The watermelon and the knife

Question 1:

The question has many questions in it.

First, the real gratitude can never find words to express itself.

The gratitude that can find words to express itself is just a formality -- because anything heartfelt immediately goes beyond words, concepts, language. You can live it, it can shine from your eyes, it can come as a fragrance from your whole being. It can be a music of your silence, but you cannot say it. The moment you say it, something essential dies immediately.

Words can only carry corpses, not living experiences.

So it is understandable that you find it difficult to express your thankfulness. It is not your difficulty; it is the difficulty of the experience of thankfulness itself.

And blessed are those who have such experiences which are beyond words.

Cursed are those who know nothing except words and language.

Secondly, you are saying that soon you will be going away from me and I will be only in your heart.

If I am in your heart, there is no way to go away from me. You can go away from my physical presence, but my physical presence is no longer significant if you are already feeling my presence in your heart.

You have become aware of my spiritual presence. The physical presence is only a triggering point -- if it can lead you to the spiritual presence, its work is done. Now I will be beating in your heart wherever you are, it does not matter whether you are here or on a faraway planet.

Love is the only phenomenon which destroys space, distance, time.

The chemistry of love has not been understood yet. The physicists are concerned about space and time, and they have not yet come to understand the point that there is something more in existence, where time and space both disappear.

Love is a phenomenon which knows no time, space, distance. Perhaps science will never be able to understand it. Perhaps it is beyond the scope of science. But it is not beyond the scope of poetry, of religion. It is not beyond the scope of meditation.

It is not beyond the scope of every individual who is ready to dissolve himself into love.

Science then remains a faraway echo, and love becomes the only reality.

People like Shankara, Bosanquet, Bradley, were not talking nonsense when they said that the world is an illusion. The world consists of time and space -- but these people tried to argue that the world is an illusion. They made a philosophical system propounding the illusoriness of the world. Their very effort confutes them -- if the world is illusory, then what is the need to prove that it is illusory? If something is not, it is not.

But if Shankara had to go out of this room, he would go through the door, not through the wall. The wall is real. If Bradley had to take his lunch, he would not eat stones. Because what difference can there be, when breads are illusory, and stones are also illusory? -- both are illusions.

These people were trying to prove something which they had not experienced in their own beings. It was not the experience of love; it was mere logic. Hence, hundreds of philosophers have been trying to convince the world that all is illusory, but nobody is convinced. Even they themselves are not convinced.

I am reminded of a story.

One Buddhist philosopher was brought to the court of a king. People said that he was one of the greatest logicians they had ever heard about. And he propounded the theory that everything is illusory, all is made of the same stuff that dreams are made of.

But the king was a very pragmatic, practical man. He said, "Wait. Announce that all people should go into their houses and close their doors, shops should be closed, because our mad elephant is going to come out on the road." And this Buddhist philosopher was left standing on the road, and he was crying and weeping and shouting, "Save me!

Nothing is illusory -- at least this elephant is not illusory." And the elephant was really mad.

Seeing his condition... the elephant was stopped from attacking him. The philosopher was brought back to the court and asked, "Now what do you say about your philosophy?"

He said, "Everything is illusory."

The king said, "And the elephant?"

He said, "The elephant is illusory, the philosopher who was crying and and weeping is illusory, and the king who has saved him is illusory -- everything is illusory. But please don't put me out there again -- because it is a philosophy. I am ready to argue, but you cannot argue with a mad elephant. If you have any philosophers, you bring them and I will prove that everything is illusory."

These philosophers were saying something which has a piece of truth in it. But they were trying to prove it. That's where they went wrong.

Love cannot be proved.

It can be only be experienced.

And in love, all that consists of space and time appears to be made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. It is not an argument, not a philosophy.

You can sit close to a person, your bodies are touching and yet you can be hundreds of miles away from each other.

And you can be hundreds of miles distant from each other, and yet love can bring you so close that you can melt into each other.

