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CHAPTER 11
Truth or Trick?
13 July 1973 pm in Mt Abu Meditation Camp
The first question:
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
YOU SAID THAT TO LIVE MOMENT TO MOMENT ONE MUST THROW AWAY ONE’S DEAD PAST AND MEMORIES. DOES IT MEAN THAT ALL THE MEMORIES HAVE TO BE DISSOLVED AND DESTROYED TO TRANSCEND THE MIND? BUT ONE NEEDS A STRONG MIND AND AN INTENSE AND SUFFICIENT ACCUMULATION OF MEMORIES TO FUNCTION IN THIS WORLD.
To die to the past does not mean that you will not be able to remember it. It does not mean that all your memories will be dissolved or destroyed. It only means that now you do not live in those memories, you are not identified with those memories. You are freed from them. They will remain but now they will be just a part of your brain, not part of your consciousness.
The brain is a mechanism, just like a tape-recording machine. The brain goes on recording everything. The brain is the physical part. It will go on recording, and your memories cannot be destroyed unless the brain is destroyed. But that is not the problem. The problem is that your consciousness is filled with memories. Your consciousness goes on identifying itself with the brain and the brain is always stirred by your consciousness – and memories go on flooding you.
When it is said, “Die to the past,” it means do not be identified with the brain. You can use the brain; then it is just an instrument. When you will need it you will use it. And you will need it. You will have
to go back home; you will have to remember where you live – where your house is, what your name is. You can use these memories but use them; do not be used by them. That is the problem.
While you are here you need not think about the house where you live in your town but you go on thinking about it. You need not remember your wife while you are here but you go on talking with her and she is not here. When you go back home you must recognize that she is your wife but there is no need to be bothered with her now. She must not come in the mind; the mind must not go on functioning unnecessarily. It must not bring in the past; it must not flood the present with the past.
The memory remains. It is not being destroyed. Through meditation the mind is not destroyed. You simply start transcending it. It remains a storehouse; you need not live in it. If you live in it then you are mad. You need not live in a storehouse. When you need something, you go into the storehouse, bring that something out and use it. But a storehouse is not a living-room.
But you have made it one. Your storehouse of memory has become your living room; you live there. Do not live there, that is the whole meaning. Be in the present and whenever the past is needed use it. But do not allow it to go on continuously overflooding you. That overflooding by the past makes your consciousness dim and dull. Then you cannot see with clear eyes, you cannot feel with a clear heart. Then nothing is clear, everything becomes confused.
Rather, on the contrary, when you are not identified with the mind you will have a very clear memory. You do not have a really good memory because you are not your master. Your mind is just a mad mechanism. When you need to remember something, it will not come and when you do not need it, it goes on coming: you are not the master. You cannot be the master if you become identified with the slave. If you become too much attached to the slave, the slave will start mastering you.
So if you die to the past you will not become less efficient in the functioning of your mind, you will become more efficient. A master is always more efficient. When he wants to remember, he remembers; when he doesn’t want to remember, he doesn’t remember. When he says to the mind, “Function,” it functions. When he says, “Stop,” the mind stops. I have to use memories. I have to talk to you: I have to use words, I have to use language. But only when I am talking to you do I use them. The moment I am not talking the mind stops. Then there is total vacuum – void. Then there is no cloud.
It is just like your legs: when you want to walk you use your legs. But if you go on moving them while just sitting or standing, people will think you are mad. Then you may say, “What can I do? My legs go on moving; I cannot do anything.” And if someone says to you, “Stop this,” you will say, “If I stop, then when I want to walk what will I do? I will become less efficient. If I stop, then I will lose the capacity to walk, so I have to use them constantly.” Remember, if you use them constantly, when the time comes to walk you will feel tired. You are already tired.
While sitting there is no need to use the legs. While not talking there is no need to use words. Do not verbalize within. While not using the past there is no need to allow it to flood you. Dying to the past means becoming master of your mind. Then you will be more efficient. But that efficiency will be of a different quality – a totally different quality. There will be no effort in it.
Now whenever you want to remember you have to make an effort because you are so tired; your brain is so tired, continuously working. There is no stop for it, no relaxation. Even while you are
asleep, the body is resting but the mind continues to work. Dreaming, it is working – constantly working. It is a miracle that you are not mad. Or maybe you are already mad but you are not aware; or maybe, because everyone is mad like you, you cannot compare and you cannot know what is happening to you.
