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

mins

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

Chapter title: Die Living

5 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7607050

ShortTitle:

BELOV205

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

97

mins

THE MAN THAT BREATHES

LIVES ON THE AIR,

AND THE OTHER, UNSEEN,

RESTS ABOVE REACH.

BETWEEN THE TWO

MOVES ANOTHER MAN

AS A SECRET LINK.

WORSHIP KNOWINGLY.

IT IS A SPORT

AMONGST THE THREE OF THEM.

MY SEARCHING HEART,

WHOM DO YOU SEEK?

BETWEEN THE DOORS

OF BIRTH AND DEATH,

STANDS YET ANOTHER DOOR,

WHOLLY INEXPLICABLE.

HE WHO IS ABLE

TO BE BORN

AT THE DOOR OF DEATH,

IS DEVOTED ETERNALLY....

DIE BEFORE DYING,

DIE LIVING.

RELIGION is a very complex phenomenon. Its complexity has to be understood.

There are seven types of religions in the world. The first type is ignorance-oriented.

Because people cannot tolerate their ignorance, they hide it. Because it is difficult to know that one does not know, it is against the ego, people believe. Their belief systems function to protect their egos. They are helpful, but in the long range they are very harmful. In the beginning they seem to be protecting, but finally they are very destructive. The very orientation is in ignorance.

Religion is light, religion is understanding, religion is awareness, religion is authenticity.

But a major part of humanity remains in the first type of religion. It is simply to avoid the reality, to avoid the gap that one feels in one's own being, to avoid the black hole of ignorance.

The people of the first type are the fanatics. They cannot even tolerate that there can be other sorts of religions in the world. Their religion is THE religion. Because they are so afraid of their ignorance, if there is some other religion also then they will become suspicious, then doubt will arise. Then they will not be so certain. To gain certainty they become very stubborn, madly stubborn. They cannot read others' scriptures, they cannot listen to other nuances of truth, they cannot be tolerant to other revelations of God.

THEIR revelation is the only revelation, and their prophet is the only prophet. Everything else is absolutely false. These people talk in terms of absolute, while a man of understanding is always relative.

These people have done great harm to religion. Because of these people, religion itself looks a little stupid. Remember not to be a victim of this first sort. Almost ninety percent of humanity lives in this first sort of religion, and that is in no way better than irreligion.

Maybe it is worse -- because an irreligious person is not fanatic. An irreligious person is more open, at least ready to listen, ready to talk things out, ready to argue, ready to seek and inquire. But the first type of religious person is not even ready to listen.

When I was a student in the university I used to stay with one of my professors. His mother was a very devout Hindu; completely uneducated, but very religious.

One day on a cold winter night, fire was burning in the room in the fireplace, and I was reading RIG VEDA. She came by the way and she asked, "What are you reading so late in the night?" Just to tease her, I said, "This is the Koran." She jumped over me, took away the RIG VEDA and threw it in the fireplace and said, "Are you a Mohammedan?

How do you dare to bring the Koran in my house!"

Next day I told her son, my professor, that, "Your mother is a Mohammedan" -- because this sort of thing has only been known to be done by Mohammedans.

Mohammedans burnt one of the greatest treasures of the world, the library of Alexandria.

The library was the greatest in the ancient world. The fire continued for almost six months, the library was so big. It took six months for it to be burnt down completely. And the man who burnt it was a Mohammedan, Calipha. His logic is the logic of the first type of religion. He came with a Koran in one hand and with a burning torch in the other, and he asked the librarian, "I have a simple question. In this big library, millions of books are there...."

Those books contained all that humanity had learned up to that time, and it was really more than we know now. That library contained every information about Lemuria, Atlantis, and all the scriptures of Atlantis, the continent that disappeared into the Atlantic.

It was the ancient-most library, a great preserve. Had it still been, humanity would have been totally different -- because we are rediscovering many things which had already been discovered.

This Calipha said, "If this library contains only that which is contained in the Koran, then it is not needed; it is superfluous. If it contains more than is contained in the Koran, then it is wrong. Then it has to be destroyed immediately. Either way it has to be destroyed. If it contains the same as the Koran, then it is superfluous. Why manage such a big library unnecessarily? The Koran is enough. And if you say that it contains many more things than the Koran, then those things are bound to be wrong, because the Koran is THE

truth."

Holding the Koran in one hand, he started the fire with the other hand -- in the name of the Koran. Mohammed must have cried and wept that day in heaven, because in his name, the library was being burnt. This is the first type of religion. Always remain alert, because this stubborn man exists in everybody.

I was reading just the other night....

The two old codgers had equal reputations for being stubborn. When they encountered each other in situations where one had to give in, a third party usually had to settle the issue. One day the old fellows, each driving a large load of hay, met on a narrow lane.

Both determined not to give an inch.

Finally one said to the other, "I am prepared to stay here as long as you want to wait." He took out his newspaper and began to read. The other filled his pipe and smoked contentedly. After half an hour of silence he leaned forward and called out to his neighbor, "Would you mind letting me read the paper when you are through?"

THIS stubborn man exists in everybody, and this is the lowest type of man. It exists in Hindus, it exists in Mohammedans, it exists in Christians, Buddhists, Jains -- it exists in everybody

And everybody has to be aware not to get caught. Only then can you rise to higher sorts of religion.

The problem with this first type of religion is that we are almost always brought up in it.

We are conditioned in it, so it becomes almost normal. It looks normal. A Hindu is brought up with the idea that others are wrong. Even if he is taught to be tolerant, that tolerance is of one who knows towards others who don't know. A Jain is ABSOLUTELY

brought up with the belief that only he is right; others are all ignorant, stumbling, groping in darkness. This conditioning can become so deep that you may forget that this is a conditioning, and that you have to go above it.

Mulla Nasrudin was telling a friend his future through palmistry. He said, "You will be poor and unhappy and miserable until you are sixty."

"Then what?" asked the man hopefully.

"By that time," said Nasrudin, "you will be used to it."

That's the problem: one can become used to a certain conditioning, and one can start thinking as if it is one's nature, or as if it is the truth. So one has to be very alert and watchful to find this lowest possibility in oneself and not get caught in it.

Sometimes we go on working hard in transforming our lives, and we go on believing in the first type of religion. The revolution is not possible -- because you are trying something which is so low that it cannot be really religious. The first type of religion is just religion in name; it should not be called religion.

One man was saying to another, "My son-in-law, the doctor, has been treating a patient for yellow jaundice for twenty years. He just found out the man was Chinese."

"Ain't that something?" said the other man.

"What is terrible is, he cured him."

Twenty years treating a man for yellow jaundice -- he may be a Chinese, but how long can he protect himself? If continuously you work on yourself with a wrong attitude, your nature starts yielding. You start functioning the way you want to function. Yes, the habit can become second nature. Unfortunately, sometimes it becomes first nature, and nature is completely forgotten.

The characteristic of the first sort of religion is imitation. It insists on imitation: imitate Buddha, imitate Christ, imitate Mahavir, but imitate. Imitate somebody. Don't be yourself, be somebody else. And if you are very stubborn you can force yourself to be somebody else.

You will never be somebody else. Deep down you cannot be. You will remain yourself, but you can force so much that you almost start looking like somebody else.

Each man is born with a unique individuality, and each man has a destiny of his own.

Imitation is crime, it is criminal. If you try to become a Buddha, you may become an imitation Buddha. You may look like Buddha, you may walk like Buddha, you may talk like Buddha, but you will miss. You will miss all that life was ready to deliver to you.

Because Buddha happens only once. It is not in the nature of things to repeat. God is so creative that He never repeats anything. You cannot find another human being in the present, in the past, or in the future, who is going to resemble you exactly. It has never happened. Man is not a mechanism. He is not like Ford cars on an assembly line; you can produce millions alike, exactly alike. Man is a soul, is individual. Imitation is poisonous.

Never imitate anybody, otherwise you will be a victim of the first sort of religion, which is not religion at all.

Then there is the second type. The second type is fear-oriented.

Man IS afraid, the world IS a strange world, and man wants to be secure, safe. In childhood the father protects, the mother protects. But there are many people, millions of them, who never grow beyond their childhoods. They remain stuck somewhere, and they still need a father and a mother. Hence God is called the Father or the Mother. They need a divine Father to protect them; they are not mature enough to be on their own. They need some security.

One psychologist, Winnicott, has been working with a particular problem with small children for many years, and he has discovered many beautiful things. They are pertinent.

You may have watched small children with their teddy bear, or their toy, their special toy, or their blanket, or something that has a special personality to the child. The teddy bear...you cannot replace the teddy bear. You may say that you can find a better one, but that doesn't matter. There is a love relationship between the child and HIS teddy bear. His teddy bear is unique; you cannot replace it. It becomes dirty, it becomes smelly, rotten, but the child goes on carrying it. You cannot find a new one, a fresh one. Even parents have to tolerate it. Even they have to respect, because a child feels offended. If the parents are going to travel, they have to tolerate the teddy bear also; they have to treat it almost as a member of the family. They know this is foolish, but for the child it has significance.

What significance does the teddy bear have for the child? It is objective in a way. It is there, outside the child; it is part of reality. Certainly it is not just imagination, it is not just subjective; it is not a dream, it is there. But it is not totally there; many of the child's dreams are involved in it. It is object, objective, but much subjectivity is involved in it.

For the child it is almost alive. The child has projected many things onto the teddy bear.

He talks to the teddy bear, sometimes he becomes angry and throws it away, then says'I am sorry' and takes it back. It has a personality, almost human. Without the teddy bear he cannot go to sleep. Holding, hugging, he goes to sleep; he feels secure. With the teddy bear the world is okay, everything is okay. Without the teddy bear he is suddenly alone.

So the teddy bear exists in a totally new dimension which is neither subjective nor objective. Winnicott calls it 'the transitory realm': a little objective and a little subjective.

Many children grow physically, but they never grow spiritually, and they need teddy bears all their lives. Your images of God in the temple are nothing but teddy bears.

So when a Hindu goes into the Hindu temple, he sees something which a Mohammedan cannot see. The Mohammedan can only see a stone statue. The Hindu sees something which nobody else can see; it is his teddy bear. It is objectively there, but not totally objective. Much subjectivity of the worshipper is projected on it; t functions as a screen.

You go to a Jain temple. You may be a Hindu, but in a Jain temple you will not feel any reverence arising in you. Sometimes you may even feel a little offended, because Mahavir, his statue, is nude, naked. You may feel a little offended. You may like to go out as soon as possible; you may not feel any respect. But then there comes a Jain with tremendous respect; it is his teddy bear, and he feels very protected.

So whenever you are in fear, you start remembering God. Your God is a by-product of your fear. When you are feeling good, unafraid, you don't bother. There is no need.

THE second type of religion is fear-oriented. It is very ill.

It is almost neurotic -- because maturity only comes to you when you realize that you ARE alone, and you have to be alone, and you have to face the reality as it is. These transitory teddy bears are just of your imagination; they are not going to help. If something is going to happen, it is going to happen; the teddy bear cannot protect you. If death is going to happen, it is going to happen. You go on calling to God, but protection cannot come to you. You are calling nobody, you are simply calling out of fear. Maybe calling loudly gives you a certain courage.

Maybe praying...prayer gives you a certain courage, but there is no God to respond to it.

There is nobody who is going to respond to your prayer. But if you have an idea that somebody is there to respond to your prayer, you may feel a little relieved, relaxed.

Once I saw Mulla Nasrudin praying very devoutly. When he had finished his NAMAJ, I asked him, "Mulla, there must be some problem; you were praying so deeply. Please answer my one question: is your prayer ever answered?"

He said, "Yes, one way or the other."

But if the prayer is answered one way or the other, what is the point of it? Yes, sometimes it coincides with facts, sometimes it does not coincide with the facts, but your prayer makes no difference to the facts. It may make a little difference in your mind, but it makes no difference in reality.

The fear-oriented religion is the religion of 'don't': don't do this, don't do that -- because fear is negative. The Ten Commandments are all fear-oriented -- don't do this, don't do that -- as if religion is nothing but avoiding -- don't do this, don't do that -- closing oneself in safety and security, never taking any risk, never moving on the dangerous path, in fact not allowing yourself to be alive. Just as the first type of religion is stupid, fanatic, the second type of religion is negative. It gives a certain stiffness, up-tightness. It is childish.

It is a search for security which is nowhere possible, because life exists as insecurity. God exists as insecurity, danger, and risk.

THE key word for the fear-oriented religion is "hell', and of course, repression, continuous repression: don't do this. The second type of person is always afraid -- what to eat, what not to eat, whether to love a woman or not to love a woman, whether to make a house or not to make a house. And whatsoever you repress, you are never free of it; in fact, the more and more you are in its power. Because when you repress a thing it goes deeper into your unconscious. It reaches to your very roots and poisons your whole being.

I have heard....

An old-timer was seeing a movie for the first time. He was known to be a very religious man, a man who used to do his prayer regularly, fulfill all the duties, had never been known to get involved in any sort of problematic situations. He was, in short, a very simple man -- but not so simple inside. At one point in the feature, a bevy of shapely girls dashed across the screen. They crossed a railroad track, reached a swimming pool and began to disrobe for the plunge. They had taken off their shoes, stockings, shirts, skirts, and were beginning on...and a passing freight train sped across the screen and obscured the view. When it had passed, the next scene showed the girls frolicking in the water.

The old-timer saw the show again and again and again. At length an usher tapped him on the shoulder. "Are you not ever going home?" he asked.

"Oh, I reckon not yet for awhile," said the old-timer. "One of these times that darned train is going to be late."

Deep inside you will always carry whatsoever is repressed. You may follow the religion as ritual, but it will never become your heart.

I have heard an anecdote:

For centuries European Jews were the victims of organized persecution, called pogroms.

These pogroms took place so often that Jews developed a sense of humor about them.

In a small town in Poland, soldiers broke into the house of Ostrovoski and his family.

Living with him were his wife, three daughters, two sons, and his very aged and religious mother. She was known around almost as a saint.

"Line up!" shouted the sergeant in charge. "We are gonna beat up all the men and rape all the women!"

"Wait," pleaded Ostrovoski. "You can wallop me and my sons, abuse my wife and daughters, but please sir, I beg you, don't rape my mother. She is seventy-five years old and very religious."

"Shut up!" yelled the old woman. "A pogrom is a pogrom!"

Remember, repression is not a way towards freedom. Repression is worse than expression, because through expression a person is BOUND to become free one day or other. But through repression, one always remains obsessed. Only life gives you freedom.

A lived life gives you freedom, an unlived life remains very attractive, and the mind goes on roaming around whatsoever you have repressed.

Smulovitz, aged eighty-three and widowed, refused to be placed in just any Miami Beach old-age home. "I won't eat anything," he declared to his son, "unless it is strictly kosher."

The son searched for weeks and finally found a place that served meals in accordance with the Jewish dietary laws. He placed his old father in the home, secure in the knowledge that his father would be eating only kosher food.

Three days later he came for a visit and learned that the old man had left and checked into the Fontainbleau Hotel. The boy rushed over to the hotel, got a key, went upstairs, opened the door, and there was his father in bed with a blonde. They were both stark naked.

"Poppa, how could you?" asked the bewildered boy.

"But look," said the old man, "I'm not eating."

People who live through rituals out of fear may avoid one thing, but they will fall into another -- because the understanding is not their own. It is just fear-oriented. It is hell they are afraid of.

A real religion gives you fearlessness: let that be the criterion. If religion gives you fear, then it is not really religion.

The third type of religion is out of greed.

It is a 'do' religion. Just as the fear-oriented is a 'don't' religion, the greed-oriented is a 'do'

religion: do this. And just as the fear-oriented religion has the key word 'hell', the religion of greed has the key word 'heaven'. Everything is to be done in such a way that the world

-- the other world -- is completely secure and your happiness beyond death is guaranteed.

'Do' religion or greed religion is formal, ritualistic, ambitious, desire-oriented. It is full of desires. See the Mohammedan concept of paradise, or the Christian concept of paradise, or the Hindu concept of paradise. Degrees may be different, but this is a very strange thing: all that these people say one has to deny oneself in this life, they go on providing in heaven in great quantities. You are to be celibate here just to achieve heaven where beautiful APSARAS, always young, stuck at the age of sixteen, are available.

Mohammedans say, "Don't take any alcoholic beverage. But in heaven, rivers of wine!

No need to be worried."

But this seems to be absurd. If something is wrong, it is wrong. How can it become good and right in heaven? Then Omar Khayam is right. He says, "If in heaven rivers of wine are available then let us practice here, because if we go unpracticed, it will be difficult to live in paradise. So let this life be a little rehearsal, so that we have the taste, and we have the capacity." Then Omar Khayam seems to be more logical. In fact, he is joking against the Mohammedan concept of paradise. It is foolish; the whole concept is foolish. But people become religious out of greed.

One thing is certain: that whatsoever you accumulate here will be taken away; death will take it away. So the greedy person wants to accumulate something which cannot be taken by death. But the accumulating idea, the desire to accumulate, remains there. Now he accumulates virtue. Virtue is the coin of the other world. He goes on accumulating virtue so he can live in the other world forever and forever, in lust.

This type of man is basically worldly. His other world is nothing but a projection of this world. He will do because he has desires, and he has ambition, and he has a power-lust, but his doing will not be of the heart. It will be a sort of manipulation.

Mulla Nasrudin and his young son were driving in the country one winter. It was snowing; their bullock-cart broke down. They finally reached a farm-house and were welcomed for the night. The house was cold and the attic in which they were invited to spend the night was like an icebox. Stripping to his underwear, the Mulla jumped into a featherbed and pulled the blankets over his head. The young man was slightly embarrassed.

"Excuse me, Dad," he said. "Don't you think we ought to say our prayers before going to bed?"

The Mulla stuck one eye out from under the covers. "Son," he said, "I keep prayed up ahead for situations just like this one."

Then things are just on the surface. Greed and fear and ignorance are just on the periphery.

These are three sorts of religions -- and they are all mixed together. You cannot find a person who is absolutely, purely of the first type or the second type or the third type.

Wherever greed is, there is fear; wherever fear is, there is greed; and wherever greed and fear exist, there is ignorance -- because they cannot exist without them. So I am not talking about pure types. I am classifying simply so that you can understand well.

Otherwise they are all mixed.

These three are the lowest types of religion. They should not be called religions.

Then there is the fourth type: the religion of logic, calculation, cleverness.

It is 'do' plus 'don't' religion: worldly, materialistic, opportunistic, intellectual, theoretical, scriptural, traditional. This is the religion of the PUNDITS, the learned scholar who tries to prove God through logic, who thinks that the mysteries of life can be understood through the head.

This type of religion creates theology. It is not really religion but just a very faint carbon copy of it. But all the churches are based on it. When a Buddha exists in the world, or a Mohammed, or a Krishna, or a Christ, then pundits and scholars and learned people, intellectually clever and cunning people, gather together around them. They start working hard: "What does Jesus mean?" They start creating a theology, a creed, a dogma, a church. They are very successful people because they are very logical people. They cannot give you God, they cannot give you truth, but they give you great organizations.

They give you the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church. They give you great theologies, just clevernesses, nothing of the real experience; just intellectual, head-oriented. Their whole edifice is as if one is making a house of cards: a small breeze and the house is gone. Their whole edifice is such, as if one is trying to sail in a boat of paper.

It looks like a real boat, the form is of a boat, but it is a paper boat. It is doomed, it is already doomed. Logic is a paper boat. And life cannot be understood through logic.

I have heard about one American:

A very wealthy American was convinced that an atomic war was just around the corner, and determined that he would survive it. He bought an acre of land in the middle of the Arizona desert and employed a labor force to build him a home five miles underground.

It was to be encased in lead fifty yards thick, and equipped with its own power plant which would supply sufficient electricity to give him light, heat, and purified air for at least ten years. Frozen food, water, cigars, alcoholic refreshment, for the same period of time had to be provided, together with every conceivable aid to luxurious living. The job was completed in three years at a cost of five hundred thousand million dollars.

The proud owner went to the desert to inspect it, and a red Indian shot him in the back with an arrow.

That's how life is: you make all the arrangements and just one arrow is enough to finish you. Man is very fragile. How can man's logic understand reality? Man is so limited, his understanding is so short-sighted. No, there is no way through logic. Through logic a philosophy is born, but not real religion.

THESE four are ordinarily known as religion.

The fifth, sixth and seventh are the real religions. The fifth is the religion based on intelligence; not on logic, not on intellect, but on intelligence. And there is a lot of difference between intellect and intelligence.

Intellect is logical; intelligence is paradoxical. Intellect is analytical; intelligence is synthetical. Intellect divides, cuts into pieces to understand a thing. Science is based on intellect, dissection, division, analysis. Intelligence joins things together, makes a whole out of parts -- because this is one of the greatest understandings: that the part exists through the whole, not vice versa. And the whole is not just the sum of the parts, it is more than the sum.

For example, you can have a rose flower, and you can go to a scientist, to a logician. You can ask him, "I want to understand this rose flower"; what will he do? He will dissect it, he will separate all the elements that are making it a flower. When you go next you will find the flower gone. Instead of the flower there will be a few labelled bottles. The elements have been separated, but one thing is certain -- there will not be any bottle on which will be the label 'beauty'.

Beauty is not matter and beauty does not belong to parts. Once you dissect a flower, once the wholeness of the flower is gone, beauty is also gone. Beauty belongs to the whole, it is the grace that comes to the whole. It is more than the sum. Then only parts are there.

You can dissect a man; the moment you dissect, life disappears. Then you know only a dead body, a corpse. You can find out how much aluminium is there and how much iron and how much water (eighty percent or something); you can find the whole mechanism the lungs, the kidneys, everything -- but one thing is not there: life. One thing is not there that was the most valuable. One thing is not there that we wanted to understand really, and everything else is there.

Now even scientists are becoming alert that when you take blood out of a man's bloodstream and you examine it, it is no longer the same blood. Inside the bloodstream of the man it was alive, throbbing with life. Now it is just a corpse. It cannot be the same because the gestalt has changed. You can take the color of the rose flower from it, but is it the same color? It looks the same but it cannot be the same. Where is that fragileness?

Where is that aliveness, that throb of life? When it was in the rose flower it was in a totally different arrangement and life was present. It was full of presence; God was there beating in its heart. Taken out, the part is there but you cannot say the part is the same. It cannot be because the part exists in the whole.

Intellect dissects, analyzes. It is the instrument of science. Intelligence is the instrument of religion; it joins together. Hence, the greatest science of spirituality we have called Yoga. Yoga means the methodology to join. Yoga means to put things together. God is the greatest totality, all things together. God is not a person, God is a presence, the presence when the total is functioning in a great harmony -- the trees and the birds and the earth and the stars and the moon and the sun and the rivers and the ocean -- all together. That togetherness is God. If you dissect, you will never find God. Dissect a man; you cannot find the presence that was making him alive. Dissect the world; you cannot find the presence that is God.

Intelligence is the method to join things together. An intelligent person is very synthetical. He always looks for a higher whole, because the meaning is always in the higher whole. He always looks for something higher in which the lower is dissolved and functions as a part, functions as a note in the harmony of the whole, gives its own contribution to the orchestra of the whole but is not separate from it. Intelligence moves upwards, intellect moves downwards. Intellect goes to the cause.

Please follow it; the point is delicate.

Intellect goes to the cause; intelligence goes to the goal. Intelligence moves into the future, intellect moves in the past. Intellect reduces everything to the lowest denominator.

If you ask what love is, intellect will say it is nothing but sex -- the lowest denominator.

If you ask what prayer is, the intellect will say it is nothing but repressed sex.

Ask intelligence what sex is, and intelligence will say it is nothing but the seed of prayer.

It is the potential love. Intellect reduces to the lowest; it reduces everything to the lowest.

Ask intellect what a lotus is, and it will say it is nothing, just an illusion; the reality is the mud -- because the lotus comes out of the mud and again falls back into the mud. The mud is the real, the lotus is just an illusion. Mud remains, the lotus comes and goes.

Ask intelligence what mud is, and intelligence will say, "It is the potentiality of being a lotus." Then mud disappears and millions of lotuses flower.

Intelligence goes to the higher and higher and the higher, and the whole effort is to reach to the ultimate, to the pinnacle of existence. Because things can be explained only through the higher, not through the lower. You don't explain through the lower, you explain away. And when the lower becomes too important, all beauty is lost, all truth, all good. Everything that has any significance is lost. Then you start crying, "Where is meaning in life?"

In the West, science destroyed every value and reduced everything to matter. Now everybody is worried about what is the meaning of life, because meaning exists in the higher whole. See, you are alone; you feel, "What is the meaning of life?" Then you fall in love with a woman; a certain meaning arises. Now two have become one -- a little higher. A single man is a little. Lower than a couple. A couple is a little higher. Two things have joined together. Two opposite forces have mingled, the feminine and the male energies. Now it is more of a circle.

That's why in India we have the concept of ARDHANARISHWAR. Shiva is painted as half woman and half man. The concept of ARDHANARISHWAR says that man is half, and woman is half. When a man and woman meet in deep love, a higher reality arises: certainly greater, more complex, because two energies are meeting.

Then a child is born; now there is a family -- more meaning. Now the father feels a meaning in his life: the child has to be brought up. He loves the child, he works hard, but work is now no longer work. He is working for his child, for his beloved, for his home.

He works, but the hardness of the work has disappeared. He is not dragging it. Tired of the whole day, he comes home dancing. Seeing the smile on his child's face, he is tremendously happy. A family is a higher unit than the couple, and so on and so forth.

And God is nothing but the communion of all, the greatest family of all.

That's why I go on calling these orange people my family. I would like you to disappear in the whole. I would like you to be so absorbed in the whole that you remain individual, but you become part of a greater unity, bigger than you. Meaning arises IMMEDIATELY

whenever you become part of a greater unity.

When a poet writes a poem, meaning arises -- because the poet is not alone; he has created something. When a dancer dances, meaning arises. When a mother gives birth to a child, meaning arises. Left alone, cut from everything else, isolated like an island, you are meaningless. Joined together you are meaningful. The bigger the whole, the bigger is the meaning. That's why I say God is the biggest conceivable whole, and without God you cannot attain to the highest meaning. God is not a person; God is not sitting somewhere. Those ideas are just stupid. God is the total presence of existence, the being, the very ground of being.

GOD exists wherever there is union; wherever there is Yoga, God comes into existence.

You are walking alone; God is fast asleep. Then suddenly you see somebody and you smile; God is awakened, the other has come in. Your smile is not isolated, it is a bridge.

You have thrown a bridge towards the other. The other has also smiled, there has been a response. Between you both arises that space I call God -- a little throb. When you come to the tree and you sit by the side of the tree, completely oblivious to the existence of the tree, God is fast asleep. Then suddenly you look at the tree, and an upsurge of feeling for the tree and God has arisen.

Wherever there is love, God is; wherever there is response, God is. God is the space; it exists wherever union exists. That's why I say love is the purest possibility of God, because it is the subtlest union of energies.

Hence the insistence of the Bauls that love is God. Forget God, love will do. But never forget love, because God alone won't do.

Intelligence is discrimination, understanding. Truth is the key word, sat. The man who moves through intelligence moves towards SAT, truth.

Higher than intelligence is the sixth type of religion. I call it the religion of meditation.

Meditation is awareness, spontaneity, what the Bauls call SAHAJA MANUSH, the spontaneous man. Freedom -- it is non-traditional, it is radical, revolutionary, individual.

The key word is CHIT, consciousness. Intelligence is still the highest form of intellect, intelligence is the purest form of intellect. The ladder is the same. Intellect is going downwards on the same ladder, intelligence is going upwards, but the ladder is the same.

In meditation the ladder is thrown. Now, no more movement on the same ladder, neither upwards nor downwards. Now, no more movement, but a state of no-movement inside, a drowning into oneself, a sinking in.

