The First Question:

Says Lao Tzu, "If Tao is not laughed at, it will not be Tao."

And I would like to say to you: 'If you will not misunderstand me, you will not be you.' You are bound to misunderstand. You have not understood what I had been saying about Heraclitus, Christ and Zen, and if you cannot understand Heraclitus, Zen and Jesus, you will not be able to understand Patanjali either.

The first rule of understanding is not to compare. How can you compare? What do you know about the innermost state of Heraclitus or Basho or Buddha, Jesus or Patanjali? Who are you to compare? Because comparison is a judgment. Who are you to judge? But the mind wants to judge because in judgment the mind feels superior. You become the judge; your ego feels very, very good. You feed the ego. Through judgment and comparison you think that you know.

They are different types of flowers - incomparable. How can you compare a rose with a lotus? Is there any possibility to compare? There is no possibility because both are different worlds. How can you compare the moon with the sun? There is no possibility. They are different dimensions. Heraclitus is a wild flower; Patanjali is in a cultivated garden. Patanjali will be nearer your intellect, Heraclitus nearer your heart. But as you go deeper, the differences are lost. When you yourself start flowering, then a new understanding dawns upon you - the understanding that flowers differ in their color, they differ in their smell, they differ in their shape, form and name.

But in flowering they don't differ. The flowering, the phenomenon that they have flowered, is the same. Heraclitus is, of course, different; has to be. Every individual is unique; Patanjali is different. You cannot put them into one category. There exist no pigeonholes where you can force them, categorize them. But if you also flower, then you will come to understand that flowering is the same whether the flower is lotus or rose - makes no difference. The innermost phenomenon of energy coming to a celebration is the same.

They talk differently; they have different patterns of mind. Patanjali is a scientific thinker. He is a grammarian, a linguist. Heraclitus is a wild poet. He does not bother about grammar and language and the form. And when you say that listening to Patanjali, you feel that Heraclitus and Basho and Zen they appear childish, kindergarten teachings, you are not saying anything about Patanjali or Heraclitus, you are saying something about you. You are saying that you are a mind-oriented person.

Patanjali you can understand; Heraclitus simply eludes you. Patanjali is more solid. You can have a grip. Heraclitus is a cloud; you cannot have any grip on him. Patanjali, you can make tail & head out of him; he seems rational. What you will do with a Heraclitus, with a Basho? No, simply they are so irrational. Thinking about them, your mind becomes absolutely impotent. When you say such things, comparisons, judgments, you say something about you - who you are.

Patanjali can be understood; there is no trouble about it. He is absolutely rational, can be followed, no problem about it. All his techniques can be done because he gives you the how, and how is always easy to understand. What to do? How to do? He gives you the techniques.

Ask Basho or Heraclitus what to do, and they simply say there is nothing to be done. Then you are at a loss. If something is to be done you can do it, but if nothing is to be done you are at a loss. Still, you will go on asking again and again, "What to do? How to do? How to achieve this you are talking about?"

They talk about the ultimate without talking about the way that leads to it. Patanjali talks about the way, never talking about the goal. Patanjali is concerned with the means, Heraclitus with the end. The end is mysterious. It is a poetry; it is not a mathematical solution. It is a mystery. But the path is a scientific thing, the technique, the know-how; it appeals you. But this shows something about you, not about Heraclitus or Patanjali. You are a mind-oriented person, a head-oriented person. Try to see this. Don't compare Patanjali and Heraclitus. Simply try to see the thing - that it shows something about you. And if it shows something about you, you can do something.

Don't think that you know what Patanjali is and what Heraclitus is. You can't even understand an ordinary flower in the garden, and they are the ultimate flowering in existence. Unless you flower in the same way, you will not be able to understand. But you can compare, you can judge, and through judgment you will miss the whole point.

So the first rule of understanding is never to judge. Never judge and never compare Buddha, Mahavira, Mohammed, Christ, Krishna; never compare! They exist in a dimension beyond comparison, and whatsoever you know about them is really nothing - just fragments. You cannot have the total comprehension. They are so beyond. In fact, you simply see their reflection in the water of your mind.

You have not seen the moon; you have seen the moon in the lake. You have not seen the reality; you have simply seen a mirror reflection, and the reflection depends on the mirror. If the mirror is defective, the reflection is different. Your mind is your mirror.

When you say that Patanjali seems to be very great, and teaching very great, you are simply saying that you couldn't understand Heraclitus at all. And if you cannot understand, that simply shows that he is very very beyond you than Patanjali; he is far beyond than Patanjali. At least you can understand this much - that Patanjali seems to be difficult. Now follow me closely. If something is difficult, you can tackle with. Howsoever difficult, you can tackle! More hard effort is needed, but that can be done.

Heraclitus is not easy; he is simply impossible. Patanjali is difficult. Difficult you can understand, you can do something, you can bring your will to it, your effort, your whole energy to it, and you can do something, and it can be solved. Difficult can be made easy, more subtle methods can be found. But what you will do with the impossible? It cannot be made easy. But you can deceive yourself. You can say there is nothing in it, it is a kindergarten teaching, and you are such a grown-up, it is not for you; it is for children, not for you.

This is a trick of the mind to avoid the impossible, because you know you will not be able to tackle it. So the only easiest course is simply to say, "It is not for me; it is below me - a kindergarten teaching," and you are a grown-up mature person. You need a university; you don't need a kindergarten school. Patanjali suits you, looks very difficult, can be solved. The impossible cannot be solved.

If you want to understand Heraclitus, there is no way except you drop your mind completely. If you want to understand Patanjali, there is a way gradually. He gives you steps what to do; but remember, finally, eventually, he will also say to you, "Drop the mind." What Heraclitus says in the beginning, he will say in the end, but on the path, the whole way, you can be fooled. In the end he is going to say the same thing, but still he will be understandable because he makes grades, and the jump doesn't look like a jump when you have steps.

Just this is the situation: Heraclitus brings you to an abyss and says, "Jump!" You look down; your mind simply cannot comprehend what he is saying. It looks suicidal. There are no steps. And you ask, "How?" He says, "There is no 'how?', you simply jump. What is the 'how?" Because there are no steps, so "how" cannot be explained. You simply jump, and he says, "If you are ready I can push you, but there are no methods." Is there any method to take a jump? Because jump is sudden. Methods exist when a thing, a process, is gradual. Finding it impossible, you turn about. But to console yourself that you are not such a weakling, you say, "This is for children. It is not difficult enough." It is not for you.

Patanjali brings you to the same abyss, but he has made steps. He says one step at a time. It appeals! You can understand! The mathematics is simple; take one step, then another. There is no jump. But, remember, sooner or later he will bring you to the point from where you have to jump. Steps he has created, but they don't lead to the bottom - just in the middle, and the bottom is so far away, you can exactly say it is a bottomless abyss.

So how many steps you take makes no difference. The abyss remains the same. He will lead you ninety-nine steps, and you are very happy - as if you have covered the abyss, and now the bottom has come nearer. No, the bottom remains as far away as before. These ninety-nine steps are just to befool your mind, just to give you a "how", a technique. Then at the hundredth step, he says, "Now jump!" And the abyss remains the same, the span the same.

No difference because the abyss is infinite, God is infinite. How can you meet him gradually? But these ninety-nine steps will befool you. Patanjali is more clever. Heraclitus is innocent: he simply says you, "This is the thing: the abyss is here. Jump!" He does not persuade you; he does not seduce you. He simply says, "This is the fact. If you want to jump, jump; if you don't want to jump, go away."

And he knows that to make steps is useless because finally one has to take the jump. But I think it will be good for you to follow Patanjali because, by and by, he seduces you. One step you can take at least, then the second becomes easier, then the third. And when you have taken ninety-nine steps, to go back will be difficult, because then it will look absolutely against your ego to go back: because then the whole world will laugh, and you had become such a great sage, and you are coming back to the world? And you were such a maha-yogi - a great yogi, and why you are coming back? Now you are caught, and you cannot go back.

Heraclitus is simple, innocent. His teaching is not of a kindergarten school, but he is a child - that's right - innocent like a child, wise also like a child. Patanjali is cunning, clever, but Patanjali will suit you because you need somebody who can lead you in a cunning way to a point from where you cannot go back. It becomes simply impossible.

Gurdjieff used to say that there are two types of Masters: one innocent and simple; another sly, cunning. He himself said, "I belong to the second category." Patanjali is the source of all sly Masters. They lead you to the rose garden, and then, suddenly, the abyss. And you are caught in such a grip of your own making, that you cannot go back. You meditated, you renounced the world, renounced wife and children. For years you were doing postures, meditating, and you created such an aura around you that people worshipped you. Millions of people looked at you as a god, and now comes the abyss. Now just to save you have to jump: just to save your prestige. Where to go? Now you cannot go.

Buddha is simple; Patanjali is sly. All science is cunningness. This has to be understood, and I am not saying it in any derogatory sense, remember; I am not condemning. All science is cunningness!

It is said that one follower of Lao Tzu - an old man, a farmer - was drawing water from a well, and instead of using bullocks or horses, he himself - an old man - and his son, they were working like bullocks and carrying the water out of the well, perspiring, the old man, breathing hard. It was difficult.

A follower of Confucius was passing. He said to this old man, that "Have you not heard? This is very primitive. Why are you wasting your breath? Now bullocks can be used, horses can be used. Have you not heard that in the town, in the cities, how nobody is working like this that you are working? It is very primitive. Science has progressed fast."

The old man said, "Wait, and don't talk so loudly. When my son is gone, then I will reply." When the son was gone to do some work, he said, "Now you are a dangerous person. If my son ever hears about this, immediately he will say, 'Okay! Then I don't want to pull this. I can't do this work of a bullock. A bullock is needed.' "

The disciple of Confucius says, "What is wrong in that?" The old man said, "Everything is wrong in it because it is cunningness. It is deceiving the bullock; it is deceiving the horse. And one thing leads to another. And if this boy who is young and not wise, if he once knows that you can be cunning with animals, he will wonder why cannot you be cunning with man. Once he knows that through cunningness you can exploit, then I don't know where he will stop. You please go from here, and never come back again to this road. And don't bring such cunning things to this village. We are happy."

Lao Tzu is against science. He says science is cunningness. It is deceiving nature, exploiting nature - through cunning ways, forcing nature. And the more a man becomes scientific, the more cunning; has to be so. An innocent man cannot be scientific, difficult. But man has become cunning and clever. And Patanjali, knowing well that to be scientific is a cunningness, also knows that man can only be brought back to nature through a new device, a new cunningness.

Yoga is science of the inner being. Because you are not innocent, you have to be brought through a cunning way. If you are innocent, no means are needed, no methods are needed. A simple understanding, a childlike understanding, and you will be transformed. But you are not. That's why you feel that Patanjali seems to be very great. It is because of your head-oriented mind and your cunningness.

Second thing to remember: he appears difficult. And you think Heraclitus is simple? He appears difficult, that too becomes an appeal for the ego. The ego always wants to do something which is difficult, because against the difficult you feel you are someone. If something is very simple, how the ego can feed out of it?

People come to me and they say, "Sometimes you teach that just by sitting and doing nothing it can happen. How can it be so simple? How can it be so easy?" Says Chuang Tzu, "Easy is right," but these people say, 'No! How can it be so easy? It must be difficult - very, very difficult, arduous."

You want to do difficult things because when you are fighting against a difficulty, against the current, you feel you are someone - a conqueror. If something is simple, something is so easy that even a child can do it, then where your ego will stand? You ask for hurdles, you ask for difficulties, and if there are not difficulties you create, so that you can fight, so that you can fly against a strong wind and you can feel that, "I am someone - a conqueror!"

But don't be so smart. You know the phrase "smart aleck"? You may not know from where it comes - it comes from Alexander. The "aleck" word comes from Alexander the Great, a short form. "Don't be a smart Alexander." Be simple: don't try to be a conqueror, because that is foolish. Don't try to be a somebody.

But Patanjali appealed; Patanjali appealed to the Indian ego very much, so India created the most subtle egoists in the world. You cannot find more subtle egoists anywhere in the world as you can find in India. It is almost impossible to find a simple yogi. Yogi cannot be simple, because he is doing so many asanas, so many mudras, and he is working so hard, how can he be simple? He thinks himself to be at the top - a conqueror. The whole world has to bow down to him; he is the cream - the very salt of life.

You go and watch yogis: you will find them very, very refined egos. Their inner shrine is still empty; the divine has not come in. That shrine is still a throne for their own egos. They may have become very subtle; they may have become so subtle that they may appear to be very humble, but in their humbleness also, if you watch, you will find the ego.

They are aware that they are humble, that's the difficulty. A really humble person is not aware that he is humble. A really humble person is simply humble, not aware, and a real humble person never claims that "I am humble," because all claims are of the ego. Humility cannot be claimed; humbleness is not a claim, it is a state of being. And all claims fulfill the ego. Why this happened? Why India became a very subtle-egoist country? And when there is ego, you become blind.

Now ask Indian yogis: they are condemning the whole world. West, they say it is materialist - only India is spiritual. The whole world is materialist, as if there is a monopoly. And they are so blind, they cannot see the fact that exactly opposite is the case.

The more I have been watching Indian and the western mind, I feel the western mind is less materialist than the Indian. The Indian mind is more materialist, clings to things more, cannot share, is miserly. The western mind can share, is less miserly. Because the West has created so much materialist affluence does not mean that the West is materialist, and because India is poor does not mean that you are spiritualists.

