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‌CHAPTER 2

2 February 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[The Enlightenment Intensive group is present. One member says: At first I didn’t like it, bu the second half of the group I liked very much.]

Always remember that even if you don’t like a certain thing, it is not necessarily bad. Liking and disliking makes no difference. Sometimes the thing that you like may be harmful, and vice versa: the thing that you don’t like at all may prove a great transformation. In fact that is more likely.

The thing that you don’t like is more likely to help you, because liking comes out of the past, liking comes out of your mind. The mind likes that which hts with it, and anything that fits with the mind is never going to change you. Anything whatsoever that fits with the mind will strengthen the same mind, will make it even stronger.

So something that the mind feels repelled by has to be explored. There is a possibility that it may prove a radical change in your life. And right now you misunderstand because you are identified too much with the mind. You don’t know what is really beneficial and what is not. Whatsoever you decide, you decide through the mind. You don’t know yet how to look at things without the mind interfering.

Now for example, this: if you had listened to the mind, the mind was telling you, ‘Leave! It is pointless, and why are you wasting your time? I don’t like it!’ That mind tries to say that you don’t like it, and you are so identified that you don’t make the distinction that this is the mind saying, ‘I don’t like it.’ But the mind’s liking or disliking is not your liking or disliking. You are separate from the mind, different from the mind.

So sometimes try that which the mind does not like, and sometimes don’t try that to which the mind feels attracted and likes. Go on playing with this game. By and by the mind and you become loose,

and then you have a tremendously new perspective. Then sometimes it happens that you can see a thing without the mind coming in, because now you are loose, not so tightly attached to each other.

This loosening comes only when you sometimes go on trying the thing that the mind does not like, and sometimes not trying the thing that the mind likes.

Gurdjieff used to use this technique very much.

Somebody would come who was a vegetarian and who was absolutely against meat-eating and non-vegetarian food. Gurdjieff would force him to eat non-vegetarian food. Now it was repelling – to a person who has never touched meat and to a person who has always preached vegetarianism there cannot be anything more repulsive. Suddenly this man says, ‘Eat meat, otherwise I don’t allow you here... otherwise leave me!’

Now he had to choose between Gurdjieff and vegetarianism – and that is too much! When you have come in close proximity to a person like gurdjieff it becomes very difficult not to choose him. To eat meat is nauseating for a person who has always been against it, but gurdjieff would force him.

Sometimes, to a meat-eater, Gurdjieff would say, ‘Stop meat-eating completely. Become vegetarian.’ For somebody who never drank he would go on forcing him to drink more and more till he was completely lost. To somebody who drank he would tell them to stop it. That was a way of loosening the mind from the person.

To somebody who hated manual work Gurdjieff would give manual work. He had a great insight into finding what people hated – and he would immediately find out what it wasAnd sometimes very

surprisingly.

Just a few days before, I was reading a memoir.… A doctor – Gurdjieff’s doctor, his own private physician – has written in his memoirs that the first time he came in contact with Gurdjieff the thing that impressed him was his tremendous insight.

A woman had come with this doctor to Gurdjieff for the first time. Gurdjieff used to see people only at the dining table every evening – thirty, forty, sometimes fifty and sometimes one hundred people in a small room, crowded. This woman had come with the doctor for the first time – a young beautiful woman – and she was sitting by the side of a very old woman.must have been like our bhakti

(italian and elderly, she is an ashramite), white-haired.

Gurdjieff used to prepare plates, and he would say to whom a plate should go. He prepared a plate and said, ‘It goes to the mum.’ So the people who took the plate thought he was indicating the old woman – naturally, because she was the oldest woman there and he had said, ‘This goes to the mum.’

But when the disciple took the plate to the old woman, Gurdjieff said, ‘No, the other one.’ The young woman was by the side of the old woman and nobody could believe why he was calling her ‘mum’. That young woman started crying! The doctor was also puzzled.

Only later on did he come to know that that woman was really a mum – she was a mother to her children, she was a mother to her husband too! She was mothering everybody... she was even mothering her own father. Her whole life was concentrated on that point.