Intellect is other-oriented; intelligence is also other-oriented. Intellect cuts the other, intelligence joins the other, but both are other-oriented. So if you understand rightly, the first four types of religion I don't call religion. They are pseudo-religions. Real religion starts with the fifth type, and that is the lowest, but REAL. The sixth type of religion is that of meditation, consciousness, CHIT. One simply moves into oneself. All directions are dropped, all dimensions dropped. One simply tries to be oneself, one simply tries just to be. That is where Zen exists, in the sixth type of religion. The very word 'Zen' means DHYANA, meditation.

Then comes the highest type of religion, the seventh: the religion of ecstasy, SAMADHI.

Just as the fifth type has the key word SAT, truth, and the sixth type, the religion of meditation, has the key word CHIT, consciousness, the seventh. the highest, has ANAND, bliss, ecstasy. That is the key word: SAT-CHIT-ANANDA, truth, consciousness, ecstasy.

The Bauls belong to the seventh type -- joy, celebration, song, dance, ecstasy -- ANAND.

They make meditation tremendously joyful -- because a person can be meditative and can become sad. A person can be meditative and can become very silent and may miss bliss.

Because meditation can make you silent, absolutely still, but unless dance happens in it, something is missing. Peace is good, peace is very beautiful, but something is lacking in it; bliss is lacking. When peace starts dancing it is bliss. When peace becomes active, overflowing, it is bliss. When bliss is enclosed in a seed it is peace. And when the seed has sprouted, not only that, but the tree has bloomed and the flowers have come and the seed has become a bloom, then it is SAMADHI. That is the highest type of religion.

Peace has to dance and silence has to sing. And unless your innermost realization becomes a laughter, something is still lacking. Something still has to be done.

That's where the Bauls enter. Their religion is that of ecstasy. Now the song for today: THE MAN THAT BREATHES

LIVES ON THE AIR,

AND THE OTHER, UNSEEN,

RESTS ABOVE REACH.

BETWEEN THE TWO

MOVES ANOTHER MAN

AS A SECRET LINK.

WORSHIP KNOWINGLY.

The man that breathes, and the man that lives beyond... between these two there is a third man, the link: body, psyche, and soul. Or, you can use the Christian Trinity -- God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Body is THE MAN THAT BREATHES. By breathing, the body is alive. The breath goes into your body; it gives PRANA, vitality, to your body. Without breath the body would disappear, because without breath the body would be disconnected from the atmosphere.

The atmosphere is continuously pouring its own being into your being. Exhaling, inhaling

-- atmosphere is continuously keeping you alive, flowing, streaming. "The body," Bauls say, "is the first man."

Then there is a beyond which needs no breathing, which is eternally there, which needs nothing. That is the God of the Bauls. They call the essential man ADHAR MANUSH.

And between the two is the psyche, the mind, or call it heart. Bauls call it heart; the Holy Ghost. It exists as a link.

The whole work has to be done in the psyche. On one pole of it exists the body, on the other pole, God. The whole work of discipline, of SADHANA, has to be done in the psyche. That is what meditation is all about.

THE MAN THAT BREATHES

LIVES ON THE AIR,

AND THE OTHER, UNSEEN,

RESTS ABOVE REACH.

BETWEEN THE TWO

MOVES ANOTHER MAN

AS A SECRET LINK.

WORSHIP KNOWINGLY.

The Bauls say that just worship won't do, but WORSHIP KNOWINGLY. The body has to worship the psyche, and the psyche has to worship the unseen. This is what they mean by 'worship knowingly'. Let your body follow your psyche, your heart, let your body follow your feelings, and let your feelings follow the unknown, the unseen. Then you are a worshipper. Then worship is not an ordinary ritual that you do in the temple; then worship is something that you do in your own being. That is your real temple.

IT IS A SPORT

AMONGST THE THREE OF THEM.

MY SEARCHING HEART,

WHOM DO YOU SEEK?

And the Bauls say it is a LEELA, a sport. These three are running, chasing each other: the body, the psyche, and the soul.

MY SEARCHING HEART,

WHOM DO YOU SEEK?

This word LEELA, sport, has to be understood. It is uniquely Eastern. In the West never has a concept like that ever arisen. In the West the concept of God is that of a worker, not of a player. The concept of God is of a creator, and the creation seems to be very serious.

But the concept of LEELA is of fun, play. In the East we have known that God is not serious, and religion need not be serious. God is the greatest player; He is in a great play.

As a painter plays with the brush and the paint and the color on the canvas, out of play something arises. The painting can be done in two ways: you can be very serious about it

-- but then you will be just a technician. You may do it perfectly well, but it will lack something: it will lack spirit. That is the difference between a technician and an artist. An artist has no plan. He simply sits before the canvas and starts playing. He is more childlike. Out of his play something arises. That is the best way to understand modern painting.

Modern painting is more Eastern than Western. Picasso is more Eastern than Western, because he is playing. That's why it is very difficult to understand modern painting.

Classical painting is very simple to understand. It reproduces life exactly, it is a replica. It is more like photography -- mechanical. Modern painting is very difficult to understand.

It is as difficult to understand as the flowers. Somebody asked Picasso -- seeing his painting he asked, "What does it mean?" Picasso said, "Nobody goes to the plants and asks, and nobody goes to the birds and asks,'What do you mean?' Why do you come to me, and me alone? Go to the plants and ask the flowers 'why?'"

A great LEELA goes on.

BOTANISTS have become aware of something very rare and meaningful. They have become aware that insects play with flowers and imitate flowers; they deceive flowers.

Butterflies imitate flowers and deceive flowers. And on the other hand, flowers imitate insects and butterflies, and the play goes on. Lizards imitate rocks, and rocks imitate lizards. The great play continues, hide-and-seek.

LEELA is a beautiful concept. It relaxes you tremendously, absolutely. If God is in LEELA, then don't be serious and don't keep long faces; there is no need. Become more playful. Life is a sport. Look at life with the eyes of play, non-seriously. The difference is tremendous.

You go on a street to your office; then you have a totally different mind -- tense, ambitious, worried, stressed. On the same route you go for a morning walk -- the road is the same, the trees are the same, the birds are the same, the sky is the same, you are the same, the people passing are the same. But when you go for a morning walk you have no stress, no tension, because you are not going anywhere in particular. It is just a morning walk -- you are enjoying it, you are playful.

Prayer is a play. So if you go to the temple and you become very serious, you will miss the temple. Go to the temple to laugh, go to the temple to enjoy, go to the temple to celebrate.

The Bauls sing,

I have no knowledge

of my own self.

If for once

I could know what I am,

the unknown would be known.

God is nearby

and yet far away --

like the mountain hiding

behind my streaming hair.

I travel distant towns

of Dakar and Delhi

constantly searching,

but circling round my own knees.

God is alive

in my living form.

Only purity of heart

will lead me to Him.

The more I study

the wisdom of the Vedas,

the more I am bewildered.

I am blind

in spite of my eyes.

Only purity of heart

will lead me to Him.

God is alive

in my own living form.

Never in my life

did I once face the man

who lives in my own little room.

My eyes blinded

by the weight of storms

can see nothing, even when He stirs.

My hands fail

to reach His hands

as He is forever engaged

with the world.

I keep silent when they call Him

the word of life,

and the water

and the fire

and the earth

and the air,

while no one is sure.

Could I ever wish to know

anyone else?

I do not yet know

my own little room....

THE Bauls say if you can know your own little room, you will know all -- because He is there. He is in the body as the breathing man. He is in the psyche as your intelligence, awareness, meditation. And He is beyond you. Move slowly: let the body follow feeling, let the feeling follow the unknown. Don't move through knowledge, move through feeling, and then you will be in tune with God.

He does not dwell

in the complex of stars,

nor in limitless space.

He is not found

in the ethical scriptures

or in the texts of the Vedas.

He lives beyond

the existence of all.

The man is here,

in his form without form

to adorn the hamlet of my limbs

and the sky above

in the glow of his feelings,

the platform of spontaneous matter.

Even matter, the body, is spontaneous. That is his platform. The man is here!

If you fail to recognize

your own heart,

can you ever come to know

the great unknown?

The farthest away

will be nearest to you

and the unknown within your knowing.

Fill up your home

with the world abroad,

and you will attain

the unattainable man.

Open your heart to the skies, to the unknown, to the unfamiliar. Don't move with knowledge, because knowledge means that which you have already known. That's why the Vedas won't help. Veda means knowledge; the very word 'veda' means knowledge. It comes from a root VED, which means 'to know'. Hence, the Bauls' continuous criticism of the Vedas. Knowledge is not going to help.

Move into the unknown, wait for the unknown to knock at your door. You simply wait --

alert, expectant, ready to receive, with a feeling heart, and being playful.

BETWEEN THE DOORS

OF BIRTH AND DEATH,

STANDS YET ANOTHER DOOR,

WHOLLY INEXPLICABLE.

HE WHO IS ABLE

TO BE BORN

AT THE DOOR OF DEATH,

IS DEVOTED ETERNALLY....

DIE BEFORE DYING,

DIE LIVING.

A very significant secret: between the doors of birth and death, stands yet another door...

that door is what we call love. Have you watched? Between birth and death there is nothing else to happen but love. If you miss love between birth and death, you have missed the whole opportunity of life. You may gather knowledge and you may gather valuable stones, and you may gather money and prestige and power, but if you have missed love, then you have missed the real door.

The first door, the door of birth, is simply an opportunity to move through the second door, the door of love. Between birth and death is love. In fact, life exists only to give an opportunity to love and be loved. If that is missed, all is missed. If that is not missed, then even if you have missed all, nothing is missed. And this door of love is REAL death. The other death that will come in the end is not real, because you will survive it. You will be reborn again. As death follows birth, so birth follows death. They are two aspects of the same coin. But if you move into the door of love, then you die, and you die so totally that then there is no birth for you, and of course, no death. Love is the real death because the ego disappears completely.

In ordinary death the body disappears, ego remains, and that carries you into new lives.

That is the whole thread of rebirth. Once that thread is broken and the root is cut, you disappear from the world of matter, from the world of the visible into the world of the invisible, the beyond, the other shore.

BETWEEN THE DOORS

OF BIRTH AND DEATH,

STANDS YET ANOTHER DOOR,

WHOLLY INEXPLICABLE.

HE WHO IS ABLE

TO BE BORN

AT THE DOOR OF DEATH,

IS DEVOTED ETERNALLY....

That is what Bauls call the real door of death.

DIE BEFORE DYING,

DIE LIVING.

If you can die before dying, that is, if you can pass through the door of love, if you can die living, then there is no death for you. Then you have become deathless, then you are immortal, then you are a God. Then you are no more part of the material world where bodies are formed and where bodies are de-formed. Then you are no more into the world of forms, of creation, destruction; you are beyond. That beyond is already in you.

The man is here. It is right now, in this moment, here. But you will have to pass through the alchemy of love, otherwise you will never know it.

The Bauls sing,

Reaching for reality

is lame talk

to describe the goal

of the lover-worshipper.

He will attain

the great unattainable.

Stare at the face

of the invisible one

bearing the nectar of love.

How can I capture the man

who is not to be caught?

He lives on the other bank

of the river,

and the skin of my eyes

screens my sight.

The body screens your sight. If you become too identified with the body, it becomes a barrier, Reverse the process: let the body follow the heart, not the heart the body. If the heart has to follow the body, body becomes a barrier. Then you cannot reach the other shore. If the body follows the heart, the body becomes the boat.

Where is the home

of the moon?

And what makes

the cycle of the days

wander, encircling

the moving nights?

The lunar eclipse

in the night of the full moon

is known to all.

But no one enquires

about the blackened moon

on the darkest night

of the month.

He who is able

to make the full moon rise

in the sky

of the darkest night,

has a right to claim

the glory of the three worlds --

the heaven, the earth and the other spheres.

"He who is able to make the full moon rise in the sky of the darkest night"...that is their description of love.

A LOVER is capable of creating life out of death; he can do the miracle. He can make the moon rise in the darkest night. That's why there is a fear about love. I have observed thousands of people trembling whenever they are on the threshold of love, afraid. Why does so much fear come out of love.

Erich Fromm has written a beautiful book in which he says that love seems to be one of the most risky things, one of the most dangerous. And there is tremendous fear in humanity about love. People talk about love; they may be talking just to deceive themselves. Their talk may be just a substitute to give them a feeling that they are lovers.

But people are afraid of love. It gives fear, because love is death. Your ego has to be dropped completely, utterly effaced. It is suicide. Fear is natural, but if you are courageous enough and you can pass through it, if you can carry the cross of love on your shoulders, resurrection is certain. The moment ego is dropped, you are born.

He who knows

the essence of love,

fears none.

Devoted only

to love's own form,

alive before his eyes,

his home is in

happiness itself.

Lulling lust

by lust alone

he raids the heart of the God

that churns all hearts,

finding himself

in perennial love.

Let your heart be a caring home

for the man of your heart.

Focus your vision

through the eye-black of loving.

He will be floating

on the mercurial mirror.

Hours wither like broken games

on the playground of the earth.

Abandon search

and join the carnival of love.

Abandon search

and join the carnival of love....

The Bauls say just intellectual search, seeking, is not going to help. "Join the carnival of love": that is what prayer is, that-is what worship is.

Be ecstatic, joyful, celebrating, singing, dancing. Let God be allowed to be playful through you. Let playfulness be your only prayer. Let joy be your only worship.

The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #6

Chapter title: Now Is Not Part Of Time

6 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7607060

ShortTitle:

BELOV206

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

85

mins

The first question:

Question 1

HOW SHOULD I PRAY? I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PROPERLY EXPRESS THIS

LOVE THAT I FEEL INTO PRAYER.

PRAYER is not a technique, it is not a ritual, it is not a formality. There is no pattern to it. It is a spontaneous outpouring of the heart, so don't ask how, because there is no how and there cannot be any how to it. Whatsoever happens in the moment is right. If tears come, good. If you sing, good. If you dance, good. If nothing comes and you simply remain silent, good. Because prayer is not in the expression; it is not in the container, it is in the content. Sometimes silence is prayerful, sometimes singing is prayerful. It depends on you, it depends on the heart. So if I say sing, and you sing because I have told you to sing, then the prayer is false from the very beginning. Listen to your heart, feel your moment, and let it be. And whatsoever happens is good.

Sometimes nothing will happen, but that is what is happening. You allow it, you don't impose your will on it. When you ask how, you are trying to impose your will, you are trying to plan. That's how prayer has been missed. That's how all the churches and religions have become rituals. They have a set prayer, a set form: the authorized version, the approved. But how can anybody approve prayer? How can anybody give you an authorized version?

Prayer has to arise in you, it has to flower in you. And each moment has its own prayer, and each mood has its own prayer. Nobody knows what is going to happen to your innermost world tomorrow morning. How can it be fixed? A fixed prayer is a false prayer: this much can certainly be said. A ritualized prayer is no longer prayer: this can be said in absolute terms. An unritualized, spontaneous gesture -- that's what prayer is.

Sometimes you may feel very sad, because sadness also belongs to God. Sadness is also divine. There is no necessity to always be happy. Then sadness is your prayer. Then let your heart cry and let your eyes pour down tears. Then let sadness be offered to God.

Whatsoever is there in your heart, let it be offered to the Divine Feet -- joy or sadness, sometimes even anger.

Sometimes one is angry with God. If you cannot be angry with God, you have not yet known love. Sometimes one is really in a deep rage. Then let anger be your prayer. Fight with God -- He is yours, you are His, and love knows no formality. Love can survive all fights. If it cannot survive a fight, then it is not love. So sometimes you don't feel like praying; then let that be your prayer. You say to God, "Wait! I'm not in the mood, and the way you are doing things, it is not even worth praying." But let it be a spontaneous pouring of your heart.

Never be inauthentic with God because that is the way of not being with Him. If you are insincere with God -- deep down you are complaining, and on the surface praying? --

then God will see the complaint, not the prayer. You have been false. He can look directly into your heart. Whom are you trying to deceive? The smile on your face is not going to deceive God; your truth will be known to Him. He can only know your truth; lies don't exist for Him. So let the truth be there. You simply present your truth to Him and say that today you are angry, you are angry with His world, you are angry with Him, you are angry with your life: "I hate it! And I cannot pray, so you will have to remain without my prayer today. I suffer much; now you suffer."

Talk to Him as one talks to one's lover, one's friend, one's mother. Talk to Him as one talks to a small child.

I was staying with a family, and the mother ordered the small child to pray. He was very interested, and he was not ready to go to sleep, and he wanted to be with me a little longer. But the family was very disciplinarian, so they said, "Now it is nine o'clock. You go and sleep, and don't forget your prayer." He was angry; I could see it. He went into his room. I followed just to listen to what he was going to pray. In the darkness I heard him say, "God, make bad people good and good people nice." He knows his mother is good, his father is good, but not nice.

I have heard about another child. He was staying in a guest house with the family. The first night he prayed. He always used to sleep with a small light on, but there was no light and the electricity had gone. Suddenly, as he prayed the electricity disappeared. He was just getting into his bed, and he told his mother, "Let me get up again and let me pray again more carefully, because the night is going to be dark." First he had just prayed by the way, but now the night was going to be dark and there was no light and he was more afraid. He said, "Let me pray again. Let me get out, and let me pray more carefully, because now there is more danger."

Listen to children's prayer and become a child.

All the religions say that God is Father. In fact, the emphasis should be that man is the child. That is the real meaning when we call God 'the Father'. But we have forgotten; God is the Father but we are not His children. Forget whether He is Father or not. You just be a child -- spontaneous, true, authentic. Don't ask me and don't ask anybody how to pray.

Let the moment decide, let the moment be decisive, and the truth of the moment should be your prayer.

That's my answer: the truth of the moment, whatsoever it is, unconditionally, should be your prayer. And once you allow the truth of the moment to possess you, you will start growing, and you will know tremendous beauties of prayer. You have entered on the path. But if you simply go on repeating a certain prayer, a technique, then you will miss.

You will never enter on the path, you will just remain outside.

The second question:

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO, TO STEAL YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT I AM INCESSANTLY

PRAYING. PLEASE OSHO, AT LEAST BLESS ME, SO THAT MY PRAYER MAY

BECOME MORE INTENSE AND ALIVE.

THAT'S BEAUTIFUL.

A disciple has to steal much from the Master, because there are a few things which cannot be given; only you can take, I cannot give. The nature of the thing is such that it cannot be given, but you can take. A disciple has much to steal from the Master. The question is very significant, and I bless you.

But prayer alone won't do, because prayer belongs to one path, and enlightenment belongs to another path. Prayer is part of the path of the devotee, the BHAKTA, the Sufi.

He says, "I don't want any enlightenment. I just want to be playing with you continuously my Lord -- a thousand and one games in a thousand and one worlds in a thousand and one lives. I don't want to get out of the game, I don't want to get out of this LEELA; it is beautiful. I want to remain a part of it. Make me worthy so I can remain always here and now, playing the game of hide-and-seek with you."

Prayer is part of the path of the devotee, the lover. The lover loves the bondage of love; he's not in any way trying to get out of it. In fact, his only prayer is that he should be thought worthy so that God continues the game He is playing. The play is beautiful; he's not asking for freedom from it.

The word 'enlightenment' belongs to the path of meditation. The meditator says, "Enough is enough. Long have I suffered; now let me be free." In fact, he cannot ask. He tries, but he cannot pray -- because to the man on the path of meditation, even prayer is a bondage.

Mahavir never prayed, Buddha never prayed. Prayer was meaningless for Buddha; he made all efforts to get out of it. So if you want enlightenment then don't pray because prayer will create a bondage. It is a most refined love. The bondage is very golden, but it is a bondage. If you choose it that way, then it's okay. But then enlightenment is not the right word.

I have heard....

The indignant mother asked her young son, "Why didn't you tell me you wanted to go fishing?"

"Because I wanted to go fishing," said the small boy.

If you really want to go fishing, don't ask, go. Asking won't help. Then you are alone if you want to be enlightened. Then there is no God; then there is nobody who can help you. Because if you need anybody's help, that very help becomes a bondage. If I help you to become free, you will start depending on me. Then without me you will not be able to be free. No help is possible on the path of meditation, only indications. Buddha has said,

"Buddhas only show the path. They cannot help in any substantial way. You have to go on your own, you have to be your own light."

I have heard an anecdote:

"I am going away for a few days, Nasrudin," said the master of the house. "And I am going to leave with you all my keys. They're to my closets as well as those to my chests and jewel boxes. I know they will be safe with you but of course, I expect you not to touch them."

When the master returned, the Mulla said to him, "Master, I am going to leave you."

"Why, Nasrudin?"

"Because you don't trust me."

"How can you say that when I left you with all my keys?"

"That you did, master, but not one of them fits."

If you really want to steal enlightenment from me, no key is going to fit -- not because I am giving you wrong keys, but because the door is open and there is no lock...and you are looking for the lock. Because you have a key you are looking for a lock, and the lock does not exist. So you can go on looking for the lock because of your key, and you will miss. The door is open; you just enter me and it is there. Nobody is barring the path.

But prayer will not be helpful, meditation will be helpful. Meditation will give you the clarity to see.

There is a very beautiful incident in the life of Houdini, the great magician. His whole life was a tremendous success; he was a miracle-monger. He did so many miracles that if he was a man to cheat humanity, he could have cheated very easily. But he was a very sincere man. He would say, "Whatsoever I am doing is nothing but skill; there is no miracle in it." No magician has ever done as much as Houdini has done. His power was almost impossible to believe. He was thrown in almost all the great prisons of the world, and within seconds he would be out. He was chained, locked, and within seconds -- the chains wouldn't work, locks wouldn't work -- something would happen, and he would be out. He would be out almost within seconds, not even a minute.

But in Italy he failed -- only once in his life. He was thrown in the central prison of Rome, and thousands of people had gathered to see him come out. Minutes passed and there was no sign of him. It was almost half an hour, and people started getting restless because it had never happened: "What has happened? Has he gone mad, or died, or what happened? Or has the great magician failed?" After one hour he came out perspiring and laughing loudly. And the people asked, "What happened? One hour? We were thinking that you had either gone mad or you were dead! Even the authorities were thinking to go in and see. What happened?"

He said, "They tricked me; they made me a fool. The door was not locked! All my skill is to open the lock, and I was trying to find out where the lock is, and there was no lock.

The door was not locked at all, it was already open. Tired, exhausted, worried, puzzled, I fell, and when I fell and struck the door, the door opened. That's how I am out; not because of my skill."

Exactly the same is the case with me.

The question has been asked by Bodhidharma; he has many keys. Nothing will fit, and he is collecting more and more keys. He is very calculating, clever. Now that those keys are not fitting he is asking for my blessings. My blessings are there whether you ask or not, but keys are not going to fit. Throw the keys! The door is open. Nobody is barring the path. But if you seek enlightenment, the path is of meditation. If you seek eternal play, then there is no need to think in terms of enlightenment.

These two terms are different, totally different. The ultimate result is the same. The BHAKTA, the devotee, finds his enlightenment in this beautiful play of God, and the meditator finds this game beautiful when he reaches his enlightenment. But they approach in different directions with different methodology, with different attitudes. One has to decide it very clearly, otherwise you can get confused. Love or meditation has to be chosen very clearly, and then stick to the path. Finally, everything that has happened on the other path will also happen to you, so don't be worried. But it will happen only on the peak. All the paths meet when they reach to the peak of the mountain, but all the paths move differently.

The third question:

Question 3

HOW TO RECOGNIZE PAST LIFE EXPERIENCES FROM ILLUSION, MADNESS?

THERE is no need: all that is past is already illusion. There is no difference between illusion and the past. All that is gone is no longer real. Now this is something to be understood very deeply.

Yesterday is no more. Now what is the difference between a real yesterday and an imagined yesterday? There is no difference because both will exist only in your mind --

the real and the imagined. Both will be imaginations of a sort. What will be the difference between a real yesterday and an unreal yesterday? There is no difference because both are unreal. They both exist only in your mind and nowhere else. All past is illusory; all future is illusory because it is not yet; and between the two is the present. Hence in the East we call the whole existence illusory, MAYA -- because between two illusions how can reality exist? And today is also going to be yesterday; today is continuously passing into yesterday. The present is continuously becoming past. How can the real become illusory?

The future is passing into past, and the present is just a gate, nothing else. Future is illusory, past is illusory; just on the gate things appear, for a single moment, to be real.

What type of reality can this be? That too is illusory. Hindus say it is only appearance, not real.

Real is that which subsists. Real is that which is always eternally there. Real is that which is beyond time. Unreal is that which is within time. The past is within time. It will be difficult to think of the present as unreal, but start from the past. It is easy to think of the past as unreal, because whether it happened or not, what difference does it make? It may not have happened at all. It may be just in your mind, it may be just your idea that it happened. It is very easy to think about the past as unreal, and about the future also.

Between the two is the narrow bridge of the present. How can something real be between two unrealities? How can the middle be real when the two ends are unreal, and when this real also is continuously turning into unreality and illusion? No, all that is experienced is imagination; it is dream stuff. Only the experiencer is real, only the observer is real. The observed is dream; the observer, the witness, is real.

That is one of the greatest discoveries of human consciousness in the whole of human history. There is nothing to compare with it. All other discoveries are just childish. This one discovery is the base of all religion: that you are -- you as a witness. Even for a dream to exist, a dreamer is needed. The dream may be a dream, but the dreamer cannot be a dream. Even to be deceived I would have to exist; even to fall into error, I will be needed. Without me the error cannot exist. This witness is the search of meditation.

So don't be bothered about how to recognize past life experiences from illusion, madness.

There is nothing to recognize. There is no need.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin was telling his wife about a dream he had experienced the night before.

"It was terrible," he said. "I was at a birthday party at Joe's house. His mother had baked a chocolate cake three feet high, and when she cut it everybody was given a piece that was so large that it hung over the sides of the plate. Then she dipped up some homemade ice cream. She had so much of it that she had to give each one of us our share in a soup bowl.

"What was so terrible about that dream?" asked his wife.

"Oh," said Nasrudin, "I woke up before I could get the first taste."

We are continuously waking up from the past. Each moment is a wakening. But we are continuously falling asleep into the future, so each moment is again a moment of stumbling into darkness and sleep. So the real distinction that has to be made is between waking and sleeping. No other distinction is of any value.

Try to be so wakeful that you don't fall asleep again. Remain so alert that the future is not allowed to deceive you again as you had allowed it before. What has become past is nothing, but once it is your future then you get deceived by it. Now it is past; now another future is arriving. Every moment future is arriving, and future can deceive you only if you are asleep. Then again it will become past. Now let me tell you one thing: if you remain alert and you don't allow the future to deceive you in the present, the past disappears. Then there is no memory left of it, no trace of it. Then one is just a clean slate, a sky without any clouds, a flame without smoke.

That's what the state of enlightenment is -- so alert that only the witness is real and everything else is nothing but ripples on the surface of the water. Everything is passing, everything is a flux. Only one thing remains and remains and remains, and that is your consciousness, your awareness.

But we are caught in the net of the past. That which passes somehow remains in the mind. It passes, it is no longer there, but somehow the mind clings to it.

I have heard....

A man in the upstairs apartment yelled to Mulla Nasrudin downstairs, "If you don't stop playing that clarinet I will go crazy!"

"Too late now," said Nasrudin. "I stopped an hour ago."

People are continuously worried about things which have almost gone and disappeared.

The past makes you crazy. You go on brooding, you go on playing with the wounds, you go on hurting yourself again and again. You go on feeding your ego again and again. The past seems to be your treasure. It is nothing -- just bubbles, air bubbles. And the same is the future; and between the two is this moment of the present. BE ALERT, be awake. No other distinction is of any significance. Only one distinction is of significance, and that is of being alert or unalert.

Now I can tell you this: if you are unalert, then whatsoever happens is imaginary. If you are alert, then whatsoever happens is real. Were you alert in the past? If you were alert, then it was real. Are you alert right now? If you are alert then whatsoever is happening before you IS real. Will you be alert tomorrow? Then whatsoever will happen will be real. So forget about reality and unreality; just try to become more and more alert.