If poverty is spirituality, then impotence would be brahmacharya. No, poverty is not spirituality; neither affluence is materialism. Materialism doesn't belong to the things, it belongs to the attitude. Neither spirituality belongs to poverty, it belongs to the inner, non-attached, sharing. You cannot find in India anybody sharing anything. Nobody can share; everybody hoards. And because they are such hoarders, they are poor. Because few people hoard too much, then many people become poor.

The West has been sharing. That's why the whole society rises from poverty to affluence. In India, few people become so rich, you cannot find so rich people anywhere else - but few - and the whole society drags itself into poverty, and the gap is vast. You cannot find such a gap anywhere. The gap between a Birla and a beggar is vast. Such a gap cannot exist anywhere, is not in existence anywhere. Rich people are in the West, poor people are in the West, but the gap is not so vast. Here the gap is simply infinite. You cannot imagine such a gap. How can it be fulfilled? It cannot be fulfilled because the people are materialist. Otherwise how this gap? Why this gap? Can't you share? Impossible! But the ego says that the whole world, the whole world, is materialist.

This has come because people were attracted to Patanjali and to people who were giving difficult methods. Nothing is wrong with Patanjali, but Indian ego found a beautiful, subtle outlet to be egoist.

The same is happening to you. Patanjali appeals you; he is difficult. Heraclitus is "kindergarten" because he is so simple. Simplicity never appeals the ego. But, remember, if simplicity can become an appeal, the path is not long. If difficulty becomes the appeal, then the path is going to be very long because, from the very beginning, rather than dropping the ego, you have started accumulating it.

I am speaking on Patanjali not to make you more egoist. Look and watch. I am always afraid of talking about Patanjali; I am never afraid about talking Heraclitus, Basho, Buddha. I am afraid because of you. Patanjali is beautiful, but you can be attracted for wrong reasons, and this will be a wrong reason if you think he is difficult, and the very difficulty becomes an attraction. Somebody asked Edmund Hillary, who conquered the Everest - the highest peak, the only peak which was unconquered - somebody asked, "Why? Why you take such trouble? What is the need? And even if you reach to the peak, what you will do? You will have to come back."

Said Hillary that, "It is a challenge to the human ego. An unconquered peak has to be conquered!" No other utility... What you will do? What he has done? He went there and put a flag and came back. What nonsense! And many people died in this effort. Almost for hundred years many groups had been trying. Many died, were lost, fell into the abyss, never came back, but the more it became difficult to reach, the more appeal.

Why go to moon? What will you do? Is not earth enough? But, no, the human ego cannot tolerate this - that the moon remains unconquered. Man must reach, because it is so difficult, it has to be conquered. So you can be attracted for wrong reasonS. Now going to moon is not a poetic effort; it is not like small children who raise their hands and try to catch the moon.

Since humanity came into existence every child has longed to reach to the moon. Every child has tried, but the difference must be understood deeply. The effort of a child is beautiful. The moon is so beautiful. It is a poetic effort to touch it, to reach it. There is no ego. It is a simple attraction, a love affair. Every child falls in that love affair. If you can find a child who is not attracted by the moon, what type of child is that?

Moon creates a subtle poetry, a subtle attraction. One would like to touch it and feel it; one would like to go to the moon. But that is not the reason for the scientist. For the scientist the moon is there, a challenge. How this moon dares to be there continuously, to be a challenge, and man is here and he cannot reach! He has to reach.

You can be attracted for wrong reasons. The fault is not with moon, neither the fault will be with Patanjali. But you should not be attracted for wrong reasons. Patanjali is difficult - the most difficult - because he analyzes the whole path, and each fragment seems to be very difficult, but difficulty should not be the appeal - remember that. You can walk through Patanjali's door but you should fall in love not with the difficulty, but with the insight - the light that Patanjali throws on the path. You should fall in love with the light, not with the difficulty of the path. That will be a wrong reason.

And please don't compare. Comparison is also out of the ego. In real existence, things exist without any comparison. A tree which reaches four hundred feet into the sky, and a very, very small grass flower are both the same as far as existence is concerned. But you go and you say, "This is a great tree. And what is this? Just ordinary grass." You bring the comparison in, and wherever comparison comes, comes ugliness. You have destroyed a beautiful phenomenon.

The tree was great in its "tree-ness" and the grass was great in its "grassiness". The tree may have risen four hundred feet. Its flowers may flower in the highest sky, and the grass is just clinging to the earth. Its flowers will be very, very small. Nobody may be even aware when they flower and when they fade. But when this grass flowers, the phenomenon of flowering is the same, the celebration is the same, and there is not a bit of difference. Remember this: that in existence there is no comparison; mind brings the comparison. It says, "you are more beautiful." Can't you simply say, "You are beautiful"? Why bring "more"?

Mulla Nasrudin was in love with a woman, and as women are prone to ask, the woman asked, when Mulla Nasrudin kissed her, "Are you kissing me the first woman? Am I the first woman whom you are kissing? Is your first kiss given to a woman?" Nasrudin said, "Yes, the first and the most sweetest."

Comparison is in your blood. You cannot remain with a thing as it is. The woman is also asking for a comparison; otherwise why be worried about whether this is a first kiss or a second? Each kiss is fresh and virgin. It has no relationship with any other kiss of the past or of the future. Each kiss is an existence in itself. It exists alone in its solitariness. It is a peak in itself; it is a unit - not in any way connected with the past or with the future. Why ask whether it is the first? And what beauty the first carries? And why not the second, and why not the third?

But the mind wants to compare. Why the mind wants to compare? Because through comparison ego is fed, that "I am the first woman; this is the first kiss." You are not interested in the kiss - in the quality of the kiss. This moment the kiss opened a door of heart; you are not interested in that, that is nothing. You are interested in whether it is a first or not. The ego is always interested in comparison, and existence knows no comparison. And people like Heraclitus, Patanjali, they live in existence, not in mind. Don't compare them.

Many people come to me and they say that, "Who is great, Buddha or Christ?" What foolishness to ask! "Buddha is greater than Christ and Christ is greater than Buddha n I say to them; "Why you go on comparing?n A subtle thing is there working. If you are a follower of Christ, you would like Christ to be the greatest because you can only be great if Christ is the greatest. It is a fulfillment of your own ego. How can your Master not be the greatest? He has to be because you are such a great disciple. And if Christ is not the greatest, then where Christians will be? If Buddha is not the greatest, then what will happen to the ego of the Buddhists?

Every race, every religion, every country, thinks itself to be the greatest - not because any country is great, not because any race is great: in this existence everything is the greatest. The existence creates only the greatest, every being unique. But that doesn't appeal to the mind because then greatness is so common. Everybody great? Then what is the use of it! Somebody has to be lower. A hierarchy has to be created.

Just the other night, I was reading a book of George Mikes, and he said that in Budapest, in Hungary, where he is born, one English woman fell in love with him. In Hungary, an English woman fell in love with him. But he was not much in love; but he didn't want to be rude also, so when she asked that, "Can we not get married?" he said "It will be difficult because my mother will not allow me, and will not be happy if I marry a foreigner." The English lady was very much offended. She said, "What? I and a foreigner? I am not a foreigner! I am English! You are a foreigner and your mother too!" Mikes said that, 'in Budapest, in Hungary, I am a foreigner?" The woman said, "Yes! Truth does not depend on geography."

Everybody thinks that way. The mind tries to fulfill its desires, to be the most supreme-most. From religion race, country, everything, one has to be watchful - very watchful. Only then you can get beyond this subtle phenomenon of the ego.

Because it is both. "He is closer than the closest and he is farther than the farthest," says the Upanishad. He is both near and far. He has to be, because who will be far then? And he has to be near also, because who will be near you? He touches your skin, and he is spread beyond the boundaries. He is both!

Heraclitus emphasizes the nearness because he is a simple man. And he says that he is so near, nothing is needed to do to bring him nearer. He is almost there; he is just watching at the gate, knocking at your door, waiting near your heart. Nothing is to be done. You simply be silent and have a look; just sit silently and look. You have never lost him. The truth is near.

In fact, to say it is near is wrong because you are also truth. Even nearness seems to be very, very far; even nearness shows that there is a distinction, a distance, a gap. Even that gap is not there: you are it! Says the Upanishad, "Thou art that: tattwamasi swetaketu." You are already that: even that much distance is not there to say that he is close.

Because Heraclitus and Zen they want you to take the jump immediately - not wait. Patanjali says he is very far. He is also right: he is very far also. And he will appeal you more, because if he is so close and you have not attained him, you will feel very, very depressed. If he is so close, just by the side of the corner, just standing by the side of you, if he is the only neighbor, and from everywhere he surrounds you and you have not achieved, your ego will feel very very frustrated. Such a great man like you, and he is so near and you are missing? That seems very frustrating. But if he is very far, then everything is okay because time is needed, effort is needed - nothing is wrong with you, he is so far away.

Distance is such a vast thing. You will take time, you will go, you will move, and one day you will achieve. If he is near, then you will feel guilty. Then why you are not achieving him? Reading Heraclitus and Basho and Buddha, one feels uncomfortable. Never that happens with Patanjali. One feels at ease.

Look at the paradox of the mind. With the easiest of people one feels uncomfortable. Uncomfort comes from you. To move with Heraclitus or Jesus is very uncomfortable because they go on insisting that the kingdom of God is within you, and you know that nothing exists except hell within you. And they insist the kingdom of God is within you; it becomes uncomfortable.

If the kingdom of God is within you, the something is wrong with you. Why you cannot see it? And if it is so present, why not it can happen right this moment? That is the message of Zen - that it is immediate. There is no need to wait, no need to waste time. It can happen right now, this very moment. There is no excuse. This makes uncomfortable; you feel uncomfortable, you cannot find any excuse. With Patanjali millions of excuses you can find, that he is very far. Millions of lives effort is needed. Yes, it can be attained, but always in the future. You are at ease. There is no urgency about it, and you can be as you are right now. Tomorrow morning you will start moving on the path, and the tomorrow never comes.

Patanjali gives you space, future. He says, "do this and that and that, and by and by you will reach - some day, nobody knows - in some future life." You are at ease, no urgency. You can be as you are; there is no hurry.

These Zen people, they drive you crazy, and I drive you more crazy, Mm? - because I talk from both the sides. This is just a way. This is a koan. This is just a way to drive you crazy. Heraclitus I use, Patanjali I use but these are tricks to drive you crazy. You simply cannot be allowed to relax. Whenever there is future, you are okay. Then the mind can desire God, and nothing is wrong with you. The very phenomenon is such that it will take time. This becomes an excuse.

With Patanjali you can postpone; with Zen you cannot postpone. If you postpone, it is you who are postponing, not God. With Patanjali you can postpone because the very nature of God is such that it can be attained only in gradual ways. Very, very difficult, that's why with difficulty you feel comfortable, and this is the paradox people who say it is easy, you feel un-comfortable; people who say difficult, you feel comfortable. It should be just the otherwise.

And the truth is both, so it depends on you. If you want to postpone, Patanjali is perfect. If you want it here and now, then you will have to listen to Zen and you will have to decide. Are you in an urgency? Have you not suffered enough? Do you want to suffer more? Then Patanjali is perfect. You follow Patanjali. Then somewhere in the distant future you will attain to bliss. But if you have suffered enough - and this is what maturity is: to understand that you have suffered enough.

And you call Heraclitus and Zen for children? Kindergarten? This is the only maturity, to have realized that, "I have suffered enough." If you feel this, then an urgency is created, then a fire is created. Something has to be done right now! You cannot postpone it; there is no meaning in postponing. You have postponed it already enough. But if you want future, you would like to suffer a little more, you have become addicted with the hell, just one day more to remain the same, or you would like some modifications...

That's what Patanjali says: "Do this, do that, slowly. Do one thing, then another thing," and millions of things have to be done, and they cannot be done immediately, so you go on modifying yourself. Today you take a vow that you will be non-violent, tomorrow you will take another vow. Then day after tomorrow you will become a celibate, and this way it goes on and on, and then there are millions of things to be left: Lying is to be dropped, violence is to be dropped, aggression is to be dropped; anger, hate, jealousy, possessiveness - millions of things you have - by and by. And meanwhile you remain the same.

How can you drop anger if you have not dropped hate? How can you drop anger if you have not dropped jealousy? How can you drop anger if you have not dropped aggressiveness? They are interrelated. So you say that now you will no more be angry, but what are you talking? Nonsense! Because you will remain hateful, you will remain aggressive, you will like to dominate, you love to be at the top, and you are dropping anger? How you can drop it? They are interrelated.

This is what Zen says: that if you want to drop, understand the phenomenon that everything is related. Either you drop it now, or you never drop it. Don't befool. You can simply whitewash: a little here, a patch there, and the old house remains with all its oldness. And while you go on working, painting the walls and filling the holes and this and that, you think you are creating a new life, and meanwhile you continue the same. And the more you continue, the more it becomes deep-rooted.

Don't deceive. If you can understand, understanding is immediate. That is the message of Zen. If you cannot understand, then something has to be done, and Patanjali will be good. You follow Patanjali. One day or other, you will have to come to an understanding where you will see that this whole thing has been a trick - trick of your mind to avoid, to avoid the reality, to avoid and escape - and that day suddenly you will drop.