So remember: if you feel me in your heart, then I am coming with you. Wherever you go, I am coming with you -- and without a ticket, because they have not yet found a way to know whether a person is traveling with someone hiding in his heart.

Thirdly: the world is certainly crazy. And it is not that it has suddenly become crazy -- it has always been so.

I am not a pessimist; neither am I an optimist. I am simply a realist. I know that it is impossible to change this whole crazy world.

Even if I can change my people, my sannyasins, that is hoping too much.

So I don't want you to become a missionary, making efforts to change the crazy people.

You change yourself, and you help the fellow travelers -- the sannyasins who are on the same path, in the same search -- encourage them, help them in every possible way. There are moments of darkness, there are moments of discouragement, there are moments one feels perhaps he should not have chosen this path because it goes against the whole crazy world.

To be sane in this insane world is bound to be against it.

So help those few people who are moving towards sanity, and never ask for the impossible. This is possible -- to change a few thousand sannyasins around the world.

And perhaps if a few thousand sannyasins are changed that may create a certain magnetism, a certain gravitation, such that many more millions of people may be pulled into it.

But you should begin with yourself. If you can change yourself, that is much; and if you can help those who are on the path, it is enough for your compassion and for your love.

In the crazy world also there are many people who don't want to be the way they are, they want to be transformed. And if you find someone who has a deep longing to be transformed, help him. But never impose yourself on anybody, because if somebody wants to remain insane that is his birthright. Don't disturb him; he is already disturbed too much. Just leave him alone, and let him live his insanity. Bless him, that "Live it totally."

Perhaps by living insanity totally he may come out of it.

The problem with insane people is that they are always living it partially, they are always repressing, they are always not doing what they want to do. If they are allowed total freedom, perhaps they may come out of their insanity.

At least my people should give everybody freedom to be himself, without any judgment, without any condemnation, without calling him insane, without calling him a sinner, without sending him to hell. Just accept.

A loving person accepts the other as he is, without demanding any change.

Question 2:

The experience of ultimate blissfulness, ecstasy or orgasm has nothing to do with the other.

It happens within you; the other is only an excuse.

It can be the master, it can be anybody else.

With the master it is easier, because with the master you don't have any expectations.

With any other man you have expectations. With any other man you want to dominate; with any other man your relationship is not a relaxed phenomenon. It has nothing to do with the man -- it is your attitude, your approach that is decisive.

If your relationship with the master is full of expectations, then this experience cannot happen.

The experience can happen even with a tree, or even with the stars, or even just sitting alone in your room. It has nothing to do with anybody else. You have to understand it clearly: it is an explosion of joy within you.

But sitting alone in your room is the most difficult, because you don't have any excuse.

You cannot even smile because you will think, "Am I going crazy? There is nobody and I am smiling."

I was waiting on a railway station platform. The train was to come late in the night, and there were few other people. One man relaxing in an easy chair was attracting everybody's attention because sometimes he would make gestures as if he was throwing something away, and sometimes he would smile and sometimes he would laugh -- and the laughter would be so much that he would have to hold his belly, because the whole body was laughing.

I was just sitting by his side. I don't want to disturb anybody -- he was enjoying so much - - but it was difficult to resist the temptation to know what was happening to the man.

I asked him, "It is interference on my part, I am sorry, but I cannot resist anymore, and we have to sit here for a few hours still. What is going on? Sometimes you throw things away just by a gesture of your hand. And you make such faces, and sometimes you smile, and sometimes you have such a belly laughter that you have to hold your belly -- and you are alone."

The man said, "I don't tell the secret to anybody. But you have been sitting by my side for three hours, and I can understand how difficult it must have been for you to resist the temptation of asking. I will tell you the secret. Just come close."

So I went close. I pulled my chair close to him. And he said, "It is nothing special. I am just telling jokes to myself."

I said, "Jokes?"

