The Beloved - Vol 2

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The Beloved, Vol 2

Talks on the Baul Mystics

Talks given from 01/07/76 am to 10/07/76 am English Discourse series

10 Chapters

Year published: 1976

The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #1

Chapter title:The Roots And The Flowers Are One 1 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7607010

ShortTitle: BELOV201

Audio: Yes Video: No Length: 87

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THE MILK OF THE LIONESS IS SEEN AT ITS BEST

WHEN STORED

IN A GOLDEN CUP. WORSHIPPING PROSPERS IN A PROPER CONTAINER.

THE LOVER WHO WHOLLY LOVES, CAN REACH REALITY,

COMPREHENDING THE UNATTAINABLE MAN. THE SECRETS OF DEATH

ARE REVEALED TO HIM WHILE HE IS FULLY ALIVE. WHAT DOES HE CARE

FOR OTHER SHORES OF LIFE...?

Humanity is split. The very human mind is split because of two extremist life philosophies. Both are exaggerations; both are logical extremes.

One is what people call the philosophy of èat, drink and be merry', the materialist standpoint that life is just an accident. It is not going anywhere. There is no meaning in it, no significance, no coherence. You are not preparing for something. Nothing is going to happen, so you are left in the moment; make the most of it. Death is going to destroy utterly, nothing will survive, so don't be bothered about the other shore. Don't think in terms of goals. Don't think that God, truth, liberation, MOKSHA, NIRVANA have to be achieved. These are all just illusions; they don't exist -- empty, dreams of the human mind. They are not substantial, so squeeze out of the moment whatsoever you can. But there is no undercurrent of meaning in life. Life is accidental: you are not created for any

purpose.

Many live that way and miss much -- because there IS purpose, because life is not an accident, because there is a running thread in each moment of eternity, because life is an unfoldment. Something is going to happen. The future is not barren, it is going to be creative. Preparation is needed so that you can unfold, so that your seed can become manifested, so that your essence is achieved, so you can know who you are and what this existence is.

Life is not just a madman's thought. It is very systematic. It is not chaos, it is a cosmos.

There is order. Even behind disorder there is order; only eyes are needed to penetrate to that depth. On the surface maybe you can see only a sequence of moments and you cannot see eternity. On the surface maybe you can see only the body and nothing more.

Just as when you go to the ocean, standing on the beach you cannot see the depth of the ocean, only the waves. But the ocean is not just waves. In fact, waves cannot exist without the ocean; the ocean can exist without the waves. Waves are not separate from the ocean. Waves are nothing but ocean waving, and ocean has tremendous depth. But to know that depth one has to go into that depth, one has to dive deep.

The materialist standpoint makes life absolutely empty of meaning. Then whether you live or you commit suicide makes no difference, because life and death are just the same.

Life is nothing but a way of dying. You are going to die; how you die does not matter, when you die does not matter. How long you live and then die does not matter. Nothing matters. This standpoint is a half-truth -- and half-truths are dangerous, more dangerous than lies because they have something of truth in them. That something can be very, very deceiving. A complete lie is not so dangerous because it cannot deceive for long. Sooner or later you will come to know that it is a lie. Half-truths are very dangerous because something is true, and that something true may keep you hooked and you may never be able to know the lie.

The other extreme is that of the spiritualist. He says, "This moment is useless. Time is useless, only eternity has meaning. So don't waste this moment in

rejoicing, delighting.

Don't waste this moment, prepare for the future. Sacrifice the present for the future.

Sacrifice all that you have for that which the future holds in itself as a promise. Make life a constant approach towards truth. Make life a constant effort to realize oneself, or God, or NIRVANA. This is not significant, but THAT. HERE is not significant, but THERE.

The other shore is significant. This shore is to be used only as a jumping board. But you have to go to the other shore. Real life is on the other shore. On this shore there is only illusion, MAYA, so don't waste your time in anything that keeps you on this shore. Don't be happy on this shore, because if you are happy on this shore, how will you be able to leave it? Become sad, become serious. This shore is the shore of sorrow. This shore is not the shore of life, but death. This shore is nothing but accumulated sin, so be sad that you are here, be indifferent to whatsoever this shore can give to you. Don't be attached to anything here. Don't fall in love with someone. Don't fall in love with the beauty of this shore. Be alert and remember the other shore, keep your eyes on the other shore."

This too, is another extreme. It also carries half of the truth, and is as dangerous as the first extreme.

This moment is also part of eternity, and this shore belongs to the river as much as the other shore. And the beauty on this shore, and the song and the poetry of this shore is as divine as the song and the poetry of the other shore. This very moment is eternity available to you. So just sacrificing this moment for the future is foolish, because the future will always come as this moment. The other shore will always come as this shore.

And, if you have learned a trick that spiritualists have learned, and that they have taught to the whole humanity and corrupted the mind -- how to destroy this moment, how to be negative on this shore -- then you will be negative anywhere. Wherever you are you will be negative. Wherever you are you will be destructive. Wherever you are you will remain sad and sorrowful. This is not religion.

THE BAUL attitude is a great synthesis between these two polarities. The Baul

understanding uses both half-truths and makes a whole truth out of it. The Bauls say,

"This moment is not all, right; but to say that this moment is nothing is wrong." The Bauls say, "Life is a preparation, but the preparation is nothing but to be blissful in this moment." They are not materialists and they are not spiritualists. They are religious people. Religion is a great synthesis. And if you don't understand this, you will be a victim of either this extreme or that. Or, you can be a victim of both, half-half. That's how schizophrenia arises.

Schizophrenia is not a disease that happens to a few people -- it is the normal state of humanity. Everybody is divided, split. You can watch it in your own life. When you are not with a woman, with a man, not in love, you think, you fantasize about love. Love seems to be the goal. That seems to be the very meaning of life. When you are with a woman or with a man and in love, suddenly you start thinking in terms of spiritualism:

"This is attachment, this is possessiveness, this is lust." A condemnation arises.

You cannot be alone and you cannot be with somebody. If you are alone you hanker for the crowd, for the other. If you are with somebody you start hankering to be alone. This is something to be understood, because everybody has to face this problem. You are born in a schizophrenic world. You have been given double standards. You have been taught materialism, and you have been taught spiritualism, together. The whole society goes on teaching you contradictory things.

I was staying with a Vice Chancellor, and he told me that he was very worried about the new generation. He has two young boys and he was worried about them. He wants them to be humble. He wants them to be true, honest; he wants them to be religious, prayerful.

I said, "That's okay. What else do you want them to be?" He said, "Of course, I would like them to succeed in life." I insisted, "What do you mean by success?"

He said, "At least I have become a Vice Chancellor. I would like them to be well-educated, to reach to high posts, to succeed materially as far as wealth is

concerned: a good house, a good car, a good wife, respect in the society." And then he became a little uneasy, and he said, "But why are you asking this?"

I said, "I am asking this because both are contradictory. On the one hand you want your son to be humble, on the other hand you want him to be ambitious. Now both will make him just split. On the one hand he will try to carry the ideal of humility, humbleness, simplicity; on the other hand, the ideal to succeed, to be ambitious, to achieve. An ambitious man cannot be humble; a humble man cannot be ambitious. And you want him to be prayerful? And you want him to be true and honest? A man who is trying to succeed in the world HAS to be dishonest. Of course, he has to be dishonest in such a way that nobody ever discovers it. He has to be very cunningly dishonest. He has to pretend to honesty and remain dishonest. He has to pretend to humbleness and remain egoistic. But these are such different, diametrically opposite goals, and you put them inside one person

-- that person will always remain divided. If he succeeds he will think,'What happened to my humbleness, what happened to my prayer, what happened to my compassion?' If he becomes humble he will think,'What happened to my ambition? I am nowhere'."

You are born in a schizophrenic world. Your parents were schizophrenic, your teachers were schizophrenic, your priests, your politicians are schizophrenic. They go on talking about two diametrically opposite goals, and they go on creating the split m you.

The Bauls are very healthy people -- not schizophrenic, not split. Their synthesis has to be understood; the very understanding will help you tremendously.

They say, "This world and the other world are not opposite." They say, "To eat, drink and be merry, and to be prayerful, are not opposite." They say, "This shore and the other shore belong to the same river of God." So they say that each moment has to be lived as a materialist, and each moment has to be given a direction as a spiritualist. Each moment, one has to be delightful, rejoicing, celebrating, and at the same time, remaining alert and conscious, remaining fully aware about the future unfoldment. But that unfoldment is not against this moment's rejoicing. In fact, because you rejoice in this moment, the next moment your flower opens more. The more you are happy m this moment, the more you will become capable of being happy in the next moment. If today has

been a heaven, tomorrow cannot be a hell because it will be born out of today. If today has been tremendously beautiful, a day of song, a day of dance and laughter. then how can tomorrow be a day of sorrow? From where can sadness enter in? It is going to be YOUR

tomorrow. And whenever it will come, it will come as today, and you have learned the secret of how to live today.

The Bauls say, "Learn from the materialist the way to live. "Learn from an Epicurean, a CHARVAK; learn from him the way to live this moment. Learn the direction from real spiritual people -- a Buddha, a Mahavir, a Krishna -- and make a synthesis out of both.

Don't divide time and eternity; don't divide matter and mind; don't divide earth and sky.

Don't divide the roots and the flowers; they are together.

This togetherness is the goal of the Baul. And when inside you divisions disappear, and inside you there is no conflict, and inside you you are one, you become luminous. A great grace arises in you. Then you will be as happy as Epicurus and as silent as Buddha.

IN the soul of a Baul, Buddha and Epicurus embrace each other. And this is my goal also, and this is my teaching also. If somehow you can become a Buddha without becoming an Epicurus simultaneously, you will miss much. You will become a stone Buddha; you will not be alive. Or if you can become an Epicurus without becoming a Buddha, you will miss much. You may enjoy a few fleeting moments of life, but that's not enough. Life has more to give and you live only on the waves, you never reach the depths.

I would like you to become capable of living on the waves, with the sun shining and the storm raging and great winds blowing, and to go into the depth also, where all storms cease, where deep darkness exists without any penetration from the sun, where everything is silent and peaceful and tranquil, and there is no disturbance. But, I would like you to become capable of both. If one makes you incapable of the other, then you are not a very rich human being. Then you are half-human. Then half of your being is dead.

Then you are paralyzed; then you are not fully alive.

You must have heard what the existentialists say. They have a very basic dictum: that existence precedes essence. They say that man is born first, and then, by and by, he creates his own essence, his own soul. Man is born empty, with no content in him, just a blank paper. Then, by and by, he has to write his own autobiography on it. He has to make his own signature; he brings none. He comes as an emptiness.

The Bauls say just the opposite thing. They say: Man is born with essence, the ADHAR

MANUSH. The essential man is always there, maybe manifest or not manifest. The tree is already in the seed. Essence precedes existence, not otherwise. The Bauls say that life is not a creation of something new, it is just unfoldment. You already have it; it just has to be unfolded, barriers just have to be removed. Obstacles just have to be put aside and your life starts unfolding. You are like a bud: when obstacles are no more there, you start flowering, your lotus opens.

BUT that which you are going to become you already are, in essence -- "Because if you are not already," the Bauls say, "then you cannot become." You can become only that which you are. You can become only your being. There is no other way of becoming, there is nothing else you can become. A rosebush will grow roses, a lotus plant will grow lotuses. You are already carrying your destiny; just obstacles have to be removed.

This is what Bauls call preparation. To prepare oneself means to remove the obstacles on the path. If you remove hate, love starts flowing. You are not to create love; nobody can create love. If you were to create love then it would be impossible. Just remove the hate and you will see love streaming. Remove unconsciousness, and you will see knowing arising in you. Remove the negative, and the positive starts unfolding itself. Then the whole preparation is just negative. It is almost as if a rock is blocking a small stream: you remove the rock and the stream starts moving. With the rock blocking her path, it may not ever have been possible for her to come and be manifested.

We are carrying many rocks within our beings -- call them blocks in your energy

-- but those blocks have to be dissolved and removed.

The methods of the Bauls are very simple. They say that if you can dance, many blocks will disappear from your being -- because when a person dances and

really moves into dance, and becomes movement, then he becomes liquid. Have you not seen it? If you have seen somebody lost in dancing, can't you see it? that he is no longer solid? He is flowing. The solidity is gone; he has become liquid. This liquidity melts the blocks. So dancing is the Yoga of the Baul; he dances for hours together. When the moon is in the sky in the night, the Bauls will dance the whole night -- because for them the moon is a symbol of their Beloved, Krishna. They call Krishna 'the moon'. When the moon is there they will dance, and they will dance madly. And this dance is not a performance. It is not for somebody else to see. If somebody sees it and watches, that's another thing. The Baul dances for himself, for his own pleasure.

Somebody asked Tulsidas, a great poet, "Why have you written RAMAYAN? Why?" --

because he devoted his whole life to it. Said Tulsidas, "SWANTAHSUKHAI TULSI RAGHUNATH GATHA": for my own pleasure I have been singing the story of Ram --

SWANTAHSUKHAI; for my own pleasure, for my sheer pleasure, but for my own pleasure. It is not a performance, it is not for somebody else.

The Bauls dance SWANTAHSUKHAI, for their own pleasure.

Singing is another of their methods, They have chosen very aesthetic methods, not hard, but very soft methods, feminine methods, Taoist methods. They sing and they are lost completely in their singing. Singing is chanting for them; singing is prayer for them. And they sing about their Beloved, and they sing about their Lord, about their God. If you are lost in your singing you are lost in NADABRAHMA, you are lost in 'the soundless sound'. And their singing and dancing is not a ritualized thing. There is no ritual. Each Baul is individual. You will not find two Bauls singing the same song or singing in the same way. And you will not find two Bauls dancing the same dance or dancing the same way. They don't follow any ritual.

This has to be understood, because this is very, very fundamental for them. And this I would like you to remember: if anything becomes a ritual, then drop it; it is useless now -

- because a ritual means a repetition. Mohammedans do their NAMAJ in a certain way every day; it becomes a ritual. Christians do their prayer. the same

prayer again and again. They become so habitual with it that no consciousness is required. They can do it and they can think many thoughts in the background. It has become robot-like. They can repeat the words. They know the words, they have repeated them so many times. It is a dead ritual.

Bauls say, "Let your prayer arise in each moment. What is the need to carry the past?

Can't you talk to your God directly? What is the point of repeating the same thing again?"

Today is different from yesterday -- the prayer has to be new, as new as the morning sun or the morning dewdrop. Say something that arises in your heart. If nothing arises, bow down in deep silence, because He knows. He will understand your silence. Some day you feel like dancing -- dance. Now that is the prayer for that moment. Some day you want to sing -- but don't repeat anybody else's song, because that is not your heart, and that is not the way you can pour your heart into the divine feet. Let your own song arise. Forget about metre and grammar. God is not too much of a grammarian, and He is not worried about what words you use. He is more concerned about your heart; He is more concerned about your intention. He will understand.

So Bauls make their own songs on the spur of the moment. It is spontaneous. They just relax in the moment: they let the dance happen, they let the singing happen. That's why they are known as mad people, because on some day they may be quarrelling with God!

It has to be so. When you love God you can quarrel also. Some day they may be very angry and they will say, "No, I'm not going to pray to you today. What have you done to me? I am very angry." But this is beautiful; this is prayer. This will be heard. This will reach to the very core of existence. When you love, sometimes you are annoyed also.

When you love, sometimes you are angry also, sometimes you dance also, sometimes you complain also. Man is very helpless, and a Baul lives in total helplessness. That's why he leaves all possessions and becomes a beggar on the road. He leaves himself in the hands of God. He says, "I will trust you."

JUST the other day I was reading one prayer of a Baul, and the Baul says, "Okay, if you want to test me, test. And if you want to give me pain, give. I will

try to tolerate as much as I can. Okay." But his talk is not mere talk; it is a communication. And he's not repeating scripture. He creates his scripture. And when you CREATE your scripture, only then do you live it. If it is borrowed you cannot live it. A borrowed song is not a song, and a borrowed dance is not a dance. Let it arise in you. Don't be worried about performance, because we do performance because we are too concerned about the opinion of others. The Baul is not performing anything; his approach is direct. He talks to God as a small child talks to his father or to his mother, or a lover talks to his beloved: it is alive.

The song for today:

THE MILK OF THE LIONESS IS SEEN AT ITS BEST

WHEN STORED IN A GOLDEN CUP. WORSHIPPING PROSPERS

IN A PROPER CONTAINER.