Patanjali is gradual, Zen is sudden. If you cannot be sudden, then it is better to be gradual. Rather than being nothing, neither this nor that, it is better you be gradual. Patanjali will also bring you to the same situation, but he will give you a little space. It is more comfortable - difficult, but more comfortable. No immediate transformation is demanded, and with gradual progress, mind can fit.

It is up to you. If you want to do the work, you can do. If you want to realize without doing the work, that too is possible. That too is possible! It is up to you to choose! If you want to do hard work, I will give you hard work. I can create even more steps. Patanjali can be made even more long, stretched. I can put the goal even farther away; I can give you impossible things to do. It is your choice. Or, if you want really to realize, then this can be done this very moment. It is up to you. Patanjali is a way of looking, Heraclitus is also a way of looking.

Once it happened: I was passing through the street and I saw a small child eating a very big watermelon. The melon was too big for him, and I looked and I watched and I saw that he is finding a little difficulty to finish. So I asked him, I told him, "It seems to be really too big; isn't it so?n The boy looked at me and said, "No! Not enough me."

He is also right. Everything can be looked from two standpoints. God is near and far. Now it is for you to decide from where you would like to take the jump - from the near or from the far. If you want to take the jump from the far, then come all the techniques, because they will take you far, from there you will take the jump. It is just like you are standing on this shore of the ocean; the ocean is here also and there at the other shore also - which is completely invisible, very, very far away. You can take the jump from this shore because it is the same ocean, but if you decide to take the jump from the other shore Patanjali gives you a boat.

The whole yoga is a boat to go to the other shore, to take the jump. It is up to you. You can enjoy the journey; there is nothing wrong in it. I am not saying it is wrong. It is up to you. You can take the boat and go to the other shore, and take the jump from there. But the same ocean exists. Why not take from this shore? The jump will be the same, and the ocean will be the same, and you will be the same. What difference does it make to go to the other shore? There may be people on the other shore, and they may be trying to come here. There are also Patanjalis; they have made boats there. They are coming towards here to take the jump from the faraway.

It happened: one man was trying to cross a road. And it was a peak hour, and it was difficult to cross the road; so many cars going so fast, and he was a very very mild man. He tried many times and then came back. Then he saw Mulla Nasrudin on the other side - old acquaintance. He cried, "Nasrudin, how you crossed the road?" Nasrudin said, "I never crossed. I was born on this side."

There are people who are always thinking of the distant shore. The distant always looks beautiful, the distant has a magnetism of its own, because it is covered in mist. But the ocean is the same. It is up to you to choose. Nothing is wrong, going to that ocean, but go for right reasons. You may be simply avoiding the jump from this shore. Then even if the boat leads you to the other shore, the moment you reach the other shore you will start thinking of this shore, because then this will be the faraway point. And many times, in many lives, you have done this. You have changed the shore, but you have not taken the jump.

I have seen you crossing the ocean from this side to that and from that side to this. Because this is the problem: that shore is far away because you are here; when you will be there, this shore will be far away. And you are in such a sleep that you completely forget again and again that you have been to that shore also. By the time you reach to the other shore, you have forgotten the shore that you have left behind. By the time you reach, oblivion takes over.

You look to the distant, and again somebody says, "here is a boat, sir. You can go to the other shore, and you can take the jump from there because God is very, very far away." And you again start preparation to leave this shore. Patanjali gives you a boat to go to the other, but when you have reached to the other, Zen will give you always the jump. The final jump is of the Zen. Meanwhile you can do many things; that is not the point. Whenever you will take the jump it will be a sudden jump. It cannot be gradual!

All "gradualness" is going from this shore to that. But nothing is wrong in it. If you enjoy the journey it is beautiful, because he is here, he is in the middle, he is at that shore also. No need to reach to the other shore either. You can take the jump in the middle also, just from the boat. Then boat becomes the shore. From where you jump is the shore. Every moment you can take the jump; then it becomes the shore. If you don't take the jump, then it is no more the shore. It depends on you, remember this well.

That's why I am talking about all contradictory standpoints, so that you can understand from everywhere and you can see the reality from everywhere and then you can decide. If you decide to wait a little, beautiful. If you decide to take right now, beautiful. To me everything is beautiful and great, and I have no choice. I simply give you all the choices. If you say, "I would like to wait a little," I say, "Good! I bless you. Wait a little." If you say, "I am ready and I want to jump, I say, "Jump, with my blessings."

For me there is no choice - neither Heraclitus, nor Patanjali. I am simply opening all the doors for you with the hope that you may enter some door. But remember the tricks of the mind. When I talk about Heraclitus, you think it is too vague, too mysterious, too simple. When I talk about Patanjali, you think it is too difficult, almost impossible. I open the door, and you interpret something and take a judgment and you stop yourself. The door is open not for you to judge. The door is open for you to enter.

 

The Second Question:

Doubt and belief are not different - two aspects of the same coin. This has to be understood first, because people think that when they believe, they have gone beyond doubt. Belief is the same as doubt because both are of a mind concern. Your mind argues, says 'no', finds no proof to say 'yes'; so you doubt. Then your mind finds arguments to say 'yes', proofs to say 'yes', so you believe. But in both the cases you believe in reason; in both the cases, you believe in arguments. The difference is just on the surface; deep down you believe in the reasoning, and trust is dropping out of reasoning. It is mad! It is irrational! It is absurd!

And I say trust is not faith; trust is a personal encounter. Faith again is given and borrowed. It is a conditioning. Faith is a conditioning that parents, culture, society gives you. You don't bother about it; you don't make it a personal concern. It is a given thing, and that which is given and has not been a personal growth, is just a facade, a false face, a Sunday face.

On six days you are different; you enter church and you put on a mask. See how people behave in church; so gently, so humanly - the same people! Even a murderer comes to church and prays, see the face - it looks so beautiful and innocent, and this man has killed. In church you have a proper face to use, and you know how to use it. It has been a conditioning. From the very childhood it has been given to you.

Faith is given; trust is a growth. You encounter reality, you face reality, you live reality, and by and by you come to an understanding that doubt leads to hell, misery. The more you doubt, the more miserable you become. If you can doubt completely, you will be in a perfect misery. If you are not in a perfect misery, it is because you cannot doubt completely: You still trust. Even an atheist, he also trusts. Even a man who doubts whether the world exists or not, he also trusts; otherwise he cannot live, life will become impossible.

If doubt becomes total, you cannot live a single moment. How can you breathe in if you doubt? If you really doubt, who knows the breath is not poisonous! Who knows millions of germs are not being carried within! Who knows cancer is not coming through the breath! If you really doubt, you cannot even breathe. You cannot live a single moment; you will die immediately. Doubt is suicide. But you never doubt perfectly, so you linger on. You linger on; you somehow drag on. But your life is not total. Just think: if total doubt is suicide, then total trust will be the absolute life possible.

That's what happens to a man of trust: he trusts, and the more he trusts, the more he becomes capable to trust. The more he becomes capable of trust, the more life opens. He feels more, he lives more, he lives intensely. Life becomes an authentic bliss. Now he can trust more. Not that he is not deceived, because if you trust, that doesn't mean that nobody is going to deceive you. In fact, more people will deceive you because you become vulnerable. If you trust, more people will deceive you, but nobody can make you miserable; that's the point to understand. They can deceive, they can steal things from you, they can borrow money and they will never return - but nobody can make you miserable - that becomes impossible. Even if they kill you, they cannot make you miserable.

You trust, and trust makes you vulnerable - but absolutely victorious also, because nobody can defeat you. They can deceive, they can steal, you may become a beggar, but still you will be an emperor. Trust makes emperors out of beggars, and doubt makes beggars out of emperors. Look at an emperor, who cannot trust; he is always afraid. He cannot trust his own wife, he cannot trust his own children, because a king possesses so much that the son will kill him, the wife will poison him. He cannot trust anybody. He lives in such a distrust, he is already in hell. Even if he sleeps, he cannot relax. Who knows what's going to happen!

Trust makes you more and more open. Of course, when you are open, many things will become possible. When you are open, friends will reach to your heart; of course, enemies can also reach to your heart - the door is open. So there are two possibilities.

ut you are arrowed towards me.

If you want to be secure, you close the door completely. Bolt it, lock it and hide within. Now no enemy can enter, but no friend can enter also. Even if God comes, he cannot enter. Now nobody can deceive you, but what is the point? You are in a grave. You are already dead. Nobody can kill you, but you are already dead; you cannot come out. You live in security, of course, but what type of life is this? You don't live at all. Then you open the door.

Doubt is closing the door; trust is opening the door. When you open the door, all the alternatives become possible. Friend may enter, foe may enter. Wind will come; it will bring the perfume of the flowers; it will also bring the germs of diseases. Now everything is possible - the good and bad. Love will come; hate will also come. Now God can come, devil can also come This is the fear that something may go wrong, so close the door. But then everything goes wrong. Open the door - something is possible to go wrong, but for you, nothing, if your trust is total. Even in the enemy you will find the friend and even in the devil you will find God. Trust is such a transformation that you cannot find the bad because your whole outlook has changed.

That is the meaning of Jesus' saying, "Love your enemies." How can you love your enemies? It has been a problem to be solved - an enigma for Christian theologians. How can you love your enemy? But a man of trust can do, because a man of trust knows no enemies. A man of trust knows only the friend. In whatsoever form he comes makes no difference. If he comes to steal he is the friend; if he comes to take he is the friend, if he comes to give he is the friend: in whatsoever form he comes.

A man of trust cannot be deceived. In whatsoever form, whosoever comes, it is always the divine coming to him because trust makes everything holy. Trust is an alchemy. It transforms not only you; it transforms for you the whole world. Wherever you look you find him: in the friend, in the foe; in the night, in the day. Yes, Heraclitus is right. God is summer and winter, day and night, God is satiety and hunger. This is trust. Patanjali makes trust the base - the base of all growth.

When you see that doubt is misery, then comes trust. When you see faith is dead, then comes trust. You are a Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan; have you ever observed that you are completely dead? What type of Christian you are? If you are really a Christian, you will be a Christ - nothing less than that. Trust will make you Christ, faith will make you a Christian - a very poor substitute. What type of Christian you are? Because you go to the church, because you read the Bible? Your faith is not a knowing. It is an ignorance.

It happened in a Rotary Club somewhere: a great economist came to talk. He talked in the jargon of the economics. The priest of the town was also present to listen to him. After the talk, he came to him and said, "It was a beautiful talk you gave, but to be frank, I couldn't follow a single word." The economist said, "In that case, I would say to you what you say to your listeners: 'Have faith'."

When you cannot understand, when you are ignorant, the whole society says, "Have faith." I will say to you: it is better to doubt than to have a false faith. It is better to doubt, because doubt will create misery. Faith is a consolation; doubt will create misery. And if there is misery, you will have to seek trust. This is the problem the dilemma that has happened in the world. Because of faith, you have forgotten how to seek trust. Because of faith you have become trustless. Because of faith you carry corpses: you are Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, and you miss the whole point. Because of faith, you think you are religious. Then the inquiry stops.

Honest doubt is better than dishonest faith. If your faith is false - and all faith is false if you have not grown into it, if it is not your feeling & your being & your experience - all faith is false! Be honest. Doubt! Suffer! Only suffering will bring you to understanding. If you suffer, truly one day or other you will understand that it is doubt that is making you suffer. And then the transformation becomes possible.

You ask me,

You cannot use it, because you have never been an honest doubter. Your faith is false: doubt is deep down hidden. Just on the surface a whitewash of faith is there. Deep down you are doubtful - but you are afraid to know that you are doubtful, so you go on clinging with faith, you go on making gestures of faith. You can make gestures, but through gestures you cannot attain to reality. You can go & bow down in a shrine; you are making the gesture of a man who trusts. But you will not grow, because deep down there is no trust, only doubt. Faith is just superimposed.

It is just like kissing a person you don't love. From the outside everything is the same, you are making the gesture of kissing. No scientist can find any difference. If you kiss a person, the photograph, the physiological phenomenon, the transfer of millions of germs from one lip to another, everything, exactly is the same whether you love or not. If a scientist watches and observes, what will be the difference? No difference - not even a single iota of difference. He will say both are kisses and exactly the same.

But you know when you love a person then something of the invisible passes which cannot be detected by any instrument. When you don't love a person, then you can give the kiss, but nothing passes. No energy communication, no communion happens. The same is with faith and trust. Trust is a kiss with love, with a deeply loving heart, and faith is a kiss without any love.

So from where to begin? The first thing is to inquire into the doubt. Throw the false faith. Become an honest doubter - sincere. Your sincerity will help, because if you are honest how can you miss the point that doubt creates suffering? If you are sincere, you are bound to know. Sooner or later you will come to realize that doubt has been creating more misery - the more you go into doubt, the more misery. And only through misery one grows.

And when you come to a point where misery becomes impossible to tolerate, intolerable, you drop it. Not that really you drop it; the very intolerability becomes the drop. And once there is no doubt , and you have suffered through it, you start moving towards trust.

Trust is transformation - shraddha; and, says Patanjali, that shraddha - trust - is the base of all samadhi, of all Ultimate experience of the divine.

 

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The first question:

THE SEED CAN FLOWER WITHOUT THE GAP, without the time-gap in between, because the seed is already flowering. You are already that which you can become. If it was not so, then the seed cannot flower right now.