Don’t be afraid, your efficiency will be increased. And the quality will be different because there will be no effort. When you need to, you can use your mind. It is just an instrument; just like your hands and legs it is a physical part of you. Memory is a physical thing, remember, so if your brain is destroyed you may be alive and conscious but you will lose your memory. If a particular part of your brain is destroyed, then a particular type of memory will be lost.
One of my friends, a doctor, fell down from a train. He fell down on his head and something was destroyed. For three years all memory was lost; he couldn’t even recognize his father or mother. He was alive, fully alive, conscious; but he couldn’t read, couldn’t write, because all memory was lost. He started from abcd again and only after three years was he able to use his brain again. But now he was just a child of three years; all the medical knowledge, all the degrees that he had, were lost, because particular tissues, particular nerves in the brain, were destroyed and with them all memory was lost or cut off.
Now, in China, they use brainwashing. They give some electrical stimulation to particular parts of the brain; just by electrical shock they destroy the inner memory. So if you are a religious man they will give you a shock treatment in the mind and all your memories – that you are religious, that you go to this church or you read this holy book, or you belong to this sect – will be destroyed. Then you can easily be converted into a communist because then you don’t know who you are.
And now these techniques have become available to the whole world. Every government now has the secrets. And the most dangerous thing that is going to happen soon all over the world will be not physical violence but psychological violence. You need not murder a man; you simply destroy a particular memory in him. He is brainwashed, now he will have to learn from abc, so he cannot fight with you. If you want to convert him into a communist or an anticommunist, first destroy the memory; then he becomes like a child, helpless. Then start the training again. Now a new memory will be created, a new learning, a new conditioning.
The atom bomb is not such a great danger as these secrets are because the very soul of man can be enslaved through them. If Jesus is born now in Soviet Russia or communist China, they will not crucify him; first they will try to destroy his memory. They cannot be successful with Jesus but they can be successful with you. They cannot succeed with Jesus because he is already unidentified with the memory. If you destroy the memory nothing is really lost because he lives in his consciousness, not in his memories. You don’t really have any consciousness separate from the memories, so if your memory is destroyed your consciousness is destroyed. You don’t know how to function without the memories.
So for the new generation, the coming world, meditation is a must because only that can protect you from political dictatorship – nothing else. They will not put you in jail or send you to Siberia – no, those things are just out of date now. They will simply put an electrical instrument around your head, and they will give particular electric shocks to the brain, and you will become just like a child. They will wash out the memories just as you can erase on a taperecorder. What is done there is
just an electrical stimulation and whatsoever is recorded is erased; then you can record again. The same is possible with the brain because the brain is a mechanism.
And when I say to die to the past, I mean do not get so attached to the brain that you do not know that you can exist without the brain. Knowing this, realizing this, that “Without the brain I CAN exist; I am consciousness and not the memories; memories are just my instruments,” you will become free from your own mind. And once you are free from your mind, no one can make a slave of you. Otherwise, everyone is trying to manipulate you to make you a slave.
Religions, so-called religions have done that. They go on manipulating your mind. When you were just a child they were trying to teach you that you were a Hindu or a Christian or a Catholic or a Protestant. They went on teaching you from the very childhood when you didn’t know anything; when you were not alert; when you were not aware; when you couldn’t recognize what is true and what is false. When you could not think, they started to teach you, to condition you. They made a Christian out of you or a Hindu or a Jaina or a Mohammedan. These are slaveries.
Now there is no need to get hold of children; even an old man can be made a child again by just washing his mind. Then he will have to learn from abc. And when you learn from abc you cannot argue, when you have to learn from abc you cannot disbelieve. That is why every religion wants to get hold of children and every religion tries to force some type of religious education because only in childhood.…
Really, if you cannot get hold of a child before seven years of age, you will never get hold of him. Only before seven years of age can you make a slave of him. Then he will never know that he is a slave because slavery goes deeper than his awareness. You cannot think that being a Christian you are a slave or being a Hindu you are a slave – or can you?
Society has played a trick upon you. When you were not fully alert they conditioned your mind. Now when you think, the conditioning has gone deeper than thinking. Whatsoever you think, that conditioning colors it. Even if you become anti-Christian and you were taught to be a Christian, your anti-Christianity will carry your Christianity with it. Even your anti-Christianity will be colored by the conditioning that was given to you. You will be obsessed with the same thing in the reverse order.
Friedrich Nietzsche was against Christianity, particularly against Christ. But he was brought up as a Christian. His whole life he struggled; his whole life he went on writing against Christ. But he was so much obsessed with Christ that when he went mad, in the last stage of his life before he became mad, he started signing his name “Anti-Christ, Friedrich Nietzsche.” That conditioning had gone so deep! You can become anti, but you cannot be indifferent.