He said, "Yes, I am telling jokes, but sometimes old jokes that I have told many times start, so I throw them away. And sometimes the jokes are so juicy that I cannot contain myself from laughing loudly -- but people are sleeping, and there are so many people, so I have to hold myself and my laughter. A few jokes are such they don't create laughter, but just a very gentle smile."

I said, "You are a great man. You have found a great secret."

He said, "What do you mean by finding `a great secret'?"

I said, "If everybody knew this secret, the world would be much nicer, less miserable; there would be more laughter, more joy. There is no need to wait for somebody else to tell you a joke. This is perfectly good -- you tell a joke to yourself, and if you don't like it you can simply throw it away. With somebody else telling a joke, if you don't like it you still have to smile, you have to be a hypocrite. Deep down you are saying, `Rotten!' but on the surface you are smiling and saying what a great joke it is. And you have found a tremendous freedom. You can choose your own jokes, and you can enjoy any juicy joke as many times as you want -- you can start telling it again."

The scientists have discovered that all that happens to you, happens in the centers of your brain. Excuses may be outside, but the real happening is in the seven hundred centers in the brain.

One of the most important men of this century was Delgado. For his whole life he worked on animals and how their brains function. And he was surprised to find that what you call sexual orgasm -- which the ordinary man finds to be the ultimate in pleasure -- can be managed without anybody, you can do it alone. It has nothing to do with anybody else. You can keep just a small remote controller in your pocket... because there is one center that controls your sexual pleasure.

Delgado was working on white mice. He had opened the brain of one mouse, and planted an electrode at the sex center in the mind. According to his findings, sex has nothing to do with your genitals. Sex is centered in the head -- the genitals are only branches spreading out, connected with the center.

He fixed the electrode with a remote controller, and as he would push the button the poor mouse would go into a thrilling experience, ecstasy, orgasm. Delgado could not believe it -- it had nothing to do with the genitals; it was direct.

Then he made a small machine with buttons on it, and trained the mouse to push the button if he wanted a mild orgasm, or if he wanted a very strong one, or if he wanted the strongest.

And you will be surprised: even mice are not so stupid -- when there is a choice, who will go for the mild orgasm? He had just to push the button and his whole body would go into a thrill. By his side was put his food, water, everything that he liked -- but he was not interested in anything. In one hour he had six hundred strong orgasms -- and of course he died, because you cannot survive that much, there is a limit to everything. Six hundred orgasms in one hour, ten orgasms per minute... and he forgot about drinking or food.

Delgado says that whenever we think that our pleasure, our pain, our misery, our joy is dependent on somebody outside, we are wrong.

Outside are only excuses.

And this is the teaching of all the ancient mystics: that your bliss is within you, the kingdom of god is within you.

These are different ways of saying it. Delgado speaks in scientific terminology. Jesus speaks in a religious way.

You are saying that here with me, you feel ecstatic, orgasmic experiences.

I want you to remember: I may be the excuse, but the whole doing is yours. You are absolutely independent. And it is better to remember it; then it can happen with any man, any tree, any beautiful sunset, any starry night -- or just sitting silently doing nothing in the darkness of your room. You just have to find out what happens in you.

You are focused on the outside; that's why you go on missing what is happening inside.

You think it is happening because of the master, so you are focused on the master. Then you become attached to the master -- that becomes your slavery.

When something like this happens, close your eyes and see what is happening within you, and soon you will find small clues... how it happens, in what situations. You were silent, you were relaxed, you were not thinking. Your mind was empty, and it came like a flood.

Then try it alone.

It is not happening with any other man because with any other man you are not silent.

With any other man you are constantly quarreling, fighting, nagging.

It is very difficult to find a woman who is not bitchy, and being bitchy do you think you will have ecstasy? You are bitchy, but the man will be the target. You think that he is the cause -- why did he come late? where has he been?

One day Mulla Nasruddin's wife was crying. As I entered their house, she started crying even more loudly. I said, "What is the matter?"