Then time would be needed. Then Zen is not possible. Then only Patanjali is the way. If you are to become something, a time process will be a must. But this is the point to understand: all those who have known, they have also known that becoming is a dream. You are already the being; you are perfect as you are.

Imperfection appears because you are fast asleep. The flower is already flowering; only your eyes are closed. If the seed has to reach to the flower, then much time will be needed, and this is no ordinary flower: God has to flower in you. Then even eternity will not be enough, then it is almost impossible. If you have to flower, then it is almost impossible. It is not going to happen; it cannot happen. eternity will be needed.

No, that is not the thing.

It can happen right now, this very moment. Not even a single moment has to be lost. The question is not of seed becoming a flower. The question is of opening the eyes. You can open your eyes right now, and then you find the flower has always been flowering. It was never otherwise; it could not have been otherwise.

God is always there within you; just a look, and it is manifested. Not that it was hidden in a seed; you were not looking at it. So only this much is needed - that you look at it. Whatsoever you are, look at it, become aware of it. Don't move like a sleepwalker.

That's why it is related that many Zen Masters, when they became awakened, they roared with laughter. Their disciples couldn't understand, their fellow travelers couldn't understand, what happened. Why they are roaring madly? Why this laughter? They were laughing because of the whole absurdity. They were seeking that which was already achieved; they were running after something which was already there within them; they were seeking something somewhere else which was hidden in the seeker himself.

The seeker is the sought; the traveler is the goal. You are not to reach somewhere else. You are to reach only to yourself. This can happen in a single moment; even a fraction of a moment is enough. If the seed has to become a flower, then eternity is not enough because it is a flower of God. If you are already the God, then just a look back, just a look within, then it can happen.

Then why Patanjali? Patanjali is needed because of you. You take such a long time to get out of your sleep, you take such a long time to get out of your dreams, you are so much involved in the dreams, you have so much invested in your dreams, that is why time is needed. Time is not needed because the seed has to become a flower; time is needed because you cannot open your eyes. With closed eyes you have become so much accustomed, it has become a deep habit. Not only that: you have completely forgotten that you are living with closed eyes. You have completely forgotten it. You think that, "What nonsense you are talking. My eyes are already open." And your eyes are closed.

If I say, "Get out of your dreams," you say, "I am already awake," and this too is a dream. You can dream that you are awake; you can dream that your eyes are open. Then much time will be needed - not that the flower was not already flowering - but it was so difficult for you to awake.

There are many investments. Those investments have to be understood. The ego is the basic involvement. If you open your eyes, you disappear. Opening the eyes looks like death. It is. So you talk about it, you listen about it, you think about it, but you never open the eyes because if you really open the eyes you also know that you will disappear. Then who will be you? A nobody. A nothingness. This nothingness is there if you open the eyes; so it is better to believe that the eyes are already open, and you remain somebody.

The ego is the first involvement. The ego can exist only while you are asleep, just like dreams can exist only while you are asleep. The ego can exist only while you are asleep - metaphysically asleep, existentially asleep. Open the eyes. First you disappear; then God appears: this is the problem. And you are afraid that you may disappear, but that is the door, so you listen about it, you think about it, but you go on postponing - tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow.

That's why Patanjali is needed. Patanjali says no need to open the eyes immediately; there are many steps. You can come out of your sleep in steps, in degrees. Certain things you do today, certain tomorrow, then day after tomorrow, and it is going to take a long time. Patanjali appeals because he gives you time to sleep. He says no need to come out of your sleep right now; just a turning over will do. Then have a little more sleep; then do something else. Then by and by, in degrees...

He is a great persuader. He persuades you out of your sleep. Zen shocks you out of your sleep. That's why a Zen Master can hit you on your head; never a Patanjali. A Zen Master can throw you out of the window; never a Patanjali. Because a Zen Master uses shock treatment - you can be shocked out of a sleep, so why go on trying and persuading you? Why waste time?

Patanjali brings you by and by, by and by. He brings you out and you are not even aware what he is doing. He is just like a mother. He does just the opposite, but just like the mother. A mother persuades a child into sleep. She may sing a lullaby, let the child feel she is there, no need to be afraid. Repeating the same line again and again, the child feels seduced into sleep. He falls into sleep holding the hand of the mother. No need to be worried. The mother is there and she is singing, and singing is beautiful. And the mother is not saying that, "Go into sleep," because that will disturb. She is simply persuading indirectly. And then by and by she will take her hand out, and she will cover the blanket and move from the room, and the child is fast asleep.

Just the same Patanjali does in the reverse order. By and by he brings you out of your sleep. That's why time is needed; otherwise the flower is already flowering. Look It is already there. Open the eyes and it is there; open the door and he is standing there waiting for you. He has been always standing there.

It depends on you. If you like a shock treatment, then Zen is the path. If you like a very gradual process, then yoga is the path. Choose! In choosing also you are very deceptive. You say to me, "How I can choose?" That too is a trick. Everything is plain. If you need time, choose Patanjali. If you are afraid of shocks, choose Patanjali. But choose! Otherwise non-choosing will become the postponement. Then you say, "It is difficult to choose, and unless I choose how I can move?"

A shock treatment is immediate. It brings you down to the earth immediately. My own methods are shock treatment. They are not gradual. With me you can hope to attain in this life; with Patanjali many lives will be needed. With me you can hope to attain right now also, but you have many things to do before you attain.

You know ego will disappear, you know sex will disappear. There is no possibility of sex, once you attain; it becomes absurd, silly. So you think, "A little more. What is wrong in waiting? Let me enjoy a little more." Anger will not be possible, violence will not be possible, jealousy will not be there; possessiveness, manipulating, they all will disappear.

You suddenly feel, "If all these disappear, then what I will be?" - because you are nothing but a combination, of all these, a bundle of all these and if all these disappear, then only nothingness is left. That nothingness ll scares you. It looks like an abyss. You would like to close your eyes and dream a little more, just as in the early morning you are awake but you would like to turn to the other side just for five minutes and have a little dream more - it was so beautiful.

One night Mulla Nasrudin woke up his wife and ' told her, "Bring my specs immediately. I was having such a beautiful dream, and more is promised."

And desires go on promising you - more is always promised - and they say, "Do this and that, and why be in a hurry when enlightenment is always possible? You can attain any time; there is no hurry. You can postpone it. It is a question of eternity, a concern of eternity; why not enjoy this moment?

You are not enjoying but the mind says, "Why not enjoy this moment?" And you have never enjoyed; because a man without inner understanding cannot enjoy anything. He simply suffers; everything becomes a suffering to him. Love - a thing like love - he suffers even that. The most beautiful phenomenon possible to a man asleep is love, but he suffers even through that. Nothing better is possible when you are asleep. Love is the greatest possibility, but even you suffer from that. Because it is not a question of love or something else - sleep is suffering, so whatsoever happens you will suffer. Sleep turns every dream into a nightmare. It starts beautifully, but something somewhere goes always wrong. In the end you reach to hell.

Every desire leads to hell. They say every road leads to Rome - I don't know, but of one thing I am certain: every desire leads to hell. In the beginning desire gives you much hope, dreams: that is the trick. That's how you are trapped. If the desire from the very beginning says, "Be alert: I am leading you to hell," you won't follow it. The desire promises you the heaven, and promises you - "Just a few steps and you will reach it; just come with me" - allures you, hypnotizes you and promises you many things, and you, being in suffering, think, "What is wrong in trying? Let us try a little this desire also."

That too will lead you to the hell because desire as such is a path to hell. Hence, Buddha says, "Unless you become desireless, you cannot be blissful." Desire is suffering, desire is a dream, and desire exists only when you are asleep. When you are awake and alert, desires cannot befool you. Then you see through; then everything is so clear that you cannot be fooled. How money can befool you and say that you will be very, very happy when there is money? Then look to rich people: they are in hell also - maybe a rich hell, but it makes no difference. A richer hell is going to be worse than a poor hell. Now they have attained money, and they are simply in a state of constant nervousness.

Mulla Nasrudin accumulated much wealth, and then he entered a hospital, because he couldn't sleep and he was nervous and constantly trembling and afraid - afraid of nothing in particular. A poor man is afraid of something in particular; a rich man is simply afraid. If you are afraid about something in particular, something can be done. But he is simply afraid. he does not know why, because he has everything; there is no need to be afraid, but he is simply afraid and trembling.

He was entered into the hospital, and for the breakfast few things were brought, and in those few things was a bowl of quivering gelatin. He said, "No. I cannot eat this." The doctor asked, "Why you are so adamant about it?" He said, "I cannot eat anything more nervous than me!"

But a rich man is nervous. What is his nervousness, the fear? Why he is so scared? Because every desire fulfilled, and still the frustration remains. Now he cannot even dream, because all dreams he has passed through; they lead nowhere. He cannot dream and he cannot gather courage to open the eyes also, because there are involvements. He has promised many things in his sleep.

When Buddha disappeared one night from his palace, he wanted to tell his wife that, "I am going." He wanted to touch the child who was just a day before born, because he would not be back again. He went to the very door of the room. He looked at the wife. She was so fast asleep, must have been dreaming; her face was beautiful, smiling, child in her arms. Then he waited for few seconds on the door; then he turned. He wanted to say, but then he became afraid. If he said something, then the wife is bound to cry and weep and create a scene.

And he is afraid of himself also, because if she weeps and cries, then he may become aware of his own promises, that "I will love you forever and ever, and I will be with you forever and ever." And what about this child who is only one day born? And she will, of course, bring the child before me, and she will say, "Look what you have done to me. Then why you gave birth to this child? And now who will be his father? And am I alone responsible for him? And you are escaping like a coward." All these thoughts came to him, because in sleep everybody promises. Everybody goes on giving promises not knowing how he can fulfill them, but in sleep it happens because nobody is conscious what is happening.

Suddenly he became aware that these things will be brought and then the family will gather - and the father and everybody else - and he is the only son of the father, and the father is looking at him, and in his sleep he has promised him also. Then he simply escaped: he simply escaped like a thief.

After twelve years, when he came back, the wife asked him the first thing that had come to his mind that night when he was leaving. The wife asked, "Why didn't you tell me? The first thing I would like to ask - for these twelve years I was waiting for you - why didn't you tell me? What type of love is this? You simply left me. You are a coward."

And Buddha listened silently. And the wife was silent and he said, "These all thoughts had come to me. I had come just to the door, I had even opened the door. I looked at you; in sleep I had promised many things. But if I am going to be awake, if I am getting out of the sleep, then I cannot keep the promises given in sleep. And if I try to keep the promises, then I cannot awake.

"So you are right. You may think I am a coward; you may think that I escaped from the palace like a thief, not like a warrior, not like a man of courage. But I tell you, exactly opposite is the case, because when I was escaping, to me at that moment, that was the moment of greatest bravery because my whole being was saying, 'This is not good. Don't be a coward.' And if I had stopped, if I had listened to my sleepy being, then there was no possibility for me to awake.

"And now I come to you; now I can fulfill something, because only a man who is enlightened can fulfill. A man who is ignorant, how he can fulfill anything? Now I come to you. That moment if I had stopped I couldn't give you anything, but now I bring a great treasure with me, and now I can give it to you. Don't weep, don't cry; open the eyes and look at me. I am not the same man who had left that night. A totally different being has come to your door. I am not your husband. You may be my wife, because that is your attitude. Look at me - I am totally a different person. Now I bring treasures for you. I can make you also aware and enlightened."

The wife listened. The same problem always came to everybody. She started thinking about the child. If she becomes a sannyasin and moves with this beggar - her ex-husband, now he is a beggar - if she moves... and what will happen to the child? She has not said anything, but Buddha said, "I know what you are thinking, because I have passed that period where promises given in the sleepy state all crowd together and say, 'What are you doing? - your child...' You are thinking that, 'Let the child become a little more aged, let him be married, then he can take over the palace and the kingdom,' and then you will follow. But remember, there is no future, no tomorrow. Either you follow me right now or you don't follow me."

But the wife... And a feminine mind is more asleep than a male mind. There are reasons for it, because a woman is a greater dreamer, she lives more in hopes and dreams. She has to be a greater sleeper, otherwise it will be difficult for nature to use her as the mother. A woman must be in deep hypnotic state, only then she can carry a child nine months in the womb and suffer, and then give birth and suffer, and then bring up this child and suffer, and then one day this child simply leaves her and goes to another woman... and suffer.

It is such a long suffering, a woman is bound to be a greater sleeper than man. Otherwise, how can you suffer so much? And she always hopes. Then she hopes with another child, then with another child, and her whole life is wasted.

So Buddha said, "I know what you are thinking, and I know you are a greater dreamer than me. But now I have come to cut all the roots of your sleep. Bring the child. Where is my son? Bring him." The feminine mind played a trick again. She brought Rahul, the child who was twelve years of age now, and she said, "This is your father. Look at him - he has become a beggar - and ask him what is your heritage, what he can give to you. This is your father; he is a coward! He escaped like a thief not even telling me, and he left a one-day-old child. Ask him your heritage!"

Buddha laughed, and he told Ananda, "Bring my begging bowl." And he gave the begging bowl to Rahul, and he said, "This is my heritage. I make you a beggar. You are initiated. You become a sannyasin." And he said to his wife, "I cut the very root. Now there is no need to dream. You also awake because this was the root. Rahul is already a sannyasin; you also awake. Yashodhara, you also awake, and become a sannyasin."