Gurdjieff had an insight into where people were. In fact a master can work only when he has that insight, otherwise there is no work possible. And he will immediately bring out the thing that you don’t like. The woman started crying because that was the one thing she never liked to be told. Mm? that was one thing that used to hurt her very much. She knew it – it was like a wound. She had come for the first time and this man had caught hold of her!

Gurdjieff would always give just the opposite. To somebody who likes physical exercise very much, goes for a morning walk, evening walk, horse-riding, this and that, Gurdjieff would say to just sit silently and not to do anything. He would feel restless and would boil inside.

But this is the way the mind and you become loose.

When you don’t listen to the mind, a distance arises. So learn this one thing from this experience – don’t decide in a hurry.

Sometimes you don’t like a woman and she may prove the best companion. Sometimes you like the woman at the first sight – you ‘fall in love’ as it is said – and she may prove the worst enemy to you. That’s how it is happening all over the world: people fall in love at first sight and then they suffer their whole life. Because this is decided by the mind... and the mind is blind!

The mind has no awareness. Awareness is a totally different thing, far away from mind, and awareness becomes available only when the mind is no more making its chattering, its noise, so you can hear the still, small voice, from somewhere beyond the mind.

Keep it as a key, and sometimes go on trying something against the mind. Enjoy it, and you will be benefited tremendously.

[A sannyasin asks: I feel a little confused about what I call the will and surrender. It is something very difficult for me to find the right attitude towards surrendering.]

Don’t make a problem out of it. Surrendering is really nothing against the will. The moment you start thinking that surrendering is against the will, it looks like a problem.

Surrendering is not against the will at all – in fact it is a flowering of the will, it is the culmination of the will. Only a person who has tremendous will can surrender. A weak person cannot surrender. A weak person may say that he has surrendered, but he has nothing to surrender. He is hiding his impotence behind a beautiful word – surrender is a beautiful word, and you can hide behind it. But he has nothing to surrender! What will you surrender if you don’t have the will?

So to me, surrender and will are not opposites. Surrender is the final crescendo. So nothing to be worried about. With me, opposites are not opposites but complementaries – that has to be always remembered. Whenever you are creating some division and thinking in terms of opposites, always remember that my insistence is that there are no opposites, everything is complementary. It is only great will that makes it possible for surrender to happen. They are not against each other.

So don’t create any conflict and don’t start thinking, ‘What is my way: will or surrender?’ Wherever you are and whatsoever you are, learn to accept it. If there is will, good – you have to grow your will.

One day when a grown-up will is there, a mature will is there, you will see – now the ripe will wants to fall like a ripe fruit.

Only unripe fruits resist – a ripe fruit simply falls of its own accord. When a real man of will comes to me he immediately surrenders. There is no problem about it... he does not hesitate at all. But when the will is not ripe, then the hesitation... natural hesitation. And there is nothing wrong in it – it Simply shows that you need a little more mature will. So wherever you are, go on moving in the same direction.

I am not interested in changing your directions and I don’t want to give you something towards which you were not growing on your own – no, not at all! Whatsoever your goal, wherever your natural movement, I help it that way. If you find that will is the thing that goes naturally with you, go into it deeply, go totally. Then that is your discipline and that is my teaching for you. Go into it as deeply.… Get in tune with your will. And one day you will find that now the fruit is ripe and the fruit wants to fall to the earth. The ripe will, of its own accord, changes its quality and be-comes surrender.

And this has to be the basic key for all opposites in every path wherever people divide. Somebody comes and says, ‘What is my path – reason or love?’ Unless you have a very grown-up reason you will not be able to fall into love. You will always be afraid, hesitant, reluctant; you will go only so far, because the reason will not be able to decide totally. Only a very mature reason can decide totally.

Somebody comes and asks, ‘What is my right attitude: belief or faith? Reason or faith? Action or inaction? Feminine or masculine? Yin or yang?’ And my approach is the same: that wherever you are finding yourself naturally, go in the same direction. If you can go into the same direction far enough, you will turn in the other direction automatically – because it is a wheel and everything turns into its opposite. That’s the whole secret of life. The day turns into night, the night turns into day.…

There is no need to be worried about what to choose – day automatically turns into night and night automatically turns into day; life turns into death, and death turns into life again. That’s how it moves, one has simply to accept!

