, so she simply relaxed, relaxed into a deeper layer of her own being. To all people from the outside she will look fast asleep. When she is back, even she may not be able to understand what has happened because to her also it may look like sleep. It is not sleep; it is a certain stage: in yoga we call it TANDRA. It is a midway point between waking and sleep, and without dreams.

So there are two midway stages between deep sleep and waking. The ordinary stage is dreaming: if you are just in between, then you dream. Either you are awake, or you are fast asleep, or you are dreaming. And dreaming is just in the middle of waking and sleeping; it is the middle passage. This is ordinarily so.

But if your meditation goes deeper, or, if your love goes deeper, the first change that happens in consciousness is a change in the middle stage -- dreaming stops. Now it is very difficult to say what it is. You can think about it as sleep, or you can think about it as waking; it is both together -- just a balance between the two, a very balanced stage.

TANDRA is the first glimpse, the beginning of SATORI. Dreams disappear first. Then in the next step, sleep disappears; and in the third step, what you call waking, that disappears. And when all three have disappeared, then arises what we call REAL waking.

Then one becomes enlightened. TANDRA is the first step; dreams are disappearing.

So sometimes it happens that people fall asleep here -- they are in a state of trance.

TANDRA can be translated as trance. For all practical purposes, they are asleep. They will not be able to remember my words, but after they are back they will remember that something very deep and silent has happened. Something in their energy has changed.

It is a deep relaxation. In this relaxation if some message arises, listen to it very carefully.

"Two mornings ago I slept through the lecture and woke up at the end with the word

'single-mindedness' on my mind." That morning I had been talking about singlemindedness.

The question is old. The question is concerned with the series of Zen stories.

I was talking that morning about single-mindedness. You may not have heard; you were in TANDRA, in trance to what I was saying. But what I wanted to deliver to you has been delivered. Your being listened, your body listened, your totality drank out of me, absorbed what I was saying, what I was being here. And when you came back, as a condensed message, a gift from your deepest core to your periphery, from your center to your circumference, the word 'single- mindedness' arose in your consciousness. Now you ask what to do?. -- be single- minded!

And what do I mean when I say 'be single-minded'? In fact, to say 'be single- minded' is almost to say 'be without mind' -- because the mind exists only in conflict. Mind exists only as many. When the manyness has disappeared and the crowd is no more there, we call it single-minded -- or you can call it no-mind because the mind has disappeared.

Mind is many; single mind is no-mind. When you are one, together -- no conflict inside, no division, all demons gone, you have become indivisible,,everything joined together in a deep coherence and harmony, a single orchestra -- then there is no-mind.

Single-mindedness is a term from Yoga tradition. No-mind means the same, but the term belongs to another tradition, Zen. But they both mean the same: don't be a crowd, don't be poly-psychic. Become uni-psychic, become one.

The fifth question:

Question 5

HOW CAN I DISTINGUISH BETWEEN ENLIGHTENED SELF-LOVE AND EGOMANIA?

The distinction is subtle but very clear, not difficult; subtle, but not difficult. If you have egomania, it will create more and more misery for you. Misery will indicate that you are ill. Egomania is a disease, a cancer of the soul. Egomania will make you more and more tense, will make you more and more up-tight, will not allow you to relax at all. It will drive you towards insanity.

Self-love is just the opposite of egomania. In self-love there is no self, only love. In egomania there is no love, only self. In self-love you will start becoming more and more relaxed. A person who loves himself is totally relaxed. To love somebody else may create a little tension, because the other need not be always in tune with you. The other may have his or her own ideas. The other is a different world; there is every possibility of collision, clash. There is every possibility of storm and thunder because the other is a different world. There is always a subtle struggle going on. But when you love yourself, there is nobody else. There is no conflict -- it is pure silence, it is tremendous delight.

You are alone; nobody disturbs you. The other is not needed at all. And to me, a person who has become capable of such deep love towards himself becomes capable of loving others. If you cannot love yourself, how can you love others? It must first happen at close quarters, it must first happen within you, to spread towards others.

People try to love others, not being at all aware that they have not even loved themselves.

How can you love others? That which you don't have you cannot share. You can give to others only that which you have already with you.

So the first and the most basic step towards love is love of oneself; but it has no self in it.

Let me explain it to you.

The 'I' arises only as a contrast to the 'thou'. 'I' and 'thou' exist together. The 'I' can exist in two dimensions. One dimension is 'I-it': you -- your house, you -- your car, you -- your money; 'I-it'. When there is this 'I', this 'I' of 'I-it', your 'I' is almost like a thing. It is not consciousness; it is fast asleep, snoring. Your consciousness is not there. You are just like things, a thing amidst things: part of your house, part of your furniture, part of your money.

Have you watched it? A man who is too greedy about money, by and by starts having the qualities of money. He becomes just money. He loses spirituality, he is no more a spirit.

He is reduced to a thing. If you love money, you will become like money. If you love your house, by and by you will become material. Whatsoever you love, you become.

Love is alchemical. Never love the wrong thing, because it will transform you. Nothing is so transforming as love. Love something which can raise you higher, to higher altitudes.