The moment always comes when you are in the transit period from where sleep turns into awakening. The whole past will hold you back, and past is powerful. Future is powerless for a sleepy man. For a man who is not sleepy, future is powerful; for a man who is fast asleep, past is powerful, because a man who is fast asleep knows only dreams that he had dreamed in the past. He is not aware of any future. Even if he thinks about future, it is nothing but past reflected forward again; it is just past projected again. Only a man who is aware becomes aware of the future. Then past is nothing.

Keep it in the mind. You may not be able to understand right now, but some day you may understand. For a sleepy man, cause is more powerful than the effect; seed is more powerful than the flower. For a man who is awake, effect is more powerful than the cause, flower is more powerful than the seed. The logic of sleep is: the cause produces the effect, seed produces the flower. The logic of awakening is just the reverse: it is flower who produces the seed; it is effect who produces the cause; it is future who produces the past, not the past that produces the future. But for a sleepy mind, the past, the dead, the gone, is more powerful. It is not...

The yet-to-be is more powerful: the yet-to-be-born is more powerful because life is there. Past has no life. How it can be powerful? Past is already graveyard. Life has already moved from there: that's why it is past. Life has left it, but graveyards are very powerful for you. The yet-to-be, the yet-to-be-born, the fresh, that which is going to happen, for a man of awakening that becomes more powerful. The past cannot hold him back.

The past holds you back. You always think about past commitments; you always linger around the graveyard. You go again and again to visit the graveyard and pay your respects to the dead. Always pay respects to the yet-to-be-born, because life is there.

The being is already there - everything as it is already, perfect, absolute, ecstatic - nothing can be added, there is no way to improve upon it. Then what is needed? Only one thing, that you become conscious and see it. This can happen in two ways. Either you can be shocked out of your sleep: that is Zen. Or, you can be brought, persuaded, out of your sleep: that is Yoga. Choose! Just don't hang in between.

 

 

 

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The Second Question:

Surrender doesn't depend on the object. It is a quality that you bring in your being. To whom you surrender is irrelevant. Any object will do. You can surrender to a tree; you can surrender to a river; you can surrender to anything - to your wife, to your husband, to your child. The problem is not there in the object, any object will do. The problem is to surrender.

The happening happens because of surrendering, not because to whom you have surrendered. And this is the most beautiful thing to understand: whomsoever you surrender, that object becomes the God. There is no question of surrendering to God. Where will you find God to surrender? You will never find. Surrender! And to whomsoever you surrender, the God is there. The child becomes the God, the husband becomes the God, the wife becomes the God, the guru becomes the God, even a stone can become God.

Even through stones people have attained, because it is not a question at all to what you surrender. You surrender, and that brings the whole thing, that opens the door. Surrendering, the effort to surrender, brings an opening to you. And if you are open to a stone you become open to the whole existence, because it is only a question of opening. How can you be open to a stone and not open to the tree? Once you know the opening, once you enjoy the euphoria that it brings, the ecstasy that happens just by opening to a stone, then you cannot find such a foolish man who will close immediately to the remaining existence. When even opening to a stone gives such ecstatic experience, then why not open to all?

In the beginning one surrenders to something, and then one is surrendered to all. That is the meaning that if you surrender to a Master, in the experience of surrendering, you have learned a clue; now you can surrender to all. The Master becomes just a passage to be passed through. He becomes a door, and through that door you can look at the whole sky. Remember, you cannot find God to surrender, but many people think that way; they are very tricky people. They think, "When God is there, we will surrender." Now this is impossible because God is there only if you surrender. Surrender makes anything God. Surrender gives you the eyes, and everything that is brought to these eyes becomes divine. Divinity, divineness, is a quality given by surrendering.

In India, Christians, Jews and Mohammedans laugh about Hindus, because they may be worshipping a tree or they may be worshipping a stone - not even carved, not even a statue. They can find a stone by the side of the road, and they can make a god out of it immediately. No artist is needed because surrender is the art. No carving, not a valuable stone is needed, not even marble. Any ordinary stone, discarded - it cannot be sold in the market and that's why it is Lying there by the side of the road - and Hindus can make immediately a god out of it. If you can surrender, it becomes, divine. The eyes of surrender cannot find anything else than the divine.

Others have laughed; they couldn't understand. They think that these people are stone worshippers, idol worshippers. They are not! Hindus have been misunderstood. They are not idol worshippers. They have found a key, and that key is that you can make anything divine if you surrender. And if you don't surrender then you can go on searching for God for millions of lives. You will never meet him, because you don't have the quality which meets, which can meet, which can find. So the question is of a subjective surrender, not of the object to whom to surrender.

But, of course, there are problems. You cannot so suddenly surrender to a stone because your mind goes on saying, "This is just a stone. What are you doing?" And if the mind goes on saying, "This is a stone; what are you doing?" - then you cannot surrender, because surrender needs your totality.

Hence, the significance of a Master. A Master means somebody who is standing on the boundary - boundary of the human and the divine. One who has been a human being like you, but is no more like you - something else has happened - who is a plus, a human being plus. So if you look to his past, he is just like you - but if you look to his present and the future, then you look to the plus(+). Then he is the divine.

It is difficult to surrender to a stone, to a river -- very, very difficult - even to surrender to a Master is so difficult. Then surrendering to a stone is bound to be very difficult, because whenever you see a Master, then again your mind said that this is a human being like you, so why surrender to him? And your mind cannot see the present; the mind can see only the past - that this man is born like you, eats, sleeps like you, so why surrender to him? He is just like you.

He is, and yet he is not. He is both Jesus and Christ - Jesus the man, the son of man, and Christ, the plus point. If you watch only the visible, then he is the stone; you cannot surrender. If you love, if you become intimate, if you allow his presence to go deep in you, if you can find a rapport - that is the word; rapport with his being - then suddenly you become aware of the plus. He is more than human. In some unknown way, he has something that you have not got. In some invisible way, he has penetrated beyond the boundary of the human. But this you can feel only if there is a rapport.

That is what Patanjali says, shraddha - trust; trust creates rapport. Rapport is an inner harmony of the two invisibles; love is a rapport. With somebody you simply fit as if you both were born for each other. You call it love. In a moment, even at the first sight, somebody simply fits with you, as if you were created together and were separated; now you have met again.

In the old mythologies all over the world, it is said that man and woman were created together. In Indian mythology they have a very beautiful myth. The myth is that a wife and husband were created in the very beginning as twins, brother and sister. Together they were born - wife and husband as twins, fitting together in one womb. There was a rapport from the very beginning. From the first moment there was a rapport. They were together in the womb holding each other, and that is rapport. Then, due to some misfortune, that phenomenon disappeared from the earth.

But the myth says that still there is a relationship. A man and a woman... The man may be born here and the woman may be born somewhere in Africa, in America, but there is a rapport, and unless they find each other there will be difficulty. And it is very difficult to find each other. The world is so vast, and you don't know where to seek and where to find. If it happens, it happens by accident.

Now scientists also believe that sooner or later we will be able to judge the rapport by scientific instruments, and before somebody goes for marriage, the couple has to go to a lab so that they can find whether their bio-energy fits or not. If it is not fitting, then they are in an illusion. This marriage cannot... They may be thinking that they will be very happy, but they cannot be because the inner bio-energy does not fit.

So you may like the nose of the woman and the woman may like your eyes, but that is not the point. Liking the eyes won't help, liking the nose won't help, because after two days nobody looks at the nose and nobody looks at the eyes. Then the problem is of bio-energy. The inner energies meeting and mixing with each other; otherwise they will repel. It is just like if you transfuse blood; either your body accepts it or rejects it, because there are types of blood. If it is the same type, only then the body accepts it; otherwise it simply rejects.

The same happens in a marriage. If the bio-energy accepts, it accepts, and there is no conscious way to know about it. Love is very fallacious, because love is always focused on something. The voice of the woman is good, and you are allured. But that is not the point. It is a partial thing. The whole must fit. Your bio-energies should accept each other so totally that deep down you become a one person. This is rapport. It happens in love rarely because how to find? - it is still difficult. Just falling in love is not a sure criterion. Out of one thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine times it fails. Love has proved a failure.

Even a greater rapport happened with a Master. It is greater than love. It is shraddha - trust. Not only your bio-energy meets and fits, but your very soul fits together. That's why, whenever somebody becomes a disciple, the whole world thinks he is mad; because the whole world cannot see what is the point. Why are you going mad after this man? And you cannot explain it also, because it cannot be explained. You may be even not aware consciously what has happened, but with a man, suddenly, you are in trust. Suddenly something meets, becomes one. That is rapport.

It is difficult to have that rapport with a stone. Because it is even difficult to have that rapport with a living Master, how can you have it with a stone? But if it happens, immediately the Master becomes a God. For the disciple, the Master is always a God. He may not be a God for others; that is not the point. But for a disciple he is the God, and through him the doors of divineness open. Then you have the key - that this inner rapport is the key, this surrender. Then you can try it: surrender to a river...

You must have read Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha". He learns many things from the river. You cannot learn from a Buddha, just watching the river, so many moods of the river. He has become a ferryboat man just watching thousands of climates around it. Sometimes the river is happy and dancing, and sometimes very, very sad, as if not moving at all - sometimes very angry and roaring, against the whole existence, and sometimes so calm and peaceful like a Buddha. And Siddhartha simply a ferryman - passing the river, living near the river, watching the river, with nothing else to do. It becomes a deep meditation and a rapport, and through the river and the "riverness" of it he attains: he attains to the same glimpse as Heraclitus.

You can step in the same river and you cannot. The river is the same and not the same. It is a flow, and through the river and the rapport with it, he comes to know the whole existence as a river - a "riverness".

It can happen with anything. The basic to remember is surrendering.

Yes! Surrender is always the same. It is just up to you to whom you can be able to surrender. Find the man, seek the river, and surrender. It is a risk - the greatest risk possible. That's why it is so difficult to surrender. It is a risk! You are moving in the unknown territory and you are giving so much power to a man or to something you surrender.

If you surrender to me you are giving total power to me. Then my 'yes' is your 'yes', then my 'no' is your 'no'. Even in the day I say it is night, you say, "Yes, it is night." You are giving total power to somebody. The ego resists. The mind says, "This is not good. Keep the control yourself. Who knows where this man will lead you? Who knows, he may say, 'Jump from the hilltop,' and then you will be dead. Who knows, this man may manipulate you, control you, exploit you." The mind will bring all these things. It is a risk, and the mind is taking all the security measures.

The mind is saying, "Be watchful. Watch this man a little more." If you listen to the mind, surrender is not possible. Mind is right! It is a risk! But whenever you take, it is going to be a risk. Watching won't help much. You can watch forever, and may not be able to decide because the mind can never decide. Mind is confusion. It is never decisive. You have to bypass mind someday or other, and you have to tell the mind, "You wait. I go: I will take the jump and see what happens."

What you have got to lose really? I'm always wondering what you have got that you are so afraid to lose, what exactly that you are bringing when you surrender. You have nothing. You can gain out of it, but you cannot lose because you have nothing. You can always be profited out of it, but there is no possibility of any loss because you do not have anything to lose.

You must have heard Karl Marx's famous maxim, "Proletarians of the world unite because you have nothing to lose but your chains." That may be true, may not be true. But for a seeker this is exactly the thing. What you have got to lose except your chains, your ignorance, your misery? But people become very much attached to their misery also - to their very misery they cling as if it is a treasure. If you want to take their misery away, they create all sorts of barriers.

I have been watching these barriers and these tricks with thousands of people. Even if you want to take their misery, they cling. They indicate a certain thing because they don't have anything else, this is the only treasure that they have. Don't take it away because it is always better to have something than nothing. That is their logic: it is always better to have something - at least this misery is there - than nothing, than to be completely empty, than to be nobody.

Even if you are miserable, you are somebody. Even if you have a hell within you, at least you have something. But watch this, observe this, and when you surrender remember you have nothing else to give. A Master is taking your misery, nothing else. He is not taking your life because you don't have. He is taking only your death. He is not taking anything valuable from you because you don't have it. He is taking only the rubbish, the junkyard that you have collected through many lives, and you are sitting on the heap of the junkyard and you think this is your kingdom.

He is not taking anything. If you are ready to give your misery to him, you will become capable to receive his bliss. This is the surrender, and then the Master becomes a god. Anything, anybody you surrender becomes divine. Surrender makes divineness, surrender creates divineness. Surrender is a creative force.

 

 

 

 

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The Third Question:

Yes! Even more so, because satori is just a glimpse, and a glimpse is dangerous because now you enter the territory of the unknown. Before it, Master is not necessary. Before it you were moving in the known world. Only after satori he becomes absolutely necessary, because now somebody is needed to hold your hand and to lead you towards that which is not simply a glimpse, but becomes an absolute reality. After satori you have the taste, and the taste creates more desire. And the taste becomes so magnetic that you would like to rush into it madly. Now the Master is needed.

After satori, many more things are going to happen. Satori is like seeing the peak of Gourishankar, Everest, from the plains. Some day, a clear morning, a sunny morning, and mist is not there, you can see from thousands of miles away the beautiful peak of Gourishankar rising high in the sky. This is satori. Now the actual traveling starts. Now the whole world looks useless.