Reality and unreality are not qualities of the objective world, they are qualities of subjective consciousness. For Buddha everything is real. For you, fast asleep, snoring, everything is unreal. Just think of it in this way: you are sleeping in a room and somebody is sitting by your side alert and awake. The room is the same. Both are in the same room, in the same space. One is fast asleep, the other is sitting by the side. Are they in the same room? Can they be in the same room? Because one who is asleep is dreaming, dreaming of a thousand and one other rooms except this one. Have you ever dreamed about the same room in which you were sleeping? -- no, never. A dream is always somewhere else. That's the function of the dream: to take you somewhere else.

The man who is asleep is dreaming. He is not aware of this room and the reality of THIS

room. He has his own imaginary reality. The man who is awake and sitting by his side is in this room. His alertness gives him a totally different quality of reality.

Buddha, walking, moving from one village to another village, and by his side is his disciple, Anand; both are in two different worlds. Anand is fast asleep, dreaming; Buddha is awake, non-dreaming. When you are not dreaming, you are encountering reality. When you are dreaming, you are encountering only your dream, unreality. What is the criterion for reality, alertness?

Become more alert; the world becomes more real. Become even more alert; the world becomes even more real. When you are at the peak of your awareness, the world is so radiantly real that it is difficult to call it matter. One has to call it God; nothing else will do. It is so radiantly real, it is so eternally real that one has to say that time has ceased.

Reality is neither past, nor present, nor future; it simply is. It is herenow. Now is not part of time. In fact, you should not use the word 'now'. Only enlightened people should be allowed to use it, because your now is just not there.

What do you call 'now'? The moment you call it 'now' it is already past. Or, if you call it

'now' before it is past, then it is in the future. You are so asleep that by the time you come to recapture it, it is already gone. It is very slippery. Now is possible only when you are so alert that there is not a single dream in your mind, not a single thought, no ripples arising. Then you are totally present. When you are present then reality is present. It is your presence that reveals the presence of reality. Then you are in the now, and the now is eternal. Then it never comes and goes, it is simply there. Then nothing comes and nothing goes.

One of Buddha's great disciples, Bodhidharma, used to say that, Buddha never existed; he was never born, he never walked on the earth, he never talked. One of his disciples told him that what he was saying seemed simply absurd. "Buddha was born in Kapilvastu to a certain king, to a certain woman. He renounced the world. These are historical facts, and you go on denying them? And you yourself are a follower of Buddha. If he never existed, if he was never born and he never walked on the earth, then whom do you follow?"

Bodhidharma said, "I follow that one who was never born, never walked on the earth, never uttered a single word, never died. I follow that. He is the real Buddha. And all else which you call history is nothing but dreams seen by sleepy people."

Now this has to be understood. I am talking to you; it is a fact. I am talking to you, you are listening to me, but still Bodhidharma is perfectly true: it is still a dream because you are not awake. If you are awake you will see that I have not uttered a single word. Then you will see a totally different reality where words are not uttered, where silence reigns, where wordless reality is encountered. If you are awake you will see me directly, and you will see total stillness, but that will depend on your silence, that will depend on your non-dreaming state, that will depend on your awakening. Then you will see that this man who is sitting in front of you is not the real man. Then something else, something totally different, diametrically different, will be revealed to you.

That's the meaning when we call Buddha 'Bhagwan'. It is not a reality for everybody, but only for those who became alert; they recognize. That's what we mean when we call Jesus 'Son of God'. It was not revealed to all, because everybody knew that this man was nobody else but the son of Joseph the carpenter. And he was just claiming nonsense, that he is the Son of God. But those who loved him and those who were tremendously alert about his reality became aware that the son of Joseph the carpenter was just a reflection in the world of unreality, in the world of dreams.'Son of God' is the reality. But you can see that reality only to that extent to which you have become real. More than that you cannot do.

Facts are not truths. Something may be a fact and may not be true, and something may be true and may not be a fact. This word 'fact' is derived from a Latin root which means 'to do', FACERE. This is beautiful. A fact is that about which you can do something. But our doing is nothing but dreaming. You can do many things in your dream also; they are facts. You become so obsessed with your dream that sometimes it has happened that you had a nightmare, and then you awake, but you still go on trembling, you still go on perspiring. The fear is still there, the heart beats faster. Now you know that it was a dream, now you know that it was just a nightmare, nothing to be worried about, but still you are trembling. The dream has affected you so much that it even penetrates your reality -- your body, your mind.

But we go on living in two sorts of sleep: one is in the night which we call sleep, and the other is in the day which we call waking. It is a waking sleep, just for name's sake. Our eyes are open, but unless thinking stops completely, your real eye remains closed.

"How to recognize past life experiences from illusion?"

There is no way and there is no need, and one should not waste time in foolish things.

The gone is gone; the gone is already illusion. Only one thing remains and that is your witnessing. Catch hold of it, don't lose track of it. It will be difficult to catch hold of it; again and again you will lose track, but again and again remind yourself to catch hold of it. Many times you will miss the goal, many times you will have glimpses. But by and by, more and more possibility will open. And if you can remain alert even for a few minutes together, a new man will be born unto you. You will be totally different. The old will be gone, and then you will not be worried with past, or future, or present. You will simply live in a different dimension, the dimension of eternity -- where nothing passes, nothing is born, nothing dies, everything remains.

The fourth question:

Question 4

I AM FULL OF ENERGY, FEELING PLAYFUL AND MORE AND MORE

FRIENDLY, BUT I TALK TOO MUCH. WHAT TO DO?

BE playful about that too. Don't make it a serious thing. Talk playfully, and if nobody is listening, take it playfully -- because there is no necessity that somebody should listen.

Don't feel offended. If it comes easy for you to talk, talk. If the other is not in the mood to listen, that is his problem. But don't feel offended. Just remain alert to what is happening in you, that you want to talk. It will happen to many people.

When meditation releases energy in you, it will find all sorts of ways to be expressed. It depends on what type of talent you have. If you are a painter and meditation releases energy, you will paint more, you will paint madly. You will forget everything, the whole world. Your whole energy will be poured into painting. If you are a dancer your meditation will make you a very deep dancer. It depends on the capacity, talent, individuality, personality. So nobody knows what will happen. Sometimes sudden changes will happen: a person who was very silent and was never talkative suddenly becomes talkative. He may have been repressed. He may not have been allowed ever to talk. When the energy arises and flows, he may start talking.

But there is nothing to be worried about. Don't repress it. If you feel it is getting too heavy for others, then just sit in your room and talk alone. There is no need for somebody else to listen to you. In fact, who listens? You can talk to the wall and it will be more human, because you will not be creating any suffering for anybody. You will not torture, you will not bore anybody.

Somebody has sent me a beautiful anecdote.

Pat Reilly was confessing his sins. "Sure, Father, I had sex seven times last night."

The priest asked, "How many women?"

"Ah, Father, there was only one woman," answered Pat.

To which the priest said, "Well, it is not as bad as I thought. Who is the woman?"

"My wife, Father."

"Well," said the priest, "there is nothing wrong with that, son."

"I know, Father, but I just had to tell someone," replied Pat.

There are moments when you just have to tell someone. If you don't tell, it becomes heavy on you. If you tell, you are released and relaxed. If you can find a sympathetic listener, good; otherwise just talk to yourself. But don't repress it. Repressed, it will become a burden on you. Just sit in front of the wall and have a good talk. In the beginning you will feel it a little crazy, but the more you do it, the more you will see the beauty of it. It is less violent. It does not waste somebody else's time, and it works the same way, it does the same: you are relieved. And after a good talk with the wall you will feel very, very relaxed. In fact, everybody needs to do it. The world would be better and more silent if people started talking to the walls.

Try it. It will be deep meditation -- knowing well that the wall is not listening. But that is not the point.

I have heard about a great psychoanalyst who became very old but still continued to practice six, seven, eight hours per day, listening to the patients. He had a young disciple, an apprentice, who became tired after three or four hours -- listening to nonsense, neurotic obsessions, fixations, the same thing again and again. He asked his old master one day, "How do you manage? Because I see you as fresh in the evening as in the morning when you come to the clinic. You are as fresh as when you go -- seven, eight hours of nonsense. You never get tired. I get tired after two, three hours -- and I am a young man!"

The old man laughed and said, "Who listens?"

Freud arranged it very well. He did not even face the patient. He would tell the patient to lie on a couch, and there would be a curtain, and behind the curtain he would sit. And the patient lying on the couch looking at the ceiling, had to talk. It was really very meaningful. One: when a person is Lying down he is more relaxed. He talks of deeper things than when he is sitting. He goes deeper into his unconscious. Talk to a man standing, and he will be very superficial. Sit down, and he goes a little deeper. Let him lie down and then listen to him; he goes very deep.

And then: he was not facing anybody. When you are facing somebody the very presence of the other functions as a repressive force. Then you start saying things which he would like. Then you start saying things in such a way that he is not offended. Then you manage somehow to say things which will be approved by him. Then there is much repression; then the truth never comes out. When the man is not facing you and you are just facing the ceiling, you have nothing to manage. The ceiling will never be offended, you can say anything you like. By and by, one goes deep into associations.

There is no need for the Freudian couch, simply your bedroom will do. And there is no need for anybody to sit there, you can just talk and listen to yourself. Talking and listening to yourself will give you a depth, a great understanding about your own mind.

So talk to the wall, and listen. Be both the talker and the listener. Don't analyze, don't judge, don't say 'this is good and that is bad','that should not be said and this should be said', no. And don't make any refinement, don't polish. Simply blurt out whatsoever comes to the mind -- ugly, absurd, irrelevant. Let the mind have full play and you simply watch. It will be a very great meditation.

The new groom was pushing the praises of married life to his bachelor friend. "Yes, it is wonderful. Breakfast before I go to work is large and delicious. When I go off after that the little woman gives me a big hug and kiss at the door. I return home at night, supper is on the table. After that I sit in the living room reading the paper while the missus cleans away the dishes. Then she changes into something more comfortable and sits down beside me, and talks to me. And she talks, and talks, and talks, until I wish she would drop dead."

Don't give such an opportunity to anybody that he starts thinking, "When are you going to drop dead?" It is your problem. Or, you can make a good arrangement if somebody has the same problem. This is Amida's problem. In this ashram there are so many mad people; you can find somebody else who has the same problem. Then you can make a good arrangement: one hour you talk, one hour you listen to him. No need to be connected with each other, no need to be relevant, and no need to follow any rules of conversation. It is not a conversation. One hour you blurt whatsoever comes to your mind, and of course, then you have to pay -- one hour you have to listen. And it will be valuable for both.

But one thing should be remembered: don't repress it. Anything repressed becomes poisonous. And talking is just innocent; the wall will do. Go to the trees and they will feel very happy; nobody talks to them. They are always waiting. They will feel grateful. Or go to the river or to the rocks, but don't repress. By and by, things will clear up and talking will disappear. It is just the beginning. Then deeper layers of being will be touched. Talk is the most superficial layer of your life, just a very superficial layer. When energy is flowing deep, that layer starts trembling, ripples arise. Allow them. Soon, when the talk is exhausted and you have thrown out all the rubbish that you have been carrying for your whole life, silence will come. And that silence will be completely uncorrupted, virgin.

You can force your talking, you can repress it and you can look silent, but your silence will not be real silence. Deep down the tremor will continue; deep down the volcano is getting ready to erupt any moment. You are sitting on top of it.

People look silent but they are not silent. I would like you to become really silent, and the way is a deep catharsis.

I know Amida is feeling great energy. Her energy sources are tapped, and she is getting connected with her very ground of being. So in all ways she will feel too powerful. Talk also is one of the most basic ingredients of a human being. A human being is a human being because he can talk. No other animal has that capacity. And then Amida is a woman, not even a man.

I have heard....

A woman was saying to her husband that the new priest was a great talker. And she said,

"I have never known a man to talk so fast. It is almost impossible to understand what he is saying. His words overlap."

The husband said, "I know the reason for it. His father was a politician and his mother was a woman."

Now, the perfect combination. So Amida is a woman; talking is easy. There are many reasons for it.

Have you watched? -- small girls start talking before boys. Boys lag behind. In colleges, schools, universities also, as far as language is concerned, girls are always better than boys. They always get higher marks, they are more articulate.

Something seems to be different between the feminine mind and the male mind: the male mind is a better doer, the female mind is a better talker. Maybe because much energy is taken by doing as far as man is concerned; no energy is taken by doing as far as woman is concerned, so the whole energy pours into one direction.

But there is nothing wrong about it. A good talker has something valuable: he can communicate better. To be articulate is beautiful because communication is more possible. And a good talk is an aesthetic value in itself. But first, let the flood be thrown out. Then things will sort themselves out, then things will settle.

After this flood is gone, Amida will find very small sentences coming into her consciousness, but diamond-like, each sentence a value in itself. But first this flood has to go. If the flood is repressed, then those diamonds will be lost forever. That's why all the great scriptures of the world are written in sutras, aphorisms: because the people who wrote them went through this flood of catharsis. When the catharsis was complete, then diamond-like, small sentences -- simple, aesthetic, beautiful, complete -- started bubbling in the consciousness. It is from that consciousness that the Vedas were born, and the Koran. And it is from that consciousness that the beauty of the language of the Bible arises. Never again has it been surpassed.

Jesus was illiterate, but nobody has ever surpassed that clarity, that penetrating reality of his assertions. Behind it is great meditation. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or the Brahma Sutras of Badraina or the Bhakti Sutras of Narad -- small sentences, the smallest you can conceive, almost telegraphic -- but so much is pressed into them that each sentence has atomic energy. If it explodes, if you lovingly take it into yourself, to your heart. It will explode and you will become luminous through it.

But first the flood has to go. It is a good symbol that the flood has come. Allow it. If you can find some sympathetic ears, good. Otherwise, trees, rocks, but don't repress it.

The fifth question:

Question 5

I AM CONFRONTED BY DEATH. I ACCEPT, OR SO I THINK, AND THEN MANY

PEOPLE GET SICK AND DEATH HAPPENS AND HOSPITALIZATION AND I GET

THIS ENORMOUS KNOT OF FEAR IN MY STOMACH. I AM SO SCARED OF

DEATH AND DYING. I GET SO FREAKED OUT.

DEATH is a problem. You can avoid it, you can postpone it, but you cannot completely dissolve it. You have to face it. It can be dissolved only by going through it to the very end, all the way. It is very risky and it will give you great fear. Your whole being will start shaking and trembling; the very idea of dying is unacceptable. It looks so unjust and it looks so meaningless. If a person is to die then what is the meaning of life? Then why am I living, for what? If only death is finally to happen, then why not commit suicide now? Why get up every day, work hard, go to bed, get up again, work hard, go to bed --

for what? Just to die in the end?

Death is the only metaphysical problem. It is because of death that man starts thinking. It is because of death that man became a contemplative, a meditator. In fact, it is because of death that religion was born. The whole credit goes to death. Death stirred everybody's consciousness. The problem is such; it has to be solved. So nothing is wrong with it.

The question is from Vidya.

"I am confronted by death"...everybody is confronted by death. Martin Heidigger has said, "Man is a being towards death." And that is the priority of man. Animals die but they don't know that they die or that they are going to die. Trees die, but there is no confrontation with death. It is the priority of man that only man knows that he is going to die. Hence, man can grow beyond death. Hence, there is a possibility to penetrate into death and overcome it.

"I accept or so I think"...no, acceptance is not possible. You can deceive: you can think that you accept because it is so troublesome even to look at it. Even to think about it is so troublesome that one thinks, "yes, okay, I'm going to die -- so what? I'm going to die, but don't raise the question. Don't talk about it." One keeps it away, goes on putting it by the side so it does not come in the way, keeps it in the unconscious.

Acceptance is not possible. You will have to face death, and when you have faced it you need not accept, because then you know there is no death.

"And then many people get sick and death happens and hospitalization and I get this enormous knot of fear in my stomach"...that is where the problem has to be solved. That enormous knot in the stomach is exactly the place where death happens. The Japanese call it HARA. Just below the navel, two inches below the navel is a point where body and soul are connected. It is there where disconnection happens when you die. Nothing dies, because body cannot die, body is already dead. And you cannot die because you are life itself. Just the connection between you and the body disappears.

That knot is exactly the place where the work has to be done, so don't try to avoid that knot. I would like to say to Vidya that whenever you feel that knot, it is such a valuable moment. Close your eyes, go deep into the knot. That is hara. Feel it, allow it; it has some message for you, it wants to say something to you. If you allow it, it will give you the message. If you relax into it, if you go into it, by and by, you will see the knot has disappeared and there is, instead of a knot, a lotus flower, something flowering there. It is a very beautiful experience. And if you go still deeper you will see that it is a bridge, that flower is a bridge. On this side is the body, on the other side is your reality, your soul.

And that flower is connecting both; the flower is the bridge.

The flower's roots are in the body, and the flower's fragrance and the petals are in the soul. It is a link. But if you are afraid and you don't go there, it feels like a knot, a tension, a stress.

"I am so scared of death and dying. I get so freaked out"...There is no need to freak out; freak in. It's perfectly natural that when somebody dies, somebody is hospitalized again and again, again and again, you remember your death. Nothing is wrong in it.

I have heard....

A beatnik visited a psychiatrist and pleaded, "You have got to help me."

"What is your problem?" asked the head-shrinker.

"Lately," said the beat, "I have had the most compelling desire to shower and shave."

Now if you don't shower and you don't shave, one day or other there is going to be a very compelling desire to shower and shave. It is not a problem; just go and take a shower.

You are avoiding death. It has to be faced, it is part of life's work. It is one of the greatest lessons one has to learn. There is no need to be freaking out; that is not going to help. Go in, face it. Remember that yes, one day or other you will be hospitalized, one day or other you will be ill, and one day or other, you are going to die. So there is no point in postponing it. It is better to understand it before it is too late.

Mulla Nasrudin got sick and worriedly sent a hurried call for the priest, and insisted that he call on him every day to groom his neglected soul for the hereafter. One day when the priest made his daily call, he found Mulla Nasrudin in high spirits.

"I am getting along fine, sir," chortled Nasrudin. "My doctor says I will live for ten years yet, so you don't need to come back for a while. But how about dropping in again in about nine years, eleven months and twenty-nine days?"

One day it has to be faced. Don't be foolish; don't postpone it. Because if you postpone it to the very end, it will be too late. It is not certain when the last day will happen. It can happen today, it can happen tomorrow, it can happen any moment. Death is very unpredictable.

We live in death, so any moment it can happen. Face it, encounter it, and that knot in the stomach is the right place to encounter it. That is the very door from where you enter into life and from where you go out of life.

The last question:

Question 6

BELOVED OSHO, BEING IN LOVE WITH YOU IS SCARY, AND I SURRENDER.

IT is from Prem Purnima. My answer is: being in love with you, Purnima, is even more scary, and I accept.

The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #7

Chapter title: They Kill Lust With Lust

7 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

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7607070

ShortTitle:

BELOV207

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

94

mins

THOSE WHO ARE DEAD

AND YET FULLY ALIVE

AND KNOW THE FLAVORS

AND FEELINGS

IN LOVING;

THEY WILL CROSS THE RIVER.

GAZING AT

THE STREAM OF LIFE AND DEATH,

THEY SEEK INTEGRITY.

THEY HAVE NO WISH

FOR HAPPINESS AT ALL,

WALKING AGAINST THE WIND.

THEY KILL LUST

WITH LUST

AND ENTER THE CITY OF LOVE

UNATTACHED...

MAN IS ENERGY, A DYNAMISM, A PROCESS, A VERY CREATIVE PROCESS

with a thousand and one potentialities, with infinite alternatives open. Man is an opening, an evolution, and with all the possibilities that the existence has. Man is a miniature existence; a drop, of course, but a drop has all that the ocean has; a drop, of course, but a conscious drop. And the consciousness is oceanic; it knows no boundaries. But the man I am talking about is the essential man of the Bauls, ADHAR MANUSH. You can be that, but you are not that. You are the seed. You can open and blossom and release your fragrance to the winds, but you are not yet that. It has to be remembered.

Gurdjieff used to say that man is not born with a soul; he has to create it through effort. A man is born only with an opportunity. It can be used, it can be wasted, so all depends on you. One has to become a creator of oneself. The parents have given you a body and a possibility, but the real birth has yet to happen. And for that real birth you will have to become your own mother, your own father. That real birth is an inner creativity. You have to move withinwards to find your own source of energy, and not only that, but to change the mechanical channels of that energy,, to make conscious channels for it.

Ordinarily, energy flows downwards. That's what Bauls call lust. When they call it lust they are not denouncing it, condemning it. It is just a fact, just as water flows downwards.

It is natural for water to flow downwards, down the hill. But water can rise upwards; just a little heat is needed. The water has to be heated; it can evaporate. At a certain degree of heat, a hundred degrees, it starts rising towards the heavens. The same water that was always going downhill starts going uphill. A conversion has happened; just heat was needed. In the East this heat is known as TAP. The word TAP means heat; the word TAP

means 'heating yourself'.

The Bauls sing,

While desire burns in the limbs

still there is time.

Boil the juice

on the fire of longing

to condense the fruit.

The sweetness of syrup

will ferment and sour

unless it is stirred

on controlled heat.

Feelings evolve from desire,

and love shoots forth from lust.

Lust is the same energy as love; the difference is only of direction. Lust moves downwards, love has started the uphill task. Lust is like roots of a tree, love is like wings of a bird -- but the energy is the same. All energy is the same.

Energy as such is neutral. Unless you become conscious about it you cannot be creative.

And the downhill movement is very destructive: you are simply dissipating yourself. You are not getting any integration through it -- what Gurdjieff used to call crystallization.

Every moment you are poured with energy. Existence goes on pouring energy into you, through air, through water, through food, through the sunlight, through the moonlight, and a thousand and one other subtle influences. The universe goes on pouring its energy into you. What are you doing with that energy? Are you doing anything or simply wasting it? Are you creating something out of it? Are you getting a certain integrity, crystallization out of it? Or does it just come through one end and is lost through the other end?

There are many people who are just like a pipe: you pour one thing through one end, through the other end it goes out. Don't be a pipe. When the energy is in you, do something with it so that something of it becomes a permanent part of you. Otherwise the whole life will be just a pipe: eating, defecating, drinking, urinating -- just a pipe. Subtle juices are created by your energy. That's what sex is; a very subtle juice. Now what are you doing with it? Are you doing anything with it, or just wasting it?

Lust is the lowest form of sex energy; love, the highest form. Unless your lust becomes love you will be missing your goal.

GURDJIEFF used to say that there is a certain mechanism in man; he called it

'KUNDABUFFER', just parallel to KUNDALINI: Kundalini is a center, but it functions only when the energy rises upwards. Kundabuffer is that center which functions in you when the energy goes downwards. Kundabuffer has to be destroyed, melted, destructured. It is a mechanism out of the continuous practice of many lives. A certain mechanism has arisen in everybody, a channel. The moment energy is ready it simply moves through that channel. That channel is already there to take it out of your being. If this is the truth and nothing else is possible, then Jean-Paul Sartre is right: that man is a useless passion. Then for a few days you are alive on the earth, doing nothing -- eating things, throwing things, absorbing things, throwing things. Then what is the point of it all?

But this is not all. The kundabuffer can be melted; that channel can be broken. And once that channel is broken another channel starts functioning. It is already there waiting for you. Not that it does not exist; it exists. It has come with you but you have not used it yet.

You have not allowed energy to flow into it. Of course, it is an uphill task, it is arduous.

Going downward is very easy; going uphill, strength, awareness, a certain will, courage, trust...many things will be needed.

The Bauls sing,

The act of loving

is not an ideal dream.

Loving grows

from the grilling of lust --

like feeling death,

being wholly alive.

The clay-beetle buried

in the earth lives on clay,

nestling in it.

Lovers who know

how love can overcome lust

though an uphill walk,

even for a man of strength...

THE very courageous, the really strong people, the really adventurous, become attracted towards paths of self-realization or paths of self-transformation. Religion is the greatest adventure there is. Going to Everest is nothing, going to the moon also is nothing; going to the highest peak of your being is the real task. Because in the first place, we are not even aware that the peak exists. In the first place, we are so unconscious that we don't know what we are doing. We don't know what we are doing with our lives.

I have heard....

The manager of a small power plant was electrocuted while on the fob. The assistant manager informed the police chief, the coroner, and the workmen in the plant. They gathered, horror-stricken, about the body of the dead manager stretched out on the floor, and began to speculate how an experienced man could commit so fatal an error.

"The only thing I can think of," said the assistant manager, "is that poor Joe must have picked up this terminal in one hand.... "

The assistant manager picked up the terminal and then without thinking reached out with his other hand and came into contact with... Bang!

The assistant manager was stretched out next to the manager, but the mystery was resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

Man is unconscious. You go on doing things, not knowing why. You go on doing things you could not do if you were even a little conscious.

What we are doing with our life is just sleeping through it. Consciousness has to be evolved. The more consciousness you have, the more energy starts flowing upwards on its own accord. Consciousness is the clue, the key, the master key. Lust becomes love through consciousness, so love cannot be an unconscious thing.

When Bauls say that love is the door, they don't mean the love that you call love. Your love is as unconscious as anything else. It is unconscious, that's why we use the expression 'falling in love'. Yes, it is a 'falling in'. The love Bauls are talking about is a rising in love, not falling in love. It is not a fall, it is a rise. So don't misunderstand that your love is what Bauls are talking about. Your love is just a name for lust -- a good name, a beautiful, nice name. And beware of nice words because they can be very deceptive. If you label lust as love, you will be deceived by your own labelling.

LUST is when you are unconscious. You see a woman or a man and you fall in love, and you don't know why; sometimes even against yourself, in spite of yourself.

People come and say to me, "What can we do? We are helpless; love has happened." This love is not the love of the Baul; this is lust. What a Baul calls lust is this: unconscious love is lust. Then it flows downwards. Then it moves through the sex center into the world again. Upwards lust is love, but then it is conscious. Consciousness is the staircase: step by step you become more and more conscious. Whatsoever you do, you do it with full consciousness -- even walking, eating, going to bed, talking, listening -- small things of life, but you do them with consciousness. And when you are in love, you are in love with full consciousness. It is not against yourself. It is not that you are possessed, it is not that you are a victim, it is not that you are being pulled by somebody like a magnet. No, you are moving on your own.

The Bauls' love is very cool. It has the coolness of awareness. Your love is very hot; it has the fever of unconsciousness.

We are functioning through kundabuffer. This mechanism exists just at the center of sex.

People who are living through kundabuffer can live two sorts of lives: one, of indulgence, and the other, of repression -- but both are the same. Ordinarily the people who live a life of repression are thought to be saints. That's simply foolish. They are the same people in a different garb. People who live a life of indulgence are as unconscious as the people who live a life of repression. In fact, the more strong the kundabuffer is, the more people become repressive, because they want to control it. They are afraid. They are afraid because they are losing the ego control over their sex desire. They try to control it, but their control is like forcing the sex desire deep into the unconscious. They sit on top of it; they have to continuously fight with it.

And remember: if you have to fight with something you can never leave it and you can never go beyond it. To fight with it you have to remain on the same level. To fight with it you have to remain sitting on top of it for twenty-four hours. There is no holiday. You leave it even for a single moment and it is again there, forcing you towards indulgence.

Indulgence and-repression are the two faces of the same type of person. In your monasteries you will find the repressive type, in the world you will find the indulgent type. The playboy and the so-called saint may look opposite to each other, but they are complementary. Their obsession is the same, their fixation is the same, their neurosis is the same. Kundabuffer has to be melted down. What to do?

ONE small technique will be of tremendous help. Whenever you feel sex desire arising, there are three possibilities: one, indulge in it -- ordinary, everybody is doing that; second: repress it, force it down so it goes beyond your consciousness into the darkness of the unconscious, throw it into the basement of your life. That's what your so-called extraordinary people are doing -- MAHATMAS, saints, monks. But both are against nature. Both are against the inner science of transformation.