The buddhists have the right word for it – ‘tathata’; one has to accept the suchness of things. Whatsoever is, is – accept it, and don’t hanker for the opposite. Go headlong into it, to the farthest end of it, and suddenly you will see that it has turned into its polar opposite... a miracle. And then you know that life is one.

Will and surrender are two polarities of one energy, like negative and positive electricity. The positive electricity cannot exist without the negative – neither can the negative exist without the positive.

So will and surrender both exist in your being and both exist together. But will is more primary, so one has to go through the will. Surrender is more ultimate, so one has to go into surrender one day... but there is no need to force it, there is no need to cultivate it, because all that is cultivated is false. Only the natural, the spontaneous, that which comes on its own, is beautiful and true!

So simply accept your being, whatsoever, wheresoever it is – accept it totally. Let its suchness be welcomed – that this is where you are, this is how you are. You cannot be anywhere else and you

cannot be anybody else. This is the way you are and this is the only way you are. This is the only way you can be in this moment. I am not talking about other moments, you will change, but in this moment this is the only way you can be. So why create anxiety ? Why become divided, split?

Live the moment! Live the suchness of it and live it totally. And out of this lived moment, out of this lived suchness, the other will come – it will arise on its own. And when it comes on its own it is tremendously beautiful.

Surrender will come, but that is the flowering. Will is like the seed and surrender is like the flower. Wait... nothing to be worried about. It is on the way, mm?

[A sannyas couple ask about their relationship. The woman had had a car accident which caused many changes in her. The man said they had opposite temperaments; he felt blocked in expressing love.]

I understand. It is something very fundamental to be understood. First, we are always attracted towards the opposite person, the opposite type. People fall in love with the opposite type, because if you are in love with somebody who is just like you, you will feel as if you are in love with your twin – and that will be monotonous. It will be as if you are in love with your own picture, with your own mirror-reflection.

Only very egoistic persons fall in love with the same type of person – very very egoistic people... narcissistic. They fall in love with a person who is just like them, a carbon copy. But then they have other problems, their ego creates the problem.

They don’t allow the other any freedom whatsoever, because any freedom seems to be a betrayal. The other has to be just a replica, exact and precise. The other should not be allowed nay individuality. If the other asserts any individuality there is conflict – and how can the other be just a replica? Then there is pretension, hypocrisy. People wear masks and pretend, but then love disappears; love is not possible.

In that way there is a problem, because the person is only in love with his own ego and he wants the other to fit exactly with his ego – that’s not possible. Either the other is killed – then there is a dead person, and you cannot love a dead person.And if the other is alive you cannot love, because you

want him to be just a replica, just a copy to your being; so you are asking the impossible. Either way there is frustration. But this happens in only one percent of cases.

In ninety-nine percent of cases the other type of problem arises – we fall in love with the opposite type of person. In fact that is real heterosexuality. It is not only a question of a man falling in love with a woman; it is really two polarities falling in love with each other.

That’s why I am not in favour of homosexual tendencies – because they are egoistic. You are falling in love with somebody who is just like you – a man or a woman: a woman falling in love with a woman or a man falling in love with a man. That is very egoistic and juvenile, immature.

Heterosexuality brings another type of problem, because it brings great challenges. The first challenge is that the other is other – you are a man and she is a woman – and from there

temperaments are different. And not only that, in other ways also, we always love the person who is really opposite to our temperament in every way.

It almost always happens that a very intellectual person will fall in love with a woman who is completely non-intellectual. Miller fell in love with Marilyn Monroe. Mm? she was just a cow. She suffered very much because she wanted to be an intellectual. This man, Miller, was a great intellectual and she felt inferior. That created conflict. She tried but she could not do anything because she was really a totally different type – a body type who lives through instincts... and that was her beauty; that was her charm. That’s why Miller had fallen in love with her.

Miller’s intellect was a great attraction for her, because she always felt that she should have gone to the university, should have great degrees – and she never even went to school, even to high school; she was not even a matriculate.

So Miller was a pinnacle of intellect – a great, intelligent person, very argumentative. She had fallen in love with that intellectual and miller had fallen in love with that instinctive, intuitive being.