This is a turning point. Now all that you knew becomes useless, all that you had becomes a burden. Now the world, the life that you had lived up to now, simply disappears like a dream because the greater has happened. And this is satori, a glimpse. Soon the mist will be there, and the peak will not be visible. The clouds will come and the peak will disappear. Now you will be in an absolute uncertain state of consciousness.

The first thing will be whether whatsoever you have seen was real or just a dream, because where it is now? It has disappeared. It was just a breakthrough, just a gap, and you are back - thrown to your own world.

Suspicions will arise: whatsoever you have seen, was it true? Was it really there or you dreamed about it or you imagined it? And there are possibilities. Many people imagine, so the suspicion is not wrong. Many times you will imagine, and you cannot make the distinction, what is real and what is unreal. Only a Master can say that, "Yes, don't be worried. It was real," or a Master can say, "drop, throw it! It was just imaginary."

Only one who has known the peak - not from the plains - only one who has attained to the peak, only one who has become the peak himself, only he can tell you because he has the criterion, he has the touchstone. He can say, "Throw it! Rubbish! It is just your imagination," because when seekers go on thinking about these things, the mind starts dreaming.

Many people come to me. Only one percent of them have the real thing; ninety-nine percent bring unreal things. But it is difficult for them to decide - impossible, not difficult - they cannot decide. You suddenly feel an upsurge of energy in your backbone, in the spine: how you will decide whether it is real or unreal? You have been thinking too much about it; you have been desiring also. Unconsciously you are sowing seeds that it should happen, the kundalini should rise. Then you have been reading Patanjali, then you have been talking about it, then you meet people who say their kundalini has risen. Your ego, and then everything mixed...

Suddenly one day, you feel the upsurge; it is nothing but a creation of the mind - just to satisfy you - that, "Don't be worried: don't be so much worried. Look! Your kundalini has arisen," and just mind imagining. Then who will decide? And how you will decide? - because you don't know the true. Only truth can become the criterion to decide whether this is true or untrue.

A Master is needed even more after first satori. There are three satoris. The first satori is just a glimpse. This is possible even sometimes through drugs; this is possible through many other things - sometimes accidents. Sometimes you were climbing a tree and you fell down, and it was such a shock that the mind stopped for a single moment, and the glimpse will be there, and you will feel so euphoric that you are taken out of your body, you have known something.

Within a second you are back, the mind starts functioning: it was simply a shock. Through electric shock it is possible, through insulin shock it is possible, through drugs it is possible. Even sometimes in illness it happens. You are so weak that the mind cannot function; suddenly you have a glimpse. Through sex it is possible. In the 0rgasm, when the whole body vibrates, it is possible.

The first glimpse is not necessarily through religious effort. That's why LSD, mescaline, marijuana, have become so much important and appealing. The first glimpse is possible, and you can be caught because of the first glimpse in a drug. It can become a permanent trip; then it is very dangerous because glimpses won't help. They can help, but there is not necessarily help coming from them. They can help only around a Master, because then he will say, "Now don't be after the glimpse. You have got the glimpse, now start traveling to reach the peak." Because it is not only to reach the peak; finally one has to become the peak.

These are the three stages: first is glimpse - this is possible through many ways, not necessarily religious. Even an atheist can have the glimpse, a person who is not interested in religion can have the glimpse. Drugs, chemicals can give you the glimpse. Even after an operation, when you are coming out of chloroform, you can have the glimpse. While the chloroform is given to you and you are going deeper and deeper, you can have the glimpse.

Many people have attained to first satori; that is not very, very significant. It can be used as a step for the second satori. Second satori is to reach the peak. That never happens accidentally. That happens only through methods, techniques, schools, because it is a long effort to reach the second satori.

And then there is the third satori, what Patanjali calls samadhi: that third is to become the peak. Because from the second also you can come down. You reach to the peak; it may be unbearable.

Bliss is also sometimes unbearable - not only pain, bliss also - it is too much; one comes back to the plains.

To live on a high peak is difficult - very difficult! - and one would like to come back. Unless you become the peak itself, unless the experiencer becomes the experience, it can be lost. And up to the third - samadhi - a Master is needed. Only when the final samadhi, the ultimate, has happened, a Master is not needed.

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The last question:

If you listen to the words and their meaning you may understand many things, but you will not understand me and you will not understand yourself also. Those many things are not worth. You don't bother about words and meanings; you listen to me as if I am not a speaker but a singer, as if I am not talking to you in words, but talking to you in sounds, as if I am a poet!

No need to try the meaning, what I mean. Just listening to me without paying any attention to words and meanings, a different quality of clarity will come to you. You will feel blissful: that's the real clarity. You will feel happy; you will feel peaceful and silent and calm. That is the real meaning.

Because I am here not to explain certain things to you, but to create a certain quality within your being. I am talking not to explain: my talking is a creative phenomenon. I am not trying to explain to you something - that you can do through books and there are millions of other ways to understand these things - I am here to transform you.

Listen to me - simply, innocently, without creating any worry about words and their meanings. Drop that clarity; that is not of much use. When you simply listen to me, transparent, the intellect no more there - heart to heart, depth to depth, being to being - then the speaker disappears and the listener also. Then I am not here and you are also not here. A rapport exists; the listener and the speaker have become one. In that oneness, you will be transformed. To attain to that oneness is the meditation. Make it a meditation, not a contemplation, not a reflection. Then something greater than words is communicated - something beyond meanings. The real meaning, the ultimate meaning, is transferred - something that is not in the scriptures and cannot be.

You can read Patanjali yourself. A little effort and you will understand him. I am not talking here so that you become capable of understanding Patanjali; no, that is not the point at all. Patanjali is just an excuse, a peg. I am hanging something that is beyond scriptures on him.

If you listen to my words, you will understand Patanjali, there will be a clarity. But if you listen to my sound, if you listen not to the words but to me, then the real meaning will be revealed to you, and that meaning has nothing to do with Patanjali. That meaning is a transmission beyond scriptures.

 

 

The First Question:

I AM NOT ON ANY ANCIENT PATH. So, few things have to be understood. I am not like Mahavira who was the end of a long series of teerthankaras, twenty-four - he was the twenty-fourth. In the past twenty-three had become Master of Masters, gods, on the same path, the same method, the same way of life, the same technique.

The first was Rishabh and the last was Mahavira. Rishabh had nobody in the past to look to. I am not like Mahavira, but like Rishabh. I am a beginning of a tradition, not the end. Many more will be coming on the same path. So I cannot look for instructions to anybody; that's not possible. A tradition is born and then a tradition dies, just as persons are born and persons die. I am the beginning, not the end. When somebody is in the middle of the series or at the end, he gets instructions from the Master of Masters.

The reason why I am not any path? I have worked with many Masters, but I have never been a disciple. I was a wanderer, wandering through many lives, criss-crossing many traditions, being with many groups, schools, methods, but never belonging to anybody. I was received with love, but I was never a part - a guest at the most, an overnight stay. That's why I learned so much. You cannot learn on one path so much; that's impossible.

But, to me, a hidden harmony exists. That's why people who follow one path are unable to understand me. They are simply baffled, bewildered. They know a particular logic, a particular pattern. If the thing fits into their pattern, it is right. If it doesn't fit, it is wrong. They have a very limited criterion. To me, no criterions exist. Because I have been with so many patterns, I can be at ease anywhere. Nobody is alien to me and I am not a stranger to anybody. But this creates a problem. I am not a stranger to anybody, but everybody becomes a stranger to me - has to be so.

If you belong not to a particular sect, then everybody thinks you as if you are the enemy. Hindus will be against me, Christians will be against me, Jews will be against me, Jains will be against me, and I am against nobody. Because they cannot find their pattern in me, they will be against me.

And I am talking about not pattern, but a deeper pattern which holds all the patterns. There is a pattern, another pattern, and another pattern - millions of patterns. Then all the patterns are held by something underground which is the pattern of patterns - the hidden harmony. They cannot look at it, but they are not at fault also. When you live with a certain tradition, a certain philosophy, a certain way of looking at things, you become attuned to it.

In a way, I was never attuned to anybody - not that much so that I could have become a part of them. In a sense it is a misfortune, but in another sense it proved a blessing. Many who worked with me achieved liberation before me. It was a misfortune to me. I lagged and lagged behind because never working totally with anything, moving from one to another.

Many achieved who started with me. Even few who started after me achieved before me. This was a misfortune, but in another sense this has been a blessing because I know every home. I may not belong to any home, but I am at home everywhere. That is why I have got no Master of Masters - I was never a disciple. To be directed by a Master of Masters, you have to be a disciple to a certain Master. Then you can be directed. Then you know the language. So I am not directed by anybody but helped by many. The difference has to be understood: not directed, I don't receive any orders, "Do this or don't do that", but helped by many.

Jains may not feel that I belong to them, but Mahavira feels, because at least he can see the pattern of patterns. Followers of Jesus may not be able to understand me, but Jesus can. So I am helped by many. That's why many people are coming to me from different sources. You cannot find such a gathering anywhere on the earth at this time. Jews are there, Christians are there, Mohammedans are there, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, from all over the world. And more, many more, will be coming soon.

That's a help from many Masters. They know I can be helpful to their disciples; they will be sending many more - but no instructions, because I never received instructions from any Master as a disciple. Now there is no need also. Just a help, and that is better - I feel more at freedom. Nobody can be so free as I am.

Because if you receive directions from Mahavira, you cannot be as free as I am. A Jain has to remain Jain. He has to go on talking against Buddhism, against Hinduism. He has to because it is a fight of many patterns and traditions. And traditions have to fight if they want to survive. And for the sake of disciples they have to be argumentative; they have to say, "That is wrong," because only then the disciple can feel that "This is right." Against wrong, the disciple feels what is right.

With me you will be at a loss. If you are just here with your intellect, you will be confused. You will go crazy because this moment I say something and next moment I contradict it: because this moment I was talking about one tradition, another moment I am talking about another. And sometimes I am not talking about any tradition; I am talking about me. Then you cannot find it anywhere in any scripture.

But I am helped, and the help is beautiful because I am not supposed to follow it. I am not forced to follow it. It is up to me. Help is given unconditionally. If I feel like doing it, I will do; if I don't feel, I will not do it. I have no obligation to anybody.

But if you become some day enlightened, then you can receive. If I am not in the body, then you can receive instructions from me. This always happens to the first person, when a tradition starts. It is a beginnin g, a birth, and you are near a birth process. And it is most beautiful when something is born, because it is most alive. By and by, as a child grows, the child is coming nearer and nearer to death. A tradition is freshest when it is born. It has a beauty of its own - incomparable, unique.

The people who listened to Rishabh, the first Jain teerthankara, had a different quality. When they listened to Mahavira, it was thousands of years old. It was just on the verge of dying. With Mahavira, it died.

When in a tradition no more Masters are born, it is dead. It means the tradition is no more growing. Jains closed it. With the twenty-fourth they said, "Now, no more Masters, no more teerthankaras." To be with Nanak was beautiful because something new was coming out of the womb - the womb of the universe. Just as you watch a child being born - a mystery - an unknown penetrating the known, the bodiless becoming the embodied. It is fresh like dewdrops. Soon everything will be covered with dust. Soon, as time passes, things will become old.

But by the time of the tenth guru of the Sikhs, the tenth Master, things became dead. Then they closed the line and they said, "Now no more Masters. Now the scripture itself will be the Master." That's why they called their scripture "Guru-granth" - the Master scripture. Now no more persons will be there; just a dead scripture will be the Master now. And when a scripture is dead it is futile - not only futile; it is poisonous. Don't allow anything dead in your body. It will create poison; it will destroy your whole system.

Here, something new is born, a beginning. It is fresh, but that's why it is very difficult also to see it. Because if you go to the Ganges, the source of the Ganges, it is so tiny there - fresh, of course: never again it will be so fresh, because when it moves it gathers many things, accumulates, becomes more and more dirty. At Kashi it is the dirtiest, but then you call it "Holy Ganges" because now it is so vast. It has accumulated so much, now even a blind man can see it.

At the Gangotri - at the beginning, at the source - you need to be very perceptive. Only then you can see; otherwise it is just a trickling of the drops. You cannot even believe that this trickling of the drops is going to become Ganges - unbelievable.

It is difficult right now to see what is happening because it is a very, very tiny stream, just like a child. People missed with Rishabh, the first Jain Teerthankara, but they could recognize Mahavira - see? Jains don't think much of the first - Rishabh. In fact, they pay their whole homage to Mahavira. In fact, in the western mind, Mahavira is the originator of Jainism. Because they pay so much respect to Mahavira in India, that's how others can feel that somebody else was the originator? Rishabh has become legendary, forgotten; may have been, may not have been, he doesn't seem to be historical - hoary past - and you don't know much about him. Mahavira is historical, and he is the Ganges, near Benares, Kashi - so vast.

Remember that the beginning is small, but never again the mystery will be so deep as in the beginning. The beginning is life and the end is death. With Mahavira, death enters into Jain tradition. With Rishabh, life entered, came down from the above Himalayas, to the earth.

I have got nobody to be responsible to, nobody to get instructions from, but much help is available. And if you take it in its totality, then it is more than any single Master can instruct. When I am talking about Patanjali, Patanjali is helpful. I can talk exactly as if he was talking here. I am not talking, in fact; these are not commentaries. It is he himself using me as a vehicle. When I am talking about Heraclitus, he is there - but as a help. This you have to understand, and become more perceptive so that you can see the beginning.