So Bauls say, "Prepare yourself." But when they say to prepare yourself, they don't mean to be against the world. Their preparation is life-affirmative. When they say 'prepare', they don't mean it as other spiritualists mean it. The other spiritualists say, "Prepare"; they are saying: drop enjoying, drop delighting in life, move against life. Start destroying all attachment, all love, all celebration. These spiritualists seem to be, in some deeper way, very masochistic. Suffering becomes a very great value for them. They start creating suffering for themselves.

No, a Baul is a lover of life. When he says prepare, he says to enjoy this moment so you are ready for the next moment. Make this moment golden. Let all your moments be a series of golden moments, and you will become a golden cup.

THE MILK OF THE LIONESS IS SEEN AT ITS BEST

WHEN STORED IN A GOLDEN CUP.

BECOME a golden cup before you invite God to pour Himself into you. Enjoy, delight, rejoice, so that you can become capable of higher rejoicings. Celebrate this shore so that you can learn the ways of celebration and you can be called to the other shore. Only those who are ready will be called. If you are sad, gloomy, masochistic, torturing yourself, you are putting the other shore farther away. Because that shore belongs to those who can penetrate. That shore comes closer the more you celebrate. In fact, if your celebration comes to a peak, this shore turns to be that shore. When you are really at the peak of your celebration, when your dance is at the ultimate climax, immediately this shore is no more this shore; you are on the other shore. You are no more in the world, you are in God.

WORSHIPPING PROSPERS IN A PROPER CONTAINER.

A right container is needed. If you are desiring to become a container for God, if you have invited Him to be your guest and you want to be His host, then you will have to learn the ways of paradise. You will have to live in such a way, herenow, that this very moment becomes a paradise, Only then can you invite God. Many people go on inviting without ever thinking if they are ready to receive.

If He comes, will He find you ready? If He comes, will you be able to welcome Him?

Have you the golden cup ready if He pours down upon you? Where will you collect Him?

Is your heart ready, open to receive Him? Are you receptive, sensitive? Nobody asks this.

Many people come to me and they say, "Where is God?" -- as if it is God's duty to prove Himself, to prove where He is. And if He cannot prove Himself, then they cannot trust.

God is surrounding you herenow. He is within and without. Nothing else is; only God is.

But you are not ready. The golden cup is missing. You don't have the eyes to see Him, and you don't have the ears to listen to Him, and you don't have the hands

to touch Him.

You are not ready, and you can receive only that for which you are ready. Not even a single moment is lost. Once you are ready, immediately -- not even a single moment's gap, immediately the moment you are ready -- He happens. Because He has already happened; only your readiness has to happen.

Even if sometimes we try to be ready, our efforts are very half-hearted.

THE songwriter, Bob Dylan, gives us a modern parable that expresses quite well what I wish to say to you. On the backside of his album, JOHN WESLEY HARDING, we read of three kings who visit a man named Frank. The first king explains their mission to Frank:

"Mr. Dylan has come out with a new record. This record, of course, feature's none but his own songs, and we understand that you are the key."

"That's right," said Frank, "I am."

"Well then," said the king in a bit of excitement, "could you please open it up for us?"

Frank, who all this time had been reclining with his eyes closed, suddenly opened them both as wide as a tiger. "And just how far would you like to go in?" he asked.

The chief of the kings replied, "Not too far, but just enough so we can say that we have been there."

Even when people are seeking God, they want only to go this far -- so that they can say to the world that they have seen Him. But they don't want to go far enough -- because if you go far enough into God, you never come back. They don't want to take another step --

because if you go deep, then there comes a point of no return. They only want to go a little bit, so that they can come back into the world and say to people that, "We have seen God also." But their whole interest is in the world and the respectability that the world can give to them. They have a big bank balance, they have a big palace today; now they even possess God in their homes.

This parable is beautiful.

Replies the chief of the kings, "Not too far, but just enough so we can say that we have been there."

WHEN you go to the temple you are still not going; your face is towards the marketplace.

Have you seen it sometimes in you or in others? -- if you are alone in the temple, you don't enjoy your prayer very much. If there are many people watching, then there is great enthusiasm. Then you are so full of spirit. Then your prayer is great, you feel very high --

not because of the prayer, but because the whole town is watching you. And they will think how religious, how virtuous, how close to God you are. You would like them to feel jealous. It is a performance. But your performance is before the people; God is out of it. You are not contacting Him.

Contact Him alone, because it is not a performance. You are not to prove anything to anybody, you are just to open your heart.

The Bauls say,

As you wonder, sitting alone, the time approaches for death.

Heedless of all, O my insane heart, you have travelled eight million times the painful ways of life to death,

to find the measured land, the body of the man.

Why did you let such human earth turn to wasteland?

Cultivated, it could have yielded a harvest of gold.

Take up, my heart, the spade of devotion, wrench out the weeds of sin;

the seed of faith will grow. Just destroy obstacles.

Take up, my heart, the spade of devotion, wrench out the weeds of sin;

the seed of faith will grow.

You are carrying the seed within you. It is already treasured in the deepest core of your being, waiting and waiting and waiting for obstacles to be removed so that it can unfold.

God is your intrinsic quality; God is your destiny. You are the seed and God is going to be the flower out of this seed.

Human limbs are held together by a pair of lotus blossoms growing in the lower

and the upper regions of the body.

But the lotuses burst open in search

as the sun in the body rises and sets.

As your awareness rises and sets, your innermost lotuses open and close. Just as in the morning the sun rises in the sky on the horizon in the East, and the lotuses bloom, when night comes and the sun sets in the West, the lotuses close again.

The Bauls say, Human limbs are held together by a pair of lotus blossoms...

... What the yogis call CHAKRAS: the vortexes of energy, the wheels of energy, the seven CHAKRAS. Bauls call them the seven lotuses.

...growing in the lower

and the upper regions of the body.

But the lotuses burst open in search

as the sun in the body rises and sets.

On which of these blooms is the full moon born,

and on which

the darkest night of the month?

The lowest lotus is the sex lotus. If you remain there you will remain in a dark night. The last lotus, the seventh, SAHASRAR, is the lotus where the moon becomes full. Move from sex to love. Love is the quality or the function of the man who has come to SAHASRAR; sex is the quality and the function of the man who lives at the lowest lotus.

And don't be worried, the Bauls sing,.

My worries continue for my crumbling boat

that can no longer carry. Water rushes through her hulk and salt eats at her keel.

My boat can bear no more the burden of water.

O Master of my life, open your eyes.

Show me your kindness and hold me as I die.

Passions like bandits raided my boat and went off with the spoils.

They cut the mooring rope and left me adrift.

The Master says:

Wash away the stains of your heart and your boat will thrive

in tranquility.

Just the stains on your heart have to be washed away. The heart just has to drop doubts, the heart has to drop suspicions. Once trust arises, you are washed clean. Trust is a tremendous cleansing of the heart. Then the lotuses open.

Sown on a slab of stone,

the seed of faith dries day by day,

never sprouting.

You may cultivate the arid earth, but the hardened seed

will yield no harvest.

Great is the woodland where the sandal grows, and the breeze, bearing the scent of sandal perfumes the neighboring trees

turning them into sandalwood.

If on a very hard heart you want to sow the seed of God, it will not grow. Let your heart be soft, let it become receptive. Then it will be like the soft soil of the woodland where sandals grow. And these lines are beautiful:

Great is the woodland where the sandal grows, and the breeze, bearing the scent of sandal perfumes the neighboring trees

turning them into sandalwood.

AND when one man's seed flowers not only is he perfumed, all those who come in contact with him become sandalwood. Hence, the glory of SATSANG, the glory of the presence of a Master. He has become a sandalwood. Just coming in contact with him you will be perfumed, and your own seed will start sprouting.

Gathering planks and pieces of metal you build a boat to float on the sea, but the elements are alien to water.

The boat sails and the boat sinks

but the tie of love is never torn.

If the vehicle is not right, if the preparedness is not right, then the whole effort will be lost. You can make a heavy boat, but then it will sink. It will not float in the sea. The Bauls say that only in the boat of love, in soft, feminine passivity, in the boat of songs and dances, does one reach to the other shore. Become more feminine, more soft, like soft soil, and throw out all hard stones from your heart. We ordinarily do just the opposite: we go on gathering doubts and suspicions. We go on destroying our own soil.

WORSHIPPING PROSPERS IN A PROPER CONTAINER. THE LOVER

WHO WHOLLY LOVES, CAN REACH REALITY,

COMPREHENDING THE UNATTAINABLE MAN.

"The lover who wholly loves, can reach reality, comprehending the unattainable man "

Love is the path of the Baul; love, and nothing else -- wholly in love, totally in love, total trust.

To find nectar,

stir the cauldron on the fire, and unite the act of loving with the feeling for love.

ORDINARILY people love, but they don't have a FEELING for love. They exploit love.

They even act like lovers, but their love is in the service of gratification. They don't have a feeling for love. They don't love love. They don't have respect,

reverence for love. Love remains a lust; it never becomes worship, prayer. TO FIND NECTAR,

STIR THE CAULDRON ON THE FIRE, AND UNITE THE ACT OF LOVING WITH THE FEELING FOR LOVE. DISTILL THE SWEETNESS

OF THE HEART

AND REACH THE TREASURES, DEVOTING YOURSELF

TO THOSE WHOLLY DEVOTED.

If you can find a person who is wholly devoted to God, then devote yourself to that person -- because love cannot be taught, it can only be caught. Nobody can teach you the ways of love; you will have to live in close vicinity of a lover. Nobody can teach you how to pray: you will have to live in close vicinity of one who is in prayer. Watching him, feeling him, moving around him, tasting the flavor of his being, will teach you what prayer is. Then prayer will not become a ritual. Then prayer will be a flowering within you, a spontaneous arising of a new vision.

Distill the sweetness of the heart

and reach the treasures, devoting yourself

to those wholly devoted.

That is the relationship between a Master and a disciple. Bauls move in search of a Master. Whenever they find somebody whose song, whose dancing is

prayerful...and there is no intellectual criterion for knowing it; you have just to be with someone. How do you know that a person is in love? What is the criterion? Just be with him and see: see how he behaves, see how he responds. See his tears and his songs. Watch his moods in different moments. By and by, you will be able to feel what worship, what love, what prayer is. Yes, it cannot be taught, but it can be caught.

Will the day ever dawn

when the treasured man of my heart will become my own?

Though not cast in any shape, the man is evidenced

in the ways of love.

There is no proof for God, but there is enough proof in those people who have loved Him. There is no proof that God exists, but there is enough proof that a Meera existed, that Chaitanya existed. There is enough proof because we have seen a transfiguration happening in Meera, we have seen the transmutation happening in Chaitanya. We have seen. They were ordinary metal suddenly becoming gold. We don't know God exists; there is no proof -- but is it not enough proof? The Bauls say, "The man is evidenced in the ways of love." That is the only evidence.

VIVEKANANDA went to Ramkrishna. He wanted a proof for God, and Ramkrishna started laughing in his mad way. And suddenly, he touched Vivekananda's heart with his feet. Vivekananda fell into a swoon, a trance. The friends that had come with Vivekananda were all worried: "What has happened?" And Vivekananda was not the sort to fall easily into a trance. He was an intellectual, atheistic, skeptical, well trained in logic and philosophy. What had happened? What had this man done? And when Vivekananda came back, he was a totally different man. Then Vivekananda tried in thousands of ways to escape from this man Ramkrishna, but it was impossible. It was as if a great magnet was pulling him. He would escape for a few days and then come back, almost against his will. One day he would again find himself sitting before Ramkrishna, and he would tell Ramkrishna, "Leave me alone. Why are you

haunting me?" Ramkrishna said, "What can I do? You asked,'Is there any God, is there any proof?' I don't know any proof. All that I know is that He is in me, so I allowed Him to touch you. What else can I do? Now it is for you to decide whether God is or not."

There is no proof, but there are enough proofs; no direct proof, but many indirect evidences.

Will the day ever dawn

when the treasured man of my heart will become my own?

Though not cast in any shape, the man is evidenced

in the ways of love. Those who are absorbed by the flavours of feelings and are wholly living

with the knowledge of death have won their foes --

pride and envy, lust and anger,

ignorance and greed. If your life,

flowing with life, longs for the man,

the man will come with kindly steps.

Look at the worlds of gods, demons and man -- all held in your body.

He is already there.

God has already penetrated you: the news may not have reached yet, the gospel may not have been heard yet.

The English word 'gospel' is very beautiful. In the old English it was 'godspell', then it became 'gospel'. Godspell is even better.

He has already penetrated you. He is already there but the news has not reached you.

Your head is too far away from your heart. Bring your head a little closer.

The man is evidenced in the ways of love, and the worlds of gods, demons and man -- all are held in your body. He is already there, holding all together. The Bauls go on crying and weeping; their tears are the proof. Their weeping is so authentic, their crying is so authentic that once coming in contact with a Baul, you will never ask whether God exists or not.

I shall not open my eyes again if I don't see Him at first sight.

Can you then tell me

through the sense of smelling and through my listening ears that He has come --

that He has come to the sky in the East --

that your friend has come to the sky of the East?

"I shall not open my eyes if I don't see Him at first sight": they go on singing, praying.

Their song is so true, their prayer is so penetrating. How it is possible without God? Yes, God is evidenced in the ways of love.

THE LOVER

WHO WHOLLY LOVES, CAN REACH REALITY,

COMPREHENDING THE UNATTAINABLE MAN.

The emphasis is on wholly, totally, utterly, completely. Immediately, when you are total you are ready, the golden cup is ready.

THE SECRETS OF DEATH ARE REVEALED TO HIM WHILE HE IS FULLY ALIVE. WHAT DOES HE CARE

FOR THE OTHER SHORES OF LIFE...?

"The secrets of death are revealed to him while he is fully alive"...and the lover knows what death is. The lover knows that death is not. Only the lover knows that death is the most false thing in existence. Why? How does the lover come to know that death is not? -

- because the lover has already died in his love. And he finds himself, he is still there --

not only there but more so, so much so that he has never been before. Dying, he is for the first time living totally. He dies in the love of God, in the love of the Beloved. He surrenders himself utterly, unconditionally.

JUST a few days ago Girisha wrote me a letter. She thinks she has too much work in the ashram. Maybe that's true, maybe it is not true. But in the letter she

wrote something which is very meaningful. She wrote in the letter, "I have too much work and it is not surrender, it is sacrifice." Now surrender knows nothing about sacrifice.

If you have known surrender, you are sacrificed already. You are no more there to be sacrificed. Surrender means you have died already. If you have surrendered to me, then there is no problem. Then, more work or less work -- it has nothing to do with you. It is irrelevant. Then I have to look after it, I have to decide what work is more and what work is less. And I have to decide how much you have to be put into work and how long, and how much you have to be forced and pushed in a certain direction. But for you, it is not any longer a problem -- you are surrendered. But if you think that it is becoming a sacrifice and not a surrender, then you are not surrendered at all. Then anything will look like sacrifice. A lover knows nothing of sacrifice. When you are surrendered, you are dead as far as your ego is concerned. Then whatsoever happens, you not only accept it, you accept in deep gratitude.

The lover knows the secrets of death, because he has moved into death already through his love. There are two deaths: one that happens at the end of your life, and the other that can happen between death and birth -- the death of love, lovedeath. One who dies in love never dies again. Then all deaths are finished for him. He's already resurrected. He has come to know that only the ego dies. If you drop the ego then you are deathless.

THE SECRETS OF DEATH ARE REVEALED TO HIM WHILE HE IS FULLY ALIVE. WHAT DOES HE CARE

FOR THE OTHER SHORES OF LIFE...?

In that tremendous moment of surrender -- this shore turns to be the other shore, this world becomes the other world -- what cares he for the other shore?

I have been reading a very significant story:

Four hundred years ago a gardener planted a small pine in one inch of soil in a

shallow dish. He trimmed each root and branch as the tree grew. When he died, his son took up the task, and so on down through nineteen generations. Today that tree stands, never having outgrown the original dish, in the Kovala Gardens of Tokyo. After four hundred years it is only twenty inches high, and a twisted top some thirty-six inches across.

That little tree shouts a warning to everybody. The mind and soul can be cut back just like the tree, always with the same result -- a dwarf.

If you are not growing your roots into life, if you are not growing your roots and spreading your roots in love, in trust, you will remain a dwarf. You will never become the essential man, ADHAR MANUSH. Grow, grow towards depth -- because when your roots grow towards depth, your branches grow towards height. Depth and height grow together. The deeper you go into the earth, the higher you go into the sky. The deeper you go into this shore, the closer you reach to the other shore.