The third -- a very rare minority ever tries it -- is when the sex desire arises, close your eyes. It is a very valuable moment: desire arising is energy arising. It is like the sun rising in the morning. Close your eyes; this is the moment to be meditative. Move downwards to the sex center where you are feeling the thrill the vibration, the kick. Move there and just be a silent onlooker. Witness it, don't condemn it. The moment you condemn you have gone far away from it. And don't enjoy it, because the moment you enjoy you are unconscious. Just be alert, watchful, like a lamp burning in a dark night. You just take your consciousness there, unflickering, unwavering. You see what is happening at the sex center. What is this energy?

Don't call it names because all words have become contaminated. Even if you say it is sex, immediately you have started condemning it. The very word has become condemnatory. Or, if you belong to the new generation, then the very word has become something sacred. But the word is always loaded with emotion. Any word which is loaded with emotion becomes a barrier on the path of awareness. You just don't call it anything. Just watch the fact that an energy is arising near the sex center. There is a thrill

-- watch it. And watching it, you will feel a totally new quality of energy. Watching it, you will see it is rising upwards. It is finding a path inside you. And the moment it starts rising upwards you will feel a coolness falling on you, a silence surrounding you, a grace, a beatitude, a benediction, a blessing all around you. It is no longer like a thorn, painful.

It no longer hurts; it is very soothing, like a balm. And the more you remain aware, the higher it will go. If it can come up to the heart, which is not very difficult -- difficult, but not very difficult.... If you remain alert you will see it has come to the heart. When it comes to the heart you will know for the first time what love is.

UP to now you have been carrying a counterfeit in the name of love. When the energy comes to the heart chakra, then it is transformed into love. Once it is transformed into love, once you have felt it, once it has penetrated you, your whole being will feel purified. You will feel virgin, you will feel so pure, so holy, that you cannot think that heaven is anywhere else. You will know it is within you, within your heart. And heaven will become a truth; it will not be theology then, it will become almost a geography. You will know exactly where it is, and God will no longer be a hypothesis. In that purity, in that silence, in that fulfillment of love you will see, God is -- not as a theory, but as a self-evident truth; not as an argument, not as a proof, not as a conclusion, not as a syllogism, but simply it is there. There is no way to deny it. It is there so much that you can deny yourself, but you cannot deny God. You yourself look so faint before the reality of God that you can say, "I may not be, but He is."

That will be the first glimpse. Energy can rise still higher. When it comes to the center of the throat, it becomes prayer. People have been doing prayer, but they don't know what prayer is -- because prayer is the most subtle and refined form of love. If you have not moved through the heart center you cannot go to prayer; there is no way. One has to go via the heart. Because of the throat center, because it exists at the throat center and happens at the throat center, people have started doing rituals. People have made prayers: they assert, they say something. But just by using the throat center and saying something to God you are not praying. Prayer is concerned with the throat center, but not as verbalization. It is an experience at that center, and the experience is exactly like when a child sucks at his mother's breast for the first time. It is not that you say something, but you receive something.

Prayer is not saying something to God, but receiving something from God. God becomes the mother, the mother's breast. Prayer is a nourishment. Yes, it exists and happens at the throat center because the throat center is the center to receive. The throat center is the first center which starts functioning because the child has to suck air; that happens through the throat center. And then he has to suck milk; that happens through the throat center. Prayer is just like sucking air, vitality, or sucking milk at the breast of your mother.

Hence, Jesus says, "Unless you become like small babes, you will not enter into my kingdom of God." He is talking about the throat center. But Christians have completely lost track of it. He is saying in a symbolic way to again become a babe, again start sucking from the throat center the energy that life is. Now, of course, the breast is invisible and the milk is invisible.

Have you watched a man in prayer? -- how diffused with grace he looks, how peaceful, how at home, how relaxed. Watch a small babe sucking milk, fallen asleep with the nipple of the breast still in his mouth, resting on his mother's breast, fallen asleep. Watch the face of the child; that is the face of the saint also when he arrives at the throat center and prayer arises.

PRAYER is not something that you do with God; prayer is something that you allow God to do with you. Prayer is receptive. It is not an action on your part, it is a passive welcome.. Prayer is not saying something to God. On the contrary, it is listening to God.

It is being ready to receive His gift. It is very difficult to receive His gift because you have your own ideas, you have your own plans. You go on telling Him, showing Him the right path: "Do this, then I will be happy."

We have the adage that man proposes and God disposes. This is simply stupid, sheer stupidity. Just the other way round is the case: God proposes and man goes on disposing -

- because you have your own plans. You never listen to Him, you think you are wiser than Him. You go on advising Him: "Do this, don't do that" -- that's what you do in your prayer.

A real prayer has nothing to suggest to God except a deep gratitude, thankfulness. It simply accepts whatsoever God is pouring. Prayer is receiving the gift.

But it happens at the throat center. It is the highest form of love. And when you go still higher, then at the seventh center, SAHASRAR, happens SAMADHI, the ultimate ecstasy, where the seeker is lost in the sought, where you are no more yourself, where God and you lose boundaries and become one.

Overlapping starts at the throat center; boundaries become dim, not very clear-cut. But still, you exist separately. You have a separate center and God has a separate center. In prayer you two are meeting, overlapping. In some way peripheries are merging into each other, but still centers are different. The higher you go, the more centers come closer and closer. At the SAHASRAR, the seventh chakra, your centers become one. Then there is only one center. That's what is meant when Jesus says, "Not I, but my Father lives in me." Now the seeker and the sought are not two. The ultimate meeting has happened, the ultimate love has flowered, has come to fruition and fulfillment.

If you become aware and a witness when the sex center is throbbing with energy, vibrating, streaming -- without choosing indulgence or repression -- if you can remain just in the middle, a watcher, an observer, this tremendous transformation happens on its own.

So next time you feel full of passion, don't move into these two easily available alternatives: indulgence or repression. Just remain in the middle, and you are at a point where the door can open. It always opens in the middle.

Buddha used to call his path 'the middle path', MAJJHIM NIKAYA, because he said,

"Everywhere, excess is prohibited. Always choose the middle." The exact middle is the point beyond. If you can find the exact middle ground between two opposites, two rivals, you have gone beyond them, you have reached a transcendence. The transcendence opens just in the middle; the middle is the beyond.

When you are watching, standing like a witness at the sex center, energy moves upwards.

Kundabuffer starts melting, and kundalini starts functioning. Kundalini is the right path, kundabuffer the wrong path. And kundabuffer is functioning because we have lived so unconsciously for many lives that kundalini cannot function. Kundalini needs the fuel of consciousness. If that gas is missing, kundalini cannot function. Kundabuffer functions with unconsciousness.

So it depends on you: if you go on supplying unconsciousness, kundabuffer will go on functioning; if you supply consciousness, suddenly your life turns. You start moving towards the interior of your being; a deep interiority.

A man who was extremely successful with muleteams was asked how he managed the stubborn creatures.

"Well," explained the man, "when they won't move, I pick up a handful of soil and put it in their mouths. Of course, they spit it out, but as a rule they start on."

"Why do you think it has that effect?" asked the person.

"I'm not sure, but I think it changes the current of their thoughts."

If you start witnessing, nobody knows exactly HOW your energy starts moving, but somehow it happens. Maybe it changes your current of thought. It is a great shock.

You try -- you are angry, you are getting into anger; suddenly become alert. Shake and jerk your body and become alert, and see what happens. Suddenly you will see that something has slipped out of your hands; you are no longer angry. Somehow anger looks foolish now. Or, slap your face when you are getting angry rather than slapping somebody else's face -- that is not going to help. Slap your own face when you are getting angry and see what happens. Suddenly, the mechanism that was going to function in a routine way cannot function; you have shocked it.

A consciousness arises if you slap your own face, a consciousness which breaks the unconscious pattern. So wherever you want to change, remember consciousness is the key. Otherwise, we are almost living in a sort of insanity. A few mad people are in the madhouses, the remainder are outside. But it is very difficult to find a sane man. The differences are only of degrees. Have you watched the fact, have you ever become afraid of it? -- that the person who has become mad was also just like you a few days before?

Nobody had ever thought that he would become mad; he is mad. Can't the same happen to you?

IT is told about William James, the greatest American psychologist, that when he went to visit a madhouse for the first time, he went back home very sad. He had fever. The wife was worried. She said, "What has happened? You went, and you were perfectly okay."

He said, "Don't talk to me. I'm in no mood to talk." He slipped under the blankets and remained ill for two or three days. Everybody was worried. The doctor said, "Nothing is wrong." Then he said what had happened.

Seeing many mad people in the madhouse, suddenly a thought occurred to him: "The same can happen to me." That gave him a trembling; he was never the same man again.

But that made him very alert.

Inside your mind, continuous madness exists -- and you know it. How can you manage not to know it? But it goes on like an undercurrent. On the surface you manage well.

I have heard....

A clergyman had occasion to preach to the inmates of an insane hospital. During his sermon he noticed that one of the patients paid the closest attention, his eyes riveted upon the preacher's face, his body bent eagerly forward. This interest was most flattering. After the service, the speaker noticed that the man spoke to the superintendent. So as soon as possible, the preacher inquired, "Didn't that man speak to you about my sermon?"

"Yes."

"Would you mind telling me what he said?"

The superintendent tried to sidestep, but the preacher insisted. "Well," he said at last,

"what the man said was,'Just think...he is out and I am in.'"

You may be out and somebody may be in, but the difference is only of degree. Unless you become conscious, you are always on the verge of madness, always boiling, always ready. Any small thing can prove the last straw on the camel. Any small thing, any small incident, and you may cross the boundary.

TO live unconsciously is not to really live. To become conscious, to move consciously, to be conscious of all that happens in your mind, to be separate from your mind -- because consciousness becomes separate; whenever you watch something you become separate from that thing -- this is the secret. If you watch your thoughts you become separate from your thoughts; you are no more identified. And when you are not identified, you are not cooperating, and you don't go on giving energy to your thoughts -- by and by, they disappear. When the host is not interested, the guests disappear. They don't come so often; or even if they come they don't stay so long. Gaps arise -- one thought comes, then minutes pass and another thought does not come. In that gap you face reality. Then there is no screen between you and reality. Unscreened reality is what God is.

The song for today:

THOSE WHO ARE DEAD

AND YET FULLY ALIVE

AND KNOW THE FLAVORS

AND FEELINGS

IN LOVING;

THEY WILL CROSS THE RIVER.

GAZING AT

THE STREAM OF LIFE AND DEATH,

THEY SEEK INTEGRITY.

THEY HAVE NO WISH

FOR HAPPINESS AT ALL,

WALKING AGAINST THE WIND.

THEY KILL LUST

WITH LUST

AND ENTER THE CITY OF LOVE

UNATTACHED....

Tremendous sutras, tremendously significant sutras.... "Those who are dead and yet fully alive".... How can you be dead and yet fully alive? If you become a witness to your body, then you know you are not the body. The body is born and the body is going to die; the moment you know you are not the body, you know that you were never born and you will never die. So in a sense you become wholly alive, eternally alive -- what Jesus calls

'abundance of life', overflowingly alive. You cannot be exhausted then. Then you are not caused: you don't have any beginning and you cannot have any end; you are perpetual energy, eternal energy. Then you are wholly alive on the one hand, and because you know you are not the body, then the life that you used to think consisted in body is no longer there.

The body is already dead. You use it, you live in it, but you are no longer identified with it.

THOSE WHO ARE DEAD

AND YET FULLY ALIVE

AND KNOW THE FLAVORS

AND FEELINGS IN LOVING;

THEY WILL CROSS THE RIVER.

And when you are fully alert and no longer attached to the body, no longer identified with the body, no longer does the idea exist in you that you are the body, then love arises.

The moment you are no longer the body, the kundabuffer is broken -- because the kundabuffer can exist only when you are identified with the body. The kundabuffer is a part of the body.

NOW be careful about what I am saying; be attentive.

The kundabuffer is part of the body and kundalini is not part of the body. Kundalini is part of YOU, it is part of your consciousness. So people, there are many...even a few doctors have tried to find out where the kundalini exists in the body. A few have even been foolish enough to prove that it exists here or there, at this center or that.

Kundalini is not part of the physical body at all. And Gurdjieff was right: if people are trying to prove that kundalini is part of the body, then whatsoever they prove is kundabuffer, not kundalini. Nobody was there to say to Gurdjieff that kundalini is part of the soul, not of the body. And all the so-called Hindu yogis, particularly the modern ones, try in every way to imitate science when they write. They try to show and prove that Yoga is scientific. Of course, then they start falling victim to the same attitude, the same standpoint as the scientists have become victims of: the standpoint that starts with the body and thinks the body is all. So they try to prove that kundalini exists somewhere in the physical body, that it is physiological.

Gurdjieff used to say that these people were talking about kundabuffer: "Their kundalini is not kundalini, but kundabuffer; a false entity." When you are too attached to the body, this false entity arises. It arises in the body, not in you. When you are no longer identified with the body kundabuffer disappears. It is, in fact, the kundabuffer from where you are identified with the body. That's why sex becomes almost synonymous with love. When a woman has come to her menopause she starts thinking-that her life is finished. When a man comes to know that he is no longer sexually potent, he starts feeling that now he is useless. These wrong attitudes exist because we are too identified with the sex center.

If witnessing arises and you are separate, and you KNOW that you are separate -- not that you repeat it, not that the Vedas say that you are separate from your body so you repeat it, you chant it, and constant repetition gives you an illusory idea that, yes, you are separate from the body. That is not going to help. Your own knowing, experiential, existential, can be of help, nothing else. If you know you are not the body, suddenly love arises; energy starts moving towards the heart center.

The heart does not exist in the lungs. The heart is not part of the body, lungs are a part of the body. And whatsoever you have been thinking of as your heartbeat is not a heartbeat, it is just lungs beating.

Hidden behind this beat is another beat. You can think of it in this way: the lungs and heart are parallel. Lungs belong to the body, and heart belongs to the soul. Kundabuffer and kundalini are parallel: kundabuffer belongs to the body, kundalini belongs to the soul. Sex and love are parallel: sex belongs to the body, love belongs to the soul. The world and God are parallel: the world belongs to the body, God belongs to the soul. Body and soul exist parallel, like two parallel lines always together and yet meeting nowhere; always together, running together for thousands of lives and meeting nowhere. They affect each other, but meeting never happens. They color each other. When you become too obsessed with the body, your body almost possesses the soul. When you become too detached from the body, your soul starts possessing your body.

Ordinarily the soul remains a slave and the body becomes the master. But when the conversion happens, understanding arises. The soul regains its mastery and body comes to its right place -- becomes a slave, an obedient slave.

THOSE WHO ARE DEAD

AND YET FULLY ALIVE

AND KNOW THE FLAVORS

AND FEELINGS IN LOVING;

THEY WILL CROSS THE RIVER.

GAZING AT

THE STREAM OF LIFE AND DEATH

THEY SEEK INTEGRITY.

Integrity, Yoga -- integration, crystallization, centering, or whatsoever you like to call it -

- is the goal.

GAZING AT...that is the key; what I was calling witnessing.

GAZING AT

THE STREAM OF LIFE AND DEATH,

THEY SEEK INTEGRITY.

INSIDE you there is one stream of life and one stream of death. Body is the stream of death, soul is the stream of life. Soul never dies, body is never alive. With the soul-body together, the body reflects the life of the soul. It is simply luminous with the life of the soul. The life is borrowed; it is like the moon. The moon has no rays of its own, it reflects the sun. The rays come from the sun, are reflected from the moon, but you see them as if they are coming from the moon.

It is as if you burn a small lamp in a room and somebody passing outside looks inside through the glass window. The glass window spreads the light of the lamp outside also, but the light is not coming from the glass window, it is coming from an interior place.

Your body reflects life -- your body is luminous with the life of the soul. That's why when the soul disappears the body is dead. The body was always dead. Go and put off the light inside the room and the window will be dark. It was always dark because it has no light of its own.

Body is the stream of death, and if you continue to be attached to the body, you will again and again be falling into the stream of death. You will be born and you will be dying, and you will be born and you will be dying -- this is what the Hindus call 'the wheel of life and death'. Go in, withinwards, and find the source of life. It is totally different from the body. It has made its abode in the body, but it is not the body. That is the stream of life.

Watching, gazing, witnessing these two...THE STREAM OF LIFE AND DEATH, THEY

SEEK INTEGRITY. And once your understanding has become perfect about what death is and what life is, you become integrated, you become centered. Because then no more is your center in the body. Then there is no longer any illusion that you are in the body.

Then you are suddenly aware of the real center of your being, of your innermost shrine.

THEY HAVE NO WISH

FOR HAPPINESS AT ALL,

WALKING AGAINST THE WIND.

The Bauls say the real seekers have no wish for happiness at all, walking against the wind. They simply float with life. They don't ask anything from life, they simply receive.

Whatsoever life gives, they enjoy, they delight in it, but their demand has ceased. They don't swim, and they never swim against the stream; they simply float with the stream.

That's what surrender is.

There is a beautiful song....

Oh cruelly eager,

are you going to fry on fire

your heart's flower-bud?

Are you going to force it to blossom

and let the scent escape

without biding your time?

Look at my Master, God,

eternally opening the buds

to bloom

but never in a hurry.

You are dependent

on the hours of the day

because of your terrifying greed.

What else can you do?

Listen to

the Beloved's appeal

and do not hurt

the Master at heart.

The stream spontaneously flows,

lost in itself,

listening to His words,

O my eager one.

The Bauls say, "Don't try to force anything." Let life be a deep let-go. See God opening millions of flowers every day without forcing the buds, waiting, never in a hurry, giving their time to them. The Bauls say, "Everything happens at its right time, everything happens in its own season. Wait, don't be impatient, don't be in a hurry. All hurry is greed, and all hurry is a subtle fight." That which is going to happen will happen.

Whenever it is going to happen it will happen; you need not fight existence. You can surrender, you can trust.

THIS has to be understood.

If this becomes part of your inner climate, it will give you tremendous joy. Then you are no longer proposing anything, and then nobody can frustrate you. You don't have any plan and you don't have any goal. You are not going somewhere, you have simply left yourself in His hands, and He takes you wherever he wants. "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done...." Let His will be done: that is the Bauls' method. It is of surrender and love and trust. The Baul is not a yogi, certainly not a Hatha yogi; the Baul is a lover, a devotee. He trusts that God is taking him into some unknown world, but it must be beautiful because He is taking him. The river is going to the ocean; it must be going, because it is His river. This childlike trust is his only method.

THEY HAVE NO WISH

FOR HAPPINESS AT ALL,

WALKING AGAINST THE WIND.

THEY KILL LUST

WITH LUST

AND ENTER THE CITY OF LOVE

UNATTACHED....

That's why Bauls say, "Even if lust has to be transcended, it is through lust." If anger has to be transcended, it is through anger. They know the alchemy of how to change poison into nectar. They don't say to throw it, it is poison. They say to transform it, nectar is hiding behind it. The poison is only just the shell. Find the inner content of it; love is hiding behind lust. Soul is hiding behind the body, God is hiding behind the world. Don't throw it. It will be throwing something tremendously valuable. Maybe you are not yet aware of what value is there. You think it is just a stone. Become a jeweller. It is what Bauls call to become a RUSIK, a connoisseur. Know the taste of it, find out the ways, what it is. Become alert to the hidden reality, open the doors and go into it. It may be a Kohinoor; don't throw it. If God has given you the stone, it must be a Kohinoor --

otherwise why should He give it to you? Don't think yourself wiser than Him. Let His wisdom be the supreme. You trust. If He has given you a stone it must be a Kohinoor, it must be a great diamond. It is His gift; it cannot be otherwise.

So even in lust they are not like ordinary ascetics. They don't fight, they search deep in it, they try to find the chemistry of it. Something is bound to be there, otherwise why should God give so much sex energy to everyone? And to man he has given more than to any animal. In animals, sex is seasonal. Once a year or twice a year they become sexual, otherwise sex disappears. Man is sexual for twenty-four hours, twelve months a year, year in and year out. Something is bound to be there. Why has so much sex energy been given to man? It cannot be only for generative reasons -- because animals are doing perfectly well. If man were only seasonally sexual, things. in a way, would have been better: once a year for a month, and for eleven months you are free. You can do a thousand and one things and not be worried about it. One month in a year would be enough.

But why has man been given so much sex energy? It cannot be only to generate children.

This great treasure has been given for some other reason: it carries a hidden possibility for becoming tremendously alert and aware. This energy has to become love, and this love has to become prayer, and this prayer has to become ecstasy.

The generative part is very minor as far as man is concerned. Something of greater value is hiding in it. God cannot give you something without a particular reason in it.

THEY KILL LUST

WITH LUST

AND ENTER THE CITY OF LOVE

UNATTACHED....

When lust is transformed and you enter into the city of love, you enter unattached.

Remember, that is their definition of love. If love has attachment in it, it is lust, If love has no attachment in it, only then is it not lust. When you are in lust you are not really thinking of the other, thinking of your beloved or lover. You are simply using the other for your own ends. And of course, attachment is bound to be there, because you would like to possess him, and you would like to possess him or her forever. Because tomorrow also you may need, the day after tomorrow also you may need. You need a lover and you want to possess him.

LOVE is a gift. You give; you need not be worried about whether tomorrow he will be there to receive or not. Because a lover can give to the trees, to the rocks. A lover can give to the emptiness of the sky. A lover can simply flower and send his fragrance to the winds, even if nobody is there. Just think: Buddha sitting under his Bodhi tree, alone, full of love, overflowing.... Not that somebody is there to receive, but God is always there to receive, in so many forms, in so many ways.

Lust is greed, lust is attachment, lust is possessiveness. Love needs no possession, love knows no attachment, because love is not greed. Love is a gift. It is a sharing. You have found something; your heart is full, your fruits are ripe. You hanker that somebody should come and share. It is unconditional; who shares does not matter. But you are so full of it that you would like to be unburdened -- as when clouds are full of rainwater, they rain. Sometimes they rain in a forest, sometimes they rain on a hill, sometimes they rain in a desert, but they rain. The fact of where they rain is irrelevant. They are so full they have to rain.

A lover is so full he becomes a cloud, full of lovewater; he has to rain. That raining is spontaneous.

The so called lovers

rarely know

the flavors of loving.

A lover lives

for love alone

as the fish in the water.

Great is the lover

who can love day and night

and is wholly devoted

to love's intercourse.

Worship with prayers.

The man or the woman

is still alone,

but a lover is formed

when the souls conjoin.

Ordinarily a man is alone, a woman is alone. Loneliness is there. Even if you are attached to a man or woman or a friend, and it is only the attachment of lust, you will remain lonely. Have you not watched it? Attached to a woman, attached to a man, but still you remain lonely. Somewhere deep down there is no communication with the other; you are cut off, like islands. Even dialogue seems to be impossible. Lovers ordinarily never talk to each other, because each talk creates argument, and each talk brings conflict. By and by, they learn to be silent; by and by, they learn somehow to avoid the other, or at the most, tolerate. But they remain lonely. Even if the other is there, there is space; the inner space remains unfulfilled.

The Bauls say,

The man or the woman is still alone, but a lover is formed when the souls conjoin.

It is not a question of two bodies; it is not a question of two bodies meeting and embracing and penetrating each other. The question is of two souls penetrating each other. When two souls penetrate each other, then loneliness disappears forever. Then a totally new world arises where you are never, never lonely. You have become a whole.

Man is half, woman is half. When love happens, wholeness happens.

Poison and nectar

are mingled in one

like music played and heard

in one single act.

The human heart

free from flaw,

forever enlightened,

sees good and evil --

same time, same space.

A child sucking his mother

draws milk;

a leech at the breast of a woman

draws blood.

"Poison and nectar are mingled in one...." Love and lust are mingled in one, life and death are mingled in one. It depends on you what you are going to choose of it. A child sucking his mother draws milk; a leech at the same breast draws blood. It depends on you. Lust is not bad, but love and lust are mingled together.

CHOOSE love; bring love out of lust. Let your life be a life of alertness, so whatsoever you do is done in such awareness that only that which is valuable is chosen, and the valueless is left.

The whole life is nothing but a great effort to choose life against death, to choose love instead of lust, to choose God instead of the world, to choose beauty, good, truth, instead of falsities.

My heart!

You are in a muddle.

As the days go,

your inherited riches,

plundered, fly.

You only doze around the clock

drinking dreams

and living in five homes

with no control.

The robber rests with you,

my heart,

in your own room.

But how can you know?

Your eyes are shut in sleep.

This is unawareness: "Your robber rests with you, my heart, in your own room. But how can you know? Your eyes are shut in sleep." Open your eyes. Watch what is happening inside, outside. Be alert to the death and life stream, and by and by, fall into the life stream and be integrated.

Love springs

as feelings merge.

Divided forms

assume a single way.

A pair of hearts

running in parallel streams

long to reach

the God of loving.

Bauls say, "Love a man, love a woman, but let this love be nothing but an offering to the ultimate love, the love of God."

Love springs

as feelings merge.

Divided forms

assume a single way.

A pair of hearts

running in parallel streams

long to reach

the God of loving.

If your love is love and not lust, then, by and by, you will find that you and your beloved are both moving together, singing, dancing towards the Ultimate Lover, the Ultimate Beloved where, and only where, one can find rest. Then you are moving towards the ultimate home. If lust is there, then you are moving nowhere.

Lust is like dead, stagnant water -- a pond; love is like a river. And if you love somebody, your rivers move parallel towards the ocean. It is good to go dancing with your beloved, good to go hand in hand, good to go singing, with laughter in the heart. But remember, if your life becomes a pool, stagnant, then it is lust. Love is always flowing. Love is dynamic, lust is stale and stagnant.

The essence of beauty

in the mirror of love

stares at his face;

the formless

within the visual form.

The fire cools

in his hands

and quicksilver roasts on flames.

Love is a miracle. Once love has happened, miracles happen continuously: fire cools in his hands and quicksilver roasts on flames.

Love has a different world. Lust lives under a different law. The mystics have called the law of lust the law of gravitation: one is pulled downwards. And the law of love is the law of grace: one is pulled upwards.

I have heard....

A Sufi mystic was staying in somebody's house and he was thought to be a madman, so the family was a little afraid. The man was not reliable; he might do anything. But he was also known as a great mystic so they could not throw him out; they were also afraid of that. In the night -- "Where to put him? Where is he going to sleep?" So they put him in the basement.

In the middle of the night they suddenly heard laughter coming from the terrace. They could recognize the laughter; it was that madman's. But how did he reach the terrace? He had been put in the basement. They ran upstairs; he was laughing madly, he was rolling on the terrace.

They said, "What has happened? How have you come here?"

He said, "That's why I am laughing. I was sleeping in the basement, and a miracle of miracles happened: suddenly I fell upwards. Hence, I am laughing!"

The story is beautiful. Mystics fall upwards, love falls upwards. It is a part of another world, of another law: the law of grace.

Light has burst

on the walls of the sky.

The kind one

has blossomed at last.

Waking in the morning,

I saw him present,

appearing close to my face.

Flowers wither

and birds flutter

and the dew forms on the leaves.

The glow of the night

is melting away

with the rising heat

of the sun.

Love is rising sun, lust is the dark night of the soul.

Explore the nature

of your own body,

my unfeeling heart.

Unless you know

your very substance,

worshipping God is of no avail.

The body is the home

of seven heavens

for you to voyage.

You will blunder

as you never learned to know

the friends and the foes

alive in your body.

So the basic work is to know the foe and the friend in the body. To know that which you are and that which you are not is the basic work, to discriminate between death and life, lust and love, kundabuffer and kundalini.

There is no need to go anywhere. All that is going to happen is going to happen within you. All is given there, all is already given. Just a little discrimination, a little awareness is needed. Bring light unto your own being. Close your eyes from the outside and open your eyes withinwards. The whole world is there in miniature.

The mystics say: As above, so below.

The Hindus say: Whatsoever is in Brahman, whatsoever is in the universe, is also in man.

MAN is a small map of the whole cosmos. The limited and unlimited both exist in you; matter and consciousness both exist in you; the lowest and the highest both exist in you.

Nietzsche used to say that man is a rope stretched between two abysses, two eternities.