To move into a tradition when it has become a great force does not take much perceptivity, much sensitivity. To come when things are beginning, just in the morning, is difficult. By the evening many come, but then they come because the thing has become so vast and powerful. In the morning only those few chosen come who have the sensitivity to feel that something great is being born. You cannot prove it right now. Time will prove it. It will take thousands of years to prove what was being born, but you are fortunate to be here. And don't miss the opportunity, because this is the freshest point and the most mysterious.

If you can feel it, if you can allow it to go deep into you, many things will become possible in a very short period of time. It is yet not respectable to be with me - it is not a prestige. In fact, only gamblers can be with me who do not bother and worry about what others say. People who are respectable cannot come. After a few years, when the tradition becomes by and by dead, it becomes respectable. Then people will come, but those will be dead people. They will come only when something becomes respectable. They will come because of the ego.

You are here not because of the ego, because with me there is nothing to gain for the ego at least. You will lose. With Rishabh, only people who were alive and courageous and daring, adventurous, they moved; with Mahavira, dead businessmen - not gamblers. That is why Jains have become a business community. The whole community is business community; they don't do anything except business. Business is the least courageous thing in the world. That's why businessmen become cowards. In the first place they were cowards; that's why they became businessmen.

A farmer is more courageous because he lives with the unknown, does not know what is going to happen, whether rains will be there or not - nobody knows. And how can you believe in the clouds? You can believe in the banks, but you cannot believe in the clouds. No - nobody knows what is going to happen; he hangs with the unknown. But he lives a more courageous life - a warrior.

Mahavira himself was a warrior; all the twenty-four teerthankaras of the Jains were warriors. Then what misfortune happened? What happened that the whole followers became businessmen? They became businessmen with Mahavira because they came only with Mahavira - when the tradition was glorious, had a legendary past, become already a myth and was respectable to be with.

Dead people come only when something becomes dead; alive people come only when something is alive. Younger people will be coming to me more. Even if somebody old comes to me, he is bound to be younger in the heart. Old people look for prestige, respect. They will go to dead churches and temples where nothing is except emptiness and a past. What is past? - an emptiness. Anything alive is herenow, and anything alive has a future, because future grows out of it. The moment you start looking at the past, there can be no growth.

No. But I receive help which is more beautiful. And I have been a loner, a vagabond with no home, passing, learning, moving, never staying anywhere. So I have nobody to look up to. If I had to find something, I had to find it myself. Much help available, but I had to work it out. And in a way that is going to be a great help because then I don't depend on any code. I watch the disciple. There is nobody as a Master to me to look to. I have to look at the disciple more deeply to find the clue. What will help you, I have to look into you. That's why my teaching, my methods, differ with each disciple. I have no universal formula, cannot have; no fixed rules, I have to respond. I have not a discipline already - ready-made. Rather, a growing phenomenon. Every disciple adds to it. When I start working with a new disciple, I have to look into him, seek, find what will help him, how he can grow. And each time, with each disciple, a new code is born.

You are going really in a mess when I am gone - because there will be so many stories from each disciple, and you will not be able to make any end, head or tail of it - because I am talking to each individual as individual. The system is growing through him, and it is growing in many, many directions. It is a vast tree, many branches, many sub-branches, going in all directions.

I don't receive any instructions from the Masters. I receive instructions from you. When I look into you, in your unconscious, in your depth, I receive instructions from there and I work it out for you. It is always a new response.

 

 

The second question:

Question 2

No, there are not stages in fact, but when a Master is in the body, and when the Master leaves the body and becomes bodiless, there is a difference - not exactly stages.

It is just like you are standing by the side of the road under a tree: you can see a patch of the road; beyond that patch you cannot see.

Then you climb up the tree. You remain the same; nothing is happening to you or your consciousness. But you climb up the tree, and from the tree now you can look miles to this side and miles to that.

Then you fly in an airplane. Nothing has happened to you; your consciousness remains the same. But now you can see for thousands of miles. In the body you are on the road - by the side of the road - encased in the body. The body is the lowest point in existence because it means committed to the matter still, being with the matter still. Matter is the lowest point and God is the highest point.

When a Master attains to enlightenment in the body, the body has to fulfill its karmas, the past samskaras, the past conditionings. Every account has to be closed; only then can the body be left. It is like this: your airplane has arrived, but you have many businesses to finish. All the creditors are there, and they are asking to close the account before you leave. And there are many credits, because many lives you have been promising, doing things, acting, behaving, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes a sinner, sometimes a saint. You have accumulated much Before you leave, the whole existence demands you to complete everything.

When you have become enlightened, now you know that you are not the body, but you owe many things to the body and the material world. Time is needed - Buddha lived forty years after his enlightenment, Mahavira also lived near about forty years - to pay, to pay everything that they owe, to complete every circle that they started. No new action, but the old hanging things have to be finished, the old hangover has to be finished. When all the accounts are closed, now you can take your aircraft.

Up to now, with matter, you have been moving horizontally - just like in a bullock cart. Now you can move vertically. Now you can go upwards. Before this, you have always been going forwards or backwards; there was no vertical movement. And the higher you rise - and the God is the highest point, the Master of Masters - from where the perception is total. Your consciousness is the same; nothing has changed: an enlightened man has the same consciousness as the supreme state of consciousness, God - no difference of consciousness. But the perception, the field of perception, is different; now he can look everywhere.

There was a great debate in the times of Buddha and Mahavira. It will be useful to understand it at this point for this question. There was a debate: followers of Mahavira used to say that Mahavira is omnipotent omniscient, omnipresent, sarvagya, all-knowing. In a way they are right, because once you are freed from matter and body, you are God. But in a way they were wrong, because you may be freed from the body, but you have yet not left it. The identification is broken; you know that you are not the body. But still you are in it.

It is as if you live in a house; then suddenly you come to know that this house doesn't belong to you - somebody else's house and you were living in it. But then too, to leave the house you will have to make arrangements, you will have to remove things. And it will take time. You know this house is not yours, your attitude has changed. Now you are not worried about this house what happens to it. If next day it falls and becomes a ruins, it is nothing to you. If next day you leave and it takes fire, it is nothing to you: it belongs to somebody else. Just a moment before, you were identified with the house; it was your house. If there was fire, if the house fell down, you would have much worried. Now the identification is broken.

Mahavira's followers are right in a sense, because when you have come to know yourself, you have become all-knowing. But Buddha's followers used to say that this is not right - a Buddha can know if he wants to know something, but he is not all-knowing. They used to say that if the Buddha wants, he can focus his attention in any direction, and wherever he focuses his attention, he will be able to know. He is capable of omniscience, but not omniscient. The difference is subtle, delicate, but beautiful. Because they said if he knows everything and all things continuously, he will go mad. This body cannot bear that much.

They are also right. A Buddha in the body can know anything if he wants to know. His consciousness, because of the body, is like a torch. You go in the dark with the torch. You can know anything if you focus; light is with you. But a torch is a torch; it is not a flame. A flame will give light in all directions; a torch focuses in a particular direction - wherever you want. The torch has no choice You can look to the north, and then it will reveal the north. You can look to the south, and then it will reveal the south. But all the four directions are not revealed together. If you move the torch to the south, then the north is closed. It is a narrow flow of light.

This was Buddha's followers' standpoint. And Mahavira's followers used to say that he is not like a torch, he is like a lamp; all directions are revealed. But I favor Buddha's followers' standpoint. When the body is there, you are narrowed down. Body is a narrowing. You become like a torch - because you cannot see from the hands, you can see only from the eyes. If you can see only from the eyes, you cannot see from your back because you don't have any eyes there. You have to move your head.

With the body everything is focused and narrow. The consciousness is unfocused and flowing in all directions, but the vehicle, the body, is not in all directions - it always focused, so your consciousness also becomes narrowed down to it. But when the body is no more there, and a Buddha has left the body, then there is no problem. All directions are revealed together.

That's the point to be understood. That's why even an enlightened person can be guided, because an enlightened person is still tethered to the body, anchored in the body, in the narrow body, and a god is unanchored, floating in the highest sky. From there he can see all directions. From there he can see the past, the future, the present. From there his view is unclouded. That's why he can help.

Your view, even if you become enlightened in the body, is clouded. The body is there all around you. The status of consciousness is the same, the innermost reality of the consciousness is the same, the quality of the light is the same. But one light is tethered to the body and has become narrow; one light is not tethered to anything at all - just a floating light. In the highest of skies, guidance is possible.

They are enough. They are enough to guide disciples; they are enough to help disciples. Nothing is needed. But still they are tethered, and one who is untethered is always a good help. You cannot look in all directions; he can look.

You can also move and look, but that has to be done. This is what I am doing: having no instructor above, nobody to guide me, I have to be continuously on move - looking from this direction and that, watching from this direction and that, looking at you through many standpoints so that your totality can be looked. I can look through, but I have to be moving around you. Just a glance will not help because a glance will be narrowed through the body. I am having a torch and moving all around you, looking from every standpoint possible.

In a way it is difficult because I have to work more. In a way it is very beautiful because I have to work more and I have to look from every standpoint possible. I come to know many things which ready-made instructions cannot do. And when the Master of Masters in Patanjali's ideology - a god - gives instructions, he gives no explanations; he gives simply instructions. He simply says, "Do this; don't do that."

Those who follow these instructions, they will also look like ready-made. It is bound to be so because they will say, "Do this." They will not have the explanation. And very coded instructions are given. Explanations are very difficult - and there is no need also for them, because when it is given from a higher standpoint it is okay. Just one has to be obedient.

The Master is obedient to the Master of Masters, and you have to be obedient to the Master. An obedience follows. It is just like a military hierarchy; not much freedom. Much is not allowed. Order is order. If you ask for explanation, you are rebellious. And this is the problem, one of the greatest problems humanity has to face now: now man cannot be obedient as in the past. You cannot simply say, "Don't do this"; explanation is needed. And not any ordinary explanation will do. A very authentic explanation is needed because the very mind of humanity is no more obedient. Now rebelliousness is built in; a child is born rebellious now.

It was totally different in the days of Buddha and Mahavira. Everybody is taught to be individual, to stand on his own, to believe in himself. Trust has become difficult. Obedience is not possible. If somebody follows without asking, you think he is a blind follower. He is condemned. Now only a Master can help you who has all the explanations - more than you require, who can exhaust you completely. You go on asking; he can go on answering you. A moment comes when you are tired of asking, and you say, "Okay, I will follow."

Never before this it was so. It was simple: when Mahavira says, "Do this," you do this. But this is not possible, simply because man is so different. The modern mind is a rebellious mind, and you cannot change it. This is how evolution has brought it to be, and nothing is wrong in it. That is why old Masters are falling off the road; nobody listens to them. You go to them. They have instructions, beautiful instructions, but they don't provide any explanation, and now the first thing is explanation. The instruction should follow as a syllogism. All explanations should be given first, and then the Master should say, "Therefore, do this."

It is a lengthy process, but it's how it is. Nothing can be done. And in a sense it is a beautiful growth, because when you simply trust, your trust has no salt in it, no tension in it. Your trust has no sharpness in it. It is a hodge-podge thing - shapeless: no tonality in it, no color in it. It is just grey. But when you can doubt, you can argue, you can reason and a Master can satisfy all your reasons and arguments and doubts, then arises a trust which has a beauty of its own because against the background of doubt it has been achieved.

Against all doubts it has been achieved, against all challenges it has been achieved. It has been a fight. It was not simple and cheap: it has been costly. And when you achieve something after a long fight, it has a meaning of its own. If you simply get it on the road it just Lying there and take it home, it has no beauty. If Kohinoors are there all over the earth, who will bother to take them home? If a Kohinoor is just an ordinary pebble Lying anywhere, then who will bother?

In the old days, faith was like pebbles all over the earth. Now it has to be a Kohinoor. Now it has to be a precious achievement. Instructions won't help. A Master has to be so deep in his explanations that he exhausts you. I never say to you don't ask. In fact, just otherwise is the case. I say to you ask, and you don't find questions.

I will bring all the questions possible from your unconscious to the surface, and I will solve them. Nobody can say to you that you are a blind follower. And I will not give you a single instruction without totally satisfying your reason - no, because that is not going to help you in any way.

Instructions are given from the Masters of Masters, but they are just quoted words - sutras; "Do this; don't do that." In the new age, that won't help. Man is so rational now that even if you are teaching irrationality you have to reason it about. That's what I am doing: teaching you the absurdity, the irrational, teaching you the mysterious - and through reason. Your reason has to be so much used that you yourself become aware that this is futile - throw it. You have to be so much talked about your reason that you get fed up with it; you drop it on your own, not through instruction.

Because instruction can be given, but you will cling. That won't help. I'm not going to say to you, "Just trust me." I'm creating the whole situation in which you cannot do otherwise. You will have to trust. It will take a time - a little longer - than simple obedience. But it is worth.

 

 

 

 

The Third Question:

Question 3

Yes, because a Master is in touch with all the four layers of you. Your conscious layer is only one of the four layers. But that is possible only when you have surrendered and accepted him as your Master - not before that. If you are just a student, learning, then when you are in touch, the Master is in touch; when you are not in touch, he is also not in touch.