Die to the past, be alive to the present, to the moment you are in – it will not destroy your mind. Really, it will give a rest to your restless mind. Your efficiency will grow, and there will be no effort. You will not NEED to remember. You will simply remember because this is the functioning of the mind; you need not make any effort.
I have been traveling all over this country for fifteen years, and I have known thousands and thousands of people. Even after ten years I have been again to the same town – I remember the faces, I remember the names. Even I was surprised: What is the matter? – and I had not made
any effort. But I am interested in people, that is all. If you are really interested in something, you will remember it; there is no need to make any effort.
Remembering is a mechanical functioning of the memory. If you are really interested in a person you will remember the face even after many lives. I remember many faces after many lives. You cannot forget them because there is no question of forgetting. The mechanical part of your brain just goes on recording everything. The only thing that is needed is your interest.
When you are interested your mechanism is focused on the person; it records just like the lens of a camera. If you are interested in a face the camera moves, it records. If I am interested in what you are saying my mind is focused; it records, it goes on recording. There is no need to make any effort. If you are not interested, then it will not record because then it is not focused.
So if you forget things it is because you are not interested. If you forget things it is because your mind is confused. If you forget things and cannot remember and are not efficient, it means that while you are seeing a face your many memories inside go on moving. Your mirror is not vacant; your lens is already overcrowded.
Someone is saying, “My name is Ram,” and you nod your head, yes, as if you have heard. But your mind is filled with so many things, you have not heard. And then you say, “Why have I forgotten the name?” Really, you never heard the name. You were not interested in the person – not so interested that your mind became silent.
Whenever you are interested the mind is silent – your whole being is open. The memories go on being recorded and whenever you need something it will come up. But it is not so easy with you. Because your mind is so much filled, whenever you need something everything gets entangled. Nothing is clearcut; everything penetrates, trespasses, every other thing. Nothing is clear. The clarity is not there; only confusion is there. Because of that confusion you are not efficient. You will be more efficient, and without any effort, if you become alert to the moment and do not allow the past to go on overburdening you.
The second question:
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I FEEL AND REALIZE THE FUTILITY OF DESIRING. THERE SEEMS TO BE NO AMBITION IN ME. BUT YET THERE IS A THIRST, A YEARNING, AND AN INNER SENSE OF UNFULFILLMENT. PLEASE EXPLAIN WHETHER THIS TOO IS A PART OF DESIRING.
Yes, this too is a part of desiring – the negative part. Everything has two parts, the positive and the negative. The positive part of desiring is to desire something, to be ambitious. To be aware of the object of desire is a positive desire. The negative desire is: one is not aware of the object of desire, but one is aware only of the thirst of desire – of the yearning.
These are the two parts. The subjective feeling of unfulfillment is the negative part of ambition and being obsessed with an object of desire is the positive part of ambition. Both are ambition. And
if you intellectually understand that desire is futile, the negative part will remain with you – if you INTELLECTUALLY understand that desire is futile and this is not an existential experience.
You have been hearing things, you have been listening and you have been reading. And Buddhas and Christs have been talking to the world and they have been saying that you are in misery because of desire, that you are in suffering because of desire – and they say they are in bliss because of desirelessness. And you have seen them: you have seen their eyes, you have seen their faces, you have seen the grace, the bliss, the ecstasy that just moves around them. Even in their shadow the ecstasy, the dance is there. You have seen them and you have heard them and they say if you desire you will be in suffering, if you do not desire you will be in ecstasy and bliss.
Now intellectually you can understand this, because desire creates tension, because desire creates the future, because desire creates expectations, and when it is not fulfilled you are in misery. Or even when it is fulfilled you are not in bliss. When it is fulfilled you feel that this is nothing – that this is nothing compared to the dream, compared to the hope. You fall in love with a person, a girl or a boy, you fall in love with a house, you fall in love with a car, and you think, “If this woman is achieved I will be in absolute bliss.” But this is your dream; no woman can fulfill it.
This is just fantasy; no real woman can fulfill it. Every real woman will be just a faint thing compared to it. But there is no fault on the woman’s part. This is your mind which goes on fantasizing. You create a fantasy, a romance, and you move high in the heavens. Then you meet the woman. If you cannot achieve her, if you cannot get possession of her, you will be in misery, because you had a dream and the dream remained unfulfilled. You will feel a constant pain in the heart.