But now there is a problem. They have fallen in love – that’s okay – but they are so different that they never meet anywhere. She lives a very instinctive life, temperamental; in one moment she is angry, in another moment she is loving; in one moment she is ready to kill or to commit suicide. And this is very difficult for an intellectual, because he moves through reason, step by step. His working is that of syllogism and he cannot understand what type of things are happening. This looks nonsense, insane, but that’s why he has fallen in love.

Now this woman cannot understand what this logic and this mathematics and cleverness is, why there are always calculations and why one should be rational. Why not irrational? What is wrong in being irrational?

Marilyn Monroe committed suicide. Before she committed suicide she wrote a letter to a friend and in that letter she writes, ‘I could not make it with Miller, and I know that there was no possibility of finding a better man.’ She left – she divorced, she married thrice – but every time it was a failure, because she would always be attracted to something which was against her temperament. The people who would be attracted to her were attracted to the opposite, and then there was conflict.

Now this is the problem: attraction and conflict come out of the same reason – attraction out of the opposition and conflict out of the opposition. So lovers continue to fight... they remain intimate enemies. That enmity can only be dropped if you really become very understanding.

So my suggestion is that this is not your case in particular, this is the case in general. All love affairs, more or less, come to this point – they have to come, because from the very beginning the affair is doomed. The attraction is towards the opposite – how can you avoid the conflict? The conflict is implied in the attraction itself. This is the trouble, it is in-built.

So once two lovers have settled, the attraction disappears – because now you have become familiar with each other; the attraction is bound to settle. Now there will not be honeymoon peaks – you will live on a plain ground. Once the attraction settles there are only peaks of conflict. When the honeymoon is there and the peaks of honeymoon are there, the conflict is not apparent. Mm? it is

deep in the valleys far away. You can forget about it, you may not even think about it, you may not even dream about it. All honeymoons are beautiful but one cannot live in the honeymoon forever. That will be like flying in the aeroplane, always and always and always.

You have to land and settle, because you cannot live on that honeymoon height. The altitude is too high and it is difficult to breathe on that altitude for long. One has to come down and settle – and one has to settle on the earth.

Once you settle and the marriage has come to the normal, there will only be peaks of conflict; they are the compensatory peaks. With whomsoever you had the honeymoon you will have these peaks also. That’s why in the east...

The east is very cunning and clever – they dropped the whole phenomenon of love completely. Seeing this problem, and the problem is such that it cannot be avoided, the east completely dropped the love affair. Marriage has to be settled – love is not to be allowed. Once love is not allowed there are no honeymoon peaks. If you can destroy the honeymoon peaks there are no conflict peaks. That’s the whole logic of the east – very cunning logic – but then there is no romance left.

In fact, the woman and the man who are going to marry are not even to see each other; the parents will settle the whole thing. The whole thing is settled on the plain ground. Their finances have to be reckoned with, the family’s status has to be reckoned with, the health, the health of the last two, three generations of the family – whether somebody has been mad, had cancer, tb, this and that – all these things have to be taken care of. Just one thing has to be left out: love, because that is dangerous.

So from the very beginning, in the east, the marriage starts on the plain ground; they don’t allow any peaks. Then there is no conflict either... but that, too, doesn’t seem to be good. It is as if just because of thorns you destroy the roses. Seeing that the thorns always come with the roses, the east has destroyed the roses completely so there are no thorns.

The western love affair is more hectic, more dangerous, more maddening, because the west has decided to keep the roses, but then those thorns are there, and sooner or later they hurt.

So what has to be done is to first think of it as a general case. I insist on that – to think of it as a general case. Why do I insist? Because once you see something as general, you become more objective. Then it is not something in particular for you. It is not that something has gone wrong between [you both]; [you] are irrelevant. It is something that always goes wrong between every [couple].

Once you have seen that this is a general case – degrees may differ but the basic thing does not differ – you have a more objective observation and things can be easily solved. Then you are not personally involved. You have a little distance.

Whenever things go well, enjoy – whenever they don’t, don’t pay too much attention to them. So whenever you can be in a good mood and together, be together, otherwise be separate... because we are not here to cripple each other. If we cannot make the other happy then it is better that we should not come into the picture at all.