Love something beyond you.

That is the whole effect of religion: to give you a love-object like God so that there is no way to fall down. One has to rise.

One sort of 'I' exists as 'I-it'; another sort of 'I' exists as 'I-thou'. When you love a person, another type of 'I' arises in you: 'I thou'. You love a person, you become a person.

But what about self-love?. -- there is no 'it' and there is no 'thou'. 'I' disappears because 'I'

can exist only in two contexts: 'it' and 'thou'. 'I' is the figure, 'it' and 'thou' function as the field. When the field disappears the 'I' disappears. When you are left alone, you are, but you don't have an 'I', you don't feel any 'I'. You are simply a deep AMNESS. Ordinarily we say 'I am'. In that state, when you are deep in love with yourself, 'I' disappears. Only amness, pure existence, pure being remains. It will fill you with tremendous bliss. It will make you a celebration, a rejoicing. There will be no problem in distinguishing between them.

If you are getting more and more miserable, then you are on the trip of being an

egomaniac. If you are becoming more and more tranquil, silent, happy, together, then you are on another trip -- the trip of self-love. If you are on the trip of ego you will become destructive to others -- because the ego tries to destroy the 'thou'. If you are moving towards self-love, the ego will disappear. And when the ego disappears, you allow the other to be himself or herself; you give total freedom. If you don't have any ego you cannot create an imprisonment for the other you love; you cannot create a cage. You allow the other to be an eagle in the high heavens. You allow the other to be himself or herself; you give total freedom. Love gives total freedom. Love IS freedom -- freedom for you and freedom for the object of your love. Ego is bondage -- bondage for you and bondage for your victim.

But ego can play very deep tricks with you. It is very cunning, and subtle are its ways: it can pretend to be self-love.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

Mulla Nasrudin's face lit up as he recognized the man who was walking ahead of him down the subway stairs. He slapped the man so heartily on the back that the man nearly collapsed, and cried, "Goldberg, I hardly recognized you! Why, you have gained thirty pounds since I saw you last. And you have had your nose fixed, and I swear you are about two feet taller."

The man looked at him angrily. "I beg your pardon," he said in icy tones, "but I do not happen to be Goldberg."

"Aha!" said Mulla Nasrudin, "so you have even changed your name?"

The ego is very cunning and very self-justifying, very self-rationalizing. If you are not very alert it can start hiding itself behind self-love. The very word 'self' will become a protection for it. It can say, "I am your self." It can change its weight, it can change its height, it can change its name. And because it is just an idea, there is no problem about it: it can become small, it can become big. It is just your fantasy.

Be very careful. If you really want to grow in love, much carefulness will be needed.

Each step has to be taken in deep alertness so ego cannot find any loophole to hide behind.

Your real self is neither I nor thou; it is neither you nor the other. Your real self is altogether transcendental. What you call 'I' is not your real self. 'I' is imposed on reality.

When you call somebody 'you', you are not addressing the real self of the other. Again you have imposed a label on it. When all the labels are taken away, the real self remains -

- and the real self is as much yours as it is others. The real self is one.

That's why we go on saying that we participate in each other's beings, we are members of each other. Our real reality is God. We may be like icebergs floating in the ocean -- they appear to be separate -- but once we melt, nothing will be left. Definition will disappear, limitation will disappear, and the iceberg will not be there. It will become part of the ocean.

The ego is an iceberg. Melt it. Melt it in deep love, so it disappears and you become part of the ocean.

I have heard.…

The Judge looked very severe. "Mulla," he said, "your wife says you hit her over the head with a baseball bat and threw her down a flight of stairs. What have you got to say for yourself?"

Mulla Nasrudin rubbed the side of his nose with his hand, and meditated. Finally he said,

"Your Honor, I guess there are three sides to this case: my wife's story, my story, and the truth."

Yes, he is perfectly right.

"You have heard about two sides of a truth," he said, "but there are three sides" -- and he is exactly right. There is your story, my story, and the truth; I and you and the truth.

The truth is neither I nor you. I and you is an imposition on the vastness of the truth. 'I' is false, 'you' is false; utilitarian, useful in the world. It will be difficult to manage the world without 'I' and 'you'. Good -- use them, but they are just

devices of the world. In reality, there is neither 'you' nor 'I'. Something, someone, some energy exists with no limitations, with no boundaries. Out of it we come, and into it we disappear again.

The sixth question:

Question 6

EVEN IF SOMETIMES LOVE-LIKE FEELINGS ARISE IN MY HEART, IMMEDIATELY THE NEXT MOMENT I START FEELING 'THIS IS NOT LOVE, THIS IS NOT LOVE AT ALL: IT IS ALL MY HIDDEN CRAVINGS FOR SEX AND

ALL THAT'.