LOVE, love life, love all that surrounds you, and let your roots spread as far and as wide as possible. You will start touching the feet of God. Your flowers will start being offered to the divine feet. Otherwise, remember -- you will remain a dwarf.

Love is a must. It is the only nourishment for the soul. The body can exist with food; the soul can exist only with love. Let it not remain just a word; allow it to become a penetrating experience.

Love is worship for the Bauls, love is prayer for the Bauls, love is God for the Bauls.

The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #2

Chapter title: When Doubt Is Not, Trust Is 2 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code:

7607020

ShortTitle:

BELOV202

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

73

mins Question 1

THE FIRST QUESTION:

WHY DOESN'T TRUST ARISE OUT OF THE DECISION TO TRUST?

TRUST IS NOT A DECISION ON YOUR PART. You cannot decide for it. When you are finished with doubting, when you have come to see doubt through and through and you are completely convinced of the futility of the doubt, trust arises. You have to deal with the doubt, you are not to do anything about trust. Your trust will not be of much importance because your trust, your decision, will always be against doubt. And trust is not contrary to doubt; trust is simply the absence of doubt. When doubt is not, trust is.

Trust is not the opposite, remember. Notwithstanding what the dictionaries say, trust is not opposite to doubt, just as darkness is not opposite to light. It appears opposite, but it is not -- because you cannot destroy light by bringing darkness in. You cannot bring darkness in. There is no way to destroy light by throwing darkness on it. Darkness has never been able to destroy the small flame of a very small candle. The whole darkness of the existence is impotent before a small candle.

Why is it so? If darkness is opposite, inimical, antagonistic, then it should be capable sometimes of defeating light. It is sheer absence. Darkness is because light is not. When light is, darkness is not. When you put a light on in your room, have you watched what happens? Darkness does not go out of the room; it is not that darkness escapes out of the room. It is found simply not to be there. It never was -- it is pure negativity.

Doubt is like darkness, trust is like light. If you have doubt, then you will decide for trust.

Otherwise there is no need to decide for trust. Why decide for it? You must be having tremendous doubt. The greater the doubt, the greater the need is felt to create trust. So whenever somebody says, "I trust very strongly," remember that he is fighting against a very strong doubt. That's how people become fanatics. The fanaticism is born because they have created a false trust. Their doubt is alive, their doubt is not finished. The doubt has not disappeared, the doubt is there. And to fight with the doubt they have created a trust against it. If the doubt is very strong, they have to cling fanatically to their trust.

Whenever somebody says that, "I am a staunch believer," remember, deep down in his heart he is carrying disbelief. Otherwise, there is no need to be a strong believer. Simple trust is enough -- why strong? When you say to somebody, "I love you VERY strongly,"

something is wrong. Love is enough.

Love is not a quantity. When somebody says, "I love you very much," something is wrong, because love is not a quantity. You cannot love less and more. Either you love or you don't love. The division is very clear-cut.

Just a few days ago a new book had come, and the first copy I always give to Vivek. I wrote 'With love to Vivek'. She told me, "Why not MUCH LOVE?" I said, "That is impossible. I cannot write that" -- because to me, more or less is not possible. I can simply write 'love';'much love' is absurd. Quantity is not a question, but simple quality.

When you say 'much', you must be hiding something behind that 'much'; something of hatred, something of anger, something of jealousy, but something which is not love. To hide that, you have to show your over-enthusiasm, what you call 'gung-ho': MUCH love, STRONG trust, STAUNCH belief. Whenever

you are too much of a Christian, you are not a Christian at all. If you are too much of a Hindu, you have not understood at all.

Just the other night a young girl was saying to me that she was afraid. She wants to take SANNYAS but she is afraid, "Because it will be putting Christ as number two; you will become the first." She was very puzzled. "It will be putting Christ behind you," she told me. I told her, "Just look into my eyes. If you really love? Christ then you will find Christ in me. You will not find two persons. But if you are a Christian, then it is difficult. Then forget all about SANNYAS."

One who loves Christ can love me; there is no conflict. One who loves Krishna can love me; there is no conflict. But if one is a Hindu, one is a Mohammedan, one is a Christian, then it is difficult. A Christian is not a lover of Christ. To be a Christian is a decision on your part; doubt has not disappeared, doubt has been repressed.

Don't repress doubt. Rather, just on the contrary, watch, look deeply into it, analyze it.

Don't leave any part of it unanalyzed, unknown. Become acquainted with all the layers of the doubting mind. That very acquaintance, the penetration into doubt, will dissolve doubt. One day suddenly you will awake one morning full of trust -

- not as your decision.

It cannot be a decision because trust is something you are born with; doubt is a learned thing. Trust is tacit, inborn.

Every child trusts. As he grows, doubt arises. Doubt is learned. So trust is there always as an undercurrent in your being. You just drop doubt, trust will arise. And then trust has a tremendous beauty because it is pure. It is not against doubt, it is simply absence of doubt. The rock has been removed and the stream has come bubbling up, flowing.

So please, don't try to make a decision about it. Your decision will be a delay; and the more you decide, the more you will find, deep inside, the worm of doubt increasing. Then you will be divided in two and you will never be at ease, and there will be continuous agony.

So many people believe in God, and deep down is doubt -- throbbing, alive, waiting for its opportunity to destroy the trust. And the trust is bogus because the

trust is on the periphery, and the doubt has reached almost to the very core of your being. Never decide about love, about trust, about God. These things are not your decisions. They are not arguments, they are not conclusions.

When doubt is no more there, trust is. It happens. It flows. It arises out of your innermost core, from the innermost shrine. You start listening to a new music of being, a new style of being, a new way of being. It is not of the mind, it is of the being.

The second question:

Question 2

WHAT REALLY IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BAUL, A TANTRIKA, A BHAKTA, AND A SUFI? DO THEY ALL BELONG TO THE PATH OF LOVE?

THEY SEEM TO BE INTERMINGLED. PLEASE ENLIGHTEN.

THE boundaries are overlapping. They are all on the path of love, but still there are subtle distinctions. Even with overlapping boundaries they have something special: a Tantrika, a Baul, and a Bhakta. Sufi is not different from Bhakta. Sufi is the Bhakta on the Mohammedan path; Bhakta is the Sufi on the Hindu path. There is no difference between a Bhakta and a Sufi, so we will not discuss that The difference is only of terminology.

The Sufis use the Mohammedan terminology, the Bhakta uses the Hindu terminology.

The difference is not of any importance; it is just language. But these three: a Baul, a Tantrika and a Bhakta have to be understood.

Love has three possibilities: sex, the lowest; love, higher than sex; and prayer, the highest.

The Tantrika remains sex-oriented. The Tantrika in fact avoids love, because love will become an entanglement. He remains a pure technician of sex. With the sex energy he works like a scientist: aloof, detached. He does not bring love into it. He transforms the energy. Love arises in him, prayer also, but those are consequences. They follow like shadows, but the orientation is sex energy. His

whole work, his whole lab, is there at the sex center. He works there, unattached, aloof, almost indifferent to the person. With whomever the Tantrika is making love, he remains completely aloof, far away. That is part of the Tantra methodology: that you should not be attached to the person. That's why Tantrikas say: "Don't do Tantra techniques with your wife or with your beloved. No, find somebody with whom you are not attached at all, so that you can become a pure technician." It is scientific.

It is just like this: you may be a great surgeon and you may have done thousands of surgeries, but when it comes to operating on your own wife your hands will start trembling. If it comes to operating on your own child you will have to call another surgeon. He may be not so expert as you, but still you will have to call somebody else --

because the surgeon needs to be completely aloof, not concerned. Only then can surgery be perfectly scientific.

The Tantrik is absolutely of the scientific attitude. He will find a woman or a man with whom he is not attached at all. And before he even moves into a Tantric relationship with somebody, months are needed to prepare. And the whole preparation is: how to avoid love, how not to fall into deep contact with the other person. Otherwise, the whole method will not be of any use.

The Baul is love-oriented. If sex comes into a Baul's life, it is just like a shadow. It is part of his love. He's not afraid of sex, but he is not sex-oriented. He loves a woman: because he loves the woman he wants to share all that he has, sexual energies included. But sex is not his lab; his lab is love, deep contact, care for the other person -- so much so that you become less important and the other becomes more important. That which is a hindrance on the path of the Tantrika is the path of the Baul. If sex comes, it is okay. If it doesn't come, that too is okay. Sex is not the goal. And he is not working on the crude energy of sex, he is working on the subtle energy of love. As the Tantrika is working on a seed, the Baul is working on the flower, the Bhakta or Sufi is working on the fragrance. They become more and more subtle.

Prayer is the highest form of sex energy, higher than love. It is the fragrance; very subtle, all grossness gone. The Bhakta or the Sufi works on prayer. If, following prayer, love enters, it is allowed. There is no problem about it. Even if, following love, sex enters, it is allowed -- but the whole attention is focused on

prayer. So if a Bhakta falls in love with somebody, it is a form of prayer. The other is divine, the other is a god or goddess. He makes love sacred. The Baul is just in the middle of the Tantrika and the Bhakta or Sufi.

He is a bridge.

There are difficulties with the Tantrika. The difficulty is: it is very gross, and the possibility is that you may be lost in that grossness. It may overpower you. Sex is tremendous energy, wild energy, very stormy, and you are moving in an ocean. The ocean is in deep storm, and you have a very small boat, and it is very dangerous. It is very easy to enter on the path of Tantra, it is very difficult to come out of it. If a hundred enter, only one may survive -- because you are playing with wild energy. The energy is so great that you may be overpowered by it; the very possibility is there.

Prayer is very difficult -- fragrance -- you cannot see it, it is very elusive. It is very difficult to enter on the path of prayer. If you enter, you. come out of it. It is very easy to enter on the path of Tantra, but going is easy, coming is very difficult. On the path of prayer entering is very difficult, coming out is very easy. The entry is almost impossible -

- you don't even know anything about love; what to say about prayer? It is just a word with no content. It is too abstract, it is too far away. You cannot make any contact with it, with what prayer is. So, at the most, you can become a victim of a certain ritual. You can repeat a prayer: that will be just verbal, mind-stuff, a mind game. It will not be possible ordinarily to enter on the path of prayer.

The path of the Baul is just in the middle. Entry is not as easy as on the path of Tantra, and not as difficult as on the path of prayer. It is humanly possible. The Baul is very realistic, very down-to-earth, and it seems to be the safest path possible. Just in the middle, balancing both -- on the one hand sex, on the other hand prayer, and the Baul walks just in the middle.

The third question:

Question 3

YOU TELL ME TO FOLLOW MY FEELINGS, AND WHEN I FINALLY DARE TO

AND AM FEELING MUCH FREER AND SIMPLER AND HAPPIER, YOU SAY I AM IMMATURE. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

IT is from Madhuri.

It means exactly what it says: you are immature. What is immaturity? Whatsoever you are doing, you are doing almost unconsciously. Yes, I say be spontaneous, but I don't mean be unconscious. I mean be alert and spontaneous. By 'being spontaneous' you immediately understand to become a driftwood; so whatsoever happens, whatsoever and wheresoever the mind leads you, you are led by it. You become accidental. Immaturity makes a man accidental; maturity gives man a direction.

Maturity comes from a Latin root, MATURAS, which means: to be ripe. A fruit is mature when the fruit is ripe, when it has become sweet and is ready to be digested, can be eaten, can become part of anybody's life. A mature person is one who has come to know what love is, and love has made him sweet.

Now what Madhuri is doing is not love, it is just sexual fantasy -- so one day moving with one man, another day moving with another man. This can be very destructive.

Remember, what I say has to be understood very accurately, otherwise my sayings will not be helpful. They will become harmful.

It happened:

Mulla Nasrudin came home. His wife asked him, "What happened, Nasrudin, when you asked your boss for a raise today?"

"He was like a lamb," said Mulla Nasrudin. "Really? What did he say?"

"Bah!"

Please listen to what I say carefully, and don't give it your own interpretation. Don't distort its meaning. Be spontaneous, but you can be spontaneous only when you are very aware. Otherwise you will become an accident -- one moment going to the north, another moment going to the south. You will lose all

direction. A spontaneous man is ready to respond to each moment. Sometimes some may see that he is moving to the north, and sometimes others may see that he is moving to the south, but his inner direction remains absolutely certain. His inner direction remains arrowed. He may have to adjust to circumstances, but once adjusted, he again gains energy, momentum, and starts moving towards his direction. He has a feel for the direction, but that feel comes only when you are very, very alert. Otherwise, just spontaneity will reduce you to being animals.

Animals are spontaneous, but they are not Buddhas. So just spontaneity cannot make one a Buddha -- something more, something plus is needed: spontaneity plus awareness. Then you are not a mechanism, and you are not a driftwood either.

The doctor on an ocean liner notified the steward that a man had died in the stateroom number forty-five. The usual instructions to bury the body were given. Some time later the doctor peeped into the cabin and found the body still there. He called the steward's attention to the matter, and the latter said, "I thought you said cabin forty-nine. I went to that cabin and noticed that one of them was in the bunk.'Are you dead,' says I?'Pretty nearly,' says he; so I buried him."

Even if a person says that he is pretty dead, he is alive. Don't be too linguistic, don't be too literal. I say listen to your feelings, but I don't mean that you should become fragmented. I mean: listen to your feelings, but your feelings have to become a garland.

Your feelings should not be like a heap of flowers. Your feelings should be like a garland, a thread running inside the flowers. Maybe nobody is able to see it, but a thread is joining them in a continuity: that continuity is the direction. Unless your feelings are a garland, you will disperse into fragments, you will fall into pieces, you will lose your togetherness.

Yes, I had told Madhuri to be spontaneous, to move according to her feelings. But I have been insisting continuously to do everything, but always remember that awareness is a requirement, a basic requirement -- then do whatsoever you want to do. If there is something you are doing for which awareness becomes a hindrance, then don't do it. If there is something you are doing and awareness does not become a hindrance to it but on the contrary helps it, do it.

That is the whole definition of the right and the wrong. The wrong is that which

cannot be done with awareness, for which unawareness is a must. The right is that which can be done only with awareness, for which unawareness has to be dropped; otherwise it cannot be done. Awareness is a must. The right is that for which awareness is a must, the wrong is that for which unawareness is a must. That is my definition of sin and virtue. And YOU are to decide; the responsibility is yours.

It happened:

A worried woman went to see her doctor and told him that her husband appeared to have no virility, and had no interest in her whatsoever.

He gave her a prescription, saying "These will help him. Next time you and your husband are having a quiet meal together, just slip a couple of these pills into his coffee and they will make him spontaneous. And then come and see me again."

Two weeks later she went to see her doctor again, and he asked her if his remedy had been successful.

"Oh yes, doctor," she said. "Absolutely marvelous. I slipped the pills into my husband's coffee and after two sips he began making love to me."

The doctor smiled. "Fine. No complaints then?"

She said, "Well, there is one. My husband and I can't ever show ourselves in that restaurant again."

Now remember, Madhuri, what I say has to be understood, because finally, you will decide where to slip those pills. I cannot follow you. You will decide where to be spontaneous, how to be spontaneous -- and unconsciousness is not spontaneity, Spontaneity is very alert, very responsible, very caring. You are simply fooling around.

"You tell me to follow my feelings and when I finally dare to and am feeling much freer and simpler and happier, you say I am immature. What does it mean?"

I give you a certain rope to see what you do with my assertions, with my statements. I give you a certain rope, but when I see you are going crazy, then I have to pull you back.

I have been watching, waiting to see what Madhuri is doing, but enough is enough.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

Abdul the Arab was marooned in the desert. His camel had sat down and flatly refused to get up. At long last another Arab dropped by, and Abdul told him his problem.

"I can fix that," said the second Arab, "only it will cost you five shekels." "That's cheap at the price," said Abdul, "so you go ahead."

So without further ado the Arab crouched down by the side of Abdul's camel and whispered a few words in its ear. Suddenly the camel leapt to its feet and took off across the desert like a greyhound.

Abdul was amazed and delighted. "That trick is worth more than five shekels," he said.

"I know," said the second Arab, "and I want five hundred shekels from you before I tell you the magic words -- you have got to catch him."

That is only half the story: now you will have to catch him...now five hundred shekels are needed. Unless the second Arab utters the same mantra into Abdul's ear, he cannot catch the camel.

Madhuri, your desires are running like greyhounds. It was easy; it cost you only five rupees, but now you will have to catch your camel and it will cost five hundred rupees. It will be more arduous.

To just move with desires one always feels simple, because one becomes almost like an animal. It is almost felt like happiness because there is no tension, no responsibility. You don't care a bit about the other person. Now the camel has to be caught.