So whenever you are both feeling good, happy, meet, commune, love each other, but when you feel that now your temperaments are asserting themselves, there is no point in living together; leave each other alone. That will help much, because when you are left alone there is no point in being angry and sad. And there is no necessity to go through all torture – it is not worth it. What is the point of continuously torturing each other? Then you are some sort of a masochist or sadist; it is ill.

Once you understand and she understands that this is the thing – if we can be happy, we have to be together, if we cannot be happy, then we separateOnce that thing is decided, things will change,

because I don’t think that you want to be separate. Once that dagger is there, hanging over you, things will settle.

And don’t try to change each other, because that never, never happens. People go on hoping and waste their whole life. You will try to change her and she will try to change you – that is nonsense! Why bother? If you can love the person as he is, love. If you cannot love the person as he is, leave! If it is difficult to leave, make an arrangement, have an agreement, that whenever you both feel good, invite each other, be together, but the moment that you feel that something is going wrong just say good-bye, be separate.

So first start by a provisional arrangement – be together only when you are happy. We should only be with somebody when we are happy, otherwise not. Why? It is better to be happy and separate than to be unhappy and together.

If you really love each other you will sacrifice your madness, your anger, for your love. Love needs sacrifice – and we don’t sacrifice anything! We are ready to sacrifice love for other things: for small things you become angry and you never think that you are sacrificing love for it! It is trivia. When you look at it you know that it is foolish. But small things put together, one day destroy the whole love. There are not big things.

If you ask a couple, ‘For what things are you fighting?’ they feel shy, awkward – they can’t say exactly what things. They say just ‘such and such’, but to exactly put those things on the list, they feel foolish, stupid, because these things are not worth anything.

So let it be very clear that either your love is sacrificed for your small foolishnesses, or your small foolishnesses have to be sacrificed for love. Now it is up to you! If you want to save the love, sacrifice your foolishnesses. Otherwise I don’t see the point of why you should be together. Even if you love, that is not enough excuse to torture.

That continuous saying, ‘I love, I love,’ seems to be a trick of the mind, because if you love, really love the person, you would like him or her to be happy. Otherwise what is love for? It should be a blessing, but it doesn’t seem to be a blessing. Out of one hundred, in ninety-nine cases it is a curse. The greatest curse that can happen to a man is love!

But the problem is that people cannot live alone. They are not capable of being alone, so they have to be with somebody. They have to settle and accept all sorts of nonsense that grows out of it. Because people cannot stand on their own and they are children and they need somebody to lean on, this whole nonsense continues.

But you are both growing, and you both have to take more courageous steps. If there really is love then love wants that everything else should be sacrificed. Make it a deliberate, conscious effort of sacrifice. If you cannot sacrifice those foolish things please don’t say that you love, because then it is meaningless. Only your sacrifice will prove that you love.

And what am I asking that you sacrifice? Anger, hatred, jealousy, this and that – all nonsense! If you cannot sacrifice even these things, then what else can you sacrifice? People say sometimes that they are ready to die for the other, but they cannot drop a little thing like anger... and they are ready to die! It doesn’t seem possible. They are just fooling around with the idea, because who is going to ask you to die?

So make it a point: sacrifice all nonsense. And if you cannot, sacrifice love. Be courageous either way.

For one month both try to sacrifice all nonsense. And if you cannot, after one month tell me how things are. Then separate. It is not good to destroy each other continuously. Let her be with somebody else – she may be happy – and you may be happy with somebody else. Why destroy both lives?

But I don’t see that there is any need to separate. I am making it clear so that you know what you have to sacrifice, so you don’t hope in a wrong direction. I am making the situation completely hopeless so things become clear. For one month both sacrifice for love.

And remember, I am not saying that you have to ask him to sacrifice, or he has to ask you to sacrifice, because that is not sacrifice. You are not to ask him to sacrifice. You are not to say to him, ‘Osho has said – now sacrifice.’ (laughter) That is for him! [He] will do his work – you have to do your work, otherwise you will go home and you will say, ‘Now...!’ (laughter) I’m not saying that!