She said, "Now things have gone beyond control. This man" -- and she pointed towards Mulla Nasruddin, her husband -- "has been having affairs with women. There is no doubt about it, because many times I have found hairs on his coat which are not his hairs -- he is bald. The color is different."

I said, "Have you found any today?"

She said, "Not today -- that's why I am crying, because today I looked minutely and found that there was no hair. It means he has started having affairs with bald women.

This is too much, I cannot tolerate this. With women who have hair it is okay, but with women who are bald...."

It is you who are finding things which can make you joyous, which can make you miserable.

It was not happening with the man for a simple reason: first, you were always quarreling, always demanding. And these experiences are not such that they can be produced on demand -- "Bring one ecstasy just now." Nobody can do that -- except Delgado. But for that you will have to go through a small operation. In your skull he will make a small hole and put in an electrode. And he can give you a remote control -- just a small size, you can keep it in your pocket. And there will be no need to ask anybody; you can give yourself as many orgasms as you want.

But the danger is the same: what happened to the poor white mouse is going to happen to you, because the experience is so beautiful that you will not want to lose a single moment for anything else. Perhaps... the mouse is a small thing, died in one hour; you may take twenty-four hours. But more than that, you should not hope to survive.

Man can survive in misery for seventy-five years.

But in ecstasy... seventy-five years in ecstasy? Impossible.

Your organism is not made of steel. It will have a breakdown.

I can provide you an atmosphere in which it is easier to move into such spaces. If you are intelligent, you will start looking inside yourself for why these spaces are happening. And you will start on your own, alone, so that you can have those experiences without me.

If you are unintelligent, then you will start clinging to me -- and that's how so many people in the world are being exploited. If you go to someone and say, "It is because of you, master... you are the lord of my heart," you are giving that man a chance to exploit you and others.

Out of all the so-called spiritual teachers, masters, prophets, saviors, ninety-nine percent are simply frauds. But you are responsible. You have made them frauds.

I don't want anybody to cling to me, to be attached to me in any way.

My whole effort is to give you total freedom, and methods so that whatever you want, you can create it within yourself. Not even God is needed, nothing is needed -- you are enough unto yourself.

This is the great blessing of existence to every human being. You are made with such perfection -- but you never explore it, it remains dormant.

Just become an explorer of your own interiority, of your own subjectivity, and you will find thousands of ecstasies, immense blessings, unimagined, undreamt of.

You are a paradise, but have you forgotten yourself.

You are looking everywhere except within you, and that is the only place where you are going to find the treasure, the truth, the beauty.

Question 3:

My work is not like a painter's work.

It is not that I can complete the painting; it is one long painting. And I will be giving touches to the painting even when I am breathing my last -- still, the painting will be incomplete.

In life, only mad people ask for perfection. The perfectionist is another name for someone who is getting ready to become mad.

I was a guest in a maharaja's palace, and the maharaja was showing me around -- it was a beautiful palace. At a certain place he stopped and he said, "Do you see?" There was a wall, incomplete.

I said, "Why have you left it incomplete?"

He said, "The palace was made by my grandfather, and this is the tradition in our family that nothing should be made perfect. Some imperfection should be left so that the coming generation remembers that life does not allow perfection."

Imperfection is not something bad. Imperfection is the root of all growth; perfection can only be death.

Once something is perfect it is dead.

The painting that I have started will remain imperfect -- although I will go on trying to make it perfect, but it is the very nature of existence that it cannot be perfect.

And it is not my painting.

Those who are with me... it is as much their painting too. When I am gone, you have to continue to paint it. The painting has to go on growing new flowers, new foliage. Don't let it be dead at any point.

In other words, don't let it become perfect.

Make every effort to make it perfect, but don't let it become perfect.

Then there is tremendous beauty, and always flowing and growing, and there comes no full-stop.

In life we are always in the middle.