Oh yes, I told you to be free with your feelings; now I tell you to be aware. It will be more arduous, but if you can be aware, then you will REALLY become simple. This simplicity is nothing: this is just regression into childhood, or regression into animality.

The simplicity I want you to attain is the simplicity of a Buddha; not a regression, but the very climax of life. This simplicity is not going to help much. It has not helped anybody.

This simplicity is very primitive, childish, immature.

But I wanted to see what you do, and I have seen what you are doing. Now become more alert. Bring a discipline to your life, a direction. Become more caring, more loving, more responsible. Your body has to be respected; it is the very shrine of God. You are not to treat it the way you are treating it; it is disrespectful. But it will be hard, I know. But I create situations in which hard things have to be done, because that is the only way to grow.

The fourth question:

Question 4

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PATIENCE, POSTPONEMENT, AND

SHEER STUPIDITY?

YES, the question is significant because people can get confused about these three.

Patience is very alert, patience is very active, patience is very expectant. If you are waiting for somebody -- a friend is to call -- you may be sitting just by the door, but you are very attentive, alert. Any noise on the road, any car passing by, and immediately you start looking: maybe the friend has come? The wind on your doors, and suddenly you are alert: maybe he has knocked.… Dead leaves in the garden moving hither and thither, and you come out of your home; maybe he has come.… Patience is as active as that. It is a waiting. It is not dull, it is very radiant. It is not unconscious; it is not like a stupor. It is like a flame burning bright. One waits. One can wait infinitely, but one waits, expectant, active, alert, watchful.

Just the opposite is sheer stupidity. You can just be dull, idiotic, stupid, in a stupor, and you can think that you are waiting, you are patient. And you can enjoy that others who are working hard to reach somewhere are impatient people; you are very patient. But remember, patience needs work. Patience is not

inactivity. A patient person works patiently. He does not demand, he does not demand too much, he does not demand in a hurry, he does not demand for instant SATORI or SAMADHI. He knows it is arduous, the path is hard. He knows it is difficult; a thousand and one are the pitfalls. To be lost is easy, to achieve is difficult. It is almost impossible to achieve, and he knows it -- but that is the attraction, that is the challenge, God is impossible, but that's the beauty of it, that's the challenge. The challenge has to be accepted. He works hard at it and yet remains patient, knowing well his limitations, knowing well the very impossibility of the desire.

It is an impossible passion: to know God, to be God. It is unbelievable that it happens.

That's why people go on denying that Buddha ever existed -- that Jesus is a myth, that Krishna is just the imagination of the poets. Why do so many people insist that Buddha is just a myth, that Jesus and Krishna never existed? Why? They are simply saying that the whole thing seems to be impossible; it cannot happen.

In a way they are right: it cannot happen; but still it happens. It happens very rarely. It happens so rarely that you can say that it does not happen at all. Once in a while, thousands of years pass, then somebody becomes enlightened -- ALMOST as if it never happens.

Knowing this, one waits; but one does not wait in inactivity, because then the waiting will be futile. The waiting has to be just like the farmer waiting. He sows the seeds; they will come in season. It cannot be hurried. There is no point in going again and again to the field, digging and seeing whether the seeds have sprouted yet or not, because that will be very destructive. That will not allow the seeds to sprout at all. That impatience will destroy the seeds. He waits, he waters

-- nothing is seen for months. Nothing comes above the earth, but he waits with deep patience, goes on working, caring about the field, praying and expectant that they are coming, that they are on the way. And one day, they are there.

Sheer stupidity is hiding your inactivity, your inertia, your lethargy, in beautiful terms. A lethargic person can say, "I'm not in a hurry, I'm waiting," and he will not do anything.

Then you are waiting in vain; it is not going to happen. Yes, the seeds will sprout

in season, but the seeds have to be sown; otherwise they will not sprout.

So watch inside you. These distinctions are not distinctions of one man, these distinctions exist in each man. These are not categories, that somebody is 'sheer stupid' and somebody is 'very patient'. No, these moods exist together in everybody. There is a stupid moment in your life, there is a patient moment in your life, and postponement is just in the middle of these two. Postponement is very cunning.

Patience is alert, stupidity is inactive, unconscious. Patience is conscious, postponement is subconscious. Postponement has a double-bind in it: you want to do something and yet you are not ready to do anything for it. It is a very cunning state of affairs. You want to meditate, but you say, "Tomorrow." If you really want, then today is the right time, because tomorrow never comes. If you really want, then meditate right now, because there is no point in postponing it. How can you be certain that tomorrow will ever come?

It may never come. And if it is really important to you and your desire is intense for it, then you will not waste a single moment in postponing it. You will postpone everything else, but you will meditate. You postpone only that which is not significant to you, or, you are playing with yourself, being cunning with yourself. One part of your mind says,

"Yes, it is important." Another part of mind says, "Yes, it is important, I know; that's why tomorrow we will start." You are satisfied.

A man challenged by his good friend as to who was the more energetic person: the first said he got up at six, went for a walk, breakfasted at eight, did an hour's work, then to the office, half an hour for lunch, and so on. The detailed work and alternating exercise stretched out till eleven p.m.

"Well," said the friend, "how long have you been doing this?" "I start on Monday."

God is always postponed, love is always postponed, meditation is always postponed.

Anger, greed, hatred, never; the devil, never. When the devil invites you, you are IMMEDIATELY ready. Immediately, instantly you stand up. You say, "I'm

coming!"

When somebody insults you, you don't say that "Tomorrow I will be angry"; but for love you always go on postponing. For prayer you say, "Yes, it has to be done." This is a very cunning state.

You don't want to recognize the fact that you don't desire prayer, you don't desire love, you don't desire meditation. You don't want to recognize the fact that you don't have any passion for God, so you postpone in this way. You manage well -- you go on doing that which you really desire, and you go on postponing that which you don't desire at all, but you are not courageous enough to recognize the fact. At least be honest. Postponement is dishonest, very dishonest. Watch inside yourself, at what you have been postponing, and you will find that all that is beautiful you have been postponing.

It is a double-bind; you are divided, or you are playing very devilry with yourself.

I have heard.…

A rabbi had the misfortune to run his car into the side of Father Murphy's car. He jumped out and went to the other's door, loud with apologies.

"My dear Father Murphy, so sorry I am. Oi vay! that I should be so silly as to do this to you of all people, a fellow man of God! Are you all right?"

"Oh yes, no injuries, Rabbi," said Father Murphy. "But I am a bit shaken up."

"Of course you are," said the Rabbi, solicitously. "Here, have a sip of this -- it is good whiskey." And he handed a hip flask to the priest who drank heartily. "Go on, Father, have another. It is all my fault. Drink deeply, don't worry about the cost."

The priest needed no second bidding, and took another deep swig. "Won't you have one, Rabbi?" he asked.

"With the police already arriving!" exclaimed the Rabbi.

The mind is very cunning. Everybody's mind is the mind of the Jew.'Jew' is not a race; it is the innermost core of all minds. And when you are playing cunning

games with others, by and by you learn the trick of playing with yourself. This is the greatest problem that every human being has to face. You have been cunning with others; that pays in the world. By and by, you have learned the trick so deeply that you forget that now you are playing the cunningness with yourself. The mind is very worldly, very Jewish. It knows no other business than business.

I have heard.…

Abe had reached retirement a very worried man. Most of his life he had enjoyed to the full and his savings left a lot to be desired. On the morning of his retirement he turned to Rachel with a worried frown: "I don't know how we are going to afford it. I don't know how we can retire."

Rachel reached for a bottom drawer and pulled out a bankbook which showed regular deposits over the last forty years. Not only could they retire, but they were rich.

"But how did you do it?" said Abe.

Rachel said shyly, "Well, every time you made an advance to me in our married life, I put ten shillings away, and look how it has mounted up."

Overjoyed, he put his arms around his wife, "Oi vay, this is wonderful! But Rachel, why on earth did you not tell me before? If only I had known I would have given you all my business."

Get it?

The mind is always thinking in terms of business. Even when it is love, it is business.

Even when it is prayer, it is business. Even when it is God, it is business. And once you have become too accustomed to the business world, you start playing games with yourself. Be alert. Postponement is one of the most dangerous games that a man can play with himself. If you want, do it. If you don't want, be honest; who is forcing you? Just be honest. Don't do it, but know well that you are not going to do it because you don't want to do it. Why be deceptive? This sincerity will help.

As I see, no man can live without love if he is sincere. But many millions of

people live without love because they go on postponing. One day they die, their lives completely dry and desert-like.

As I see it, no man can live without God -- but millions live because they have created a false God, a substitute God, a God which is always postponed. It is easy now; you can live without God because you have a false feeling that God is there, you believe in Him, and one day you are going to devote your whole life to Him. That 'one day' will never come. If you want that one day to come, it has already arrived -- it is today. This moment is that moment of transformation.

The fifth question:

Question 5

SOMEONE HAS DARED ME TO ASK YOU THIS IMPERTINENT QUESTION --

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH VIVEK? ANYTHING I COULD POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND THROUGH TELLING?

IT will be difficult.

Vivek is so close to me that she is constantly on the cross. She has to be; it is difficult. To be so close to me is arduous. The more you are close to me, the more the responsibility.

The more you are close to me, the more you have to transform yourself. The more you feel the unworthiness, the more you start feeling how to become more worthy -- and the goal seems almost impossible. And I go on creating many situations. I have to create them because only through friction does integration happen. Only through harder and harder situations does one grow. Growth is not soft; growth is painful.

You ask me, "What do you do with Vivek?"

I am killing her slowly. That is the only way for her to get a totally new being, to be reborn. It is a cross to be with me, and hard is the task.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

An unruly, problem son of a Jewish family was causing his parents much heartache by his behavior. He had been expelled from a state school, so finally, in desperation, they sent him to a Roman Catholic school. On his return from his first day, he went straight to his room and began to do his homework.

His father came back from work and asked, "Momma, well, tell me the bad news."

"No bad news, Poppa," said momma. "He came in as quiet as a lamb, and is now in his room doing his homework yet."

"Homework?" exclaimed Poppa. "He has never done homework in his life! He must be ill!" So Poppa went to the boy's room and said, "What is this Momma telling me, that you are doing homework? Why this change of heart, all of a sudden?"

And the boy replied, "Poppa, I am the only Jewish boy in that school. On the wall opposite my desk is a picture of the last Jewish boy they had there. Oi, you should see what they did to him!".…

Jesus crucified.

To be very close to me is to be on the cross. So Vivek has to do her homework, that's all.

That's what I go on doing to her. Of course, she has to do more homework than ANY of you.

The sixth question:

Question 6

IN A RECENT LECTURE YOU WERE SAYING,'ON THE PATH OF LOVE, FORGET ALL ABOUT MEDITATION; ON THE PATH OF MEDITATION, FORGET

ALL ABOUT LOVE.' I BELIEVE MYSELF TO BE RATHER ON THE PATH OF

MEDITATION, AND WHAT YOU ARE SAYING NOW ABOUT THE

INDISPENSABLE VALUE OF LOVE IS CONFUSING TO ME. I UNDERSTAND

THAT SPEAKING OF THE BAULS YOU HAVE BECOME A BAUL, AND ARE

FULLY IN THE PATH OF LOVE. HOW SHOULD I THEN HEAR THOSE

LECTURES? AND WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF LOVE, EMOTIONS AND

FEELINGS ON THE PATH OF MEDITATION?

IF I am talking about the Bauls and love and devotion and prayer, and you are on the path of meditation, listen to me meditatively, that's all. Just listen to me meditatively; then you will be growing in meditation through listening. Don't listen through the intellect. There is no need because you are on the path of meditation, so you need not worry about the details of what I am saying. You can listen very silently without being at all worried about what I am saying, what the details are. You can simply listen in deep meditation.

Let listening be your meditation, and that will do. But if you listen from the intellect that will create confusion. If I am talking on the path of meditation and you are on the path of love, listen to me lovingly. You don't lose track of your path. And then, whether I am talking on love or on meditation, you will be fulfilled. Your own path will be strengthened. Your will will be made stronger.

The last question:

Question 7

BELOVED OSHO, PLEASE HELP ME. SHOW ME MY PATH: LOVE OR MEDITATION. GIVE ME ONE SUTRA SUITABLE TO MY NATURE.

It is from Neelam. I know her. I have known her long enough, not only in this life, but in other lives also. Her path is absolutely certain: it is love. Through love she is going to achieve. Through love she is going to be. Through love all that can happen will happen to her, and I can say it absolutely. I may not be so certain when others ask me. Somebody who has come very recently, I have to

know better, to penetrate him more, to watch him in different situations, to watch his moods, subtle layers upon layers of being, then... but about Neelam it is absolutely certain. I have known her in this life, I have known her in other lives. Her direction is absolutely clear: love is her meditation.

The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #3

Chapter title: Close Your Eyes And Try To Catch Him 3 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code:

7607030

ShortTitle:

BELOV203

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

84

mins

NEVER PLUNGE INTO THE RIVER OF LUST, YOU WILL NOT REACH THE SHORES.

IT IS A RIVER OF NO COASTS WHERE TYPHOONS RAGE.

GO TO THE HOME OF BEAUTY AND FORM, SHOULD YOU WISH TO SEE THE MAN WITHIN. HIS WAYS CROSS THE SPHERE

WHERE LIFE LIVES WITH DEATH, AND SENSE WITH INSANITY.

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND TRY TO CATCH HIM. HE IS SLIPPING BY.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE says that man is a useless passion. Meaningless. Futile. He is right if there is nothing beyond man; if there is nothing transcendental to man, he is right because the meaning always comes from a higher source. The meaning is never in the thing in itself; it always comes from the beyond.

For example, you can watch a seed; in itself it is meaningless unless it sprouts. Once it sprouts it becomes meaningful. The tree is the meaning for the seed. Now the seed exists for a certain reason. Its existence is not accidental, it is meaningful. It has to give birth, it has to create something; something that is beyond it, something that is bigger than it, something that is more comprehensive.

But then, what is the meaning of the tree in itself? Again meaning disappears unless the tree can flower. The meaning of the tree is in the flowering. When it flowers, yes, there is meaning: the tree has become a mother, the tree has given birth, the tree has become significant. It was not there without any purpose; the flower is the proof. It was there meaningfully, it was there waiting for the flower.

But what is the meaning of the flower in itself unless the fragrance is released to the winds? Once the fragrance is released the flower is meaningful, and so on and so forth.

The meaning is always in a higher state. The meaning is always of the beyond. The meaning is transcendental. If there is nothing beyond man, Sartre is absolutely right: then man is a useless passion running here and there, but doomed to failure. He cannot reach, cannot arrive, because there is nowhere to

arrive. He cannot become, because there is no beyond to become. He cannot spread, cannot flower, cannot release the fragrance. If man ends with himself, then man is certainly useless.

But man doesn't end with himself; he is a growth. Man is a becoming, a growing, a continuous transcendence. Friedrich Nietzsche has said, "That day will be the most unfortunate day when man will not aspire to become higher, when man will not aspire to transcend himself. That day will be the most unfortunate when the arrow of man's desire will not be moving higher than man, when there will be no target to reach, when man will be confined, closed in himself. That day will be the most unfortunate day."

It seems the modern man is coming closer and closer to that unfortunate day. That doomsday is coming closer and closer every moment, and Sartre is going to be true if you allow him to be true. If you allow him and you remain a seed and don't sprout, if you allow him and you remain a tree and don't flower, if you allow him and you remain a flower and don't release your fragrance, then, of course, life is hell -- just absurd, not worth living. Then to be born is to be born in misery. Then death is a blessing and life is a curse.

But it is not so; it depends on you whether your life will be meaningful or meaningless. It depends on you. That is the whole point of religion: that meaning is not already given, it has to be created. That meaning is not already transferred to you; only the potentiality, only the possibility, only the opportunity is there. You can flower into a meaningful existence, or you can wither away, useless. Great is the responsibility. If you don't do it, nobody else can do it for you. You cannot rely on servants. Life is so valuable; you cannot rely on anybody else. You will have to take control of the whole situation, and you will have to take the responsibility on your shoulders.

YOU become a man really, the day you become responsible for your growth. You become a man really, the day you decide that you have to create meaning in your life.

You are given a blank page: you will have to sign it, and you will have to write your song on it. The song is not already there. You are there; the possibility is there -- but the song has to be sung, the dance has to be danced. The dancer is there, but what is the meaning of a dancer if he has not danced yet? Even to call him a dancer is meaningless, because unless he dances how can you call him a

dancer? Unless a seed becomes a tree it is just a name, it is not a seed. And unless a tree flowers it is just a name, it is not a tree. And unless a flower releases its fragrance, it is just a name, it is not yet a flower.