Yes, man is a rope, a bridge. You are a ladder: one part is resting on the earth, the other part -- you cannot even see it -- is resting at the feet of God. Watch it, recognize it, feel the direction. And move. Start moving.

The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #8

Chapter title: I'm Just Being To You

8 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7607080

ShortTitle:

BELOV208

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

91

mins

The first question:

Question 1

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN SOMEBODY HATES YOU?

WHETHER SOMEBODY HATES YOU OR SOMEBODY LOVES YOU SHOULD

NOT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE IN YOU. If you are, you remain the same. If you are not, then you are immediately changed. If you are not, then anybody can pull you, push you; then anybody can push your buttons and change you. Then you are a slave, then you are not a master. Your mastery begins when whatsoever happens outside does not change you; your inner climate remains the same.

A psychoanalyst was attending a convention. At one of the lectures one ugly woman sitting next to him began to pinch him. Annoyed, he was about to give her an angry retort, when he changed his mind: "Why should I get angry," he decided. "After all, it is her problem."

Whether somebody loves you or hates you, it is his or her problem. If you are, if you have understood your being, you remain in tune with yourself. Nobody can disturb your inner harmony. If somebody loves, good; if somebody hates, good. Both remain somewhere outside you. This is what we call mastery. This is what we call crystallization

-- becoming free of impressions, influences.

You ask me, "What do you do when somebody hates you?"

What can I do? It is that person's problem; it has nothing to do with me. If I was not here he would have hated somebody else. He would have hated. If there were nobody and he were alone, he would have hated himself. Hatred is his problem. It has nothing to do with me, not in the least. Basically it does not even refer to me; I am just an excuse. Somebody else would have done as well, would have functioned as an excuse for him.

Have you not watched it? that when you are angry, you are simply angry. It is not that your anger is addressed to somebody. That 'somebody' is nothing but an excuse. Angry, you come home from the office; you jump on your wife. Angry, you go from your home; you are angry in the office with the peon, with the clerk, with this and that. If you analyze your states of mind, you will come to see that they belong to you. You live in your own world, but you go on projecting it on others.

When you are angry, YOU are angry -- not at me. When you are full of hate, you are full of hate -- not at me. When you are full of love, you are full of love -- not at me. Once you understand it, you remain like a lotus leaf in the world. You remain in the water but the water does not touch; it touches you not. You remain in the world and yet aloof, not of it.

Then nobody can disturb your silence, and nobody can distract you. Your compassion goes on flowing. If you love me, you receive my compassion. If you hate me, you will not receive my compassion -- not because I will not give to you. I will be continuously giving to you, as much as I give to those who love me, but you will be closed and you will not receive it.

Once being is attained, one is compassion, unconditional compassion. Not that in some moments he becomes compassionate and some moments he is not compassionate.

Compassion then is his natural climate, compassion is his permanent mood, compassion is his integrated being. Then whatsoever you do, his compassion goes on showering on you. But there are moments when you will receive it, when you will be open, and there are moments when you will not receive it because you will be closed.

So in hate you will not receive that, in love you will receive that. And you may even feel the difference -- because one who loves me will start growing, one who hates me will start shrinking. Both will become so totally different that you may start thinking that I must be giving more to the one I Love, or one who loves me, and I'm not giving to one who hates me or is angry at me or is closed towards me. But I am not doing that. The clouds are there and they are showering: if your pot is not broken it will be filled. Or even if your pot is not broken, but is upside-down, then you will miss. Hate is a state of upside-downness. Then rains can go on showering but you will remain empty, because your opening is not there.

Once you are put rightside-up, that's what love is. Love is nothing but an opening, a receptivity, a welcome, an invitation, that "I am ready; come, please."

The Bauls go on singing, "Come Beloved, come." They go on sending their invitations.

Love is inviting, hate is repelling. If you love me you will receive much -- not because I am giving you more especially; but if you hate me you will not receive at all -- not because I am not giving you, but because you are closed. But I remain myself.

I am not identified with my body, I am not identified with my mind. I have come home.

If you are identified with your body and somebody hurts your body, you will be angry; he is hurting YOU. If you are identified with your mind and somebody insults you, you will be angry, because he is hurting your mind. Once you are identified with your being nobody can hurt, because nobody has yet invented any way to hurt being.

The body can be hurt, can be killed. The mind can be hurt...but the being cannot be touched. There is no way to hurt it, there is no way to create pain. It's VERY nature is blissfulness. You can hurt my body; simple. If I am identified with the body I will be angry because I will think you have hurt me. If you insult me then the hurt goes into the mind. If I am identified with the mind, again you are my enemy. But I am neither identified with the body nor with the mind. I am the witness. So whatsoever you do never reaches to my witnessing center. It goes on witnessing it; it remains utterly unaffected.

Once false identifications fall, you are unperturbed. Then you become the center of the cyclone, and storms can go on raging all around you, but deep inside you remain at the still, small center of your being, completely transcendental to whatsoever is happening.

I have heard....

A philosopher, a barber and a bald-headed fool were travelling together. Losing their way they were forced to sleep in the open air, and to avoid danger it was agreed to watch by turns. The first lot fell on the barber, who for amusement shaved the philosopher's head while he was sleeping. He then awoke him, and the philosopher, raising his hand to scratch his head, exclaimed, "Here is a pretty mistake! You have awakened the old bald-headed fool instead of me."

Your identification is the BASIC problem. If you are identified with the body, then you are going to remain in constant trouble. Because body is continuously changing, your identity will never be at a point where you can settle and relax. One day the body is young, another day it is old. One day it is healthy, another day it is ill. One day you are so radiant with youth, another day just a dilapidated structure, a ruin. Continuously, body is in a flux.

That's why people who are identified with the body will remain constantly puzzled, confused, not knowing who they are. You are identifying with something which is not reliable. One day it is born, another day it dies. It is continuously dying and continuously changing. How can you rest with it?

If you are identified with the mind then there will be even more trouble. Because the body at least has a certain structure: it changes, but changes very slowly. You never feel the change. It changes very silently, and it takes years really, to feel a certain change happening. A child does not become a young man overnight, and a young man does not become an old man overnight. It takes years, and very slow is the change; and such minute, minor changes happen that one is never aware. But with the mind you are constantly in turmoil; every single moment there is change. One moment you are happy, another moment you are sad. One moment you were at the top of the world, feeling so fortunate, another moment you are in hell, thinking to commit suicide. How can you identify with the mind?

Being is that which remains always the same, eternally the same. It has no form so it cannot change, and it has no content so it cannot change. The being is contentless, formless. It has no name, no form -- what in the East we call NAMARUPA. These two things change: the name and the form. It is neither. It is simple, sheer existence, empty of all content and all form Once you have entered this emptiness nothing can disturb you, because there is nothing to be disturbed. Nothing can hit you, because there is nobody inside to be hit.

Then if you hate me, your arrow will pass through me. It cannot strike because there is nobody. You cannot make a target of me. Whether you love me or hate me, you cannot make a target of me. So it makes no difference. And I don't do anything, I just remain myself.

One day Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me, "Yes, I used to be in politics myself. I was a dog-catcher in my town for two years, but finally lost the job."

"What was the matter?" I asked him. "Change of mayors, or something else?"

He said, "No, I finally caught the dog."

And that's what I would like to say to you: I finally caught the dog. Now there is no work left for me. I am jobless. I'm not doing anything: all desires have gone, all doing has left.

I'm just here. I'm just being to you. If you love, you will receive me with great welcome, and you will be tremendously benefitted. If you hate you will miss, and the responsibility will be yourS. Now it is for you to choose. But I don't do anything.

The second question:

Question 2

YOU ARE RECOMMENDING MEDITATION OR DEVOTION. I FIND THEM BOTH

HELPFUL; BOTH LEAD TO THE SAME GOAL: BLISS, ANANDA. SOMETIMES I FEEL I AM THAT, OR RATHER THIS, THE ESSENTIAL MAN, AND SOMETIMES

I FEEL ECSTATIC IN BEING A DEVOTEE -- SINGING, PRAYING, DANCING, TALKING OF HIM, PLAYING LEELA WITH THE DIVINE. CAN I BE BOTH?

WHAT IS MY REAL NATURE? WHICH WOULD YOU SUGGEST FOR MY

GROWTH? IN FIFTEEN MONTHS OF SANNYAS WITH YOU, THE FEAR OF

DEATH IS GONE, BODY HAS BECOME THE TEMPLE DIVINE, MIND HAS

BECOME AN INSTRUMENT FOR HIS USE. ALL YOUR WORDS ARE SWEET, BUT SWEETER IS YOUR SILENCE FROM WHICH I HAVE RECEIVED MY LIFE'S

DIRECTION: DO NOTHING, ACCEPT, ACT, WHICH IS WORKING VERY WELL

FOR MY GROWTH. KINDLY ENLIGHTEN.

THE question is from Krishnananda Bharti.

If things are going so beautifully, why make a problem? Can't you accept your own insight? Do you always need a witness? Do you always need somebody else's approval?

If I am gone, you will be in a mess. When you are feeling so happy, is not that happiness enough proof that you are on the right track?

But in life you have been wrong so many times that you have lost trust in your own self.

This is one very basic thing to be understood and relearned: trust in yourself. When everything is going beautifully and you are feeling happy and blissful, forget what I am saying. Don't be worried about it. You know well that things are going well. Why create suspicion about your own experiences?

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin was going on a sight-seeing tour of Detroit. Going up Jefferson Avenue, the driver of the bus called out all the places of interest.

"On the right," he announced, "we see the Dodge House."

"John Dodge?" the Mulla asked.

"No, sir, Horace Dodge." Continuing on further, he called out, "On the far left corner we have the Ford House."

"Henry?" the Mulla suggested.

"No sir, Edsel." Still further out on Jefferson: "On the near left crossing you will see Christ's Church."

"Jesus? or am I wrong again?" Mulla Nasrudin asked sheepishly.

I understand that life is such that you have been found wrong so many times that you have lost your inner feel. You have lost trust in yourself. You have lost confidence, so you have to ask somebody. Even if you are feeling blissful you have to ask somebody,

"Am I going right?" Bliss is the indication.

So now, two are the possibilities: either you are-really feeling blissful as you write in your question -- then there is no need to ask me; or you are just imagining and you know it -- hence you have asked. That too has to be decided deep inside you. Because an imagined bliss is no bliss at all. You can imagine. Man has imagination in abundance.

You can imagine things -- because I am talking about bliss continuously: about love, about meditation, ecstasy. You can catch those words and your greed can start playing LEELA with you, rather than you playing LEELA with the divine. Your greed can start playing LEELA with you, and it can give you ideas. But if they are imaginary you will always be suspicious because deep down you will know that this is just fantasy. If that is the case, then asking is perfectly meaningful.

You have to decide. If it is really happening, you are really happy, it is a fact and you are not imagining it, then you are on the right track -- because there is no indication other than blissfulness.

When you feel blissful you are right, moving in exactly the way you should move.

Because bliss increases only when you are approaching closer to God, and in no other way. If you are going away from God, anguish arises. You feel more and more frustrated, more and more bored, more and more miserable. Misery is an indication that you are going astray, a natural indication that you have lost track of truth. Bliss simply says that you are falling in line with the whole. Things are becoming harmonious, the garden of the Beloved is coming closer: the air feels cooler, winds bring the fragrance of the flowers, freshness, a new thrill, a new enthusiasm. Then you are moving towards the garden of the Beloved. Maybe you cannot see yet, but the direction is right.

So trust yourself. But if you are imagining, then drop all your imagination.

The third question:

Question 3

AT DARSHAN, FROM THE WAY YOU TALKED TO ME IT SEEMS CLEAR MY

MEDITATION IS TO LIVE TOTALLY IN THE HERE AND NOW. YOU MADE IT

CLEAR I WAS NOT TO LIVE IN HOPE. T.S. ELIOT SAID, "I SAID TO MY SOUL, BE STILL, AND WAIT WITHOUT HOPE, FOR HOPE WOULD BE HOPE FOR THE

WRONG THING. WAIT WITHOUT LOVE, FOR LOVE WOULD BE LOVE OF THE

WRONG THING. THERE IS YET FAITH, BUT FAITH AND THE LOVE AND THE

HOPE ARE ALL IN THE WAITING." ANYTHING MORE TO SAY OSHO?

THE question is from Pradeepa.

She understood perfectly what I was trying to show her. Maturity happens when you start living without hope. Hope is childish. You become mature when you don't project hope into the future. In fact, you are mature when you don't have any future; you just live in the moment -- because that is the only reality there is. In the past, religion used to talk about the hereafter. Those were the childish, immature days of religion. Now religion talks about herenow; religion has come of age.

In the Vedas, in the Koran, in the Bible, hereafter is the basic goal. But now man is no longer that childish. That sort of God and that sort of religion is dead. It was a religion of hope, it was a religion of future.

Now another sort of religion is asserting itself all over the world, and this religion is about herenow, the present. There is nowhere else to go and there is no other space and no other time to live, only this space and this time, here and now. Life has to become very intense in this moment. A man who lives in hope dissipates life. He spreads life; it becomes too thin. And when it becomes too thin, it is never happy. Happiness means intensity, tremendous depth. If you spread your hope into the future, life will become very thin. It will lose depth.

When I say drop all hope, I mean be so intense in the moment that there is no need for the future. Then there is a turning, a transformation. The very quality of time changes for you it becomes eternal. What can you do with hope? In fact, what can you hope? You cannot hope for the new. You can only hope for the old, that which has happened before --

maybe with a little modification here and there, a little more decorated. But hope is nothing but past: you have lived something, you have experienced something, and you again and again hope for it. It is a repetition; it is circular.

Hope means simply projecting the past into the future again: you loved a man yesterday, you want to love the man tomorrow also. And you know that yesterday was not a fulfillment, hence the hope. Yesterday was not enough, hence the hope. You missed something yesterday. Now that missed gap is torturing you; it is creating agony. You hope that again tomorrow that man will be available to love you, and tomorrow you will really love.

But between yesterday and tomorrow is today. If you really want to love, then why not be herenow, today? Otherwise, when today will have become yesterday you will again start projecting it. Incomplete experiences are projected. Uncompleted desires are projected. If you really love totally this moment, you will never think about this moment again. It is finished, it is complete, it is perfect. It disappears, it leaves no trace on you.

This is what Krishnamurti calls 'total act'. Total act creates no KARMA: it creates no chain, it creates no bondage. If it is total, you never remember it again; there is no point.

We remember only something which has remained incomplete. Mind tends to complete things. And you have so many incomplete experiences; they go on being projected into the future. The past is gone -- now there is no way to complete them in the past; and the present is going out of your hands fast, slipping, so you don't see any point, any possibility to complete them in the present. The future is long: you can project -- this life, another life, this world, another world -- you can project eternity. Then you are at ease.

You say, "I am not at a loss; tomorrow is there. There will be another life." But by and by, you are getting trapped in a wrong pattern.

No, hope is not the right thing. Live in the present so deeply, so completely, that nothing is left. Then there will be no projection. You will move very smoothly into the tomorrow without carrying any load from today. And when there is no yesterday haunting you, then there is no tomorrow. When the past is not hanging around you, there is no future.

Pradeepa has understood rightly. That's what I was trying to show her: hope is an illness, a disease of the mind. It is hope that is not allowing you to live. Hope is not the friend, remember; it is the foe. It is because of hope that you go on postponing. But you will remain the same tomorrow also, and tomorrow also you will hope for some future. And this way it can go on for eternity, and you can go on missing. Stop postponing. And who knows what the future is going to reveal to you? There is no way to know about it. It is an opening; all alternatives are open. What is really going to happen, nobody can predict.

People have tried.

That's why people go to astrologers, to I CHING, and to other sorts of things. I CHING

goes on fascinating people, astrologers go on influencing people. Astrology still seems to be a great force. Why? -- because people are missing and they are hoping for the future.

They want some clue to know what is going to happen so they can arrange it that way.

These things will persist, even if scientifically it is proved that it is all nonsense. They will persist because it is not a question of science, it is a question of human hope. Unless hope is dropped, I CHING cannot be dropped. Unless hope is dropped, astrology cannot be dropped. It will have great power over man's mind because hope is gripping you. You would like to know little clues about the future so you can move more confidently, you can project more confidently, and you can postpone many more things.

If you know something about tomorrow, I think you will not live today. You will say,

"What is the need? Tomorrow we will live." Even without knowing anything about tomorrow you are doing that. And tomorrow never comes... and when it comes, it is always today. And you don't know how to live today.

So you are in a great trap. Drop that whole structure. Hope is the bondage of man, hope is SAMSAR, hope is the world. Once you drop hope you become a SANNYASIN; then there is nowhere to go.

I have heard....

One day Mulla Nasrudin was in a very deep meditative mood. Sitting by the side of his dog he delivered a monologue:

"You are only a dog, but I wish I was you. When you go to your bed you just turn around three times and lie down. When I go to bed I have to lock up the place, and wind up the clock, and put out the cat, and undress myself, and my wife wakes up and scolds and then the baby wakes and cries and I have to walk him around the house and then maybe I get myself to bed in time to get up again. When you get up, you just stretch yourself, stretch your neck a little, and you are up. I have to light the fire, put on the kettle, scrap some with my wife, and get myself breakfast. You be laying around all day and have plenty of fun; I have to work all day and have plenty of trouble. When you die, you are dead; when I die I have to go somewhere again."

This 'somewhere again'...call it hell, call it heaven, but somewhere; and God is here and you are always going somewhere.

God is your surround, and you are always missing Him because you are missing the present. God has only one tense -- that is present. The past and future don't exist. Man exists in the past and future, not in the present; God exists in the present, not in the past and future. So how is the meeting going to happen? We live in different dimensions.

Either God starts living in the past and future -- then there can be a meeting, but then He will not be a God, He will be just as ordinary a man as you are; or you start living in the present -- then the meeting happens. But then too you will not be human, you will become divine. Only the divine can meet with the divine; only the same can meet the same.

Drop hope.

Hope is the cause of why you are missing God. And the problem is, the vicious circle is: the more you miss God, the more you hope; the more you hope, the more you miss. Once you look deep down into hope, its structure, its grip on you -- the very vision, and the hope drops on its own accord. Suddenly you are here and now, and you will see as if a curtain had dropped from your eyes, a curtain has dropped from your senses. You will become TREMENDOUSLY fresh and young, and you will see a totally luminous world all around you. The trees will be green but in a different way: tremendously green -- and the green will be luminous. The world will immediately turn into a psychedelic world. It is -- your eyes are just so covered with dust that you cannot see the psychedelic that is surrounding you from everywhere.

Drop hope.

But whenever I say to somebody to drop hope, he thinks that I am telling him to become hopeless. No, I'm not doing that. When you drop hope there is no possibility of becoming hopeless, because hopelessness exists only because of hope. You hope and it is not fulfilled; hopelessness arises. You hope, and you hope again and again in vain; hopelessness arises. Hopelessness is frustrated hope. The moment you drop hope, hopelessness is also dropped. You are simply without hope and without hopelessness.

And that is the most beautiful moment that can happen to a man, because in that very moment one enters into the shrine of God.

The fourth question:

Question 4

DESPITE ALL YOU HAVE SAID, L AM STILL UNWILLING TO MAKE A CHOICE

BETWEEN THE PATH OF MEDITATION AND THE PATH IS LOVE. MY HEART

LOVES THE WORLD TOO MUCH TO SAY'ENOUGH', AND MY MIND IS TOO

CYNICAL TO SURRENDER. GURDJIEFF SPEAKS OF A FOURTH WAY WHICH

INVOLVES SIMULTANEOUS WORK ON BODY, HEART AND MIND. IS THERE

NO POSSIBILITY OF FOLLOWING THIS PATH?

BE alert of your own cunningness. You cannot surrender here, and you think you will be able to surrender to Gurdjieff? The problem is not with me or Gurdjieff, the problem is that with me you cannot surrender. And Gurdjieff was a hard taskmaster, one of the most dangerous Masters ever. after Bodhidharma. The problem is with you. See the point of it.

The point is, if I talk about love, people come to me and they say, "It is difficult for us; can't we meditate?" And if I tell them to meditate they say, "It is so difficult. Is there not some other way?" They want to postpone.

Now you are asking, "Can't we follow Gurdjieff?" Ask one thing: are you ready to follow? Following is difficult. Following MEANS surrendering. Following means that now you put your mind aside. Gurdjieff is now an excuse so you can think inside yourself, "If I am not surrendered to this man, at least I am ready to surrender to Gurdjieff." But where are you going to find Gurdjieff? And if you ever come across him, you will start thinking of other Masters, because there are many possibilities. You will ask the same question of Gurdjieff...that it is difficult for me to surrender to you, and it is very difficult to work on body, mind and soul together -- because even to work on one thing separately is difficult. To work on three things together is, of course, going to be more complex, more arduous. So then you can say, "Can't I follow the path of the Bauls?"

This is how you have been travelling in your many lives. Remember, you are not new on this earth. And remember, you have been with many Masters -- otherwise you would not be here. You have forgotten completely, but you have missed many times. It is not for the first time that you are missing. You may have walked with Buddha, you may have walked with Jesus. There are people who I know for certain have walked with Jesus, but they missed. There are people who walked with Buddha and they missed.

But the search goes on....

The first thing that I try to find out whenever a person wants to be initiated by me is whether he is new, or an old sinner. Up to now, I have not come across a fresh man who is getting interested in religion for the first time. No, one has been with many Masters, has travelled on many paths, but never has been totally anywhere.

Now you can miss this opportunity also.

I have heard....

A couple in their sixties had somehow managed to survive forty-five years of married life filled with as much fighting as love. When hubby came home from his office on his sixty-fifth birthday, his wife lovingly presented him with two beautiful ties. He was so touched that he would not let her cook dinner. He would take her out as soon as he had time to clean up and change his shirt. It was a rare moment of tenderness. A few minutes later hubby came downstairs dressed for an evening on the town and wearing one of his gift ties. His wife stared at him for a moment before the force of argumentative habit took command.

"What is the matter?" she snarled. "The other one is no good?"

But now, a man can wear only one tie: "What is the matter? The other one is no good?"

If you just want to be argumentative, then you can follow Gurdjieff. But that will be just avoiding the opportunity that is here, available to you. DO something. If you want to follow Gurdjieff, follow. Follow Gurdjieff, but please follow. Don't go on playing games with yourself. One can be very clever, one can deceive oneself. It is not very dangerous when you deceive others, because sooner or later they will find out that you are deceiving. It cannot go on for long. But when you are deceiving yourself, it is very difficult. Who is going to find out? You are alone there, and if YOU are deceiving....

I have heard about one man travelling on a train. He was playing solitaire. A man in the compartment was watching it, but he became aware that the other man was deceiving himself. He was the only player. The other man watching became aware that he was deceiving himself.

He said, "What is the matter? What are you doing? Can't you see that you go on deceiving yourself?"

The man said, "I have been doing it for my whole life."

The other man asked, "Can't you catch yourself deceiving?"

He said, "I am too clever."

Cleverness can become a great obstacle because cleverness is not intelligence. Cleverness is a good name for cunningness. Be aware of it.

Follow if you want to follow on Gurdjieff's path. Perfectly good; that path is perfectly good. But then what are you doing here wasting your time? Follow that path. For what are you waiting? If you are here, then forget Gurdjieff and everything else. If you want to be here with me, then be here with me so something actually happens.

But this is very common, it is not unusual: people go on changing their Masters, from one place to another. Whenever they feel that now it is getting too much, and they may get committed and involved, they change. Again they start playing the same game somewhere else. When they feel that now the moment is coming -- they will have to do something -- they again change.

It is a marriage... to be with me is to be married with me. People stay with me up to the point where the courtship continues. Once the problem arises of getting committed, involved, then they are scared. Then they start thinking of some other path. Any path will do -- because really it is not a question of paths, it is a question of surrendering.

Surrender on any path, and truth will happen to you -- because it happens not because of any path, it happens because of surrender.

Some years ago a politician was being driven by a farmer in a buggy. A winged insect kept circling about the horse's head and then about the politician's head. "Uncle, what kind of insect is that?" asked the politician.

"Just a horsefly," said the old man.

"Horsefly? What is that?"

"Just a fly that flies around the heads of horses and mules and jackasses."

As the insect was still buzzing about the politician's head he saw a chance for a little banter, and said, "Uncle, you don't mean to say I am a horse?"

"No, you certainly ain't no horse."

"Well, you don't mean to call me a mule do you?"

The farmer, irritated, said, "You ain't no mule, either."

Then the politician spoke emphatically, "Now look here, Uncle, do I look like a jackass to you? Surely you don't mean to call me a jackass?"

"No, sir, I ain't calling you no jackass and you don't look like a jackass to me. But you see, you can't fool the horsefly."

Don't be very cunning, don't be clever, because you can't fool existence. You can fool only yourself. In the final analysis you cannot fool anybody else except you. So watch each step that your mind takes. I'm not saying, "Follow me"; I'm saying, "Follow."

Anywhere, wherever your heart leads you, wherever you feel a certain harmony between you and the Master, go there and follow. But follow. Just thinking is not going to help.

You cannot befool existence.

The fifth question:

Question 5

BEING OUTSIDE THE ASHRAM IS SOMETIMES HARD FOR ME, FOR I SEE

HOW HARD PEOPLE ARE AND STEP ON EACH OTHER. THIS HURTS ME

MUCH, SOMETIMES EVEN BODILY, AND IF EEL VULNERABLE LIKE A SMALL CHILD. PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO DEAL WITH IT.

THERE are always problems in the world, and the world has always been there, and the world will remain there. If you start working out: changing circumstances, changing people, thinking of a utopian world, changing the government, the structure, the economy, the politics, the education, you will be lost. That is the trap known as politics.

That's how many people waste their own lives. Be very clear about it: the only person you can help right now is you yourself. Right now you cannot help anybody. This may be just a distraction, just a trick of the mind. See your own problems, see your own anxieties, see your own mind, and first try to change it.

It happens to many people: the moment they become interested in some sort of religion, meditation, prayer, immediately the mind tells them, "What are you doing sitting here silently? The world needs you; there are so many poor people. There is much conflict, violence, aggression. What are you doing praying in the temple? Go and help people."

How can you help those people? You are just like them. You may create even more problems for them, but you cannot help. That's how all the revolutions have always failed. No revolution has yet succeeded because the revolutionaries are in the same boat.

The religious person is one who understands that "I am very tiny, I am very limited. If with this limited energy, even if I can change myself, that will be a miracle". And if you can change yourself, if you are a totally different being with new life shining in your eyes and a new song in your heart, then maybe you can be helpful to others also, because then you will have something to share.

Just the other day Shiva sent me a very beautiful incident in the life of Basho. Basho is the greatest haiku poet of Japan, the Master haiku poet. But he was not just a poet. Before becoming a poet he was a mystic; before he starting pouring out with beautiful poetry, he poured deep into his own center. He was a meditator.

It is said that Basho was entering upon a journey when he was a young man. The journey was an endeavor to find himself. Not long after he had begun he heard a small child crying alone in the forest -- maybe he was sitting under a tree, meditating, or trying to meditate; he heard a small child crying alone in the forest. He meditated for a long time on what to do. He then picked up his pack and continued on his way, leaving the child to its own fate.

In his journal he recorded: "First one has to do what one needs for oneself before one can do anything for another."

Looks hard...a child alone in the forest, crying, and this man meditates on whether to do anything or not, whether he can help the child, whether it will be right to help him or not.

A child, a helpless child crying in the wilderness, alone, lost -- and Basho meditates over it and finally decides that how can he help somebody else when he has not even helped himself yet. He himself is lost in a wilderness, he himself is lonely, he himself is childish.

How can he help anybody?

The incident looks very hard, but is very meaningful. I'm not saying don't help a child in the forest if you find him crying and weeping. But try to understand: your own light is not burning and you start helping others. Your own inner being is in total darkness and you start helping others. You yourself are suffering and you become a servant of the people.

You have not passed through the inner rebellion and you become a revolutionary. This is simply absurd, but this idea arises in everybody's mind. It seems so simple to help others.