So what is wrong in it? Love has to arise out of lust. If you avoid lust, you will be avoiding the whole possibility of love itself. Love is not lust, true; but love is not without lust -- that too is true. Love is higher than lust, yes, but if you destroy lust completely, you destroy the very possibility of the flower arising out of the mud. Love is the lotus, lust is the mud the lotus arises out of. Remember it; otherwise you will never attain to love. At the most, you can pretend that you have transcended lust. Because without love, nobody can transcend lust; you can repress it. Repressed, it becomes more poisonous. It spreads into your whole system, it becomes toxic, it destroys you. Lust transformed into love gives you a glow, a radiance. You start feeling light, as if you can fly. You start gaining wings. With lust repressed you become heavy, as if you are carrying a weight, as if a big rock is hanging around your neck. With lust repressed, you lose all opportunities to fly in the sky. With lust transformed into love, you have passed the test of existence.

You have been given a raw material to work, to be creative. Lust is raw material. I have heard.…

Berkowitz and Michaelson, who were not only business partners but life-long friends, made a pact: that whichever one died first would come back and tell the other what it was like in heaven.

Six months later, Berkowitz died. He was a very moral man, almost saint-like, a puritan who had never done anything wrong, who had always remained afraid of

lust and sex.

And Michaelson waited for his dear departed holy friend to show some sign that he had returned to earth. Michaelson passed the time impatiently hoping for and eagerly awaiting a message from Berkowitz.

Then one year after the day of his death, Berkowitz spoke to Michaelson. It was late at night; Michaelson was in bed.

"Michaelson, Michaelson," echoed the voice. "Is that you, Berkowitz?"

"Yes."

"What is it like where you are?"

"We have breakfast and then we make love, then we eat lunch and we make love, we have dinner and then we make love."

"Is that what heaven is like?" asked Michaelson.

"Who said anything about heaven?" said Berkowitz. "I am in Wisconsin, and I am a bull."

Remember, this happens to people who repress sex. Nothing else can happen because that whole energy repressed becomes a load and pulls you down. You move towards lower stages of being. If love arises out of lust, you start rising towards higher being.

So remember, what you want to become -- a Buddha or a bull -- depends on you. If you want to become a Buddha, then don't be afraid of sex. Move into it, know it well, become more and more alert about it. Be careful; it is tremendously valuable energy. Make it a meditation and transform it, by and by, into love. It is raw material, like a raw diamond: you have to cut it, polish it; then it becomes of tremendous value. If somebody gives you an unpolished, raw, uncut diamond, you may not even recognize that it is a diamond.

Even the Kohinoor in its raw state is worthless.

Lust is a Kohinoor: it has to be polished, it has to be understood.

The questioner seems to be afraid and antagonistic: "It is all my hidden cravings for sex and all that." There is a condemnation in it. Nothing is wrong; man is a sexual animal.

That's how we are. That's the way life means us to be. That's how we have found ourselves here. Go into it. Without going, you will never be able to transform it. I'm not speaking for mere indulgence. I'm saying move into it with deep meditative energy to understand what it is. It must be something tremendously valuable because you have come out of it, because the whole existence enjoys it, because the whole existence is sexual. Sex is the way God has chosen to be in the world, notwithstanding what Christians go on saying -- that Jesus was born out of a virgin woman -- all foolishness.

They pretend that sex was not involved in Jesus' birth. They are so afraid of sex that they create foolish stories like this: that Jesus is born out of a virgin Mary. Mary must have been very pure, that's true; she must have been spiritually virgin, that is true -- but there is no way to enter into life without passing through the energy that sex is. The body knows no other law. And nature is all-inclusive: it believes in no exceptions, it allows no exceptions. You are born out of sex, you are full of sex energy. But this is not the end; this may be the beginning. Sex is the beginning but not the end.

There are three types of people. One thinks that sex is the end also. They are the people who live a life of indulgence. They miss, because sex is the beginning but not the end.

Then there are people who are against indulgence. They take the other, the opposite extreme: they don't want sex even to be the beginning, so they start cutting it. Cutting it, they cut themselves. Destroying it, they destroy themselves, they wither away. Both are foolish attitudes.

There is the third possibility: the possibility of the wise man who looks at life, who has no theories to enforce on life, who just tries to understand. He comes to see that sex is the beginning but not the end. Sex is just an opportunity to grow beyond it, but one has to pass through it.

The last question:

Question 7

OSHO, I USED TO THINK I KNEW WHAT SUBMISSION WAS. NOW I SEE IT --

IT WAS A POLITICAL MIND-TRIP TO BUY RELATIONS. NOW THAT THERE IS

NO PLACE TO STAND BUT WHERE I AM, BLISS HAS ENTERED. THANK YOU

FOR TURNING ME ON MYSELF.

It is from Anup.

It is significant to have come to an understanding of what surrender or submission is. It is one of the keys, but people are very afraid to use it -- because if you surrender, submit, you are lost. It is death-like. It is as if one is committing suicide. So people go on doing other things and they call it submission, surrender.

To have this understanding, this glimpse that all that you have up to now been thinking of as surrender, as submission is not the real thing, is a great step towards transformation.

Once you understand the false as the false, you are becoming capable of knowing the real as the real. To understand the false as the false is the beginning of understanding the real as the real. The lies have to be exposed. Once lies are exposed, truth stands nude, naked, revealed.

Table of Contents

< Previous | Contents