You create your being continuously. And if you don't create, you will be just a driftwood, accidental, moving here and there with no direction.

The Bauls start from the first step. They have a whole vision, a whole perception of all the possibilities of man, of all the rungs of the ladder. The first rung is libido, lust, sex-energy. And sex-energy has continuously puzzled man. If it remains just sex, it will become meaningless. Then you will be in a rut.

SEX is meaningful only when out of lust, love is born. Love is meaningful only when out of love, prayer is born. If your sex remains just sexuality, a circular repetition, a mechanical thing that you go on doing, then you will remain meaningless. Because sex is your energy; it has to be transformed. It is very crude, it is raw material. Much has to be done on it. It is a raw diamond. you have to cut it, you have to polish it, you have to give it a shape and a form. You have to give it beauty. It depends on you. If you go on carrying the raw stone, it is valueless -- not only that, it will be a burden on you. It is better to throw it, better to throw it than to carry it. Why carry it unless something higher can be evolved out of it?

Always remember this: Bauls are not against sex, against lust. But they say that if you remain confined to lust, you will be lost.

NEVER PLUNGE INTO THE RIVER OF LUST, YOU WILL NOT REACH THE SHORES.

IT IS A RIVER OF NO COASTS WHERE TYPHOONS RAGE.

What do they mean? -- 'the river of lust, it has no shores, and if you plunge into it you will be lost'. One has to rise above it. It is not that something is wrong in it, remember this point. Don't conclude that Bauls are saying that something is wrong with sex. They are simply saying that the wrong arises when you are confined to it. If you can use it, if you can make a stepping-stone out of it, if you can go higher than it, then it is beautiful. It has been a great help. Without it, it

would have been impossible to rise above it.

Lust in itself is like a seed: just pure possibility waiting for the right soil, waiting for the right season, waiting for the gardener, the skillful man who can help it to sprout. A seed is not actual, just potential. There is no necessity for it to become a tree. It may not ever become; it may be lost completely. If you put that seed on a stone, it will remain a seed.

Ages can pass and the seed will not sprout. Many people are like that seed: those who have not found their soil yet, who have not found their right season yet. These are the worldly people. A religious person is one whose seed has reached to the right soil, and is disappearing. When the seed disappears, the tree is born. When you disappear, then the soul is born. When the soul disappears, the God is born.

You exist like the hard shell of a seed -- that is the ego of man. The worldly man is the egoistic man; the non-worldly man is the humble man. By 'humble' a very simple thing is meant: he is disappearing as a seed, he is ready to die into the earth. The word 'humble'

comes from HUMUS. HUMUS means 'the earth'. The humble man is one who is ready to disappear into the earth. The humble man is one who is ready to lose himself.

Jesus says again and again that if you don't lose yourself you will not regain, if you don't lose yourself you will never be: "Blessed are those who are ready to lose." What does he mean? He means, blessed is the seed that loses its hard shell, becomes vulnerable, opens its soft heart to the soil so the soil can work on it, and moves into the unknown; drops the confinement with the known, drops the commitment with the known, and becomes committed with the unknown. Dangers are there -- storms will be there, clouds and thunder and lightning.

For a small plant the whole world is a crisis, a thousand and one risks. For the seed there is no danger. The seed is closed, windowless. It is in an imprisonment

-- protected, well-protected. But a small plant is very fragile. Watch it: a seed is very hard, secure; the plant is fragile and soft, and can be destroyed very easily. And the flower is still more fragile --

as fragile as a dream, as fragile as a poem. And the fragrance is still more fragile

-- it almost disappears, becomes indefinable. All growth is towards the unknown,

towards the soft, towards the fragile, towards the indefinable.

GROWTH is towards disappearance. Only the gross appears; God is invisible. Only matter appears; mind is invisible. Only the gross can be touched, is tangible, but the subtle is intangible. That's why God cannot be seen -- because God is the fragrance of the flower -- very subtle, very, very subtle.

Remember, with the gross there is more security. Lust is more secure than love; love is more secure than prayer. And if you are looking for security you will remain confined in lust.

Many people are born in sex. Nothing is wrong with that; everybody has to be born in sex. The problem arises when many people live only in sex, and die also in sex. That means that there has been no growth, no evolution. Being born in sex is perfectly natural, but to die in it? Then what is the point? Then what is the meaning of being born? Then you have not grown; then nothing has happened to you.

I was reading about one old man, an old man of almost eighty-five years. He went to his doctor, and he said, "Doctor, I am becoming impotent."

The doctor looked at him and said, "Oh? And when did you first notice this?" The old man said, "Last night and again this morning."

People live... the longer you live in lust, the uglier becomes your being. And if you have to also die in it, then the whole life was a wastage. You never even went a step further than your birth. Birth is of course natural; it has to be in sex. But death need not be.

I have heard.…

Little Sammy was busy doing his homework while waiting with his Mummy in the baby clinic. He turned to his Mum and said, "Mummy, where did I come from?"

She said, "Ach...ah, the stork brought you, darling." "Where did you come from?"

"Oh, the stork brought me too."

"And where did Grandmamma come from?"

"Why, Grandmamma was found under a gooseberry bush."

So he continued his essay and wrote, "It seems that there has not been a natural birth in our family for three generations!"

To be born in sex is natural; one need not be defensive about it. But to die in sex is unnatural. From sex one should step higher. From the seed to the fragrance is the evolution.

But many people live a repetitive cycle: they go on moving in a routine. They go on doing things, not even aware of what they are doing, not even aware of how many times they have done the same thing, not being aware that it brings nothing. But they go on doing it, not knowing what else to do. They remain occupied in the same circular way.

That's why in the East we call it SAMSAR, the wheel. The world is called 'the wheel'.

Just as when a wheel goes on moving and the same spokes go on turning up and down, up and down, up and down: if your life is like a wheel and the same spokes go on moving, your life will not have any meaning -- because meaning arises only when you take a step beyond yourself. And remember this too: if you take a step beyond and then you are stuck there, again meaning disappears.

SO meaning is in the new. And if you want to be constantly meaningful, eternally meaningful, then you have to go on growing and growing and growing. If you are stuck anywhere, meaning immediately disappears. Meaning is not in being stuck, meaning is in flow, meaning is in evolving -- so remember it. You can get stuck at love; then again meaning disappears, then again you become stale. Then the river is moving no more.

Again you will become dirty; flow is lost. And when the river is flowing it is fresh; when the river is not flowing it becomes stagnant.

The same is true about life.

If you get stuck at love, again flow is lost. Again you are in a rut. Prayer is needed...and there are higher things than prayer. Prayer is the last that can be defined; prayer is the last that can be talked about -- that too, not adequately, but very inadequately. But prayer is the last, the horizon. Not that on the horizon the earth stops; not that on the horizon the sky finishes. The horizon simply shows our limitation: our eyes cannot go beyond it, that's all. Prayer is the horizon of the libido energy, but it is not the end. There are higher things than prayer, but words don't exist for those things. When you reach to prayer then you will know that there are higher things than prayer, and growth is eternal.

People are almost dead because they are stuck. They go on seeking the same thing again and again. Watch it.

One should be in search of the new. The very search renews you, rejuvenates you. If you have some beautiful experience today, don't ask again for it tomorrow because now it is meaningless -- you have known it, it is finished. Ask for something more, seek for something new, grope for the unfamiliar and the unknown. Go beyond it. It was beautiful but don't try to repeat it, because repetition kills beauty. Repetition makes everything boring. And once you become accustomed to boredom you will become dead. Then you will go on revolving.

I have heard.…

It was a gay party. Wine, whiskey and wit flowed freely. An obsequious waiter offered a tray with drinks to a solemn, stern-looking man, obviously a clergyman. The Father looked sternly at him and said, "No thanks, I do not drink."

The waiter left, but soon enough another appeared on the scene with a second tray. The God's good man gave him a withering glare. "Don't you know I do not drink at all?" And he added as an afterthought, "I would rather commit adultery than imbibe alcohol.

Mulla Nasrudin, his neighbor, leisurely sipping his scotch, got up with alacrity, put down the glass and exclaimed, "Good heavens, I had no idea there was a choice!"

People are continuously obsessed with sex. And there are two ways to be obsessed with sex: one is the ordinary man's way. But both remain obsessed with

lust -- one for, the other against. Their constant fixation is sex; neither goes beyond it.

Bauls don't belong to either category. They don't belong to the worldly man because they go beyond sex. They don't belong to the austere man because they are not against sex.

They don't belong to the so-called religious man, the monk, because they say, "Sex is your energy; it has to be used. Of course, it has to be refined, but it has not to be condemned." How can you refine a stone and make a diamond of it if you are condemnatory about it, if you throw it? And if you start escaping from it, how can you refine it, how can you polish it, how can you make a valuable thing out of it? So there are two types of fixations in the world: the people who think sex is life, and the people who think to fight with sex is life -- and both are wrong. To use sex creatively; that is the goal of the Baul.

MULLA NASRUDIN constantly irritated his friends with his eternal optimism. No matter how bad the situation, he would always say, "It could have been worse." To cure him of this annoying habit his friends decided to invent a situation so completely black, so dreadful that even Nasrudin could find no hope in it.

Approaching him at the club bar one day, one of them said, "Mulla, did you hear what happened to George? He went home last night, found his wife in bed with another man, shot them both, then turned the gun on himself."

"Terrible," said the Mulla, "but it could have been worse."

"How in the hell," asked his dumbfounded friend, "could it possibly have been worse?"

"Well," said Nasrudin, "if it had happened the day before, I would be dead now."

People are in a rut, repeating the same again and again and again and again. It seems their eyes are completely closed. It seems they have no idea of what is possible. It seems nobody has given them even a glimpse of the beyond. It seems that they have never looked towards the heights. They have not seen the sky; they go on crawling in the mud.

Nothing is wrong essentially in the mud; it is beautiful if you can stand in it,

rooted, grounded, and your eyes can move towards the heights. Then the very quality of the mud is transformed.

NEVER PLUNGE INTO THE RIVER OF LUST, YOU WILL NOT REACH THE SHORES.

IT IS A RIVER OF NO COASTS WHERE TYPHOONS RAGE.

And you all must have felt that whatsoever you call love brings misery and nothing else: conflict, agony, suffering. Whatsoever you have called love gives you hell and nothing else. But still, somehow you manage to remain in it, you manage not to see beyond it.

It happened: A very wise old man was approached by his son. "Father," said the son, "I want to get married."

"No, my boy. You are not wise enough," said the old man. "When will I be wise enough?" asked the lad.

The old man said, "When you get rid of the idea that you want to get married, then you will be wise enough, and then you can get married."

IT seems paradoxical; it is true: when you are no longer occupied with sex, when it is no longer an obsession, a neurosis, you are wise enough to go into it -- because then you can use all the possibilities that become available through it. Then it is not just fun; then it is not just passing time; then it is not just a search for oblivion. Then it becomes a creative act on your part. Then you are creating something out of this tremendous energy. It is God's gift. Bauls call it lust -- if you remain confined in it. If you can go beyond it, it starts changing its form, it starts changing its quality.

The Bauls sing,

Plough-man, are you out of your wits not to take care

of your own land?

A squadron of six birds is picking at the rice, grown golden and ripe, in the field of your limbs. Farming the splendid measured land

of this human body, you raise the crop, the devotion to God. But passions eat at it like sparrows.

The fence of consciousness is down to dust,

leaving open gaps.

Cattle clamber up

and feast on your harvest.… Shame to you,

my shameless heart, what now can I say?

You have gathered a piece of glass

at the price of gold.

In spite of a pair of eyes

you miss the valuable jewels, caring only for artificial stones. Wandering blindfolded,

you could not see

that the house overflowed with the choicest rubies, and diamonds,

and gems of fire. Hugging a sickle in your waistband, what do you search from field to field? What is the use?

My heart,

will you not explode for once the home of beauty...?

Whatsoever you go on seeking in the mechanical ways of sexuality is not the search for beauty. It is not the search of love, it is not the search of God. At the most, it is a natural device, a biological device to drown yourself in forgetfulness. It is a natural arrangement in your body: you can drown yourself in it. It can become your alcohol, it can become your drug, it can become your

acid.

Sex is chemical; it releases certain hormones in your body. It gives you a certain illusory euphoria. It gives you a few moments when you feel at the top of the world. But then again you are back in the valley, and the valley is darker than before, and the valley is uglier than before -- as if you have been tricked, cheated. Sex gives you an illusion as if something is happening. If you remain confined to sex, then you will simply waste your energy. By and by, the energy will ooze out of you, and you will remain just a dead shell.

The Bauls say,

What color is your cottage?

On the shore of this bogus world

the frame of your home is made of bones, and the roof is thatched with skin.

But the pair of peacocks on the landing pier

hardly know that they will end one day. As the childhood passed in play,

passion, the age of passionate sport passes. The old age, too, is going away,

calling, calling

for the Master and the Lord. Your teeth are dropping down, and the hair is growing gray,

the age of manhood is at a low ebb,

the plaster of your painted house will be crumbling now

softly, softly.…

The energy oozes out, by and by. Very few are in the world who use this tremendous opportunity for growth. Watch your steps. You are given a certain opportunity to grow. If you don't grow you will simply waste; life will be just a vegetation. You cannot call yourself alive if you are not aware. If awareness is not crystallized in you, you are fast asleep, in a stupor -- a somnambulist, a sleepwalker. And sex is one of the great tranquilizers. Many people use it exactly like a tranquilizer: they make love and then they go to sleep. Then they sleep better. Energy released, empty, they fall into deep stupor.

That sleep is not real sleep -- it is just exhaustion, it is just emptiness. It is not full of energy. That sleep is like death, not like life.

The ways of the tortuous river slip from your grasp.

Beware, brothers,

do not step into the stream. The water rushes down, wrecking the blackened hills.

Brothers, beware

of the tortuous stream.

The river was dry

when the waters of the flood surged down the tortuous stream. How can we cross the river now?

Even when you are silent and not preoccupied with sex, it is very difficult to cross the river. Even when the river is not flooded, even when the river is a summer stream -- very thin, very small, very shallow -- then too it is difficult to pass and go beyond it. And when the rains come and the river is flooded and when you are so full of lust, it becomes impossible to cross it.

The river was dry

when the waters of the flood surged down the tortuous stream. How can we cross the river now? Be on your guard,

O boatman,

and hold tight to the oars,

and if the boat tends to turn over, remember the Master.

BAULS say that there is only one way to come out of the stupor man lives in, and that is remembrance of God: NAM-SMARAN, remembrance of His name. That has always been part of the basic techniques on the path of love -- to remember Him. And when a devotee, with deep reverence, remembers the name of God, his whole being is thrilled, his energy starts rushing upwards. Ordinarily the energy is rushing downwards; that is the way of sex. If you really cry the name of God, whatsoever it is -- Ram, Allah, or whatsoever, all names are His -- the very cry, the very remembrance hits somewhere near the SAHASRAR, the seventh chakra, in the head. If remembrance is not just ritual, if with deep love and reverence and devotion and surrender you have called the name of God, suddenly there comes a change in your body energies. The energy that was going to the sex center starts rising high.

The Bauls say, God has reversed

the acts of the play.

The land talks in paradox

and the flowers devour the heads of fruits, and the gentle vine, roaring,

strangles the tree.

The moon rises in the day,

and the sun at night with shining rays. The blood is white,

and on the lake of blood float a pair of swans, copulating continuously

in a jungle of lust and love.

All the great mystics have described it: when the energies start rushing upwards, when gravitation no longer affects your energy, when your energy is functioning under another Law, the law of grace; when you are pulled up, when you are falling up, when you are rushing upwards as if the sky is pulling you, then man comes to know a totally different world. Everything is upside-down -- or maybe it is really rightside-up -- but everything changes.

Kabir has said that when it happened to him, he saw the ocean burning, and the fire very cold. He saw fishes running on dry land, and he saw trees whose roots were in the sky and whose branches were coming to the earth. These are just symbolic sayings.

EVERYTHING we had known while sex-energy was running downwards is affected by it. When the sex-energy rushes up, a TOTALLY different world is revealed. Then you don't see this world because your eyes are no more the same. You are in a new dimension, just diametrically opposite to the old.

But ordinarily our whole concept of life is centered on sex. Whatsoever we do: we earn money, we earn money for sex; we try to earn fame, but we earn fame for sex. Even sometimes very innocent activities which you cannot connect with sex are connected with sex if the person is still infatuated with lust. It is difficult to see how a person who is running after fame is running after sex.