In fact, people who really need to change themselves always become interested in changing others. That becomes an occupation, and they can forget themselves.

This is what I have watched. I have seen so many social workers, SARVODAYIS, and I have never seen a single person who has any inner light to help anybody. But they are trying hard to help everybody. They are madly after transforming the society and the people and people's minds, and they have completely forgotten that they have not done the same to themselves. But they become occupied.

Once an old revolutionary and social worker was staying with me. I asked him, "You are completely absorbed in your work. Have you ever thought if what you really want happens, if by a miracle, overnight, all that you want happens, what you will do the next morning? Have you ever thought about it?"

He laughed -- a very empty laughter -- but then he became a little sad. He said, "If it is possible, I will be at a loss as to what to do then. If the world is exactly as I want it, then I will be at a loss for what to do. I may even commit suicide."

These people are occupied; this is their obsession. And they have chosen such an obsession which can never be fulfilled. So you can go on changing others, life after life.

Who are you?

This is also a sort of ego: that others are hard upon each other, that they are stepping on each other. Just the idea that others are hard gives you a feeling that you are very soft.

No, you are not. This may be your way of ambition: to help people, to help them to become soft, to help them to become more kind, compassionate.

Kahlil Gibran has written a small story:

There was a dog, a great revolutionary one might say, who was always teaching other dogs of the town that "Just because of your nonsense barking we are not growing. You waste your energy by barking unnecessarily." A postman passes, and suddenly...a policeman passes, a sannyasin passes.... Dogs are against uniforms, any sort of uniform, and they are revolutionaries. They immediately start barking.

The leader used to tell them, "Stop this! Don't waste energy, because:this same energy can be put into something useful, creative. Dogs can rule the whole world, but you are wasting your energy for no purpose at all. This habit has to be dropped. This is the only sin, the original sin."

The dogs were always feeling that he was perfectly right; logically, he was right: why do you go on barking? And much energy is wasted; one feels tired. Again the next morning one starts barking, and again by the night one is tired. What is the point of it all? They could see the leader's meaning, but they also knew that they were just dogs, poor dogs.

The ideal was very great and the leader was really a revealer -- because whatsoever he was preaching he was doing. He never used to bark. You could see his character: that whatsoever he preached he practiced also.

But by and by, they got tired of his constant preaching. One day they decided -- it was the birthday of the leader -- and they decided, as a gift, that at least on that night they would resist the temptation to bark. At least for one night they would respect the leader and give him a gift. He could not be more happy than this. All the dogs stopped that night. It was very difficult, arduous. It was just like when you are meditating, how difficult it is to stop thinking. It was the same problem. They stopped barking, and they had always barked.

And they were not great saints, but ordinary dogs. But they tried hard. It was very, very arduous. They were hiding in their places with closed eyes, with clenched teeth, so they would not see anything, they would not listen to anything. It was a great discipline. The leader walked around the town. He was very puzzled: "To whom to preach? Whom to teach now? What has happened?" -- complete silence. Then suddenly when midnight had passed, he became so annoyed, because he had never really thought that the dogs would listen to him. He had known well that they would never listen, that it was just natural for dogs to bark. His demand was unnatural, but the dogs had stopped. His whole leadership was at stake. What was he going to do from tomorrow? because all he knew was just to teach. His whole ministry was at stake. And then for the first time he realized that because he was constant}y teaching from the morning till the night that's why he had never felt the need to bark. The energy was so involved, and that was a sort of barking.

But that night, nowhere, nobody was found guilty. And the preacher-dog started feeling a tremendous urge to bark. A dog is, after all, a dog. Then he went into a dark lane and started barking. When the other dogs heard that somebody had broken the agreement, then they said, "Why should we suffer?" The whole town started barking. Back came the leader and said, "You fools! When are you going to stop barking? Because of your barking we have remained just dogs. Otherwise, we would have dominated the whole world."

Remember well that a social servant, a revolutionary, is asking for the impossible -- but it keeps him occupied. And when you are occupied with others' problems, you tend to forget your own problems. First, settle those problems, because that is your first, basic responsibility.

A famous psychologist had bought a farm just for fun. Every time he threw grain into his plowed furrows an army of black crows would swoop down and gobble up his grain.

Finally, swallowing his pride, the psychologist appealed to his old neighbor, Mulla Nasrudin.

The Mulla stepped into the field and went through all the motions of planting without using any seed. The crows swooped down, protested briefly and flew away. The Mulla repeated the process the next day and then the next, each time sending the birds off befuddled and hungry. Finally, on the fourth day, he planted the field with grain; not a crow bothered to come.

When the psychologist tried to thank Mulla, the Mulla grunted. "Just plain ordinary psychology," said he. "Ever heard of it?"

Remember, this is very plain, ordinary psychology: not to poke your nose into others'

affairs. If they are doing something wrong, that is for them to realize. Nobody else can make them realize. Unless they decide to realize it there is no way, and you will be wasting your valuable time and energy. Your first responsibility is to transform your own being. And when your being is transformed things start happening of their own accord.

You become a light and people start finding their paths through your light. Not that you go, not that you force them to see. Your light, burning bright, is enough invitation; people start coming. Whosoever is in need of light will come to you. There is no need to go after anybody because that very going is foolish. Nobody has changed anybody against his will. That is not the way things happen. This is plain, ordinary psychology; ever heard of it?... just keep to yourself.

The sixth question:

Question 6

L AM DESPERATE. IF FEEL MORE AND MORE ENERGY AND A DEEP LET-GO

WANTING TO HAPPEN. IN THE LAST WHILE I OFTEN HAVE A FEELING OF

LETTING MYSELF FALL INTO SOMETHING, LIKE INTO THE SEA, OR INTO

THE INCREDIBLE BEAUTIFUL VAST CLOUDS OF THE SKY. BUT THE

STRONGER THIS BECOMES, THE STRONGER ANOTHER PART, MY EGO, IS

TRYING TO KEEP ME DOWN, TO PUT ME TO SLEEP AGAIN, TO TELL ME

THAT EVERYTHING IS JUST BULLSHIT AND FANTASY. THIS IS SO

INCREDIBLY STRONG, AND THERE DOES NOT SEEM TO BE ANYTHING LIKE

WILLPOWER. I FEEL TOTALLY POWERLESS; THAT MAKES ME FEEL

DESPERATE, HELPLESS, AND SOMETIMES FRUSTRATED. PLEASE HELP ME.

THE question is from Anand Maria. Maria, there seems to be some misunderstanding in your mind. It is not the ego that is trying to give you a message that you are moving in fantasies; you are moving in fantasies. But fantasies are beautiful. You are dreaming sweet dreams. It is not the ego that is pulling you down, it is the ego that is dreaming and that is going into fantasies. The part that wants to pull you down is your awareness. You are in a total confusion about it.

Awareness always brings you back to reality. Ego is, in fact, a dream; it is a false entity.

Ego never stops anybody from going into fantasies, because ego feeds on fantasy. Ego is the greatest fantasy. How can it prevent you from going into fantasies? It wants you to dream, it wants you to dream great dreams of the other world.

It is not the ego that is pulling you down to the earth. The part that is pulling you down to reality is awareness, but you are condemning awareness, and you would like to go into the fantasies more and more. No, you are in a complete mess, Maria.

"I feel more and more energy and a deep let-go wanting to happen. In the last while I often have a feeling of letting myself fall into something, like the sea, or into the incredible beautiful vast clouds of the sky.... " They are nowhere, they are just in your imagination.

"But the stronger this becomes, the stronger another part, my ego, is trying to keep me down, to put me to sleep again, to tell me that everything is just bullshit and fantasy.... "

It is; it is bullshit. It will be hard for you.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

A schoolteacher in London had a mixed class containing children of all religions, of all nationalities. One day she asked her class who was the greatest man who ever lived, and said that the child who gave the correct answer would receive a shilling.

The first child was American and answered, "George Washington." Patrick O'Kelly was next and he said that St. Patrick was the greatest man who ever lived. Then there was an Indian child who said Gautam Buddha, and a Chinese who said Lao Tzu. Then little Abe was next in line and without hesitation he answered, "Jesus."

The teacher promptly gave him the shilling and said, "Now tell me how it is that you, being a little Jew, and not believing in Jesus as the Christ, mention his name as the greatest man who ever lived?"

"Well," replied Abe, "deep in my heart I know it was Moses, but business is business."

Deep in your heart you also know it is bullshit. That's why you are pulled back to the earth again and again. Come back to the earth; imagination won't help.

There is a poetry, a different type of poetry-which arises out of reality. Yes, there are beautiful clouds and there are vast oceans of beatitude, but that arises by being rooted in the earth. There is no conflict between that beauty and reality. That beauty is nothing but reality itself manifested in its total grandeur. But right now, whatsoever you are doing is just a fantasy. So change your emphasis. It is the ego which is fantasizing, and it is awareness which is pulling you down.

Allow awareness to work more and more, and don't waste time in dreams.

I have heard....

Two fishermen were exchanging their experiences of the previous day. One man said he had caught a three-hundred-pound salmon.

"But salmon never weighed as much as three hundred pounds," said the other man.

"Nevertheless, I caught one weighing three hundred pounds. What did you catch?"

"Not much," answered the second man. "Only a rusty old lamp. But on the bottom of it was inscribed: Property of Christopher Columbus, 1492. When I opened the lamp I was surprised to find it still held a candle in it, and you know that the candle was still lit?"

"Now let us get together on these stories," urged the first fisherman. "If you will put out that damned candle, I will take a couple of hundred pounds off that salmon."

One wants to have sweet experiences, one desires to have beautiful experiences. But just by desiring you cannot have them, you can only dream about them. You can have them not by desiring, but by working hard on your being. Tremendous effort is needed. Then one day reality comes, is revealed. And then it has a splendor which no dream can ever have. Because dream is just a dream, a thought in the mind -- a colorful thought, but still a thought. When reality is revealed, it is totally different; it is millions of times more beautiful than any dream. Don't waste time in dreaming. Walk on earth, be in the body, come back to your senses.

The last question:

It is from Divya.

Question 7

BELOVED MASTER, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE ABOUT LOVE OR

MEDITATION; THEY ARE ONE TO ME. I SEEK TRUTH AND YOU ARE THE

MEANS. MY DEVOTION AND MY PRAYERS ARE AN EXPRESSION OF

GRATITUDE. LOVE IS NOT THE ASKING, AND LOVE IS NOT THE OTHER.

LOVE IS, I AM. SOMETIMES I WONDER WHETHER YOU EXIST OR WHETHER I AM PERPETUALLY CREATING YOU, OR WHETHER I EXIST SEPARATE FROM

YOU. I TRULY MUST BE A GOD IF YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL. MY LOVE, MY

GRATITUDE FOR YOU IS THE ONLY CERTAINTY THAT REMAINS, THE ONLY

REALITY. I AM THE KNOWING, AND YET EACH TIME I HEAR YOU SAY'LOVE

OR MEDITATION' YOU CATCH ME AGAIN OFF CENTER, FIDDLING WITH

CATEGORIES: "AM I THIS OR THAT? LET US SEE.'

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL TRIP YOU ARE.

Thank you, Divya.

The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #9

Chapter title: Be The Formless In You

9 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7607090

ShortTitle:

BELOV209

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

98

mins

MY HEART

DRESS YOURSELF IN THE SPIRIT

OF ALL WOMEN

AND REVERSE YOUR NATURE AND HABITS.

MILLIONS OF SUNS

WILL BURST OPEN WITH BRILLIANCE

AND THE FORMLESS IN VISUAL FORMS.

YOU WILL SEE

WHAT CANNOT BE SEEN

ONLY IF YOU CAN BE

THE FORMLESS IN YOU.

The song for today:

MY HEART

DRESS YOURSELF IN THE SPIRIT

OF ALL WOMEN

AND REVERSE YOUR NATURE AND HABITS.

MILLIONS OF SUNS

WILL BURST OPEN WITH BRILLIANCE

AND THE FORMLESS IN VISUAL FORMS.

YOU WILL SEE

WHAT CANNOT BE SEEN

ONLY IF YOU CAN BE

THE FORMLESS IN YOU.

THE SONG IS TREMENDOUSLY IMPORTANT, IS VERY BASIC TO THE BAUL

ATTITUDE. There are two approaches towards God: one is of the male mind --

aggressive, active; the other is of the feminine mind -- passive, receptive. Bauls belong to the second approach. Just as Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu belong to the second approach, Mahavir and Patanjali belong to the first approach.

The male mind seeks and searches God as if God is somewhere else and has to be discovered. The feminine mind simply prays and waits. The feminine mind trusts that

"When I am ready, God will come to me." It is God who comes, not the seeker who goes to God. And in fact, how can you seek God? You don't know Him, you don't know His address, you don't know the direction, you don't know the definition. And even if you come across Him, how are you going to recognize Him? because recognition is possible only if you have known Him before.

All search in a way is futile. And because of the male mind, atheism has become very predominant in the world. It is the failure of the male mind that atheism has become so prevalent. In the West atheism has become really the greatest religion -- because the West is male-oriented. The very orientation is of conquering -- as if there is a fight between man and God, as if there is a tussle, a wrestling. In the West the result of this effort has been only that God has completely disappeared. Nietzsche declared, "God is dead."

Nietzsche is the very essence of the male mind: will to power, will to dominate, will to possess.

If you search for Him too much, your very search will become a barrier.

There have been a few people who have attained through that approach also -- a Mahavir, a Patanjali -- but those cases are rare, and the struggle is very long and unnecessary. God comes to you. God is always coming to you. The Bauls say, "It is not you who seek Him, it is He who is seeking you. It is not that you pray to Him, He is praying to you. Listen!

Be passive, accept. He is knocking on the door, and inside the room you are so occupied in searching and seeking that you cannot listen to the knock." Man cannot seek God; only God can seek man. This is a profound truth to be understood, because how can you seek God? How can you relate? You are so dark, so dull, so asleep, so unconscious, so ignorant -- how are you going to seek? And whatsoever you seek will never be bigger than you, cannot be. Your God will be your God.

If horses seek God, they will make an image of God, but the image will be of a horse, not of a man -- because man has never done anything good to horses. In fact, if they had some mythology about the devil, man's image would be the image of the devil. If trees are seeking God, they will seek in the form of trees -- because we cannot go beyond our form. Our form will be the limitation. So if you seek, the God is going to be yours, and your God is almost no God.

Let Him seek you. Allow Him. His hand has been reaching for you continuously; just be in a let-go. Don't escape from Him, that's all. There is no need to seek Him positively, just don't escape from Him. Let Him be, listen, be receptive, welcome. In that listening, in that receptivity, He will penetrate you. Become feminine, become a woman.

A Buddha is a woman.

He was seeking for six years; he tried the male-oriented approach. He was a warrior, the son of a great king, trained in the ways of war and fight and struggle. It was natural for him to seek God. He tried, he tried hard. He went from one Master to another, and he was so sincere that no Master could say to him, "You are not doing right, that's why you are not reaching." He was so sincere in his effort that all the teachers told him, "This is all we can say to you. And if it is not happening, then find some other Master. We are incapable.

We cannot do more than this."

One day he had renounced the whole world, then came the ultimate renunciation -- one day he renounced the searching and seeking also...seeing the futility of it, just groping in the dark. That night when he dropped search also, he became a woman. That night he relaxed under the Bodhi tree; there was nothing to do now.

Man is a doer. Woman is a lover, not a doer. Man is the mind, woman is the heart. Man can create things, but cannot give birth to life. For that, receptivity is needed, receptivity of the earth. The seed falls into it, disappears underground, and one day a new life arises.

That's how a child is born.

A womb is needed to give birth to God, OR, to give birth to yourself. You have to become a womb.

BUDDHA became a womb that night, renounced all. Now there was nothing to do. Just meditate over it: nothing to do. The world was finished, there was nothing to find. Now even the spiritual search was gone. Everything became absolutely calm and quiet. When there is nothing to seek there is no desire; when there is no desire there is no thought; and when there is no desire, no thought, no search, the ego cannot exist. It exists as the doer.

In that moment, future disappeared. When you are not going to do something, what is the point of having a future? The future is needed as a space to project your desires. To project, future is needed.

That night, future disappeared; in fact, time disappeared. When you are not a doer what is the use of time? Buddha relaxed. This relaxation was absolute, total, whole. He relaxed into himself -- nowhere to go, one has to relax into oneself; no desire, no thought, everything has proved futile. In fact, what proved futile was the male-oriented mind, the mind of the doer. In the morning when the last star was disappearing, he opened his eyes.

The whole night had been a night of dreamless sleep, because dreams are by-products of desires. Have you watched? When you want to do something, it is very difficult to sleep in the night; the morning is too exciting. The tomorrow is too exciting, you have to do something. Even if you are going for a holiday to the Himalayas, you cannot sleep in the night; planning continues. You have to do this and that, and rehearsal continues. Sleep becomes difficult... dreams.

Buddha slept for the first time. That sleep was SAMADHI: no thought, no dream, no desire. He relaxed into his center, and when he opened his eyes he was like a small babe -

- fresh, young. He looked at the last disappearing star, and as the star disappeared, he also disappeared. He became enlightened. But enlightenment happened in a deeply feminine state of mind.

Hence, Jains and Buddhists are always in conflict -- because Mahavir is a male-oriented mind, a warrior, a conqueror. That is the meaning of the word 'mahavir'. That is not his real name; his real name was Vardhman. But he conquered truth. And he was so brave and the adventure was so great that he is remembered as Mahavir: the great courageous one. There is a very subtle conflict between Jains and Buddhists. Down through the centuries they have been arguing against each other. That can be understood. The reason is male-mind, female-mind, yin and yang, active and passive, day and night. The day is the symbol of the man; the night is the symbol of the woman. The day is full of activity, the night is simply rest. The day is bright, light -- the sun is there. You can see things clear-cut. You can define things: you can know what is what and who is who. In the night darkness surrounds. The whole existence is enveloped in darkness. You cannot distinguish what is what; you cannot see where you are, who you are. It is a tremendous relaxation of all definitions, of all limitations, Woman is always known as the dark one, the night, the earth.

Buddha became a woman that night; he became enlightened.

Bauls say,

MY HEART,

DRESS YOURSELF IN THE SPIRIT

OF ALL WOMEN...

Become a woman. They mean of course, psychologically, spiritually. It has nothing to do with your body, but your attitude. Woman is patient. Just think of a man having a child in his belly for nine months. You cannot conceive that a man will be able to tolerate it --

impossible. A woman is very patient, accepting. The woman's resistance is much stronger than man's. Man in fact is the weaker sex. He may be stronger as far as muscles are concerned, but muscles are no criterion of strength. One hundred fifteen boys are born to a hundred girls. By the time they reach the age of marriage, fifteen boys have died.

Nature has to give birth to more males because a few of them are going to die. Women live longer than men, almost five years more; that's why you see so many widows in the world. And women are more resistant to illness, disease. Women are more tolerant, more accepting. From where comes this strength? -- it comes from their receptivity.

When you are a doer you exhaust yourself.

A woman and a man making love...man exhausts himself; woman is enriched, nourished, because she is a receptive end. Making love, a man loses energy, a woman gains it. That's why women have been suppressed all over the world. If they were not suppressed the man would be killed: it would become impossible for any man to satisfy any woman.

Now, modern researchers say that woman have multiple orgasms. A woman can make love to one dozen people in one night and still feel fresh, full of energy. A man can make love only once, and then he is exhausted. Man throws energy out, woman takes energy in.

The same has to happen with God. The Bauls say, "Become feminine, become passive."

But remember, when they say become passive they don't mean to become lazy. To be lazy is also the same as-to be active. Lazy is not passive. He may not be doing anything, but in his mind he goes on doing. He may not be actually doing anything, but he goes on doing many things in the mind -- even more so, because the whole energy is available and he has nothing do. He goes on thinking and doing things in the mind; that activity remains. Passivity does not mean inactivity, it means a very expectant patience, a very active patience, alive patience. The lazy man is dull; the lazy man is simply dead.

Passivity is not deadness. It is fully alive: the reservoir is full of energy, but not going anywhere, not going. in any search, just waiting for the Beloved to come.

That's why women never take any initiative in love affairs -- they cannot. And if a woman takes initiative in the love affair, then she must be a part of the 'lib movement'.

Then she is losing her womanhood somehow. They wait: the initiative has to come from the man. The woman waits -- not that she doesn't love, she loves tremendously; no man can love that deeply -- but she waits. She trusts that things will happen in their right time, and hurrying is not good. A woman is non-tense but full of energy, hence the feminine beauty. The roundness of the feminine body is not only a physical thing -- the same is so in her psychology also. She has a round shape, smooth, warm, ready to dissolve, but not aggressive. Passivity means non-aggressiveness, non-violence. It is not laziness.

I have heard....

The Swiss people, especially those from their capital, Berne, are said to be as slow as snails. So one day two Berner friends went out for a walk. After one hour one said,

"Christmas is beautiful."

Another hour passed when his friend answered, "Yes, and love is beautiful too."

After a long while the first answered, "You are right but Christmas is more often."

One can be so lazy that Christmas is more often than love-making.

Laziness is a sort of stagnancy. Laziness is lustlessness; laziness is suicide -- slow, very slow. So remember, passivity is not negation of energy. Passivity is a reservoir of energy

-- vibrant, throbbing streaming, ready to receive, but non-aggressive.

It happened: A sufi mystic was sitting under a tree. A passer-by told him, "What are you doing here? Your house is on fire." Just in front of him the house was on fire.

"I know it, stranger," said the so-called mystic.

"Then why are you not doing something about it?" cried the excited stranger.

"I am," said that mystic. "ever since the fire started, I have been praying for rain."

THE Baul is not lazy. He is full of action, but he is not active. This distinction has to be understood.

You can sit, for all practical purposes, not doing anything, and your mind can go on being active, occupied, engaged. You can be engaged in much activity and your mind can remain inactive, passive, aloof, detached. They are not against being active, they are against being continuously occupied inside, because then you don't give space for God to enter into you. You don't allow Him enough door. Your inner world is so full of rotten furniture that He cannot find a place to stay there. A deep inner emptiness is needed; that inner emptiness becomes the womb.

So I'm not saying stop doing, stop action; I'm not saying that. I am saying that whatsoever you are doing, let it be just an outside activity. Inside become feminine, silent, doors opened, empty, waiting.

In the mother's womb the feminine egg simply waits. It does not go anywhere. The male sperm travels, and it travels with fast speed. It is really a tremendous distance for the male sperm to travel to the woman's egg; great competition starts. Men are competitive from the very beginning, even before they are born. While making love to a woman a man releases millions of sperm, and they all rush towards the egg. Great speed is needed because only one will be able to reach the egg, not all. Only one is going to be the Nobel Prize winner. The real Olympics start there! And it is a life and death question, it is not ordinary. And great is the competition -- millions of sperms fighting, rushing -- one will reach. Sometimes it happens that two reach at the same time, hence twins are born.

Because once one sperm has entered, then the door is closed. Sometimes two sperms reach exactly at the same time, or three sperms reach exactly at the same time; the door was open, so all the three enter in. Then there are three children born, or two children, or four, or even six. But that rarely happens. Ordinarily one reaches just a split second before the others. The door is open; once one guest has entered, the door closes. But the feminine egg simply waits there...great trust.

That's why women cannot be competitive: they cannot fight, they cannot struggle. And if you find a woman somewhere who struggles and fights, who is competitive, then something of womanhood is missing in her. Physically she may be a woman, psychologically she is a man.

So remember, passivity is not laziness. Passivity has its own kind of activity. It is non-tense, relaxed.

Two turtles were dragging through the desert, very thirsty. After a while they discovered a big bottle of Coca-Cola (must have been Americans). They jumped with joy, but soon realized they had no opener. They tried hard but there was no chance to open the bottle, so they decided one would go back to the village and the other would watch the bottle. A long time passed -- five hours, ten hours, one day, two days, five days, seven days. Then the one turtle again tried to open the bottle. Immediately, the other one came running from the nearby sand dune and shouted, "If you start like this, I will never go."

BAULS are very active people, whirlwinds -- dancing, singing, and yet very inactive people as far as God is concerned. They say, "Whenever YOU think is the right time, come; you will find me waiting. I am helpless, I don't know where you are. I am helpless, I don't know how to find you. My only prayer is that you help me to allow you to find me." They simply dance and wait, they sing and wait. This waiting for God is their prayer.

If you can wait you will pass through a great transformation. Nothing is needed to be done; simple waiting -- but it needs great trust. Otherwise the mind will say, "What are you doing? If you are not going to seek Him, you will never find Him."

Bauls say, just like Lao Tzu, "Seek and you will miss. Seek not and find." He is here; your seeking takes you somewhere else. He has already come. The guest is at the door; He is knocking. But you are so occupied inside the mind -- maybe occupied for Him, thinking about Him, but so occupied -- that you cannot listen to the moment, and you cannot be open to the herenow.

MY HEART,

DRESS YOURSELF IN THE SPIRIT

OF ALL WOMEN

AND REVERSE YOUR NATURE AND HABITS.

Patanjali calls his reversal PRATYAHAR -- go back to the source. Mahavir calls this reversion PRATYA KRAMAN -- come in, don't go without; fall withinwards. Ordinarily your mind is future-oriented, always moving somewhere else, looking for God somewhere in the future. Bauls say He has been here from the very beginning. He is not in the future. He is the very cause, the source of all, so no need to seek Him in the future.

Just fall deep down into your own being and you will find Him waiting for you to come home. He is already there, He is already the case.

... AND REVERSE YOUR NATURE AND HABITS.

What do they mean by reversing your habits and your nature? Ordinarily man is upside-down. Non-essential things have become very important to you, and you go on losing the essential. You go on gathering seashells and colored stones, not for a single moment becoming aware that you are losing your life. That is the only precious thing.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin was stabbed by burglars, but before dying he wrote a note to his wife from the hospital. The last paragraph of it read, "I have been very fortunate because only the day before I had put all my money and negotiable bonds in my safety deposit box at the bank, so that I am losing practically nothing but my life."

But life is all. What else is there? If you lose life and gain the whole world, what are you gaining? And if you gain your life and lose the whole world, nothing is lost.

The Bauls say, "You will have to change your habits, you will almost have to reverse your nature." Right now you are going outward; you will have to go inward. Right now you are seeking God; you will have to allow Him to seek you. Right now you are attached to material things which have no intrinsic value; you will have to attach yourself to spiritual values which are really eternally valuable. Right now you go on fighting with life, struggling. Almost everyone believes in the survival of the fittest, so one goes on fighting and fighting and fighting. The Bauls say; "Love, don't fight. God is never known through fighting. Nothing is achieved through fighting; only love opens the door."

Right now we go on thinking that someday in the future we are going to be happy, joyful, celebrating, Bauls say, "You are fools! If you want to be happy, joyful, celebrating, nothing is lacking. Right now, this moment, dance; this moment, laugh. This moment is all there is; celebrate it. " People come to me and if I say to them, "Celebrate your life,"

they say, "Yes, that's why we have come here: to learn how to create situations in which we can celebrate." The situation is already there: trees go on celebrating, birds go on singing. What do they have? -- no bank balance, no prestige, no power. They are not presidents or prime ministers. But have you ever seen trees or birds brooding, worried, thinking of the future? No, they simply live. What has happened to man?

BAULS say, "Celebrate this moment."

This is what Christ called conversion: a one hundred and eighty degree turn -- less will not do. That's what I call SANNYAS: a hundred eighty-degree turn -- less will not do. It is not a question of renouncing life, it is just a question of renouncing old habits. It is just a question of becoming more alert and seeing what is essential and what is not. If you go on choosing the essential, sooner or later you will reach to the essential man, what Bauls call ADHAR MANUSH. And the way to reach to the essential man is to be SAHAJA MANUSH, spontaneous man. Spontaneity should be the prayer, but we are so cunning and so clever.

I stayed once with an efficiency expert. When we were going to sleep, he sat in his bed and he said, "Now I will pray." So I watched him to see what prayer he was doing. He looked at the sky and said, "Ditto."