But I tell you, if you meet her, if you can get her, you will be in a deeper misery, because at least the dream remains intact if you have not met her – you can go on dreaming. But if you meet her you will see that no woman lives in heaven. As you live on earth, she lives on earth. She is as earthly as you – even more. Woman is more earthly than man. She will shatter all your dreams. And when you awake from your dreaming, you will be in misery. Whether your dream is fulfilled or not, misery will be the result. Out of dreaming only misery results.
This you can understand. Your experience can also be helpful. Intellectually you can understand and then you can come to conclude that it is futile to desire – to be ambitious is futile; it leads to misery and hell. But this will stop only the positive desiring; the negative will remain. Really, you are still desiring – now desirelessness. You are now desiring a state of NON-DESIRE. Now desirelessness has become the object of desire. You will feel a yearning, a search, a thirst and an unfulfillment.
What is to be done now? What can be done? Intellectually nothing will happen to you: you will go on changing the object of desire and the negative part will go on pushing you into new desires. Live it. Do not believe in Buddha, do not believe in Jesus, do not believe in me. Live it. Desire and live, and experience desire in its totality. And do not hurry, do not make any haste to conclude. Your misery is because you make such hurried conclusions.
You are so susceptible to believing in anything because you do not want to go through experience. Experience may be painful – let it be. But only experience can help you. Premature conclusions, premature beliefs, will be of no help. You are simply wasting opportunities. Desire and desire intensely, I tell you: desire intensely and suffer!
Buddha comes to his conclusion not because of previous buddhas. Upani-shads were in existence; he could have read them. He was well educated, well cultured, he knew all the scriptures, but they didn’t help him. He moved through desire, he moved through experience; he suffered, he went through the fire. And only through his own experience did he come to conclude that desire is futile.
Your conclusion is not YOUR conclusion; that is the problem. Your conclusion is borrowed. You are really afraid to go through suffering, so before going through suffering you start believing. But suffering is a discipline. The only real discipline is suffering. Nothing real can be achieved without it.
And you are acting like small children: in their books, the answers are given in the back. Small children will just look at the answers. They get the answers but they do not know the process. The problem is given and the answer is given in the last chapter. They look at the answer and they know the answer, but this is not THEIR answer. They know the problem and they know the answer, but they do not know the process – how the answer is achieved.
You have been looking at the answers without going through the process. Answers are there. Buddhas have existed; they have said everything that can be said and you can memorize the answers, but without the process you will not be transformed. So forget the answers; that is what the Upanishads say. Knowledge is the barrier: forget knowledge. If you are ignorant, then you are ignorant. Start from your ignorance; do not start from anybody else’s knowledge.
It is better to start with your ignorance because that can lead you toward knowledge. But you always start with somebody else’s knowledge. Then you move in a false world, then you go on accumulating conclusions, and you know everything without knowing anything. You are in such a hurry. You say, “I do not want to go through the process; I want the answer.”
The answer can be given to you – but unless you move through the process, the answer will not be a lived answer. Unless lived, it is futile. You know desire is futile, you know anger is poison, you know greed leads to misery – you know everything. But that knowledge is of no use. Throw it! It is rubbish.
Just be aware of your state of mind: the yearning is there, the thirst is there, the unfulfillment is there. That means you are ready to desire. Now desire, and do not listen to buddhas: they are dangerous. Desire! Move! You will have to move your own way; you will have to suffer your own way. Nobody can escape suffering. The law is universal. Nobody can come to shortcuts; there are none. You will have to move your own way, you will have to pass through your own hells.
When you have passed through them, transcended them, have become richer, experienced them and a maturity has happened to you – only then will desire fall. Desire will disappear and then there will be no negative part to it. Then the total desire will disappear because you will come to realize this is nonsense. “I have been creating my own hell.” And this is not intellectual, this is not in the mind. Your total being, your whole being, will come to conclude and this conclusion will be through your experience, not through anybody else’s.
Then desire disappears without giving birth to another desire in a different guise. Otherwise you will go on changing the objects. Sometimes you desire wealth and then you feel misery. And then you conclude that this desire is misery, so you start desiring God or you start desiring heaven or you start
desiring liberation or you start desiring meditation, ecstasy – but you go on desiring. And if you go on desiring, you are simply changing the shape of the desire, the object of the desire. But DESIRE remains the same: YOU are not changing, you remain the same. You are moving in a pattern, in a circle. You are not moving anywhere.