You don't know the beginning of life, you don't know the end of life. We are always in the middle and everybody has been always in the middle. It is a process, an ongoing process, a river that goes on flowing. That's the beauty of it, that's the glory of it. And not only with the painting -- with everything, remember it. Accept that imperfection is the rule, that something becomes perfect only when its death has come.

To ask for perfection is to ask for death. Death is the full-stop.

In life you can use commas, semi-colons, but never a full-stop.

In one of the poems of Rabindranath Tagore... the critics all over the world criticized it because it suddenly begins and it suddenly ends; there is no beginning and no end. It seems as if it is a middle portion -- something in the beginning is missing, something in the end is missing.

And Rabindranath was asked, "You have been criticized but why are you silent?"

He said, "Those people don't understand life. Life is always in the middle, and my poetry represents life. Out of nowhere it begins, and suddenly it disappears and evaporates without giving you the feeling of completion."

But mind is a perfectionist.

Hence the mind always feels uneasy with the heart, with love, with life, with meditation, with beauty. With everything that grows, mind is always feeling uneasy.

It is perfectly at ease with machines; they are complete.

Machines are perfect.

To me, imperfection is not something to be condemned; it is something to be rejoiced in, something to be appreciated -- because it is the principle of life itself.

Question 4:

There is no need to be puzzled.

Nothing has gone wrong.

Everything is as it should be.

The more you love me, the closer you come to me, the more you will find I am disappearing. At a certain point, you will find that where I used to be there is only love, a fragrance, a presence. And the strangest thing is that it will feel as if it is your center, it is you.

This is one way of coming close to the master.

People are different.

Somebody may have just the opposite thing: as he comes closer to me, he starts disappearing. And as he comes very close, he finds he is no more. But it does not matter.

The basic thing is that two are not allowed to enter into the door of heaven. The two should become one. Now who disappears and who remains is just a question of language, absolutely immaterial.

And you are feeling love, you are feeling blissful, you are feeling rich; so certainly everything is going right. When things are going right, they give you indications. When things are going wrong, you are miserable, you are in despair, you are in anguish. There is no need to inquire; you can simply see your own state, and you can find out whether things are going right or wrong.

If you are feeling loving, richer, fuller, contented, then everything is going right.

You are blessed.

And whether the master disappears in the disciple or the disciple disappears in the master is only a question of from where you are seeing it.

My grandfather used to say... He was not educated, he was not a thinker. He was a very practical man. But once in a while he used to say things, just out of his practical life experiences, which had a tremendous validity.

He was a cloth merchant. I used to sit by his side once in a while when he was dealing with customers -- his way of dealing with the customers was strange.

But they loved him; if he was not there they would ask "Where is he? When will he be here? -- then we will come."

The first thing he would ask the customer was, "Do you want to be cheated? It is up to you. Do you want to pay the right price, or do you want to pay more? You can decide; just tell me. If you want to pay more, then haggling is going to happen. And remember one thing...."

In my village there was a beautiful river, and very sweet watermelons used to grow by the side of the river. I have never come across such sweet watermelons in my whole life, moving around the world. The watermelons were so sweet that the name of the river became sakkar, sugar.

So he used to say to customers, "Listen, whether the watermelon falls on the knife or the knife falls on the watermelon, in each case the watermelon is cut. You are the watermelon, I am the knife. So what do you decide? -- haggling or no haggling? In haggling you will pay more. I know the exact price. I cannot go below that, above that I can say yes at any moment. But if you don't want to be cheated, I will tell you the right price exactly. Just remember the watermelon and the knife."

So whether the disciple disappears in the master or the master disappears in the disciple, it does not matter... it is just the watermelon gone!

And you are the watermelon and I am the knife. So enjoy, and feel rich.

Everything is going right.

Question 5:

Yes, the word can say the wordless but only to the chosen few, only to those who are absolutely silent.

The word coming out of silence carries around it the wordless silence.