I was surprised: "What type of prayer is this?" So I asked him, "If you are not offended, if you don't mind, please tell me. I have heard many types of prayers, but 'ditto'? This is something absolutely new."

He said, "I say a prayer only once in a year, the first day of the year. And then what is the point of repeating the same prayer every day? I say 'ditto', and God must understand."

Even prayer is calculation. Even in prayer people are so miserly. They cannot say something to God today. In fact, their cleverness is the basis of their stupidity; their cunningness is the cause of their idiocy. They are not intelligent. An intelligent person lives in the moment -- very responsive. He allows his heart to move into prayer. He does not force anything upon the heart, he simply allows it to flow towards God. In fact, you should always remember that prayer is not to change the heart of God, prayer changes YOU. But people pray in such a way, as if they are giving advice to God: "Don't do this, do this!" All prayers, if reduced to the bare minimum, will mean that people are saying to God, "Please God, don't let two plus two be four. Have compassion on me. This time at least make two plus two be five." Prayers are complaints, grumblings. Then the prayer does not exist.

Prayer is not to change God; He needs no change. Prayer is to change yourself. But how can saying 'ditto' change you? If you say 'ditto', you remain ditto; there is no possibility.

Let it be remembered always that prayer never changes God. There is no need to change Him. He is as He should be, and His existence is as it should be -- perfect. The only change needed is within your own heart. Your prayer changes you. When you cry, tears come, or you sing and you dance, it changes YOU.

Of course, when you are in a different mood, a feminine mood, God can come closer to you; you attract Him, you allow Him, you become an opening towards Him. Prayer is an opening towards God. It is putting your heart before Him so His presence can transform you. And this should be the way of the whole of your life. It is not a question of praying once a day or once a year or once in a lifetime. Prayer should become like breathing; it should be there each moment.

The Baul never goes to the temple or to the mosque or to the gurudwara. Wherever he is, he is in prayer.

People who live unspontaneous lives become too crowded by thoughts -- of course, borrowed. All thoughts are borrowed. Knowledge as such is borrowed. KNOWING is pure and yours, but knowledge is not. People who are not spontaneous become mechanical. They don't see what is the case, they go on seeing what their expertise allows them to see; they see through blinkers.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin's wife was carried to the hospital in an unconscious condition after a terrible fall. The surgeon made a brief examination, but shook his head significantly and turned sympathetically to the anxious husband. "Mulla," he said, "I'm sorry to tell you that your wife is dead."

"No, I ain't," said the supposed corpse, opening one eye.

"Hush up you!" said Nasrudin. "Doesn't the doctor know better than you?"

EXPERTS are everywhere. It is good as far as worldly thing are concerned, but in the spiritual dimension there are no experts -- because the spiritual dimension does not allow itself to be defined, to be reduced to theorems. It is not geometry and it is not mathematics, it is sheer poetry. It knows no limitations, hence the spontaneous songs of the Bauls. They are not philosophers, not metaphysicians; they are simple singers, poets.

And their poetry is not according to the rules, and their poetry is not what people know of as poetry. They don't know any metro, they are not worried about language; they are simple people. Their poetry is their overflowing heart.

... AND REVERSE YOUR NATURE AND HABITS.

The key to this sutra is: become conscious, because all your habits are unconsciously dominated. You do things like a sleepwalker. Become conscious and your habits will change, and the conversion will happen. Do whatsoever you are doing but become more conscious while doing it. Don't become a robot, be a man.

Bauls say that once consciousness enters into your being, a new climate arises. In that new climate, new flowers open; in that new climate, new birds come and nestle around you; in that new climate, God is the closest reality. He is within and He is without. But God is not a theory to be discussed; it is something to be lived. It is an experience.

They sing,

He talks to me

but He would not let me see Him.

Listen to each single word very attentively...

He talks to me

but He would not let me see Him.

He moves close to my hands,

but away from my reach.

I explore the sky and the earth

searching Him,

circling round my error

of not knowing me:

who am I, and who is He?

"He talks to me but he would not let me see him...." These are symbols. I am talking to you; then you are passive because you have only to listen. When I am talking to you you become feminine, you become the receiving end. But if you want to see me you become male, because then you have to do something.

THE Bauls say: God talks to me but He would not let me see Him. He allows me to be passive but he won't allow me to be active. He moves close to my hands, I can almost touch Him, but the moment I try to touch He is far away. He moves close to my hands but away from my reach, because reaching for Him is again active. He comes close to you when you are simply waiting. Don't try to grab Him, He is very elusive. The moment you become male, He is gone; the moment you become female, He is there.

Attested by your own heart,

oh my Master,

lead me the right way.

As you play the melody

on the lute,

the lute could never sing on its own

without you to play it.

"... Attested by your own heart, oh my Master, lead me the right way" The Baul says, "I don't know which is the right way; you lead me. And I have nothing to say about the goal. Let your heart decide it. Whatsoever you decide is my destiny. Lead me the right way as you play the melody on the lute. The lute could never sing on its own without you to play it." The Baul becomes a hollow bamboo, a flute. This is what passivity is. If God is ready to sing, the Baul is ready to take His song as far as he can -- but he himself cannot sing. All song is His, all energy is His. At the most we can be hollow bamboos, not obstructing the way. If this is achieved, everything is achieved. If you are not obstructing the way of His song, enough. Humanity cannot do more than that.

How could he stand

in a normal upright way?

The man without a heart in him,

the roots of his tree

are planted in the sky

and the branches lie on the earth.

Flowers are in blossom

on the tree,

but it never bears fruit.

For him

the river is dying of thirst

and the fire perishes, freezing,

and birds nestle in the water.

He is meeting his Master

in the cremation ground.

ORDINARY life is a chaos. Things are not where they should be. Everything is misplaced. Roots are in the sky and branches are coming to the earth. The tree has flowered, but it never comes to fruit. The river is there and one is dying of thirst. God is there but you are standing on your head, so you cannot see Him. Or, even if you see Him, you see Him very distorted.

Mind is a mechanism to distort. Hence, whether you are on the, path of love or on the path of meditation, one thing is needed on both the paths as a basic requirement: that the mind should be put aside. Mind goes on distorting.

MILLIONS OF SUNS

WILL BURST OPEN WITH BRILLIANCE

AND THE FORMLESS IN VISUAL FORMS.

God is a tremendous experience of light, of beauty, of splendor. God is not a word, it is a dimension. It is a vast ocean in which you disappear like a small drop.

MILLIONS OF SUNS

WILL BURST OPEN WITH BRILLIANCE

AND THE FORMLESS IN VISUAL FORMS.

And once you have tasted Him, then every form becomes His form. Then the formless is bursting all around. But first, one has to have the taste. If I tell you that in these green trees it is He who is green, words will reach you but meaning will not. You will understand what I am saying, and yet you will not understand. Words you will understand: the container you will carry, but the content will be lost unless you have tasted Him. Then, everything is His form. In a rock, He is a rock; in a tree, He is the tree; in a flower, He is a flower; understand: the container you will not understand. Words you will in the star, He is a star. Then all forms are His. In tremendous forms, in millions of forms, He is expressing Himself. God is expression, manifestation, revelation. If you watch your own being you will be able to understand it.

If you have some talent -- if you can paint, or if you can sing, or if you can compose poetry -- then unless you have done it you will not feel happy, you will not feel fulfilled.

Unless your destiny is fulfilled, unless your innermost core has become creative, you will feel something is missing somewhere. You may know it, you may not know it, but you will feel a gap, a big gap in your life. You may have all that life can give to you, but if you have not found the right thing that allows your being to express itself, then you will be like a rosebush on which flowers have never happened. Then the rosebush will be sad, because the rosebush will be just futile. What is the point of being there? Once flowers bloom, the rosebush has attained to meaning, significance; the rosebush has become creative. Her soul is released, she is no more in bondage.

If you ask me what is MOKSHA, liberation, this is MOKSHA for me: to release your soul from bondage. I'm not telling you to go to the monasteries, or to the Himalayas and sit in a cave and just waste your life. I am saying that you move into the creative dimension because that is the dimension of God. Sing if you have a song to sing, and that will be your MOKSHA. Paint if painting is somewhere hidden in you and wants to assert

-- that will be your MOKSHA. Dance! If dance is throbbing within your heart, then let it be manifested. Once manifested, your soul will be free.

As I see it, the so-called religious people are less religious than the creative people. A poet is more religious to me, a painter more religious, a dancer more religious than your so-called MAHATMAS -- because they are not creative at all. They are almost stupid people; they are simply withering away. They are rosebushes that have stopped growing rose flowers: now even to call them rosebushes is not right. They are simply vegetating.

IN India a great calamity has happened: these people are respected. Uncreative people are respected, and the reasons to give them respect are simply foolish. Somebody can fast --

now this is uncreative activity; or somebody can stand for hours in the hot sun -- now this is good in a circus, but life is not enriched by it; or somebody can lie on a bed of thorns.

What is the point in it? What are you creating? One can become very insensitive and lie down on thorns. And the body has dead spots on it, so if you try to find out you will be able to find out. Just tell your wife or your husband to take a thorn or a needle and push many spots on your back. You will see that a few spots you will feel, and a few you will not feel; those are the spots. There are dead spots on the back. One has just to find where they are, then you can lie down on a bed of thorns. And by and by, the body becomes immune, resistant, hard. But these people lose all sensitivity: they have never produced a song, they have never danced. But in India they are thought to be great souls. It is ugly, it is stupid, it is very dangerous -- because the whole country has been worshipping uncreativity.

Worship dancers, singers; worship poets, painters; worship creative people -- because God's only definition is creativity. He's the creator, so be a creator in your own right.

Then your stream runs parallel to His stream. And if you become really creative, totally creative, you fall into His stream. He starts functioning through you. All creativity is His, so whenever you are creative, you are prayerful. Whether you go to the mosque or the temple is irrelevant.

Bauls are very creative people, simple, but very creative. This I call the great calamity that happened in India. Because of this many things disappeared: the genius of this country disappeared. You don't need a genius to fast, you need only a stubborn, muletype mind, that's all; just a cruel, masochistic mind, that's all. So your MAHATMAS are nothing but super-masochists, destructive people. If you starve somebody else you will be caught by the police; if you starve yourself you will be respected as a MAHATMA. But in both cases you are creating pain, misery.

I have been in contact with thousands of monks -- Jain monks, Buddhist monks, Hindu monks. Rarely has it happened -- I was simply surprised -- rarely did I come across somebody who was intelligent. But they are doing certain things which have become respectable, and nobody re-evaluates that if you honor and respect uncreative things, the country will become, by and by, more uncreative.

Bow your head down wherever you find creativity, because God is nothing but creativity.

So wherever there is a sign of creativity, God has a signature there. He has already been there. Maybe even the poet does not know, but he has been touched by something from the beyond.

Rabindranath used to close his doors whenever he would be in a poetic mood --

sometimes for one day, two days, three days he would not come out. He would forget about food, he would not go to the bathroom, he would forget about everything. The whole family and his disciples would be worried too: "How long is this going to be?..."

And he had told them never to disturb him, because whenever he was in a poetic mood, God is there. So disturbing him would be disturbing God. He would cry and tears would fall from his eyes, and he would be almost transfigured.

Once it happened that a group of people had come to meet him, and they were drinking tea. Suddenly the cup slipped from Rabindranath's hand, and he closed his eyes. People knew... they watched this beautiful phenomenon for a single moment. His face changed --

a new radiance, a new grace, something of the invisible entered. They, without disturbing him, slowly, slowly disappeared. Only one man remained, hiding behind a tree to see what was happening. He had come for the first time. That man himself has told me, "I have never seen such a transfiguration. By and by, Rabindranath was no more human --

something superhuman, a great ecstasy. And I could see the luminousness, and he started swaying, and he started singing. And those words were not coming from him; he was just instrumental. For three days he remained in that state."

Poetry is always born when the poet is just instrumental. Painting is born when the painter is not painting his ideas, but is possessed by God. Remember it: I would like my sannyasins to be creative, because I don't know of any other way to come close to God.

THESE uncreative religions and uncreative religious people have done nothing but harm

-- quarrelling, argumentative, killing each other. And with the problem about the transcendental, one thing is very complex: you cannot prove anything. The experience is transcendental. Christians cannot prove they are right. Hindus cannot prove they are right. No, no decision can be decisive, so they go on fighting and quarrelling. The whole energy that should become creative becomes destructive.

This also has to be noted down: if you don't use your energy in a creative way, if it doesn't become a dance and a laughter and a delight, then the same energy will become harmful and poisonous. It will be destructive.

It is said that Adolf Hitler wanted to become a painter, but he was refused admission. Just think: the whole world would have been totally different if he had been accepted in the academy. There would have been no Second World War. The whole humanity would have been totally different. But this man could not be creative. He wanted to be creative, he had the energy; certainly he had tremendous energy: he dragged the whole world towards destruction as no other man has ever been able to do. But it was the same energy; it could have become creative, but became uncreative.

I have heard....

The father lectured his son on the evils of fisticuffs as a way of settling disputes. "Don't you know that when you grow up you can't use your fists to settle an argument?" the father began. "You must begin to use peaceful and amicable means of arriving at a decision. Try to reason things out, try to discover by logic and evidence which is right and abide by the right. Remember that might does not make right. Though the strong may win over the weak, that still does not prove that the weak is wrong."

"I know, Dad, "said the boy, kicking at the grass. "But this was different."

"Different? What different? How different? What were you and Johnny arguing about that you had to fight over it?"

"Well, he said he could whip me and I couldn't whip him, and there was only one way to find out which of us was right."

It cannot be decided by amicable means. If this is the question: who can whip whom?

then only whipping can decide. Destructive people are always very egoistic because they don't know how to drop their egos. The creative person knows glimpses of no-ego of egolessness. He knows states of no-ego. In moments of creativity, he becomes so possessed that he has a taste of something of the beyond. But a destructive person knows no non-ego states; he becomes a crystallized ego. And then the whole world goes on fighting: Hindus fighting Mohammedans, Mohammedans fighting Hindus, Christians fighting Jews, Jews fighting Christians -- and the whole world is just a conflict. It could have been a great orchestra, but it is simply a war.

Religion has to become creative. To be uncreative should be thought as the original sin, and to be creative should be thought as the only and the super-most virtue.

MILLIONS OF SUNS

WILL BURST OPEN WITH BRILLIANCE

AND THE FORMLESS IN VISUAL FORMS.

If you are moving in the right direction -- receptive, creative, happy, celebrating, loving --

millions of suns will burst open. One day you come to your innermost shrine...

... AND THE FORMLESS IN VISUAL FORMS.

YOU WILL SEE

WHAT CANNOT BE SEEN

ONLY IF YOU CAN BE

THE FORMLESS IN YOU.

Remember it: you can see only if you can be the formless in you. If you want to see the formless you will have to become formless within. Because only when the wavelengths are the same, is there communion. When you are also formless within you, suddenly something clicks and you are one with God. He is formless, you are formless; there cannot be two formlessnesses. There can be millions of forms, but formlessness can only be one.

HOW to attain to this inner formlessness? -- drop the ego. That is giving you a limitation.

Drop the very word'1'. Use it, it is utilitarian in the outside world, but never bring it home. Never say'I' inside because that makes a limitation, and because of that barrier you will never be able to move into the Beloved, and you will never be able to allow the Beloved to move into you. If you want to see God, become something like God. Be creative -- one thing; be formless -- another thing.

Have you tallied,

my heart,

the number of ways of finding Him

in the city of love?

The treasure of life,

sans bogus reckonings,

the world is a carnival

where lovers meet

like children of games.

Figure out the nature of your feelings

for the jewel of your life.

He is reached in the way

each seek to reach Him.

He is reached in the way each seek to reach Him....

Through tender passion or servitude,

through loyalty or parental care,

or through the love

of tranquility, peace,

find the feelings

which are born with you

and then worship Him

with your own strength.

Bauls say that there are no fixed laws and rules to reach Him. There is no methodology.

There are no super highways to reach to Him, only small footpaths. And each has to seek Him in his own way. Of course, a poet has to seek in his own way, a dancer has to seek in his own way, a lover has to seek in his own way, a meditator has to seek in his own way.

So you should never listen to what others are saying; listen to your feelings. Remain true to yourself and you will remain true to God. He has already given you the key -- the key is in your feelings. Never imitate, because there is no one way for all. If you understand me rightly, then the really religious world will be a world of no religions -- no Hindu, no Mohammedan, no Christian, no Jain. A real world which is religious will be of religious people: everybody seeking and searching in his own way. And God is not limited.

JESUS says, "In my God's house there are many mansions." Yes, there are millions of doors. In fact, for each individual there is a separate door, special; nobody else can enter through that door but you. So don't imitate: imitation creates falsity, pseudo-ness, inauthenticity. Just feel your own way and don't bother about what others say. It is nobody else's business. Don't bother about what churches say, organizations say -- listen to your own heart.

Bauls are very individualistic. Religion has to be individualistic because it is a process of individuation. But what other religions have done up to now is to destroy individuality and try to make everybody a part of the crowd. They have created mobs, and they have destroyed individuals. Bauls are rebellious about it.

He who has seen the beauty

of the Beloved friend

can never forget it.

The form is for seeing

but not for discourse,

as beauty has no comparison.

He who has seen that form

flashing on the mirror,

the darkness of his heart

is gone.

He lives with his eyes

focused on the form,

careless of the river

between life and death.

His heart

forever devoted to the beauty

dares the gods.

Each one has to come to his own vision, each one has to look through his own eyes. You cannot see through my eyes, and you cannot touch Him through my hands. Even if I hold your hand and put it on Him, it will never reach to Him -- because you are not ready. If you are ready, He is always reaching you. And what is readiness in the eyes of the Bauls?

-- become individual.

Remember, God is very original; He never makes the same model again. A Buddha is a Buddha, a Krishna is a Krishna -- never again does He repeat. So don't go on carrying Gitas and Dhammapadas. Read them as beautiful pieces: read them as poetry, but not as religion. Read them as great art, literature, but not as religion. Listen to the Koran recited

-- it is tremendously beautiful whether you understand it or not, whether you know the language or not. The very word 'koran' means recite. There is no comparison; no other scripture can be recited so beautifully. It is aesthetic, it has a tremendous beauty of sound; listen to it. Read the Bible -- never has literature ever been able to transcend the simple assertions of Jesus -- but never as religion. Religion you will have to find yourself. Poetry you can find, beautiful assertions you can find. And I'm not saying don't read them, because they are your heritage. They make you rich. A man who has not read about Buddha and who has not read his assertions cannot be contemporary. Something will be missing. If you have not read the Koran and the Bible and Mahavir's statements, then you will lack something very essential. You will be poorer for that. Read, but read as great literature. Enjoy it, delight in it, but don't believe. A poem is not to be believed, it is to be delighted in.

BELIEF is borrowed. You will have to find your own trust, you will have to find your own faith. Hard is the path, arduous are the ways. In the beginning it looks almost impossible to reach, but I say to you, it is only in appearance. If you start moving: if you start praying, if you start dancing, if you start singing in His name, He arrives.

Do you wish to visit

my inner home

and drink nectar,

my heart?

Will you not fail to enter

where lovers march

in a joyous carnival

singing of love?

Then walk the way

with a lamp of beauty,

leaving behind this greed,

that lust,

the ways of the world,

and all qualities.

Blames and violence,

old age and death,

dawn and dusk

do not live there.

Only rays of color

brilliantly shine.

What cannot be seen you will see. The impossible will happen. Religion is the impossible revolution. It happens -- it is almost impossible to believe that it happens. It is so beyond the ordinary mind: it is so beyond logic, it is so beyond intellect, that it is difficult to believe that it happens -- but it happens. Look into my eyes, look into ME, watch and feel; it has happened. It can happen to you.

YOU WILL SEE

WHAT CANNOT BE SEEN

ONLY IF YOU CAN BE

THE FORMLESS IN YOU.

BUT the only art that you have to learn is how to be formless within you. How to drop the ego is the very core of all religions; how to efface yourself utterly, so utterly that your room is just an emptiness, that you are just a room and nothing else, just space, pure space. In that pure space one starts seeing that which cannot be seen, and one starts hearing that which cannot be heard, and one starts touching what cannot be touched, and one arrives to the point where all seeking, searching, desiring disappears. One is fulfilled.

That benediction is your birthright. And if you are missing, nobody else is responsible.

Only you, and ONLY you are responsible if you miss. There is no need to miss even for a single moment anymore. Once understood, what is the problem? Why cannot you put yourself aside? Why cannot you be in a state where no'I' exists?

Sometimes it happens accidentally. Listening to great music, sometimes it happens that you forget that you are. You ARE, more so than ever before -- more grounded, more centered -- but still you forget that you are. It disappears in great music. Watching a Himalayan peak, it disappears sometimes. It is so wonderful, so surprising, so pure... the untouched Himalayan snow... that for a moment you touch an altitude of your own being, and the ego is left, deep down.

Sometimes, if in the night you are suddenly awakened, for a single moment you are puzzled about who you are and where you are. Have you not watched it? Otherwise, ask your wife or husband one day to wake you suddenly in the night, to shake you, and see: for a few seconds you are, but there is no feeling of who you are. The name, the form, the identity is not there. You are coming from such deep sleep that it will take a little time to take back the garb of the ego.

IT happens in love. Two lovers sitting are not two -- something between them has fallen, disappeared. Barriers gone, they are overlapping. It happens accidentally also, but if you understand it you can, by and by, allow it to grow in you. That's all that religion is about.

MY HEART,

DRESS YOURSELF IN THE SPIRIT

OF ALL WOMEN

AND REVERSE YOUR NATURE AND HABITS.

MILLIONS OF SUNS

WILL BURST OPEN WITH BRILLIANCE

AND THE FORMLESS IN VISUAL FORMS.

YOU WILL SEE

WHAT CANNOT BE SEEN

ONLY IF YOU CAN BE

THE FORMLESS IN YOU.

The Beloved, Vol 2

Chapter #10

Chapter title: Love Is Death

10 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7607100

ShortTitle:

BELOV210

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

81

mins

The first question:

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO, THERE IS NO MORE SEARCHING AND SEEKING. THAT HAS

ALL STOPPED. I HAVE FOUND NOTHING IN PARTICULAR, BUT I FEEL FREE, FREED. I GO ABOUT MY BUSINESS WITHOUT ANXIETY. THIS FOR ME IS

BLISS, AND I FEEL SUCH A FLOOD OF GRATITUDE FOR YOUR PRESENCE

HERE. GIRISHA.

THERE IS NOTHING TO BE FOUND IN PARTICULAR. The search for the particular is illusory, utterly illusory. The mind seeks something in particular; that is the problem with the mind. God is not a particular thing or a particular being; God is sheer existence.

All that is is God. God is the greatest generality. You cannot find Him somewhere because He is everywhere. You cannot find Him in any place because He is the whole, the total. You cannot indicate Him; whatsoever the indication, it will be wrong: He is in all directions, within and without.

Mind is narrow; it goes on seeking in a very concentrated way. Concentration is not the approach towards God. Concentration is a mind approach. God is everywhere, so you have to relax, you have to be meditative. That's the difference between concentration and meditation. Concentration is a focusing of the mind exclusively on something. That's what desire is: a concentrated mind, a mind intent to reach somewhere, to reach something, a great seeking -- but it has to be narrow. And God is the infinite.

You have to relax, and you have to drop all searching -- only then you'll find Him. Seek, and you will never find Him. Just be, and He has always been there surrounding you. He has never left you for a single moment, because you cannot exist without Him. It is impossible to be without Him for a single split moment. He is your life. He is your being.

You can exist without food for months, you can exist without water for a few days, you can exist without air for a few seconds, but you cannot exist without God even for a split second. It is impossible.

This is my whole effort here: to help you to relax. I am not here to make you tense, ambitious, desiring to find God. One who is searching is still in the world. The searcher is part of the world. One day he was seeking money, power, prestige; now he is seeking God, bliss, heaven, but the search continues. He has only changed the objects of the search, but he remains the same. I am here to help you to see the point that God is already the case. You are just like a fish already in the ocean. Maybe the ocean is so obvious that you can't see: you are born in it, you are made of it, you will dissolve in it. It is a question of recognition, not of search.

A searching mind becomes concentrated. Relax and just recognize.

So I don't say to you to seek God, I say to you to live Him right now. There is no need to seek -- enjoy Him right now, celebrate! Let it be a festival. He has already happened. He is just waiting for you to dance with Him, to delight with Him.

Good. Girisha is perfectly right: "I have found nothing in particular"...right, precisely.

That is the point; nothing is to be found in particular..."but I feel free, freed"...exactly, that is the point to be understood. A great freedom is needed -- freedom from desire, freedom from search, freedom from seeking, freedom from the narrow mind. One simply relaxes in all directions. When you relax, you are all-dimensional; when you seek, you are one-dimensional. When you relax you become part of the whole; when you seek you remain an ego.

This 'nothing' is what God is; and this freedom, this tremendous freedom -- that there is no longer any desire to bind you, no bondage exists -- this is what MOKSHA, liberation is. MOKSHA or liberation is not a geographical thing. It is not somewhere: it is not after you die, it is a recognition, a recognition of here and now. Be free of all seeking.

There are only two types of people in the world: one, who are continuously seeking. They seek and they never find, because seeking is not the way to find. They seek one thing, then another thing, then another thing; they continuously change their objects, but they continue seeking. They are one-dimensional people. They miss God because God is all-dimensional. They are linear people; they move in a line -- and God is all. You cannot find Him through linear logic.

Then there is another type of person -- very rare -- who doesn't seek, who enjoys, who delights in whatsoever is available, who dances, who sings. These are the Bauls, these are the really authentically religious people.

God is not somewhere in the future. If you delight, He is here. If you celebrate, you will find Him just by your side, beating in your heart. But if you seek Him you will never find Him anywhere. The seeking mind never reaches to reality. And one becomes too much of a seeker, by and by: too much practice, conditions, so you go on seeking. Today you will seek, yesterday you were seeking, tomorrow also you will seek; past lives you were seeking, this life you are seeking, in the future lives also you will seek. Seeking has become habitual. It has become a structure. Drop that structure!

This is my message: He is here, right THIS very moment. Don't miss Him.

There is no point in seeking; you just also be here, as He is here, and the meeting, and the communion, and the orgasm... you become one.

"I go about my business without anxiety" -- beautiful! Because then everything is His, business also. Ordinary day to day activity becomes religious, because all is His. When you are taking a bath, you are giving Him a bath. When you are standing under a shower, He is showering on you. When you are eating He is eating, and when you feel satisfied He feels satisfied. When you are singing He is singing within you, and He is the audience also; He is listening to you. Every moment and every act becomes luminous with His presence. When the whole life becomes luminous -- waking, He wakes in you; sleeping, He goes to sleep and takes a rest -- then there is no distraction. Then you are continuously in tune with Him. Then the harmony has happened. This is what a religious life is all about.

Religious life is not something separate from life. It is not the life of the temple or of the monastery; it is the life offered to God -- totally, unconditionally, utterly. And now one lives because He wants you to live. And one lives happily, because He has chosen you, because He has chosen you to be an instrument to Him. Then you become a flute on His lips...then everything is tremendously beautiful. This is what the Bauls want to say....

'...and I feel such a flood of gratitude for your presence here."

Gratitude arises whenever you start feeling God's presence around you; then only gratitude is left. Then your whole energy becomes gratitude, then your whole being becomes a thanksgiving, it becomes a prayer -- because nothing is missing, and the world is so perfect, and everything is as it should be. Gratitude is natural. Gratitude is not something that can be practiced. You have been taught to be grateful; you cannot be.

Gratefulness is a consequence: when you feel God close by, gratitude arises. It is a by-product. Respect arises. This respect is not something that you manage, it is something beyond you. You have been taught to be grateful to your parents, taught to be grateful to your teachers, taught to be grateful to your elders, but those are all just conditionings.