Hence, I go on saying again and again, be aware – beware of Buddhas, Christs, Krishnas. Beware of me because I go on saying things to you which you can believe and then it is dangerous. When I say something, try to understand it; do not conclude through it. Conclusion must come through your own life; only then will it be a mutation. And do not be in a hurry. There is no hurry; time is eternal.
Experience! Be authentic to your experience and allow the conclusions to come only through your own individual particular search. The truth will happen to you but it will not happen to you if you go on borrowing it from others. That becomes a substitute truth. It creates more problems than it solves.
Your problems, as I see them, are ninety percent because of your borrowed knowledge. Only ten percent of problems are true. Ninety percent are false because they do not belong to you at all. First you start believing in a thing and then problems start to arise out of that belief. This is a borrowed problem which arises because you have believed, because you have concluded intellectually, rationally, that desire is futile. If this is really your conclusion, then how can unfulfillment still exist there? Unfulfillment is the seed of desire.
When you are unfulfilled it means desire: you want to seek fulfillment somewhere. When you are unfulfilled it means you are not that which you would like to be, you are not there where you would like to be. So desire, find, seek, move! Unfulfillment means discontentment with yourself. Fulfillment means: I am what I am; I am where I should be. Or wherever I am, I am absolutely content with me – fulfilled. Then there is no movement of desire.
Movement is there but that movement is of life, not of desire. I will go on moving and each movement will happen through my life energy, not through desire. Desire is through mind. Life goes on moving but I will move like a river. The very energy will create a movement but the movement will not be according to desire. I will not desire first and then move. Try to understand this distinction.
I am speaking to you. This speaking can be of two types: it can be a sheer movement of life energy, or it can be part of a desire. If I desire it, then I will have to rehearse it. Then before coming to you, in my mind I will desire you to be present. Then in my mind I will think what to say, what not to say, how to say it and how not to say it. Then I will plan it; then I have moved into the future. Then I will repeat it. Then if it is not up to the standard I had planned I will feel frustrated.
I have heard that once Mark Twain was coming back from a lecture hall where he had lectured. When he came back, his wife asked him, “How was the lecture?”
Mark Twain said, “What lecture are you asking about – the one I rehearsed before, or the one I actually delivered, or the one I wanted to deliver and was delivering instead in the car while coming back?”
If I think about it beforehand it is desire. If I simply come to you and it is a response, not planned, not thought about, it is a sheer movement of life energy, there has been no planning for it, then it is life moving. If it has been planned then it is mind desiring.
Movement will be there but it will be unplanned, spontaneous. Desire cripples movement. It doesn’t allow life energy itself to move. It plans, it chooses, it decides beforehand. Before the actual situation you have already decided. You will always be in difficulty because it is never going to be exactly the right response – because you cannot conceive of the situation beforehand. It always remains unknown. You will feel frustrated.
A mind which desires will always feel frustrated. Only a mind which doesn’t desire, which simply moves wheresoever life, the Brahman, leads it to – whether right or wrong, whether to hell or heaven, wheresoever the life energy leads, the one who is desireless moves within. Nothing can frustrate such a being. How? How can you frustrate him? And nothing can make YOU fulfilled. How can anyone make you fulfilled? With desire there is no meeting with fulfillment. With nondesire there is no meeting with frustration.
Be true and authentic to yourself and if you have not overcome desire do not believe that you have overcome it; that is not going to help. Know that you have not overcome. Know that ambition is there; know that as you are you are unfulfilled. You need something else. That need for something else... whether vague or not, whether you know what it is or not, makes no difference; you are not at this moment whole and total, at ease with yourself. You are not at home. Your home is somewhere else; you are searching for it.
Know it because this knowing will be good and helpful. Know it and move into desire. Suffer it! Feel the pain of it, the frustration of it, and allow life itself to come to a conclusion. Please don’t you conclude; allow life itself to come to its conclusion. And when life comes to its conclusion, desire falls without any substitute desire being created there. It simply falls down. Just like dead leaves fall from a tree, desire falls from you – total desire. Then there is no negative part hidden behind it. And when you are in the state of nondesiring, all that is blissful happens to you, all that is ecstatic happens to you. You flower for the first time. And when there is no unfulfillment, you are fulfilled AS YOU ARE.
But before that happens, if you go on borrowing it will be difficult: you are creating unnecessary barriers for yourself. The conclusions may appeal to you but that appeal is of no meaning. I can convince you about something but that conviction carries no meaning because it has been forced by me. I can argue, I can convince, and you may feel this is right. But that feeling will not help unless your life energy concludes it, unless it is an inner conviction which arises within you and is not forced from without.