After one month, come again, then we will see, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says: Every afternoon around two o’clock I feel I need to lie down and all my energy feels very very strong, at a point here (indicating head).I want to die!]

That very desire prevents you. That very desire comes from your ego. Who is this ‘I’ who wants to die? That is going to be your last achievement, the last ego-fulfillment – that you want to be egoless. Why ? When the whole world is so full of ego, only chidvilas wants to become egoless. That is very egoistic, isn’t it so? (laughter) When the whole world is so full of ego you have also to be with the ego. Why should you be egoless? When the whole world is ignorant why do you want to be enlightened? There is nothing else to do about it. This is the whole game, the same game: chasing your tail again and again! Now egolessness is the goal. A great spiritual something has to happen to you – you cannot be satisfied. This is greed! Why can’t you accept things as they are?

Now your whole effort is creating anxiety. Accept – in deep acceptance the mind disappears. Accept the ego and the ego will die, because when you accept there is no point in the ego being alive. How can it be alive? It lives through ambition, it lives through desire. Something has to be achieved: power, prestige, spirituality, nirvana. Something has to be achieved; an object is there.

The ego lives through projecting new goals. If you accept that whatsoever is, is, there is no projection and the ego disappears. There is nothing to project – nowhere to go: chidvilas is chidvilas! When one has accepted, one accepts so totally that there is not even a slight effort to be somebody else.

This is real transformation – not to desire transformation.

[The sannyasin says: I see it as being a wall. I would like it to be broken.]

So let it be there... let it be the wall! Everybody is facing it. You want something special which is not happening to anybody – that’s the trouble. You want to become a buddha, fast and instant, and that is not happening, so you become very much disturbed. That will never happen – it was not happening even to buddha himself. When he was trying he was in the same mess as you are!

For six years he was trying everything – standing on his head, fasting, mantram, kundalini, and chakras – and nothing was happening! He knew that nothing was happening, and he was chasing it like a mad dog. Then one day he recognised the fact that this was the whole ego effort – in a new direction but it was the same game!

In that moment of recognition he dropped all projection, all ambition; he rested under the tree. For the first time in millions of lives. he rested... because a mind can rest only when there is no ambition – otherwise, how can you rest? You are after it in the day, you are after it in the night, you are after it awake, you are after it asleep – how can you rest? An ambitious mind knows no rest.

For the first time he was really relaxed. There was nowhere to go and there was nothing to do, so how to create restlessness? Everything simply collapsed, all projections dropped, all dreams simply disappeared.

That night he slept in absolute stillness, in great restfulness; the relaxation was total. And in the morning when the last star was fading, he opened his eyes – for no reason; there was no motivation now. There was no motivation to even open the eyes.

Every other day, every other morning, he was awake with the motivation – now again he has to do this and that and meditate and do austerities and go to this teacher and read that scripture; there was motivation. That morning there was nowhere to go and there was no motivation. Just try to comprehend those eyes without motivation.…

He opened the eyes because now the sleep was over – not that there was any motivation to open the eyes; there was no need to close them, that’s all; it was negative. He opened the eyes and with the last star disappearing he became enlightened. The wall you are talking about disappeared, because now there was no motivation.

The motivation is the cause of the wall. It is your own motivation that is hindering you! So drop all motivations!

And I am not saying to create a new motivation, because when you are nodding your head, I know why you are nodding! (laughter) I know! I exactly know why you are nodding your head. You are saying, ’Right, bhagwan! So now let this be the motivation! So now I will try! Here is your [sannyasin]

– I will try! I will try my best to drop all motivation.’ But again you have created a motivation, and you have missed!

This is just an understanding – not something to be done... just pure understanding – that motivation is the cause of all suffering. Understanding this, motivations disappear... not that you drop them! Understanding this – that motivation is the cause of all suffering – motivation disappears. It is no more in your being, because your understanding becomes a light and the darkness disappears.

It is not that one day you become enlightened, one day you suddenly find that you were always enlightened, but because of this continuous motivation – to do this, to do that, to be this, to be that

– you were not able to see what you are, what you have always been! You have been missing your reality because of your desires.