Ask the psychologists. They say women are more attracted by fame than by anything else. They are not so attracted by the face, handsomeness, as they are attracted by achievement. An achiever, one who has much money, power, prestige, is more attractive to women than anybody else,. because a woman is constantly in search of somebody to lean upon. You may be beautiful, but if you have no power you cannot give any guarantee and security to the woman. If you are powerful, maybe you are not beautiful, you are not intelligent, but that doesn't matter. But it you are powerful, reliable, the woman can lean on your shoulders. There is a certain guarantee in you.

Men are attracted by physical proportions, body-beauty; a woman is more attracted by fame, prestige, power, achievement. So if men are too mad after power, the arithmetic is simple. Even in the face of death or in the face of danger people go on lusting.

Jeevan has sent me a beautiful joke.

Isador Ginsberg was instructed by his physician to take a holiday after years of hard work building up his clothing business. On his holiday he met a young blonde who spent much time with him. Returning to his office, he felt and looked like a new person; love had entered his life.

A few weeks later a distinguished gentleman asked to see Mr. Isador Ginsberg alone.

Smilingly, excitedly, Isador read the card handed to him. His caller was attorney- at-law of a very reputable law firm.

"I represent Miss Mamie Lottery. You remember her, from Hotel Carleton?" "Yes, yes," Isador panted excitedly.

"Well, Mr. Ginsberg, what do you think of these?" And he lays out on the desk a number of photographs of Isador and Mamie in decidedly compromising

positions.

Isador was absolutely flabbergasted. He stared wide-eyed at each of the pictures in turn.

Many minutes of silence gripped the air. Finally he turned to the lawyer and said with a firm order in his voice, "Well, I will take two of this, three of that one, and four copies of each of the other pictures."

THE grip of lust is such that you cannot see the danger ahead. The grip of lust is such that you cannot even see death ahead. In fact, a very strange phenomenon happens: the more a person comes close to his death, the more lustful he becomes. Because sex gives a feeling of life, one clings more to sexuality. Old people may not be physically able to move into sexuality, but then they start moving in their fantasies. It almost always happens.

I have watched many people die. It rarely happens that a person dies with God on his mind. Almost always, nine out of ten people die with sex on their minds when they die, and that becomes the beginning of another life. Sex on the mind becomes the beginning of another sex life.

But it has to be so if you have not been working hard to go beyond it, to go beyond its grip. If you have not been struggling hard to release yourself from its clutches, then it is going to be so -- because at the moment of death you start thinking more of sex, because sex seems to be just the opposite of death. Sex is birth; mind fantasizes about sex. And when the last moment has come when the body is going to disappear, a bout of energy, the last bout, streams into your head, overpowers you. If you die with sex on the mind, you will be moving again into the wheel of life, what the Hindus call ANAGAMIN, coming and going, coming and going; a repetitious circle.

GO TO THE HOME OF BEAUTY AND FORM, SHOULD YOU WISH TO SEE THE MAN WITHIN.

The Bauls say, "Go to the home of beauty and form, should you wish to see the man within." Love is more aesthetic; lust is almost non-aesthetic. Lust is ugly, and you can observe it. When somebody looks at you with lust in his eyes, have you watched the face? -- it becomes ugly. Even a beautiful face becomes ugly when lust is there in the eyes. And just the opposite also happens: even an ugly

face becomes beautiful when there is love in the eyes. Love in the eyes gives a totally different color to the face; a different aura arises. Lust gives a black aura, a very evilish aura around you. To look at somebody with lust is ugly. It is not the search for beauty.

One of the greatest Indian poets, Rabindranath, has said that, "Beauty is truth," and he is right. And he was very impressed by the Bauls. In fact, he was the first man to introduce Bauls to the West; he was the first man to translate a few Baul poems into English. He was a sort of Baul himself: he says, "Beauty is truth." If you seek beauty you will become truthful. The more aesthetic you become, the more sensitive you become towards beauty, the more balanced and harmonious you will become -- because finally, beauty belongs to God.

LET me explain it to you.

You see a woman: if you see with lustful eyes, you see only the body, the matter, the matter part; if you see with love, you see something that is not matter, that is spiritual; and if you see a woman with prayer, then you see something absolutely divine. It depends on your eyes. With lustful eyes you see only the body part of the woman; with loveful eyes you see the spiritual part of the woman; with prayerful eyes you see the divine, God himself. Wherever your sensitivity towards beauty is perfect, the divine is revealed.

GO TO THE HOME OF BEAUTY AND FORM, SHOULD YOU WISH TO SEE THE MAN WITHIN. HIS WAYS CROSS THE SPHERE

WHERE LIFE LIVES WITH DEATH, AND SENSE WITH INSANITY.

"His ways cross the sphere where life lives with death, and sense with insanity..."

God's ways are paradoxical. The Bauls say that in God all the opposites meet, all the polarities become one. In God, death and life are not two things. In God, darkness and light are not two things. In God, the beginning and the end are not two things. God means the totality; God comprehends all. So when you reach towards God you will not be losing anything, you will be simply gaining all. In

the beginning it may appear that you are losing something, but God is all- inclusive. Lust remains in God, of course, but absolutely transformed. Matter remains in God, but becomes sacred, is holy. One remains in the world but no more of it. God Himself is in the world, but not of the world. The world belongs to Him but He does not belong to the world.

This polarity has to be understood. The Bauls' God is a greater God than the Christian God, the Jewish God or the Mohammedan God, because those Gods are of the theologians. The Bauls' God is more poetic; those Gods are more logical. The Bauls' God is more illogical, but more true. Christians say, "God is only good." The very word 'God'

is derived from the root 'good'. God is good; then what happens to bad? Then where does the bad exist? To explain that they have to create a devil. But the Bauls laugh about such theoretical cunningness. They say that God creates the devil, so He remains the creator of the devil. And if you say the devil has gone against God, then there are only two possibilities: one, that God is not omnipotent, and the devil can go against Him -- then God is not all-powerful; the other, that God Himself provokes him to go against -- then He is all-powerful, but then He is the cause of the devil.

Bauls say that God is both, and when they say God is both, they mean that God is incomprehensible, He is paradoxical. God is all. In Him, everything is transfigured, all opposites become a harmony. God is the orchestra. He is one in the many. He's the unity of all.

HIS WAYS CROSS THE SPHERE WHERE LIFE LIVES WITH DEATH, AND SENSE WITH INSANITY.

Bauls say, "He is the supermost reason and the supermost irreason also." They say that God is reason and God is madness also. For a logical mind it becomes difficult to figure out. But Bauls say life is not of logic. The Bauls say, "We are simply describing what is the case. We are not saying what should be, we are simply describing what is the case.

This is the way we have known God: He is very rational and very irrational, both. He is infinite compassion and infinite justice, both. In Him, all the

polarities have become one."

To understand this, one has to understand with one's totality. You cannot understand this assertion, this statement, through your intellect. Then it looks absurd. But watch... Look at life: all that is alive must be somehow His, and all that dies must be somehow dying in Him. Yes, He lives in very reasonable people, but who lives in mad people then? In mad people also He lives, and He loves all ways.

SO Bauls say, "Don't be afraid; you just be yourself and you will find Him. You need not become somebody else to find Him. You just be yourself. If you are mad, then just be mad; then that is your way to find Him. If you are a singer, then go on singing. He's all-inclusive; your singing will become a prayer and a way. If you cannot sing, don't be worried; there is no need. If you feel that just being silent and sitting silently you enjoy your being perfectly, then that is your way. All ways are His. Bauls say, "Wherever you are, from wherever you travel, you travel towards Him. Just don't get stuck; go on travelling. Go on moving, don't allow movement to die. Wherever you are stuck, then the distance arises. Just go on moving and be yourself." They don't give you a certain morality; they don't give you a certain ideal; they don't give you any shoulds. They are not worried about the ought. They say, "This is the case -- He loves all as they are." Just you go on moving, don't get frozen.

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND TRY TO CATCH HIM, HE IS SLIPPING BY.

Beautiful..."Close your eyes and try to catch Him, He's slipping by." If you are stuck somewhere you will miss Him. You be on the move because He is on the move. He's always slipping, He's always moving into the new and into the unknown. If you cling with the known you will miss Him. Close your eyes and watch how swiftly He moves, how dancingly He moves. He is continuously slipping out of the old. He is the constantly new. He is like the snake who comes out of his old skin, leaves the old skin and slips by.

God is continuously slipping out of history, because He is eternity. God is continuously slipping out of that which has already happened, because He is not repetitive. And if you are clinging to history then you will miss Him, because then you will be looking at the past and He is always moving into the future.

God is future and mind is past; then the distance arises.

A real religious man is one who has no past, who has no autobiography, who is continuously new, each moment slipping with God. He does not bother; what has happened has happened -- finished! Put a full stop on it, and never look back. Go on...He is always calling you ahead, and ahead. He is always persuading you to move into new territories of being: from lust to love, from love to prayer -- and there are higher realms than prayer. And He is constantly on the move. If you follow Him, the only way is to be constantly on the move.

Be a river.

Yes, they are right...

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND TRY TO CATCH HIM, HE IS SLIPPING BY.

Why close your eyes? -- because in the beginning it will be difficult to see Him from without. There are so many forms, you may get lost. There is so much all around, so complicated is the world that you may get lost. Start from the simple -

- start from yourself. Close your eyes; then there is only one -- you! It is simple to become acquainted that way. Close your eyes and see Him; He is continuously slipping by. It is your consciousness, the essential man. The Bauls call him the ADHAR MANUSH. He is in you, in your essence, but He is continuously slipping by, going ahead. That's how He evolves.

God is evolution and God is revolution also, because sometimes He moves slowly, and sometimes He moves very fast. One has to be very alert to keep pace with Him. If you lose your alertness, He is gone. Then one never knows when one will come across Him again. One moment lost in unawareness and He will be at the farthest end of the world.

One has to remain constantly alert, aware.

But first watch Him inside. Not that He's not outside; He's there also -- because all is His, within and without. But first it is easier to understand Him within yourself. Once seen there, you will be able to see Him everywhere. Once understood there, open your eyes, and He is standing all around you: in the trees, in the birds, in the man, in the woman, in the rocks, in the rivers, in the

mountains, in the clouds. But first, get introduced to Him.

And the best introduction, and the easiest possible, is to close your eyes and look, watch there. You will find the snake always moving and leaving its old skin. This is the flow of life-energy.

The Bauls' God is not a dead, stagnant concept. It is not a God sitting somewhere on a golden throne in the seventh heaven. The Bauls' God is a very alive God, kicking in you, streaming in you. The Bauls' God is nothing but a synonym for life. LIFE written with capital letters is what the Bauls' God is all about.

The Bauls say,

My heart is saturated,

but I wish I knew with what -- joy or death.

Strange is the feeling when you become acquainted with God: you cannot say what it is, you cannot describe it. It is so contradictory, so paradoxical.

My heart is saturated,

but I wish I knew with what -- joy or death.

He is both: death and resurrection, cross and rebirth.

A sense of wonder has overtaken all.

Where is that ocean

and where are the rivers?

And yet still

the waves are there for you to observe,

only if you unite

your eyes with your heart.

That is the meaning of 'close your eyes' -- so that you can bring your heart and your eyes parallel, united. Only if you unite your eyes with your heart, then suddenly you will see the God of all paradoxes, the mad and the source of all reason, life and the source of all death.

The Bauls say,

There is no patience

in the core of my heart.

Shivering with tears it cries with the eyes, and in the silence

of lovely sound forever calls, Come Beloved, come,

come, please come!

The Bauls' path is not the path of the austere man, of the monk, no. It is the path of the dancer, the singer, the aesthetic man. His prayer is full of beauty, and God is not a concept of philosophy, but Beloved.

Free impulses live together with the forces of abstinence, and the feminine energy entwined with the spirit of man, resembles the tuned strings

of the lute, wholly invisible.

The heart is the home of no separation.

When you reach deep within yourself, when you touch your own core, your heart, you have come to the land of no separation. There, not only are you with God, you are one with Him -- because you are also part of Him. It is He who has expressed Himself like you. Feel fortunate, feel blessed; He has also chosen you to be one of His forms.

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND TRY TO CATCH HIM, HE IS SLIPPING BY.

The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #4

Chapter title: Remember To Stop In The Middle 4 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7607040

ShortTitle: BELOV204

Audio: Yes Video: No Length:

90

mins

The first question:

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO, I HAVE HEARD.…

A PSYCHOLOGIST WANTS TO EXPERIMENT WITH HIS TWIN SONS. HE

TAKES THEM DOWN TO HIS GROUP ROOMS AND PUTS EACH IN A ROOM BY

HIMSELF. IN IKE'S ROOM HE LOADS IN A PILE OF TV-ADVERTISED, HARD-SELL TOYS. IKE IS DIAGNOSED AS A COMPLAINING, NEGATIVE PESSIMIST.

IN MIKE'S ROOM HE LOADS IN AN ENORMOUS PILE OF MANURE. MIKE IS

THE OPTIMIST.

AN HOUR AFTER THEY ARE LOCKED IN, HE ENTERS IKE'S ROOM. THERE IS

IKE TOSSING OUT TOY AFTER TOY, COMPLAINING, "THIS IS NOT ANY

GOOD, THAT ONE WON'T WORK."

AS HE OPENS THE DOOR INTO THE SECOND ROOM HE IS UNABLE TO FIND

HIS SON FOR A FEW MOMENTS. BUT HE HEARS HIS VOICE; IT IS SAYING,

"THERE'S GOTTA BE A PONY, THERE'S GOTTA BE A PONY." AND AS HE

APPEARS HE IS SHOWN FRANTICALLY DIGGING THROUGH THE MANURE, LOOKING FOR THE PONY.

I HAVE CHANGED ROOMS; I HAVE GOT MY EYE OUT FOR THE PONY. THE QUESTION IS FROM PREM JEEVAN.

The first thing to be understood about pessimism and optimism is that they are not different. They look different, but don't be deceived by their appearances. They are just two polarities of the same phenomenon. A pessimist can become an optimist; an optimist can become a pessimist. A pessimist is just an optimist standing on his head, and vice versa. They are not two different people, they are not two different dimensions.

Remember, it is not worth changing rooms. Get out of both the rooms, under the sky where neither pessimism nor optimism exist. You can be at ease only when both are gone, because both are wrong.

Analyze the situation. The pessimist goes on looking at the darker side of things and goes on denying the whiter side; he accepts only half of the truth. The optimist goes on denying the darker side of things and accepts only the whiter side; he is also half true.

Neither of them accepts the whole truth, because the whole truth is both summer and winter, God and devil, darkness and light, good and evil, life and death. The whole truth is both. Both are doing the same exercise -- they are denying the half and accepting the other half. The other half is as much half as the first; there is no difference. If th!e pessimist is wrong, the optimist is also wrong. Both are not ready to accept the truth as it is. They choose.

Move out of both the rooms under the open sky of choicelessness. Don't choose. Let truth be as it is. Don't try to paint it in your own mood. Try to see the facility of it; don't bring your mood in. Don't look through hope, don't look through frustration. Don't be positive and don't be negative -- that is the highest consciousness possible.

But optimism appeals because the world is more or less pessimistic. People have long faces; they are always complaining and grumbling. It is beautiful to come across the optimist. People are always talking about the thorns; it is fortunate to meet somebody who talks about flowers and fragrances. But he is also wrong.

Let me tell you another anecdote.

Once I went to visit the hospital where Mulla Nasrudin was confined as a result of an automobile accident. The Mulla had been seriously injured: a broken leg, both arms broken, a broken collarbone, terrible cuts over his face and head, and several broken ribs.

He was so thoroughly bandaged and taped and strapped up that only his two eyes and mouth were showing.

I was at a loss for words, but I realized that I must say something. So I asked the Mulla,

"How do you feel today, Nasrudin? I suppose all of those broken bones and cuts cause a great deal of pain. Do you suffer very much?"

"No, not much," said Nasrudin. "Only when I laugh."

It is good to meet such a person. It is rare, but it is as wrong as the common variety The pessimist is the common variety. Out of a hundred persons, ninety- nine are pessimists.

They are looking for misery, they are waiting for misery. They are convinced that something is going to happen which is going to be wrong. They are ready for it. If it doesn't happen they will be very disappointed, but they are waiting for the negative, for the dark side. These people are certainly wrong, but then because of these people -- and they are in the majority -- the other rarity becomes very valuable: a person who is looking for the morning, who looks for the white lightning in the darkest of clouds. When the night is very dark he waits, because he knows now the morning is very close. He is always hopeful. But I again insist that both are wrong because life is both black and white. In fact, life is grey. On one extreme end it looks white, on the other extreme end it looks black, but just in between the two it is nothing but shades of grey.