That is why I say buddhas are dangerous – because they are so convincing. When you move around them there is every possibility that you will become a victim, every possibility that you will get convinced. Their very being is convincing. That is why so many religions are created, so many sects are there. Whenever a buddha happens, an enlightened one, necessarily you get convinced, you become hypnotized – and you borrow conclusions. And then for lives together you go on with those borrowed conclusions and they become a burden.
Die to that burden! Be authentic to yourself and try to find out where you are. Even if it is hell, accept that “I am in hell.” The very acceptance that you are in hell will create the situation where you can move out of it. But you live in hell and you go on believing that you are in heaven. This is sheer nonsense and nothing can come out of it.
The last question:
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT SOMETIMES YOU LIE AND OFFER CONDOLENCES FOR OUR FRUSTRATIONS. THEN WHEN ARE WE TO BELIEVE YOU AND HOW ARE WE TO KNOW IF YOU ARE TALKING TO US IN TRUTH OR IN TRICK?
Never believe me; do not believe me at all. Be alert. Whatsoever I say may all be lies; it may all be just a trick to give you consolation – just to help you to take a step ahead. Do not believe me! And it is difficult for you to decide when I am speaking truth and when I am speaking a lie. That is why I say wholesale: Do not believe me – because how can you decide? You do not know what the truth is; hence, how can you decide?
If you know the truth already, then there is no meaning for me, no use, in telling you any lies. But because you do not know and you cannot understand the language of truth, it will be absurd for you – you can understand only the language of lies.
But lies are of two types: there are lies which can lead you to further lies and lies which can lead you beyond them. For example, we are sitting here. If you have not known the outside ever, you do not know that flowers are there, trees are there, and the moon is in the sky. And if I tell you to come out – that the moon has come out and it is a full-moon night, so come out – you will not believe me. You will say, “What is night? What is the moon? What is the full moon?”
And there is nothing in this room by which I can show you that it is like this. And I have known the moon, and I have known the flowers and the open sky, and I want to share my bliss with you. I want that you should also come out, so I create a device, I use a lie: I say the house is on fire; you can understand that. You become afraid, you start trembling. And I create such a conviction in you that the house is on fire, that you start escaping from the room.
Of course, outside you will understand me. You will not say that I lied. You will be grateful; you will laugh. You will say, “There is no fire but now we can understand.” Only fire could have brought you out – nothing else – because that language you can understand. Suffering you can understand, bliss you cannot understand.
Hence, buddhas go on saying life is misery. It is not! They go on saying it is DUKKHA – misery, suffering, anguish. They are saying that the house of life is on fire, so escape from it. And they convince you because they have that freshness which comes to persons who have come out of the house. They have that perfume that comes to persons who have come out into the open sky; they bring that flavor. You become convinced because you see that what they say must be true: they have attained something and that attainment creates conviction. And when they say the house – the life – is on fire, you try to escape out of this house.
When you get out, you know it is a full-moon night and life was not suffering. Life appeared to be suffering because you had become imprisoned in a cage.
Life is vast, so you cannot know when I am lying or when I am saying the truth. And if you ask me to tell you when I am lying or when I am saying the truth, then the whole point will be lost. And even if I say that this is a lie and this is a truth, how can you believe me, whether I am still lying or not?
So it will be easier for you, if you can believe me, to believe TOTALLY. Or if you cannot believe me, then do not believe me at all. This will be easy: either think that whatsoever I am saying is true or whatsoever I am saying is a lie. These are the only two possibilities. Both ways you will be helped. I say that both ways you will be helped. You will not be in confusion.
If you believe me totally, that “whatsoever this man says is true,” this will help you. Not that whatsoever I say will be true, but ultimately you will find that it was the only thing that could have been helpful to you. But that you will come to know only afterwards.
If you do not believe me at all, that will also be good. That too is not easy. The easier course is to believe some things and not to believe other things. If you believe me totally or not at all, in either case you become total. In one case you are surrendered to me and you say, “Whether you lie or not, that is your business: I believe.” Then you become total; you are not divided. Or if you say, “Whether you say a truth or a lie, I do not believe you – you are a liar,” then too you are total, and totality helps.
But the easier course is to believe in some things and not to believe in other things. Why is it easier? It is easier because with whatsoever you want to believe you will think, “He is true,” and with whatsoever you do not want to believe you will think, “He is lying.” That will not be of much help; it is of NO help really. So do not choose. My advice is: do not believe at all – but if you think that the other will be good then believe totally.
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