Those desires are creating so much smoke that the flame of your being is lost. When the smoke is not there the flame burns bright, clear and bright, sharp, and then you know who you are. Then there is nothing to do, achieve, nothing to be desired. All is herenow, in your own being.…

The problem is very basic, because whenever such things are said your mind immediately translates them into the language of desire, and again you miss! So again and again you will bring the same problem and again and again I will explain to you, hoping that one day your mind will be tired of translating it and you will be able to listen directly.

I was reading the diary of an old indian man. He is ninety years old and still alive. He was a small raja – Raja Mohendra Pratap Singh – and a very great revolutionary.

He is very old, so he has been in contact with all sorts of people – lenin, stalin, mao and ho chi minh

– all the revolutionaries of the world. He has been travelling continuously... a very eccentric man.

I was reading in his diary that when he went to see lenin, the translator – the person who was translating – later on told him, ‘Whenever you said “religion” I translated it as “communism”.’ He said, ‘What nonsense! But that makes the whole thing absolutely wrong!’

But the man said, ‘That’s what translators are ordered to do in russia. If somebody says “religion” we have to translate that as “communism”!’ (laughter)

So when his talk was translated and people were clapping, then he knew later on (with a chuckle) why they were clapping! – because he was praising religion and they were hearing communism being praised. He was saying that man cannot live without religion and the translator was saying that man cannot live without communism, and people were clapping!

But the translator said, ‘Only one word I have changed – nothing else! (laughter) And that much you have to allow, because communism is our religion,’ he said. ‘So we are not doing anything wrong; commun-ism is our religion and marx is our prophet.’

This is how things go when you translate – and your mind continuously translates everything. It immediately turns into a desire; that is the basic trick of the mind. Talk about desirelessness and the mind says, ‘Okay, now we will have to create this desirelessness, so I will desire desirelessness.’ Tell

somebody, ‘Don’t think and in a state of no-thinking meditation will happen,’ and he will say, ‘Okay, I will try not to think.’ And now he continuously thinks not to think, that’s all! It is a very vicious circle.

So just watch it, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says: I have been alone or on my own now for ten days or so... I felt so incomplete or I saw myself as incomplete, and always needing somebody else to comfort me. I just saw that.]

But what is wrong in being incomplete? And what is wrong in being in relationship just to be completed by somebody else? That’s how things are. As far as the body is concerned we are incomplete. As far as the mind is concerned we are incomplete – not as much as the body, but we are still incomplete. The mind can exist alone more easily than the body. As far as the innermost being is concerned, the self is concerned, we are not as incomplete as the mind – very little, just a little incomplete... ninety-nine percent complete, only one percent missing.

The deeper you go, the more complete and more independent you will become. As the body, one is incomplete – a man is a man, the woman is a woman; the woman needs the man, the man needs the woman. Every day food is needed otherwise one will die. Water is needed, air is needed. One can live without food for three months but one cannot live without air for more than eight minutes. We are incomplete at the level of the body. The mind is a little more independent but not very much, because the mind is still divided into man and woman. And the mind also depends on the body and through the body depends on everything else that the body depends on.

Beyond the mind and body is your soul – that is far more independent But that too depends on god. So there comes a moment in the innermost core when you are no more, only god is; then only independence is. Only god is independent,

Sufis say, ‘Only god has the right to say, “I”.’ Everybody else is just pretending to be an ‘I’ but is not, because everybody is just a fragment. Only the whole can say ‘I’, because the whole has the centre.

I can understand your problem, but accept that all these levels are your levels. Your body is yours, your mind is yours. Accept them, and by and by understanding will arise through more experience.

You will become independent one day but that independence will happen at the very core of your being. And right now there is no hurry... because these things are also needed: experience of love is needed – it helps. The misery that comes through love is needed – it helps. Good and bad, all that happens, is needed; sadness, happiness, is needed. They are all climates. In these climates one becomes more and more seasoned, and one day one becomes really independent; then nothing is needed. But don’t be in a hurry, because nothing happens in a hurry. One has to go very slow-ly, very patiently.

So even if you want to hurry, hurry very slowly! (laughter) It will change – nothing is to be worried about. But accept every level of your being, don’t reject anything.

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