Has to be understood, this phenomenon... You have four minds: the supermind which is the possibility of the future, of which only seeds you carry - nothing has sprouted - only seeds, just the potentiality. Then the conscious mind - a very small fragment with which you reason, think, decide, argue, doubt, believe - this conscious mind is in touch with a Master to whom you have not surrendered. So whenever this is in touch, the Master is in touch. If this is not in touch, then the Master is not in touch. You are a student, and you have not taken the Master as a Master. You still think about him as a teacher.

Teacher and student exist in the conscious mind. Nothing can be done because you are not open; your all three doors are closed. Superconscious is just a seed; you cannot open its doors.

Subconscious is just below the conscious. That is possible if you love. If you are here with me only because of your reasoning, your conscious door is open. Whenever you open it, I am there. If you don't open it, I am outside; I cannot enter. Just below the conscious is the subconscious. If you are in love with me - not just a teacher and a student relationship but more intimate, a love-like phenomenon - then the subconscious door is open. Many times the conscious door will be closed by you. You will argue against me; you will be sometimes negative; sometimes you will be against me. But that doesn't matter. The unconscious door of love is open and I can always remain in touch with you.

But that too is not a perfect door because sometimes you can hate me. If you hate me, you have closed that door also. Love is there, but the opposite, hate, is also there - it is always with love. The second door will be more open than the first - because the first changes its moods as fast that you don't know... Any moment it goes on changing. Just one moment it was here, the next moment it is not there; it is a momentary phenomenon.

Love is a little longer. It also changes its moods, but its moods have longer periods. Sometimes you will hate me. In thirty days almost there will be eight days - one week and four days, you will hate me. But three weeks it is open. With the reason, a week is too long; it is an eternity. With the reason, one moment here, another moment against: for, against, it goes on. If the second door is open and you are in love with me, even if the door with reason is closed, I can remain in contact.

The third door is below subconscious: that is the unconscious. Reason opens the first door - if you feel convinced with me. Love opens the second door which is bigger than the first - if you are in love with me: not convinced, but in love - feeling an affinity, a harmony, an affection.

The third door opens by surrender, if you are initiated by me, if you have taken the jump into sannyas, if you have taken a jump and said to me, "Now - now you be my mind. Now you take the reins of me. Now you guide me and I will follow." Not that you will always be able to do it, but just the very gesture that you surrendered opens the third door.

The third door remains open. You may be against me rationally. It doesn't matter: I am in touch. You may hate me. It doesn't matter: I am in touch - because the third door always remains open. You have surrendered. And it is very difficult to close the third door - very, very difficult. It is difficult to open, it is difficult to close. It is difficult to open, but not as difficult as to close it. But that too can be closed because you have opened it. That too can be closed You can decide some day to take your surrender back. Or, you can go and surrender yourself to somebody else. But that never - almost never - happens, because with these three doors the Master is working to open the fourth door.

So there is very... almost impossible possibility that you will take your surrender back. Before you have taken it, he must have opened the fourth door which is beyond you. You cannot open it, you cannot close it. The door that you open, you remain the master to close it also. But the fourth has nothing to do with you. That is the superconscious. All these three doors are needed to open so the Master can forge a key for the fourth door, because you don't have the key, otherwise you yourself can open it. The Master has to forge; it is a forgery because the owner himself doesn't have the key.

The whole effort of a Master is to have enough time from these three doors to enter to the fourth and forge a key and open it. Once it is opened, you are no more. You cannot do anything now. You may close all the three doors - he has the key for the fourth and he is always in contact. Then even if you die, it doesn't matter. You go to the very end of the Earth, you go the Moon, does not make any difference; he has the key for the fourth. And, in fact, a real Master never keeps the key. He simply opens the fourth and throws the key in the ocean. So there is no possibility to steal it or do anything. Nothing can be done!.

I have forged a fourth-door key with many of you and have thrown it, so don't unnecessarily trouble yourself; it is futile, now nothing can be done. Once the fourth is opened, then there is no problem. All the problems exist before it, because at the very last moment the Master was getting ready the key because the key is difficult...

For millions of lives the door has remained closed; it has gathered all sorts of rust. It looks like a wall, not like a door. It is difficult to find where the lock is - and everybody has a separate lock, so there is no master key. One key won't help because everybody is as individual as your thumbprint. Nobody has that print anywhere - not in the past, never in the future. Your thumbprint will be simply yours, a single phenomenon. It never is repeated.

Your inner lock is also like your thumbprint - absolutely individual: no master key can help. That's why a Master is needed, because a master key cannot be purchased. Otherwise, once a key is made, everybody's door can be opened. No, everybody has a separate type of door, a separate type of lock - his own locking system - and you have to watch and find and forge a key, a special key for it.

Once your fourth door is open, then the Master is in constant touch with you. You may forget him completely: it makes no difference. You may not remember him: it makes no difference. The Master leaves the body: it makes no difference. Wherever he is, wherever you are, the door is open. And this door exists beyond time and Space. That's why it is the supermind: it is superconscious.

Yes, but only when the fourth door is opened. Otherwise, with the third door, he is more or less in contact. With the second door, half the time almost in contact. With the first door, only momentarily in contact.

So allow me to open your fourth door - and the fourth door is opened in a certain moment. That moment is when all your three doors are open. Even if a single door is closed, the fourth cannot be opened. It is a mathematical puzzle. And this condition is needed: your first, conscious door is open; your second door is open - your subconscious, your love - you have surrendered, you have taken a step into initiation, your third, unconscious door is open.

When all the three doors are open, when in a certain moment all the three doors are open, the fourth can be opened. So it happens that while you are awake, the fourth is difficult to open. While you are asleep, only then. So my real work is not in the day. It is in the night when you are fast asleep snoring, because then you don't create any trouble. You are so fast asleep, you don't reason against. You have forgotten about reasoning.

In deep sleep, your heart functions well. You are more loving than when you are awake, because when you are awake many fears surround you. And because of fear love is not possible. When you are fast asleep, fears disappear, love flowers. Love is a nightflower. You must have watched night queen - the flower that flowers in the night. Love is a night queen. It flowers in the night - because of you; there is no other reason. It can flower in the day, but then you have to change yourself. Tremendous change is needed before the love can flower in the day.

That's why you see that when people are intoxicated they are more loving. Go into any tavern where people have drunk too much: they are almost always loving. See two drunkards moving on the street hanging on each other's shoulder: so loving - as if one! They are asleep.

When you are not afraid, love flowers. Fear is the poison. And when deep down in sleep, you are already surrendered because sleep is a surrender. And if you have surrendered to a Master, he can enter into your sleep. You will not be even able to hear his footsteps. He can enter silently and work. It is a forgery, just like thieves enter in the night when you are asleep. A Master is a thief. When you are fast asleep and you don't know what is happening, he enters in you and opens the fourth.

Once the fourth is opened, then there is no problem. Every effort and every trouble that you can create, you can create only before the fourth is open. The fourth is a point of no return. Once the fourth is open, the Master can twenty-four hours be with you - there is no problem.

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The last question:

Question 4

Desires are dreams: they are not realities. You cannot fulfill them and you cannot suppress them, because to fulfill a certain thing it needs to be real; to suppress a certain thing also needs to be real. Needs can be fulfilled and needs can be suppressed. Desires neither can be fulfilled nor can be suppressed. Try to understand this because this is very complex.

A desire is a dream. If you understand this, it disappears. No need to suppress it. What is the need to suppress a desire? You want to become very famous: this is a dream, a desire, because the body doesn't bother to be famous. In fact the body suffers very much when you become famous. You don't know how the body suffers when a person becomes famous. Then there is no peace. Then continuously you are bothered, troubled by others because you are so famous.

Somewhere Voltaire has written that "When I was not famous, I used to pray to God every night that 'Make me famous. I am nobody, so make me somebody.' And then I become famous. Then I started to pray, 'Enough is enough: now make me again a nobody' - because before I used to go on the streets of Paris and nobody will look at me and I felt so sad. Nobody would pay any attention to me - as if I didn't exist at all. I will move into the restaurants and come out; nobody, even the waiters will not pay attention to me."

What about kings? They didn't know that Voltaire existed. "Then I became famous," he writes. "Then it was difficult to move from the streets because people will gather. It was difficult to go anywhere. It was difficult to go in a restaurant and take food at rest. A crowd will gather."

A moment came when it was almost impossible for him to get out of the house because in those days there was a superstition in Paris, in France, that if you can get a piece of cloth from a very famous man and can make a locket out of it, it is a luck. So wherever he will go, he will come naked because people will tear his clothes - and they will harm his body also. When he used to come from some other town back to Paris, or will go, police was needed to bring him home.

So he used to pray that "I was wrong. You simply make me again a nobody, because I cannot go and watch the river. I cannot go out and see the sunrise, I cannot go to the hills, I cannot move. I have become a prisoner."

Those who are famous are always prisoners. Body doesn't need to be famous; body is so absolutely okay, it needs nothing like such nonsense things. It needs simple things - food; it needs water to drink; it needs a shelter when it is too hot, to come under: its needs are very, very simple. The world is mad because of desires, not because of needs. And people go mad. They go on cutting down their needs, and growing and increasing their desires. There are people who would like to drop one meal per day, but they cannot drop their newspaper, they cannot drop going to the cinema, they cannot drop smoking. They can drop food - needs can be dropped - desires cannot be. The mind has become a despot.

Body is always beautiful: remember it. This is one of the basic rules I give to you - a rule unconditionally true, absolutely true, categorically true: body is always beautiful, mind is ugly. It is not the body that has to be changed. There is nothing to change in it. It is the mind. And mind means desiring. The body needs, but body needs are real needs.

If you want to live, you need food. Fame is not needed to live, respect is not needed to be alive. You need not be a very great man or a very great painter - famous, known to the whole world. You need not be a Nobel Prize winner to live, because Nobel Prize doesn't fulfill any need in the body.

If you want to drop needs, you will have to suppress them - because they are real If you fast, you have to suppress hunger. Then there is suppression, and every suppression is wrong because suppression is a fight inside, and you are wanting to kill the body, and the body is your anchor, your ship which will lead you to the other shore. Body keeps the treasure, the seeds of divine within you, protected. Food is needed for that protection, water is needed, shelter is needed, comfort is needed - for the body, because the mind doesn't want any comfort.

Look at the modern furniture: it is not comfortable at all, but the mind says, "This is modern, and what are you doing sitting in an old chair? The world has changed and the modern furniture has come." The modern furniture is really weird. You feel uncomfortable in it; you cannot sit in it long. But it is modern The mind says modern must be there because how can you be out of date? Be up to date.

Modern dresses are uncomfortable, but they are modern, and the mind says that you have to be with the fashion. And man has done so many ugly things because of fashion. Body needs nothing: these are mind needs, and you cannot fulfill them - never, because they are unreal. Only unreality cannot be fulfilled. How can you fulfill an unreal need which is not there in fact? What is the need of fame? Just meditate on it. Close your eyes and look. Where it is needed in the body? How it will help if you are famous? Will you be more healthy if you are famous? Will you be more silent, peaceful, if you are famous? What you will gain out of it?

Always make the body the criterion. Whenever the mind says something, ask the body, "What do you say?" And if the body says foolish, drop it. And there is no suppression in it because it is an unreal thing. How can you suppress an unreal thing? In the morning, you get out of bed and you remember a dream. Have you to suppress it or you have to fulfill it? Because in the dream, you dreamed that you have become the emperor of the whole earth. Now what to do? Should you try? Otherwise the question arises, "if we don't try, then it is a suppression." But a dream is a dream. How can you suppress a dream? A dream disappears by itself. You have to be only aware. You have to only know that it is a dream. When a dream is a dream and known as such, it disappears.

Try to find out what is a desire and what is a need. Need is body oriented; desire has no orientation in the body. It has no roots. It is just a floating thought in the mind. And almost always your body needs come from your body and your mind needs come from others. Somebody purchases a beautiful car. Somebody else has purchased a beautiful car, an imported car, and now your mind need arises. How can you tolerate this?

Mulla Nasrudin was driving the car and I was sitting with him. The moment we entered the neighborhood - it was a very hot summer day - he immediately closed all the windows of the car. I said, "What are you doing?" He said, 'What do you mean? Should I let my neighborhood people know that I don't have an air-conditioned car?"

Perspiring, I also perspired with him. It was like an oven, hot, but how can you allow your neighbors to know that you don't have an air-conditioned car? This is a mind need. The body says, "Drop it. Are you mad?" It is perspiring. It is saying, "No" Listen to the body; don't listen to the mind. Mind's needs are created by others all around you; they are foolish, stupid, idiotic.

Body needs are beautiful, simple. Fulfill body needs; don't suppress them. If you suppress them, you will become more and more ill and diseased. Never bother about the mind needs; once you know that this is a mind need... and is there much difficulty to know? What is the difficulty? It is so simple to know that this is a mind need. Simply ask the body; inquire in the body; go find the root. Is there any root for it?

You will look foolish. All your kings and emperors are foolish. They are clowns: just see. Dressed with thousands of medals, they look foolish. What they are doing? And for this they have suffered long. To attain this, they have passed through so many miseries and still they are miserable. They have to be miserable. Mind is the door to hell, and the door is nothing but desire. Kill desires. You will not find any blood coming out of them because they are bloodless.

But kill a need and there will be bloodshed. Kill a need, and you will die in part. Kill a desire; you will not die. Rather, on the contrary, you will become freer. More freedom will come out of dropping desires. If you can become a man of need and no desires, you are already on the path and the heaven is not far off.