One who understands both becomes choiceless. He is neither pessimist nor optimist. You will not find him in either of the rooms. You will not find him unhappy, you will not find him over enthusiastic about happiness. That is the goal of the Buddhas: they are not in agony and they are not in any ecstasy. They don't know any excitement; they are simply peaceful, silent. That is what bliss is, satchitananda. Bliss is not happiness, because happiness has a certain excitement

in it -- it is feverish. Sooner or later you will be tired of it; it is unnatural. Sooner or later you will have to change, you will have to become unhappy. Bliss is neither; it is neither negative nor positive -- it is transcendental, it is beyond duality. One remains tranquil, calm, quiet, centered. Whatsoever happens, good or bad, one accepts both because one knows life is both.

This is the real man. He is completely without any attitude. It is very easy if you have been a pessimist for long: one day you realize that you are unnecessarily being unhappy, miserable, so you change the role. You slip into the role of an optimist. But now, from one extreme to the other you have moved.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

One day Mulla Nasrudin visited a large department store to buy his wife some nylon hose. Inadvertently he got caught in the mad rush of a counter where a bargain sale was going on. He soon found himself being pushed and stepped on by frantic women. He stood it as long as he could, then with head lowered and elbows out, he plowed through the crowd.

"You there!" said a woman. "Can't you act like a gentleman?'

"Not anymore," said Nasrudin. "I have been acting like a gentleman for an hour. From now on I am acting like a lady."

There is a point where one gets fed-up with one role. The pessimist one day realizes that,

"Why? Why go on seeing the darker side? Why go on counting the thorns on the rosebush?" He forgets about thorns; he starts counting the roses -- but both are half. From one half to another half he has moved. The totality remains as far away as before.

The rosebush is both the thorn and the rose. They are both joined together there. They are not against, they are not enemies. In fact the thorns protect the flower. They are part of the whole organic being of the rosebush. And so is life. Good and bad are joined together; sinners and saints are joined together; birth and death are joined together. A real understanding is when you have understood this, this polarity. And by understanding it, you have gone beyond it. Then you become tranquil -- because there is nothing to be happy about and there is nothing to be unhappy about.

Remember, if you are happy, somewhere deep in the unconscious you are still carrying the possibility of unhappiness, because you can be happy only if you can be unhappy.

Both possibilities exist together. They cannot be separated, they are two aspects of the same coin. So if you throw one aspect the other is also thrown. If you keep one aspect the other is also kept. If you become a pessimist in the conscious mind, you will be an optimist in the unconscious. If you are an optimist in the conscious mind, you will be a pessimist in the unconscious.

Happiness, unhappiness, exist together. You can change the role anytime you like. In fact, people go on changing: in the morning you are an optimist, by the evening you have become a pessimist. That's why beggars come to beg in the morning -- because morning makes many more people optimistic. By the evening, knowing the whole life and the nastiness of it, people become pessimistic, tired, angry, frustrated. In the evening beggars don't come to beg because who is going to give? In the morning people are more open; the morning sun again brings hope. The night is gone: "Maybe today something is going to happen." People are more positive. By the evening, people become negative.

In the day you change your roles many times. If you are a little alert, you will see. A moment before you were an optimist, a moment afterwards you have become a pessimist.

Small things: changes in the climate, changes in the relationship, a small gesture on somebody's part can make, you change your role. Have you watched it? You are sitting, sad, and somebody comes, and he is a man of laughter, and he laughs and he jokes -- you forget that you were sad and you start laughing. You were laughing and a few friends come and they are all sad; they bring a climate of sadness, and you relapse into it.

As I see it, every man is born with both possibilities. You have to go beyond it; you have to see the futility of both. That's what silence is: it is complete absence of duality. So please avoid being extremists. Excess should always be avoided, because excess is the root of all untruth. In fact, there are no lies in the world, only half-truths and truth. All half-truths are lies; and the truth is not half, it is whole.

The mind tends to be always moving towards the extreme -- so you are moving

towards the height, then you are moving towards the valley, going up then coming down. Like a yo-yo you go on, and you never become aware that both are useless. Like a pendulum of an old clock you move from one extreme to another. Once the pendulum stops in the middle, the clock stops. Once you stop in the middle, time disappears. Then you are no more part of this world. The clock stops...then you are part of eternity.

Watch the pendulum moving from left to right, from right to left. A very strange thing is happening. When the pendulum is going to the right, you see it as going to the right. Ask the mechanic: he will say that when the pendulum is going to the right it is gaining momentum to go to the left; when it is going to the left it is gaining momentum to go to the right. So when you are unhappy, you are gaining momentum to be happy. When you are happy, you are gaining momentum to be unhappy. When you are loving you are gaining momentum to be hateful, and when you are hateful you are gaining momentum to be loving.

Once you understand this subtle mechanism, that mind tends to be always moving towards extremes, you stop cooperating with the mind. Pessimist or optimist, both are within mind, and the real man of understanding is beyond it.

It happened: Mulla Nasrudin was getting ready to apply to a local department store for a job. A friend told him that it was the policy of the store to hire nobody but Catholic Christians, and that if he wanted a job there he would have to lie about being a Catholic Christian.

Nasrudin applied for the job, and the personnel man asked him the usual questions. Then he said to the Mulla, "To what church do you belong?"

"I am a Catholic," said Nasrudin, "and all my family are Catholics. In fact, my father is a priest and my mother is a nun, sir."

To the whole way!

Remember to stop in the middle. That will bring balance, that will bring centering. For the first time you will feel unperturbed, undistracted, and you will be able to accept both.

Your acceptivity will become total. You will not be angry because there are thorns, and you will not be ecstatic, exhilarated, excited, because there are roses. You will see that both are, and both are good, both are needed. But you remain

unaffected, untouched, unscratched -- unscratched by the thorns and unscratched by the flower also. This is the goal.

The second question:

Question 2

I NEED TO TRUST SO BADLY, AND I SUFFER BECAUSE I DON'T. FROM WHERE AM I TO FIND THE COURAGE TO TRUST MY KILLER?

PEOPLE who trust themselves can trust others. People who don't trust themselves cannot trust anybody. Out of self-trust, trust arises. If you are distrustful about yourself, then you cannot trust me -- you cannot trust anybody. Because if you don't trust yourself, how can you trust your trust? It is going to be your trust. Maybe you trust in me, but it is your trust

-- you trust in me and you don't trust yourself. So it is not a question about me, it is a deep question about yourself.

And who are these people who cannot trust themselves? Something has gone wrong somewhere.

First, these are the people who don't have a very good self-image; they are condemnatory towards themselves. They always feel guilty and always feel wrong. They are always defensive and always trying to prove that they are not wrong, but they feel deep down that they are wrong. These are the people who have missed, somehow, a loving atmosphere.

Psychologists say that the person who cannot trust himself is bound to have some deep-rooted problem with the mother. The mother-child relationship somewhere did not happen as it should. Because the mother is the first person in the child's experience; if the mother trusts the child, if the mother loves the child, the child starts loving the mother and trusting the mother. Through the mother the child becomes aware of the world. The mother is the window from where he enters existence. And by and by, if there exists a beautiful relationship between the child and the mother, a response, a deep sensitivity, a deep transfer of energies, a flowering... then the child starts trusting others also. Because he knows the first experience was beautiful, there is no reason to think that the second is not going to be beautiful. There is every reason to believe that the

world is good.

If in your childhood there was a deep milieu of love around you, you will become religious, trust will arise. You will trust, trust will become your natural quality.

Ordinarily, you will not distrust anybody unless somebody tries hard to create distrust in you -- only then will you distrust. But distrust will be exceptional. One man deceives you and tries hard to destroy your trust. Maybe trust in that man is destroyed, but you will not start distrusting the whole humanity. You will say, "This is one man, and there are millions of men. Just for one man, why distrust all?" But if the basic trust is lacking, and something has gone wrong between you and your mother, then distrust becomes your basic quality. ]Then ordinarily, naturally, you distrust. There is no need for anybody to prove. You distrust man, and then if somebody wants you to trust him he will have to work hard, very hard. And even then, you will trust him conditionally. And even then, that trust will not be very comprehensive. It will be very narrow; it will be arrowed at one person.

That is the problem. In the old times people were very trusting. SHRADDHA, trust, was a simple quality. There was no need to cultivate it. In fact, if somebody wanted to become a great skeptic, doubting, then great training was needed, great conditioning was needed. People were simply trustful because love relationships were very, very deep. In the modern world love has disappeared, and trust is nothing but the climax of love, the cream of love. Love has disappeared. Children are born into families where the father and mother are not in love. Children are born -- the mother does not care, is not bothered about what happens to them. In fact, she is annoyed because they are a disturbance, and they are disturbing her life. Women are avoiding children, and if they happen it seems like an accident. And there is a deep negative attitude. The child gets that negative attitude; he is poisoned from the very beginning. He cannot trust the mother.

Just three or four days ago a sannyasin told me that during Primal Therapy here in the ashram, he came across a childhood memory. He remembered, he could see it, that his mother had tried to kill him by suffocating him. He could see the whole memory, again relived. Now his whole being is wavering, trembling. And he's not an ordinary man; he himself is a psychotherapist. Now, he understands many things that he had never understood before: why he seems to be so dead,

stone-like, rock-like, unflowing, why he cannot trust anybody, why he cannot move into love easily, why it is such a great effort, and even then, something, somewhere goes wrong. He is not streaming -- the mother tried to suffocate him.

The basic trust lost, the tacit trust lost: "Even mother tried to kill me? Then who can be trusted?" -- impossible. Now this world is just inimical. One has to struggle; it is a survival of the fittest.

Many times I have wondered: somebody should try a psychoanalytical study of Charles Darwin. Nobody has tried yet. There must have been something gone wrong between him and his mother, hence the hypothesis of the survival of the fittest. In the same way one can have a psychoanalytical study of Prince Kropotkin. There must have been a deep love relationship between him and his mother, so deep that he contradicted Charles Darwin and tried to replace his theory of survival of the fittest with the theory of cooperation. He said, "There is no conflict in life, but there is cooperation. In fact, when a tiger jumps on an animal and eats the animal, this too is cooperation." How does he explain it? He says,

"In fact, the moment the tiger jumps on his prey, the prey relaxes, dies easily. There is no conflict. The prey becomes food for the tiger."

There must be a cooperation when you pick an apple from the tree and you eat it; there must be a deep cooperation between the apple and you. Otherwise, the apple would create trouble in your body. It would go on fighting you if there were a conflict. It would never allow itself to be absorbed by your body; it would remain inimical. But it simply dissolves into you, becomes your blood, becomes your bones, becomes your flesh.

Kropotkin says, "There is tremendous cooperation in life." Even when a tiger jumps and kills the prey, he says there is cooperation. Ask Charles Darwin: even when there are two friends deep in love, and they are ready to die for each other, Darwin says that these are just pretensions. Deep inside there is conflict, struggle, competition, jealousy.

A philosophy is not born out of the blue. A philosophy comes from your own existence, your own lived experience. If the child has been deep in love with the mother and the mother has showered her love, that is the beginning of all trust for the future. Then the child will make more loving relationships with women,

will make more loving relationships with friends, one day will be able to surrender to a Master -- and finally, will be able to dissolve himself completely into God. But if the basic link is missing then the foundation is missing. Then you try hard, but it becomes more and more difficult.

That's what I feel about the questioner.

"I need to trust so badly"...yes, because trust is nourishment. Without trust you remain hungry, you remain starved. Trust is the most subtle nourishment for life. If you don't trust you cannot really live. You are always in fear; you are surrounded by death, not by life. With a deep trust inside, the whole view changes. Then you are at home and there is no conflict. Then you are not a stranger in the world. Then you are not an alien, you are not a foreigner. You belong to the world, the world belongs to you. The world is happy that you are -- the world is protecting you. This feeling of a deep protection gives courage, and gives courage to move into unknown paths.

When the mother is in the home the child has courage. Have you watched it? He can go out on the road, he can move into the garden, and he can do a thousand and one things.

When the mother is not there he simply sits inside, he is afraid. He cannot go out; the protection is not there, the protective aura is not there. The atmosphere is totally alien.

It happened once.…

I was staying with a friend. The couple had gone to attend some marriage ceremony and they had left their small kid to play, and they said to me, "Just you watch." I was watching -- he was playing just outside the porch. He fell, he looked all around, he looked at me. I looked at him very silently. He waited for a single second to feel whether it was worth crying or not. But I was so neutral, as if I was not there, so he shrugged his shoulders: "This fellow is useless." He started playing again. After half an hour when the mother and the father arrived, he started crying. I said, "This is illogical. Half an hour has passed, now it can't be hurting." He said, "That is not the question. But you looked towards me with such stoney eyes, so I thought,'What is the point? Even if it hurts, it hurts. Crying is useless.' Now my mother has come." Now he is in a different atmosphere

-- now he can cry because he knows somebody is there to console, somebody is there to feel for him, somebody is there who cares.

If you have lived a childhood of a deep showering of love and trust on you, you gather a beautiful self-image about yourself. And if your parents have been really in deep love with each other, and they were very happy in you because you were the culmination of their love, the crescendo of their love, the actualization of their love; if they were deep in love, then you are the song that is born out of their love. You are the proof, the evidence that they loved each other. You are their creation: they feel happy about you, they accept you, and they accept the way you are. Even if they try to help you, they try to help you in a very loving way. Even if they say sometimes, "Don't do this," you don't feel offended and you don't feel insulted. In fact, you feel cared about.

But when the love is missing and the father and mother go on saying, "Don't do this,"

and, "Do this," by and by the child starts learning that, "I am not accepted as I am. If I do certain things, I am loved. If I don't do certain things, I am not loved. If I do some other things, I am hated."

So he starts shrinking. His pure being is not accepted and loved. The love is conditional; trust is lost. Then he will never be able to have a beautiful self- image. Because it is mother's eyes which reflect you for the first time, and if you can see happiness there, a bliss, a thrill, a great ecstasy just watching you, you know you are valuable, you know you have intrinsic value. Then it is very easy to trust, very easy to surrender, because you are not afraid. But if you know that you are wrong, then you are always trying to prove that you are right. People become argumentative. All argumentative people basically are people who don't have good images of themselves. They are very defensive, very touchy.

If there is some argumentative person, and you say that, "This thing you have done wrong," he immediately jumps on you, becomes very angry. He cannot even take a small friendly criticism. But if he has a good image about himself he is ready to listen, he's ready to learn, he's ready to respect others' opinions. Maybe they are right, and even if they are right and he is wrong, he is not worried because that doesn't matter. He remains good in his eyes.

People are touchy -- they don't want criticism, they don't want somebody to say

to them to do this; they don't want somebody to say to them not to do that. And these people think they cannot surrender because they are very powerful. They are just ill, neurotic. Only a powerful man or woman can surrender -- weaklings, never. Because in surrender they think their weakness will be known to the whole world. They know they are weak, they know their inferiority complex, so they cannot bow down. It is difficult for them, because bowing down will be accepting that they are inferior. Only a superior person can bow down; inferior persons can never bow down. They cannot respect anybody because they don't respect themselves. They don't know what respect is, and they are always afraid of surrender because surrender means weakness to them.

Remember it: surrender is possible if you are tremendously powerful; you are not worried about surrender, you know that you can surrender and still you will not be weak. You can surrender and you will not lose your willpower. In fact, by surrendering you are showing the greatest willpower there is.

So if you feel it difficult to trust, then you have to go back. You have to dig deep into your memories. You have to go into your past. You have to clean your mind of the past impressions. You must be having a great heap of rubbish from your past; unburden it.

This is the key to do it: if you can go back not just as memory, but as a reliving. Make it a meditation. Every day, in the night, for one hour just go back. Try to find out all that has happened in your childhood. The deeper you can go the better -- because we are hiding many things that have happened, but we don't allow them to bubble up into consciousness. Allow them to surface. Going every day, you will feel deeper and deeper.

First you will remember somewhere when you were at the age of four or five, and you will not be able to go beyond that. Suddenly, a China Wall will face you. But go -- by and by, you will see that you are going deeper: three years, two years. People have reached to the point where they were born from the womb. There have been people who have reached into the memories of the womb, and there are people who have reached beyond that, into the other life when they died.