Now the question is at the receiving end -- if it is received by a mind full of words and chattering, then the silence and the wordlessness is destroyed, you only hear the word.

But if you are silent, you hear the word and you also hear the wordless; you hear the sound, and you also experience the soundlessness.

In Mahavira's life a strange thing is reported. It is very difficult to say that it can be factual, historical. Particularly in the outside world, it will look absolutely absurd and irrational.

But here, I can tell you the story. And I can tell you that it may have happened -- because it is happening here, so there is no reason why it could not have happened in Mahavira's time. Time is irrelevant, but it can be told only to those chosen few people who have experienced something similar.

It is said that Mahavira never spoke. Although there are scriptures -- but Mahavira never spoke, he just remained silent. He had eleven disciples who were deep in silence, and there was something transferred from Mahavira in silence to the disciples. And these eleven disciples have written the scriptures; they told the people what Mahavira was saying.

So whenever it is said that Mahavira said this, remember, what he said is not a direct statement. Mahavira never spoke, he was silent. But something transpired between him and his chosen group of disciples, and those disciples became his spokesmen. They went around spreading his message.

What is the guarantee that they heard the right thing? What is the guarantee that they did not imagine that they were hearing? What is the guarantee that they are not saying things of their own? There is a guarantee, and the guarantee is that all the eleven heard the same thing.

All the eleven had to immediately write down what they heard, and because all eleven could not have imagined the same thing, it becomes an absolute guarantee: they have heard, silence has spoken to them. From silence to silence there has been a communion.

The followers of Mahavira cannot prove this.

I have asked many Jaina monks, "Can you prove this?"

And they said, "Those were the days of truth, and this is the age of darkness. Now it cannot be proved; neither can it be experienced."

To them it is simply a belief, and most often they don't mention it because it is embarrassing. If somebody raises a question, they don't have the right answer.

But in this mystery school it is happening, so there is no question of the story about Mahavira being a fiction.

As my sannyasins are growing in silence, moving deeper into meditation -- as their masks are falling down, as they are becoming more and more innocently connected with me -- first it will happen that they will hear my words, and along with my words, the wordless message.

And at the second step, there will be no need for me even to use the word. I can simply sit here, and you can hear the wordless message.

And before I leave this body, I want it to become an existential experience not only to eleven people but to thousands of people. Only that can give credibility to Mahavira's story. In twenty-five centuries Mahavira's disciples have failed, they have not been able to bring any rationality -- because it is not a question of reason, it is a question of meditation.

And you will be surprised that Mahavira's whole life is the life of meditation, and in Jainism meditation is simply forgotten. The whole religion has become a ritual.

So it is true: you can hear the wordless side by side with my words. And soon you will be able to hear the wordless even without the words. And that day will be a day of great celebration -- when I can speak to you without speaking.

A silent meeting, a communion with no noise, a music with no sounds... nothing is said but everything is heard, understood, immediately experienced.

Question 6:

"GOD IS NOT DEAD, IT'S JUST THAT HE CAN'T FIND A SPACE TO PARK HIS CAR." WHAT DO YOU THINK?

The German young people are not wrong, neither are they right; they just don't know the whole thing.

Frederick Nietzsche is also in the same position -- neither right nor wrong -- because he also does not know the whole thing. He says, "God is dead."

That is true in a way but the fact is, God committed suicide. And why did he commit suicide? -- because he could not find a parking place for his old, ancient Ford.

So they are both right.

It is that same old Ford -- the BIBLE describes it -- that God used when he drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. Drove? -- in what? It was an ancient Ford Model-T.

And it must be somewhere in Bombay, because I have been all around the world... you cannot find such ancient models as you can find in Bombay.

And the Indian government is very protective of ancient models: it does not allow new cars to come in, and it does not allow the old cars to go out.

Bombay is a great museum for old cars. If you search, you may find the first car in which God drove Adam and Eve. Where did he drive them? -- to Victoria Station!

Beyond Enlightenment