When real gratitude arises, then you see what a tremendous difference there is. The gratitude that was taught was just a concept, a dead ritual. You were following it like a mechanism. When the real gratitude upsurges in your being, you feel for the first time what prayer is, what love is.

Good, Girisha. Continue to remember, continue to relax, continue not to lose this experience that is happening to you, because this experience is the only experience that makes life meaningful, which gives life a glow, a benediction. You are blessed, Girisha, but don't lose track of it. It is very difficult to get, and it is very easy to lose -- because mind has a long history, and it is very strong, and this new experience is just a small sprout, very soft, fragile. The mind's heavy rock can crush it at any moment, so be very alert.

People who have not known anything like a spiritual experience of ecstasy, elation, who have never felt any presence of God, need not be very alert, because they have nothing to lose. But a person who has had an experience, a glimpse, a mini-SATORI, has much to lose. He'll have to be more cautious. Be more cautious. Allow what has happened to you to happen more and more. Go deeper into it so that that which is fragile becomes strong, that which is new becomes deeply rooted in your being.

It fact, people who are searching and seeking and making much fuss about it are completely unaware that finally, when they reach, they will find there is nothing.

I have heard....

A lawyer was cross-examining Mulla Nasrudin, a witness. He asked, "And you say you called on Mrs. Sultana on May 2nd? Now will you tell the jury just what she said?"

"I object to the question," interrupted the lawyer on the other side. There was nearly an hour's argument between counsel, and finally the judge allowed the question. "And as I was saying," the first lawyer began again, "on May 2nd you called on Mrs. Sultana. Now what did she say?"

"Nothing," replied Nasrudin. "She was not at home."

One day, when you arrive, you simply are amazed that for so many lives you were seeking something which had never been there, and that which has been there was so close to you, and there was no need to seek it.

Delight, enjoy. God is not a thing, it is an attitude, an attitude of celebration and festivity.

Drop sadness. He is so close by; dance! Drop long faces, it is sacrilege -- because He is so close by. Forget your childish miseries and worries; He is so close by. Don't go on brooding about immaterial things; He is so close by. Allow Him to hold your hand. He has been waiting for you for long.

The second question:

Question 2

IF YOU HAPPENED TO MEET A BAUL, A TANTRICA, AND A YOGI, WITH

WHOM WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE A CUP OF TEA?

IT is a very complex question. The answer is not easy, but still I will try.

I will tell the Yogi to prepare the cup of tea, because those are the most hygienic people!

And I will tell the Tantrica to bring it, because they know how to present a thing; they know what ritual is. But I am going to take tea with the Baul.

The third question:

Question 3

WHEN ONE BECOMES EMPTY OF ALL THOUGHTS, EMPTY OF ALL

PLANNINGS, EMPTY OF ALL DESIRES, WHAT TRANSFORMATION WILL

HAPPEN IN ONE'S OUTER LIFE AND ONE'S INNER LIFE? HOW WILL HE

BEHAVE? HOW WILL HE SEE THINGS? HOW WILL HE LIVE IN THE WORLD?

PLEASE SAY.

IT depends, it depends on the individual. There cannot be any dogmatic statement about it because each individual is so unique. When Basho becomes enlightened he starts singing poetry, poems; Buddha has never done that. When Krishna becomes enlightened he starts dancing, singing; Mahavir has never done that. When Mahavir becomes enlightened he keeps silence for many years, remains absolutely silent, not a ripple is allowed; Meera has not done that. When she becomes enlightened, she dances from village to village, she sings the glory of God. It is very difficult to make a dogmatic statement.

There have been people who renounced life when they became enlightened and went to the Himalayas, moved as far away from the society as possible. There have been people who became enlightened and came back to the world, even if they had been in the Himalayas, and started living with people again. There have been people who remained emperors even when they became enlightened. Zen Masters go on living very ordinary lives; it is very difficult even to recognize. If you don't have eyes to penetrate them, you will not recognize them.

It is said about a great Zen Master, Rinzai.... The emperor came to see him. He was cutting wood just in front of the ashram. The emperor asked, "Where is your Master?"

Rinzai said, "He is inside." Now of course, the emperor thought he must be inside the ashram, so he went inside the ashram. Rinzai ran in another door and sat on the Master's chair with closed eyes. When the emperor reached, he recognized: "This man seems to be exactly like... just like the woodcutter." He said, "What is the matter? Who are you? Are you trying to befool me, or are you a madman?" Rinzai said, "But I have told you, he is inside, and you didn't understand me. Because you did not understand me, I had to run and I had to sit on this chair. Maybe you can understand only superficials. I was ready then and there to reveal myself, but you didn't wait. Yes, I am the Master, now what do you want? And don't waste much time, because much wood is still left to be cut and chopped."

Zen Masters live very ordinary lives: they chop wood, they carry water from the well, they prepare food in the kitchen. It is very difficult to see them unless you have eyes.

They don't live any sort of extraordinary life, because they say, "The very search to be extraordinary is egoistic." Just to be ordinary is the real attitude of a religious man. And remember, the urge to be extraordinary is very ordinary. There is nothing extraordinary about it because everybody wants to be extraordinary. To be ordinary is very extraordinary -- because who wants to be ordinary?

So it is very difficult, and I will not give you a criterion to judge by because those criteria have been very destructive and harmful. Once you have a dead criterion with you, you will miss many real people, and you will be deceived by many pseudo people.

Whosoever can fulfill that criterion will look like he is enlightened.

For example: Mahavir became enlightened; he became naked. Now, anybody can stand naked; there is nothing special about it. Any madman can do that. And you can go to visit a nudist club -- they are not all Mahaviras. Buddha became enlightened; he was sitting in a particular posture, the lotus posture. You can sit in a lotus posture. If you are Eastern, then it is very simple; if you are Western, then six months' practice, but that's all. You can sit in a lotus posture, but that will not make you a Buddha. You can imitate very easily; that's how imitators are there all over the world. Go and see a Jain monk: he imitates perfectly, but nothing else is there.

Enlightenment is always new, fresh -- it is not an imitation, it is not a carbon-copy; it is ALWAYS original. So I cannot tell you exactly how he will behave, but I can tell you how to imbibe. If there is somebody who has something of the unknown around him -- a mystique -- then, how to imbibe? Drop all considerations, all mental considerations.

Don't ask that he should be 'like this'; just be with him. Just sit with him in silence. be open to him. If he has become enlightened, suddenly you will see a throb within you that you have never known before: your energy will start rising. You will see a great silence arising in you, and a great bliss, drop by drop, reaching your innermost core of being.

An enlightened person, if allowed to enter into you, will give you self-evident proofs. But those are not intellectual proofs; they are not arguments of mind. He argues with his whole being. His argument is that of his presence -- so allow his presence and don't carry any criterion. If you are a Jain you will miss Buddha; if you are a Jain you will miss Krishna; if you are a Jain you will miss Christ. If you are a Christian you will miss Mahavir. You will carry an idea, a fixed pattern. Don't carry any fixed pattern. If you feel that somebody is there who is livelier than you, more radiant than you, more understanding than you, more compassion overflowing from his being, then just be in his presence. That's what we call SATSANG: just be in his presence. If he has arrived, you will feel a sudden pull in your being -- you are being pulled towards some unknown center. And you will feel tremendous beauty, bliss. blessings showering on you. That will be the only criterion; but for that you have to be ready.

Ordinarily, people ask, "Give us some objective criterion." There is none. The criterion can only be if you are open. What is the criterion to know whether this flower is a rose or not? The only criterion is to open your eyes, open your nostrils, smell it, let it reach your being; only that will reveal. But if you don't have eyes and you have lost your sense of smell, then it will be very, very difficult for you to know whether it is a rose or something else. It may be just a plastic rose or a paper rose; it can deceive you.

So I will not give you any description of the objective reality, of what happens -- it is individual, unique, always different, never the same -- but I can give you a subjective way to feel.

I have heard....

A maddened Roman swordsman came into the village cutting down men, women, and children, and terrifying everyone. Arriving at the doors of a Zen monastery, he smashed down the door with the hilt of his sword. Striding up to the Master who was sitting in ZAZEN, he raised his sword and was just about to kill him, when something of the Master's stillness reached him. And angrily he shouted, "Don't you realize that standing in front of you is a man who can cut you in two without the blink of an eye!"

The Master quietly said, "Don't YOU realize that sitting in front of you is a man who can be cut in two without the blink of an eye? So go ahead. Don't be restricted by my silence; do whatsoever you have decided to do." But the silence had reached the madman. The silence of the Master had touched his heart; now it was impossible.

So just be open.

Even if you are a madman, and open, you will recognize enlightenment wherever it is, in whatsoever form it has taken. And even if you are a great philosopher, intellectual, very rational to the core, if you don't allow yourself to imbibe the spirit of silence and bliss, you will miss. You have to be very, very open. You have to be in a let-go -- and then the evidence comes so strongly. It is so certain that you can deny everything, but you cannot deny a man of enlightenment -- it is impossible. You may not be able to prove it to others

-- because there is no way to prove -- but for you, the thing is settled. And once it is settled for you, once you have been in contact with an enlightened man, a bridge has been created. Now you can never be the same again. The VERY phenomenon that you could recognize a man of enlightenment is enough to start the foundation of you own enlightenment. It is enough to give you a new direction, a new being, a new birth.

The fourth question:

Question 4

ANYTHING I SEE HAPPENING IN MYSELF IS FALSE, ILLUSORY, AND A MIND

TRIP, RIGHT? AND MY RECOGNITION OF THE MIND TRIP IS A MIND TRIP

TOO?

RIGHT.

As far as thoughts go, everything is a mind trip. When thoughts cease and you see without any thoughts crowding in your mind, when you see clearly with no smoke of the thoughts surrounding you, when your look is simple, innocent, uncorrupted by thoughts, then it is not a mind trip. Only meditation is not a mind trip; everything else is a mind trip. Or, love is not a mind trip; everything else is a mind trip. If love or meditation has happened to you, you will know what I am indicating towards. In a deep moment of love, thinking stops. The moment is so intriguing, the moment is so tremendously powerful, the moment is so intensely alive, that thinking stops. You are simply in awe, a great wonder surrounds you. Or in deep meditation, when the moment of silence has come and you are absolutely silent, still -- no flickering, no wavering, no trembling, the flame of your consciousness is straight -- then thinking stops. Then you are outside the grip of the mind. Otherwise, everything is a mind trip.

Remember it: one has to go beyond the mind because the mind is SAMSAR, the mind is the world. It is because of your thinking that you are missing the truth. Once thinking is stopped you are face to face with the reality. It is the continuous screen of thinking that is distorting reality. It is as if you are looking in a lake full of ripples. It is a full moon night, and the lake is reflecting the beautiful moon -- but it is full of ripples. You cannot gather it together; the moon goes on splitting into a thousand fragments. The whole lake seems to be spread over by the moon, silvery, many fragments of the moon all around. Then the wind stops, the ripples disappear: those fragments start falling into one moon. The silver that was spread all over the lake becomes more concentrated in one place. When the lake is completely without ripples, the moon is reflected perfectly.

When the mind is with thoughts, the lake is with ripples; when the mind is without thoughts, the lake is without ripples. God is reflected perfectly when there is no ripple in you. Forget all about God -- the only thing to be done is how to become ripple-less, how to become thoughtless, how to drop this constant obsession with thinking. It can be dropped -- it is because of your cooperation that it continues. It is your energy that you go on giving to it that keeps it alive. It is just like a man on a bicycle: he goes on pedaling --

it is his energy that keeps the cycle going on. Once he stops pedaling, the cycle may go a little further because of the past momentum, but then it has to stop.

Don't give energy to your thoughts. Become a witness -- indifferent, aloof, distant. Just see the thoughts, and don't be in any way involved in them. Note the fact: the thoughts are there; but don't choose this way or that, don't be for or against, don't be pro or con.

Just be a watcher. Let the mind-traffic move, just stand by the side and look at it, unaffected by it, as if it has nothing to do with you.

Sometimes try it: go on the busiest street where the traffic rush is too much. Stand by the side of the road and see the traffic -- so many people going hither and thither, and cars and bicycles and trucks and buses. You just stand by the side and look, and do the same inside: close your eyes and see -- the mind is a traffic of thoughts, thoughts rushing here and there. You watch, you just be a watcher. By and by, you will see that the traffic is becoming less and less. By and by, you will see that the road is empty, nobody is passing.

In those rare moments, first glimpses of SAMADHI will enter in you.

There are three stages of SAMADHI. First, when you achieve glimpses through gaps --

one thought comes, then it has gone and another has not come for the time being. There may even be a gap for a few seconds; in that interval reality penetrates you -- the moon becomes one. The reflection is there only for a single moment, but you will see the first glimpse.

This is what in Zen they call SATORI. By and by, the gaps will become bigger, and when the gaps become bigger and you can see reality more clearly, that vision of reality changes you. Then you cannot be the same because your vision becomes your reality also. Whatsoever you are seeing affects your being. Your vision, by and by, is absorbed, digested. That is the second stage of samadhi.

And then comes the last stage: when suddenly the whole traffic disappears, as if you were fast asleep and dreaming and somebody has shaken you and awakened you, and the whole traffic of dreaming has stopped. In that third stage you become one with reality, because there is nothing to divide. The fence that was dividing you has disappeared. The wall is no more there. The wall is made of the bricks of thoughts, desires, feelings, emotions; once it disappears -- it is a China wall, very ancient, and every strong -- but once it disappears, there is no fence between you and God. When for the first time the third stage happens, that is where the Upanishads announced, "AHAM BRAHAMASMI"

-- I am God, I am the Brahma. It is where the Sufi mystic, Mansur, declares, "ANA'L

HAQ" -- I am the truth. It is there when Jesus declares, "I and my God are one, I and my Father are one."

The fifth question:

Question 5

ON THE ONE HAND YOU ARE GIVING ULTIMATE FREEDOM TO DO

WHATSOEVER WE WANT TO DO, AND ON THE OTHER HAND YOU ARE

GIVING RESPONSIBILITY. WITH RESPONSIBILITY, I CANNOT USE THE

WORD 'FREEDOM' AS I WANT, HENCE I HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE RIGHT

MEANING OF FREEDOM. THE MOMENT I GET IT, I GET IT WITH

RESPONSIBILITY. OSHO, WHEN I UNDERSTAND I FEEL'THANK YOU'.

OTHERWISE, I WOULD LIKE TO USE, AND I HAVE ALREADY USED IT AS A LICENCE.

IT is one of the perennial questions of humanity: the question of freedom and responsibility. If you are free, you interpret it as if now there is no responsibility. Just a hundred years ago Friedrich Nietzsche declared, "God is dead, and man is free." And the next sentence he wrote is, "Now you can do whatsoever you want to do. There is no responsibility. God is dead, man is free, and there is no responsibility." There he was absolutely wrong; when there is no God, there is TREMENDOUS responsibility on your shoulders. If there is a God, he can share your responsibility. You can throw your responsibility on Him: you can say, "It is YOU who have made the world; it is YOU who have made me in this way; it is YOU who is finally, ultimately, responsible, not me. How can I be ultimately responsible? I am just a creature, and you are the creator. Why have you put seeds of corruption in me and seeds of sin in me from the beginning? You are responsible. I am free." In fact, if there is no God, then man is ABSOLUTELY

responsible for his acts, because there is no way to throw responsibility on anybody else.

When I say to you that you are free, I mean that you are responsible. You cannot throw responsibility on anybody else, you are alone. And whatsoever you do, it is your doing.

You cannot say that somebody else forced you to do it -- because you are free; nobody can force you! Because you are free, it is your decision to do something or not to do something. With freedom comes responsibility. Freedom IS responsibility. But the mind is very cunning, the mind interprets in its own way: it always goes on listening to that which it wants to listen to. It goes on interpreting things in its own way. The mind never tries to understand what really is the truth. It has taken that decision already.

I have heard....

"I am a respectable man, doctor, but lately life has become intolerable because of my feelings of guilt and self-recrimination." The patient gulped miserably before continuing.

"You see, I have recently fallen victim to an uncontrollable urge to pinch and fondle girls in the underground."

"Dearie me," tutted the psychiatrist consolingly, "we must certainly help you to rid yourself of this unfortunate urge. I can quite see how distressing.... "

The patient broke in anxiously, "It is not so much the urge I wanted you get rid of for me, doctor, it is the guilt."

People go on talking about freedom, but they don't want freedom exactly, they want irresponsibility. They ask for freedom, but deep down, unconsciously, they ask for irresponsibility, licence.

Freedom is maturity; licence is very childish. Freedom is possible only when you are so integrated that you can take the responsibility of being free. The world is not free because people are not mature. Revolutionaries have been doing many things down through the centuries, but everything fails. Utopians have been continuously thinking of how to make man free, but nobody bothers -- because man cannot be free unless he is integrated. Only a Buddha can be free, a Mahavira can be free, a Christ, a Mohammed can be free, a Zarathustra can be free, because freedom means the man now is aware. If you are not aware then the state is needed, the government is needed, the police is needed, the court is needed. Then freedom has to be cut from everywhere. Then freedom exists only in name; in fact it doesn't exist. How can freedom exist when governments exist? -- it is impossible. But what to do?

If governments disappear, there will simply be anarchy. Freedom will not come in if governments disappear, there will simply be anarchy. It will be a worse state than it is now. It will be sheer madness. The police are needed because you are not alert.

Otherwise, what is the point of having a policeman standing on the crossroad? If people are alert, the policeman can be removed, will have to be removed, because it is unnecessary. But people are not conscious.

So when I say 'freedom', I mean be responsible. The more responsible you become, the more free you become; or, the more free you become, the more responsibility comes on you. Then you have to be very alert to what you are doing, what you are saying. Even about your small unconscious gestures you have to be very alert -- because there is nobody else to control you, it is only you. When I say to you that you are free, I mean that you are a God. It is not licence, it is tremendous discipline.

The sixth question:

Question 6

AFTER HEARING YOU FOR THE LAST NINE DAYS AND UNDERGOING

MORNING AND EVENING MEDITATIONS IN YOUR ASHRAM, I CAME TO THE

CONCLUSION THAT I ENVY VIVEK, BUT I AM NOT JEALOUS OF HER. I FEEL

SHE IS HOLDING THE'PARAMPADA' OF BELOVED DISCIPLE IN THE

ASHRAM. HOW TO REACH THAT STAGE?

MIND functions in such strange ways. You have been here to meditate; it has nothing to do with anybody else. In fact, a real meditator will not look at what is happening to others. A real meditator will be going inwards.

It is said about Bayazid that he lived with his Master for twelve years, and he passed the same hall every day to come to the Master. One day the Master said to Bayazid, "You go back to the hall. There, in the cupboard, one book is Lying -- you bring that book."

Bayazid said, "I will go, because I have never seen that there is a cupboard." The Master said, "You have been coming to see me continuously, every day, for twelve years, and you have to pass that hall every day; you have not looked around?" He said, "I was coming to you, Master. I am not here to look at what is in the hall, whether there is a cupboard or not, and whether there is a book in it or not. I am not here for that. My whole intent, my whole being is just for you. I am open towards you. I will go and see." The Master said, "There is no need; the book is not needed. In fact, there is no book and there is no cupboard. It was just a test to see whether you are distracted. I am happy that you are not distracted."

Now, this question is a question of distraction. How are you related to anybody? You should be meditating, or, at the most, you should be open towards me. But mind goes on creating new complexities and troubles.

The question is from a woman, so that shows something about the feminine mind also.

She is more interested in Vivek than in me. If you are to feel envious, feel envious of me!

But a woman is a woman; even if she has come to meditate, it makes not much difference. And then she says, "I am not jealous of her, but I envy." This is always happening in the mind: if somebody is envious we call him jealous; if we are jealous we say this is just envy. There is a double-bind.

What is envy? It is nothing but passive jealousy. Maybe jealousy is too strong a phenomenon; envy is a little passive. The difference may be of degrees, but it is not of quality, it is only of quantity. Envy can become jealousy at any moment; envy is just jealousy in progress. Mind has to drop all envies and jealousies.

She has asked, "How to reach that stage?" The first thing is to drop envy and jealousy, otherwise there is no possibility -- because love cannot exist where envy and jealousies exist. Then your search is only for a certain type of power: that in the name of love you are just trying to fulfill the ego. And it is arduous to drop, because love exists only when all the negative elements of the mind are dropped. It is very arduous. You can ask Vivek how arduous it is.

Just a few days ago she was saying to me, "You are worse than Gurdjieff!" Now that is a great compliment. Gurdjieff was really very hard on his disciples, and she says, "You are worse than Gurdjieff!" But I can understand: I am hard, I HAVE to be hard. The closer you come to me, the harder you will find me. When you come just as a visitor, then it is okay; I am not hard. I have to be very, very polite when you come as a visitor -- that is the trap. Once you are trapped, then I become hard.

The woman has not taken sannyas yet; she should take sannyas and see.

Come closer to me... you will be coming closer to your own death. Love is death. You will have to die; only then can you comeclose to me. You will have to efface yourself utterly; only then can you come close to me.

But people think that love is the promise of a rose garden. Yes, ultimately yes, but on the way it is a lot of hell.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

A great philosopher, feeling the absolute meaninglessness of life, decided to commit suicide by hanging himself. A friend came into the room and discovered him standing with a rope around his waist, and he enquired what he was trying to do. The philosopher told him he was taking his own life. "But," said the friend, "why have you the rope round your waist?"

"Well," said the philosopher, "when I tied it round my neck, it was choking me."

Love is a rope round the neck -- it will choke you, it will kill you. Only those who are courageous enough to commit suicide -- a spiritual suicide -- who are ready to die, only they can be reborn, and only they can be close to me. It has nothing to do with me. I am there, available to everybody. My invitation is there for you to come. It depends on you.

But if you come just to become close to me, envious of others who are close, you are coming close for wrong reasons. Then your rope will be just around your waist, and you will say, "I cannot put it on my neck, it is choking."

People can come close also for wrong reasons, for political reasons. Now this woman has a political mind: she thinks Vivek is in a PARAMPADA, in the highest power position.

This is a search for power.

Those who are close to me are close because they have effaced themselves. At least they are sincerely trying. It is hard, it is difficult, but they are trying.

I was reading a small anecdote:

There was a small camp of little boy scouts. The camp counsellor was explaining the rules of a new game: "If your enemy calls your number from his side of the battlefield,"

he said, "you must be a dead man, immediately. Drop just where you are. Lie still as if you are dead, become completely dead."

Ten minutes later came an agonized whisper from the youngest camper, "Please may I move now? I am a dead man, but I am on an ant hill."

You can pretend that you are effacing yourself, you can pretend that you are humble, you can pretend that you are ready to drop your ego, but pretensions won't help. Sooner or later truth comes out. And one should not become interested for wrong reasons.

The girl was rich and the young man, Mulla Nasrudin, was very poor. She liked him but that was all, and Nasrudin knew it. One night he had been a little more tender than usual:

"You are very rich," he ventured.

"Yes," she replied frankly. "I am worth one million rupees."

"And I am poor."

"Yes."

"Will you marry me?"

"No."

"I thought you would not."

"Then why did you ask me, Nasrudin?"

"Aw," said Nasrudin, "just to see how a man feels when he loses one million rupees."

Don't ask such questions, because they come out of wrong desires. First watch from where they are coming and be very, very alert. See as clearly as possible. Don't hide behind words. Don't call your jealousy envy. Be very hard with yourself. Only then will your diagnosis be helpful, and right questions will arise. If you ask a wrong question, you waste time.

The last question:

Question 7

WHO IS A BAUL? PLEASE TELL US THE DEFINITION.

IT should have been asked in the beginning; now this is going to be last. But in a way, it is good. If in the beginning you had asked about the definition of a Baul, it would have been almost impossible to say anything. Not that now I can define, but at least now I can say it is indefinable.

The Baul is not a metaphysics, the Baul is a mystique. I can invite you to participate in that mystery, but definition is not possible. So I am not going to define. Instead, I will tell you a story. Maybe that will give you a definition; but you will have to find it yourself.

I have heard....

Once upon a time, an angel came to earth to see man and his world, because he had heard so many stories of man's splendor that he could not resist his curiosity. The beauty of the world overwhelmed him: the sunlit mountain peaks and dark forests, the whining winds and tossing, rainbow-colored valleys, the dew-kissed soil, the soil's lusty smell, the animals, fierce and gentle. Everywhere there was such beauty. But when the angel saw man he was awed, for he heard the music of the human heart and the song of the human soul. He fell in deep love with human mystery. Dusk came, but he lingered on. Man and man's earth had so moved the angel that he hesitated to leave. But finally, his time finished, he had to go with tears in his eyes. And tremendously encircled, enriched by this adventure on the earth, by this experience, before going out, before going back to his own world, just out of sheer joy he wanted to help some of us on our way. He looked about, saw four persons walking together. He approached them and said, "I have come to grant you each one wish." As luck would have it, they all were spiritual aspirants.

The first one spoke up, "I have striven incessantly after distant divine truth -- nothing but struggle, struggle, struggle. Give me spiritual peace!"

"But struggling is one of the joys of life," said the angel, not understanding the first seeker's wish.

"I would like peace!" insisted the man.

This being his wish, the angel changed the youth into a cow that chewed the grass of a distant pasture quite contentedly.

A bit disturbed, the angel turned to the other aspirant.

"God is pure but I am not," said the other. "Please rid me of all impurities, of passions, emotions, desires."

"Are not they the very fount of life?" asked the angel.

"But I don't want life, I want purity!" insisted the second man. He then closed his eyes and waited for his transformation. In a split second he disappeared, and in a faraway temple, a marble statue appeared in his likeness.

Then the third one said, "Make me perfect; anything less will simply not do." He vanished but did not reappear anywhere, for nothing on earth is perfect or can be perfect.

The angel turned to the fourth, "And what is your wish?"

"I have no wish," replied this happy man.

"No wish at all?"

"None -- except to be human, fully human and alive."

A near-smothered joy began again to stir within the angel. He looked longingly upon this blessed man, and then leaned over and embraced him with a deep love. The fourth man continued on his way singing the glory of life, dancing the joy of life.

This fourth man is the Baul.

There is no other way to define a Baul. The Baul is tremendous love for life, tremendous love for this earth, tremendous love for all that is. The Baul is not an idealist, he is a realist -- down to earth. The Baul does not ask for any paradise somewhere else, he is already in paradise, herenow. The Baul is not a seeker, the Baul is one who has found. the Baul is a SIDDHA: one who has looked into life and realized that all is available and there is no need to seek. One has just to participate in this mystery called life. He dances, he sings, he enjoys, he is blissful for no reason at all. This is half the story; the other half is still there.

The angel reached heaven. God called him and asked him, "What were you doing on the earth? Tinkering with my creation?"

The angel said, "I am sorry, but those people desired; those were their wishes. I simply helped them to fulfill."

God said, "That's right. I am not angry, I was just enquiring. Have you any wish to be fulfilled?"

The angel said, "Make me the fourth man back on the earth. Send me back and make me the fourth man."

Let that be your wish also. And there is no need to ask? because that is already fulfilled.

You are a man on the earth, a woman on the earth; enjoy this gift of God! In deep gratefulness, sing the song, dance the dance that is waiting deep inside your being to be expressed. Be creative. Flower.

A Baul is a flowering. A Baul is a flowing energy. A Baul is not the ordinarily so-called religious, a Baul is really religious. He is not against the world, because he is not against God. It is His creation; he is not against anything because all is God's. He finds the temple of God everywhere. Every presence is full of His presence. A Baul is a madman; that is the meaning of the word 'baul'. It comes from a Sanskrit word, vatul, which means mad.

Become mad in the name of God! Become mad in sheer joy! and then you will know what a Baul is. There is no way to define; I can only indicate. There is no way to even describe, but I am here, present -- I am a Baul. You look into me, taste me a little, eat me, drink me; that may give you some definition. And if you really want, if you really desire the definition, then become a Baul. There is no other way to know it. To know God one has become a God, because you can know only that which you have become. Only existence, and the experience of existence, can enlighten you, nothing else.

Table of Contents

Chapter title: Die Living

Chapter title: Love Is Death