But if you can reach to the point where you were born, and you can relive that moment, it will be of deep agony, pain. You will almost feel as if you are being born again. You may scream as the child screamed for the first time. You will

feel suffocated as the child felt suffocated when for the first time he was out of the womb -- because for a few seconds he was not able to breathe. There was great suffocation: then he screamed and the breath came, and his passages became open, his lungs started functioning. You may have to move to that point. From there you come back. Go again, come back, every night. It will take at least three to nine months, and every day you will feel more unburdened, more and more unburdened, and trust will arise simultaneously, by the side. Once the past is clear and you have seen all that has happened, you are free of it. This is the key: if you become aware of anything in your memory, you are freed from it. Awareness liberates, unconsciousness creates a bondage. Then trust will become possible.

When you are here with me, you are again in another womb, you are again waiting for another birth. That is the function of a Master -- to give you another birth, to make you DWIJA, twice born. One birth is from mother and father, another birth is from the Guru, the Master. You are again in another womb, a spiritual womb. You have to close accounts with your physical womb completely. You have to drop all hang-overs with your physical birth so you can be totally herenow with me.

"I need to trust so badly..." Yes, that is the point: a person who cannot trust needs to trust very badly. And a person who can trust is not even aware that he needs. The need arises when you are starving.

Psychologists have come across this -- that love is food. Just twenty years ago, if somebody had said that love was subtle vitality, then scientists would have laughed. They would have thought, "You are a poet, you live in illusion and dreams. Love and food? --

all nonsense." But now scientific researchers say, "Love IS food." When a child is given food, that nourishes his body; and if love is not given, then his soul is not nourished. His soul remains immature. Now there are ways to measure whether a child is being loved or not, whether the warmth he needs is being given to him or not. You can give a child all the nourishment he needs, all medical care he needs, in a hospital. Just remove the mother

-- give him milk, medicine, care, everything, but don't hug him, don't kiss him, don't touch him. Many experiments have been done. The child, by and by, starts shrinking into himself. He becomes ill, and in most of the cases he dies, for no

visible cause at all. Or, if he survives, he survives at the minimum: he becomes an imbecile, an idiot. He will live, but he will live just on the fringe. He will never be deep in life; he has no energy. To hug the child, to give your body's warmth to him is food, is very subtle food. Now this is being recognized, by and by.

Let me make you one prediction: after twenty or thirty years, psychologists will come to reveal that trust is even a higher food, of a greater potency -- higher than love... Like prayer. Trust is prayerfulness, but it is VERY subtle. You can feel it. If you have trust, you will suddenly see that with me you are going on a great adventure, and your life starts immediately changing. If you don't have trust, you will stand there. I go on talking, I go on pulling you; you are stuck -- somehow you go on missing me. Let your trust arise.

That trust will be a bridge between me and you. Then ordinary words become luminous, then just my presence can become a womb, and you can be reborn.

"I need to trust so badly, and I suffer because I don't. From where am I to find the courage to trust my killer?"

Yes, I am a killer, in a way. I have to kill you because that is the only way for you to be reborn. I have to cut you completely from your past, I have to destroy your biography.

Then only, the new can arise.

But if you have trust, you will be ready to die. If you have trust, you know resurrection is certain. I cannot guarantee it; there is no way to guarantee it. Only trust is the guarantee. I can talk about it, I can 'poetize' about it, but that will create only dreams in you, not guarantees. I can tell what has happened to me, I can allure you towards it, but it will not be a guarantee. "Who knows -- this man may be just Lying, or this man may not be Lying, he may be just in illusion?" How to prove it? It is not a thing that I can show to you. If you trust, then there is guarantee. In your trust is your guarantee.

You can trust me in two ways. That too has to be understood, because one way is a wrong way.

You can trust me because you feel insecure, alone. You can force trust because you can feel more secure with me. That's how many people live in churches,

organizations, religions. Somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu; it gives a certain security. You are not alone -- millions of Hindus, millions of Christians

-- you are not alone. "How can so many people be wrong? They must be right" -- so you hold, hang with the crowd, just because you are afraid. Trust can arise because of fear -- then it is negative; it will not give you a new birth. In fact, it will obstruct new birth. Trust can arise out of love; then it is right.

People who trust because they are afraid, because they want somebody to hang to, to cling to, they are afraid and they want somebody's hand, they look at the sky and they pray to God just to feel unafraid. Have you watched? Sometimes passing through a dark street in the night you start whistling, or you start singing

-- not that it is going to help.

But it helps in a way. Singing, you become warmer. Singing, you become occupied; fear is repressed. Whistling, you start feeling good. You forget that it is dark and it is dangerous, but it makes no real change in reality. If there is fear and danger it is still there. In fact, it is more, because a person who is engaged in singing can be robbed more easily because he will be less alert. He will be less cautious while whistling. He is creating an illusion around him with whistling. If your trust arises out of fear, it is better not to have that trust. It is false.

I have heard...

Mulla Nasrudin climbed into a barber's chair and asked, "Where is the barber who used to work on the next chair?"

"Oh, that was a sad case," the barber said. "He became so nervous and despondent over poor business, that one day when a customer said he did not want a massage, he went out of his mind and cut the customer's throat with a razor. He is now in the state mental hospital. By the way, would you like a massage, sir?"

"Absolutely!" said Mulla Nasrudin.

Out of fear you can say 'absolutely', but that will not be trust. Trust is born out of love, and if you find that you cannot trust, then you have to work hard. You have a very loaded past, wrongly loaded. You have to clean it, clear it.

The third question:

Question 3

I BELIEVE THERE IS A GOD. THERE MUST BE SOMETHING KEEPING THE

UNIVERSE TOGETHER. BUT DEEP IN MYSELF I DON'T FEEL THAT GOD IS

THERE OR YOU ARE THERE, OR THAT GOD IS WITH ME. I EXPERIENCE

MYSELF AS LOST AND UNPROTECTED IN A THREATENING WORLD. IF FEEL

ONLY COMFORTABLE WHEN I AM ALONE. I MISS THAT BASIC TRUST. THE

KNOWLEDGE I GATHERED, THE FEELINGS I HAVE FELT, THE EXPERIENCES

I HAVE HAD, DID NOT LEAD ME TO AN INNER TRUST. CAN YOU PLEASE HELP ME?

FIRST, belief is a pretension. Never believe in anything. Belief is pseudo-trust. It gives you a feeling as if you trust. It is 'as if' trust; it is very dangerous. If you have not experienced anything of the divine, please be honest. There is no need to trust, there is no need to believe in God. Don't make God a logical exercise. The questioner says, "I believe there is a God. There MUST be something keeping the universe together." This is a logical thing: the universe is there and things are really going together, everything is going beautifully together, so the logical mind says, "There must be somebody who is keeping it together. Existence is there, so somebody must have created it."

But God cannot be approached through logic. God can be approached only through love.

God is not a syllogism; it is not a conclusion. That's why scientists can never reach to God's truth. And people who were real thinkers have always denied God

-- because if you are REALLY thinking, you cannot believe in God. God seems

to be improbable, impossible, absurd. But logic can give you a false notion. It simply says that when you see that the world is going together, you infer that somebody is keeping it together. Just say that the world is going so tremendously together, that's all -- "I don't know why, I don't know who is keeping it or whether anybody is keeping it. " The conclusion is not right; remember that you don't know. That ignorance will be very, very helpful, because that ignorance will be sincere, authentic, true.

Now let me tell you -- you think that the world is going so together, that's why there must be a God. There have been philosophers who say that just because the world is going so together, there cannot be a God. Because if God is there, then sometimes He will get bored -- just the same repetitive world. Then there will be some personality in the world.

It is so mechanical: the stars go on moving, the sun goes on rising, the earth goes on moving, the people are born, the fruits and the seeds and again the trees and the seasons.

It seems so mechanical, many philosophers say, because the world is going so absolutely correctly that there cannot be a person behind it. Because sometimes a person changes also, and sometimes he gets fed-up also. One day he thinks, "No more sunrise today.

Enough is enough." One day he thinks, "Now, out of mango seeds apples will arise. "

If there is a personality in the world, just think -- a Picasso painting the same painting every day. If out of Picasso's house the same painting came every day, would it prove that there is a person inside, or there is a mechanism? You never go inside the house. You don't know who is inside; just a painting is coming every day on an assembly line. The same painting, everything perfect, accurate -

- will it prove that there lives inside a great painter, Picasso? or will it simply prove that there is a mechanism which goes on reproducing? There are philosophers who say because the world is running so mechanically there cannot be a personality behind it. Now what to do?

You say, the world is there: there must be a creator. There are philosophers who say that if the world needs a creator, then the creator will also need a further creator. Who will create the creator? And if you say that the creator needs no

creator -- don't be foolish.

Then they say, "Then what is the point? Then the world can be without a creator, if the creator himself can be without the creator." So you have accepted the principle basically that something can be without being created -- so the world can be without a creator. If you go into logic you will be in trouble.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

"This is a lesson in logic," said the old professor in the teahouse. "If the show starts at nine and dinner is at six, and my son has the measles, and my brother drives a Cadillac, how old am I?"

"You are eighty-four," replied Mulla Nasrudin promptly.

"Right," said the professor. "Now tell the rest of the fellows here how you arrived at the correct answer."

"It is easy," said Nasrudin. "I have got an uncle who is forty-two, and he is only half nuts.

You must be eighty-four."

If you make God an exercise in logic, you will go nuts. Nobody has ever come out of the logical inquiry sane. Nobody has ever come back sane, because the dimension is totally different -- it has nothing to do with logic. It has something to do with the heart, something to do with love.

"I believe there is a God"; please don't believe, because that belief will become a rock and it will not allow you to move deeper. Simply know that you don't know. Accept your ignorance. Don't hide behind a belief -- because there is possibility from ignorance, but there is no possibility from false, borrowed, logical knowledge. Logical knowledge is barren, love is fertile.

"I believe there is a God. There must be something keeping the universe together" -- this is not the way to approach God -- "but deep in myself I don't feel that God is there." Of course...how can you feel, how can you feel a logical proposition in the heart? Two plus two are four, certainly true -- but can you love this proposition? Can you fall in love with two plus two is four? And if somebody denies it, will you be ready to become a martyr for it because it is

true? You will say, "Forget all about it. If you want to make two plus two equal five, make it. Why should I lose my life for it?"

Nobody dies, stakes his life, for a logical proposition. It is not worth it. If somebody denies it, let it be so. Two plus two is perfectly true, but not a truth of the category of God, not even a truth of the category of Laila or Majnu. If your logic is proved wrong, nothing is proved wrong. You can change your logic. But if your love is proved wrong, you can never be the same person again. If your love is proved wrong, you are proved wrong. If your logic is proved wrong, nothing is proved wrong. You can change the logic; you remain unaffected by it. "Deep in myself I don't feel God" -- because there is no way from belief to feeling. They are not connected, so forget about belief. Otherwise there is a dangerous possibility: you may pretend that you feel.

Many people pretend. They go to the church, to the temple, to the mosque and they pretend that they are feeling for God. Their feeling is not feeling at all. In the temple you can see tears flowing down their eyes. Outside the temple you never come across that man again, that man you had seen in the temple. You never see him the same in the marketplace. That was just a mask: he was trying hard to feel. He was even ready to cry and shed false tears, what you call the 'crocodile tears'. You can see him praying, but nothing is arising out of his heart -

- there is no fire inside, no passion -- the prayer is just verbal. He goes on repeating something which he has been told to repeat; it is just parrot-like. Feeling arises only when you live in tremendous, austere sincerity.

Forget about belief in God; there is no need. Just know that you don't know. This should be the beginning: I don't know. Maybe God is there, maybe God is not there; I have to inquire. Now where to find, how to find? If God is there, He must be the God of the trees and the birds and the animals also, not only of man. Trees don't know any logic, birds don't know any logic, animals don't know any logic. If there is God He must be the God of all. Logic is very local -- just a part, a very small part of the world. Humanity has a small corner of the mind for mathematical and logical thinking.

The God must be the God of all, so forget about logic. Start approaching as the trees approach. Start approaching as the rivers run towards the sea, start approaching as the birds approach, start approaching through your being, your totality. Dance deeply. Forget about God, just dance deeply -- because in a great dancing mood, in a moment, mind disappears; you become total. When you are

really dancing and the movement is fast, mind cannot function. Mind stops; you become a no-mind. You are, but you are not a mind, and you don't think in terms of logic. You become a tree, a tree in a strong wind, a flower, a river, a rock, a star, but you lose that small territory that is dominating you, the territory of logic. Suddenly you will start a contact. You will feel you have been contacted by someone and you have contacted someone. A dancer becomes religious, has to become. Sing -- and I'm not saying sing a religious song. If singing is true, it is religious. What the words are does not matter. Run, swim, do something, and be lost in doing it.

Hence, I emphasize dynamic methods of meditation: dancing, singing, music, T'ai Chi, karate. Do something, because when you do, you are part of the greater world of the trees, of birds, of animals. They are doers, they are not thinkers. When you do something, suddenly you fall into the oceanic unity of existence.

There is then a feeling that God is. But that God is not the God of Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans. That God is your God. That has nothing to do with the Bible and Gita and Koran. That God is YOUR God; that God has nothing to do with logic, syllogism, philosophy, dogma. That God is a felt, lived experience. Then...then you will know, and there is no other way to know.

People are learning from scriptures, and the greatest scripture that has been given to you by existence remains unopened. And through scriptures you get notions.

I have heard.…

Mulla Nasrudin went to see his lawyer about a divorce.

"What grounds do you think you have for a divorce?" the lawyer asked.

"It is my wife's manners," said the Mulla. "She has such bad table manners that she is disgracing the whole family."

"That's bad," the lawyer said. "How long have you been married?" "Nine years," said the Mulla.

"If you have been able to put up with her table manners for nine years, I can't understand why you want a divorce now," the lawyer said.

"Well," said Nasrudin, "I did not know it before. I just bought a book on etiquette this morning."

You first read the books, then you decide about life.

First move into life and then decide about books. And then you will be surprised that the Gita and the Koran and the Bible are not three books, they are one book. Then Buddha and Christ and Krishna are not three persons, but three voices of the same person. But if you are first caught up in the logical structure of books, then you will never be able to know life. Try to become more natural. Forget all about God, the God that is discussed in the universities and in the churches and the temples. Forget about that God. Be with the God that is already surrounding you, that is your surround. This moment the cuckoo goes on doing her prayer, the birds go on doing THEIR prayer. Look at the trees, at how prayerful they are. The whole existence is in prayer, and what are you doing sitting inside your skull thinking about whether God exists or not?

"He must exist because the world is going so beautifully together. "

The world IS going beautifully together. Become part of this togetherness, dissolve into this togetherness! When the river is flowing by, why not jump into it? What are you doing sitting on the bank with closed eyes thinking the river must be there because...?

Drop all these 'becauses'.

The inner trust arises only when you have a live contact with God. Do whatsoever you can do, but please don't become just heads. Nothing is wrong with the head if it goes together with your totality. The wrongness enters when it becomes a part, apart, and it starts dominating the whole. Get back down into your belly from the head! Come back to your senses, become more earthly.

That's the message of the Bauls: become more true and real. When you are real, God is real; when you are true, God is true -- because when you are true you are capable of contact with the truth of existence. When you are real you are suddenly in harmony with the whole. When you are false, then the problem arises of whether God exists or not.

When the problem arises of whether God exists or not, that simply shows that you have lost your harmony with the whole. Get into harmony, get into line, fall

into line again.

Come back, be more real and true.

That is the whole message of all religions, of religion as such. That's why Buddha and Mahavir don't talk about God they say, "There is no need." Mahavir talks about truth: "Be true, be authentic, and you will be Gods." Just by being true you come closer to truth. It's simple. Can't you see such a simple point: that by being true, you come closer to truth?

Belief is false, borrowed knowledge is false. Drop all that is borrowed. You may feel poorer for the time being, because your knowledge gives you very great ego, that'I know'.

Knowing that you don't know, you may feel poor for a few days, you may feel like a beggar. But If you are ready to be true, suddenly one day the conversion happens. When you have lost all borrowed knowledge, something arises in you which was waiting and waiting. Something arises in you and fills your whole space of consciousness. That is what God is.

God is nothing but life. God is not a person; God is the energy you are, God is the energy the trees are, God is the energy the stars are. Everything is made of the stuff -- God. God is not the creator, God is this creation. This very moment you are in the ocean of God, but He is so close and you are so far away in your head that bridges are missing.

The last question:

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO, HOW COME I'M SO CRAZY ABOUT YOU?

I attract crazy people; I am crazy, that's why.

But crazy people are beautiful people. They are the only sane people is the world. That is the meaning of the word 'Baul'. Baul means crazy, mad. I am a Baul, and I attract Bauls --

that's why.

The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #5

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