A Flute on the Lips of God

THIS POEM IS BY ROBERT GRAVES:

THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING; DEAR HEART, YOU GIVE ME EVERYTHING, WHICH LEAVES YOU MORE THAN EVERYTHING -- THOUGH THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING MIGHT JUDGE IT LEFT YOU NOTHING.

GIVING YOU EVERYTHING, I TOO, WHO ONCE HAD NOTHING, AM LEFT WITH MORE THAN EVERYTHING AS GIFTS FOR THOSE WITH NOTHING WHO NEED, IF NOT OUR EVERYTHING, AT LEAST A LOVING SOMETHING.

Question 1:

Chandrikanta Bharti, the source is always the same. We are just like rays of the same sun.

The source of existence is what we call God; it is better to call it the ultimate source.

From there everything comes, and to there everything returns.

But the man who starts thinking himself separate from the source is bound to become miserly. Not knowing that he is part of the source, he becomes very small, afraid to give.

Then his mathematics is: if you give you will have less; if you go on giving, one day you will be a beggar.

Not knowing about the infinite source is the cause of our miserliness. And to be a miser is to be in misery, because the person who cannot give becomes incapable of receiving. The person who cannot give becomes closed -- he is afraid to give. He has to be very cautious to keep his windows and doors closed, tightly closed, so nothing escapes from him. But these are the same doors from where things come. If you keep your doors closed, the sunrays will not reach you, the wind will not come to you; you will not be able to see the stars and the flowers, and the fragrance will not float into your being. The miserly person is bound to be in misery -- he is cut off. He lives as if he were a tree without roots, ungrounded, uprooted. His life is nothing but a process of slow dying; he does not know anything of abundant life.

Jesus says to his disciples, "Come, follow me and I will give you abundant life." What does he mean by abundant life? He simply means that if your ego can be surrendered, if you can drop the idea of being separate from existence, in that very dropping you become open -- open to give, open to receive. And the ultimate miracle is: the more you give, the more you receive; the more you give, the more you become worthy of receiving.

It is like a well. You can lock up the well, you can cover it up in fear -- maybe in the coming year there are not going to be any rains. It is better, advisable, to preserve the water in your well, to prevent your neighbors, to prevent everybody from drinking or taking water from your well. You can keep the well closed, but when the time of need arises you will be surprised: the well water will no longer be worth drinking, it will have become poisoned. And, moreover, the well will have lost its springs.

If you go on drawing water from the well, the springs go on feeding it. The more you draw the water, the bigger the springs which go on opening up. Your well is just a small window in the ocean, a faraway window; it is connected with the ocean. If you create a vacuum in the well, if you go on emptying it, then the waters will be rushing in from all sides to fill it up. Nature abhors a vacuum -- physically, spiritually, on every dimension and plane.

Be empty, and you will be surprised: the emptier you are, the more full you will be.

Hence, by giving you don't have less; by giving you have more. By giving you don't become a beggar; by giving you become an emperor.

Gautam the Buddha came to visit Vaishali, one of the big, beautiful capitals of those days. The king of Vaishali was very egoistic: he was not willing to go to receive Buddha in his capital.

His chief minister was an old man his father's age. He had looked after the king's affairs for his whole life since he was just a child, because when the king was a child his father had died. He was almost like a father to him, and the king had great respect for the old man. The old man said, "If you don't go to receive Buddha, then take my resignation!"

The king was puzzled, he could not believe it. Why this insistence? He said, "Why should a king go to receive a beggar?"

The old man laughed and he said, "It is just the opposite! You are the beggar and he is the king, and the beggar has to go to receive the king. He is the king because he has given; he is the king because he goes on giving. The more he has given the more he has. Either see the point or here is my resignation, because I cannot serve a fool!"

The king understood the point. He went, he fell at the feet of Buddha and he said, "Excuse me, forgive me! I had always thought that you were just a beggar; now I can see that I am a beggar because I go on clinging to whatsoever small things I have got. By not clinging you have declared your real power, your mastery."

Clinging shows that you are not really the master but a slave.

The king asked Buddha, "Bless me, so that one day I can also become an emperor like you."

This poem by Robert Graves is beautiful. Poets come far closer to the truth than the philosophers, the theologians, the priests, the scholars, the so-called learned people. Poets are a little bit crazy; that's why they can have a few glimpses of the beyond. They are not logical; hence they can comprehend something which is bigger than logic. Theologians, philosophers, scholars -- they are just fools hiding their foolishness. And it is because of these so-called learned people that the world has become so poor physically, spiritually, in every way.

Just the other day I was reading a news item from Pakistan. It says that great scholars of morality are nowadays busy banishing the word ISHQ, love, from prose and poetry prescribed for university students in Pakistan.

Ishq is far more significant than the word "love." Love is only one of the dimensions of ishq. "Love" means of the world. "Ishq" has two aspects: either it can be an ordinary love, the love between a man and a woman, or it can be a love between man and existence.

Banishing the word, the very word "ishq," from all prose and poetry prescribed for the university courses is such a foolish idea. And these are the great scholars of morality! I was puzzled because if you banish the word "ishq," then particularly in the language that is spoken in Pakistan -- that is the official language of Pakistan, Urdu -- there will not be anything left at all, because the whole of Urdu poetry and prose is centered on the word "ishq." All the great poets, from Mir and Ghalib to Iqbal, will have to be banished. In fact, no other language of the world has such beautiful poetry as Urdu. Urdu is tremendously expressive. In just two small lines, Urdu can say more than any other language can manage to say in a whole page. It is very telegraphic, and it is full of love.

Banish the word "love" and you banish all the great poets, all the great mystics. You will have to banish all the Sufis because they talk about love. And they are not only banishing poetry and prose devoted to love, even the word love, "ishq," has to be removed -- even the mention of the word!

These are the fools who have been dominating humanity for centuries. They would like to destroy even the possibility of love. There is a certain logic in it, because humanity up to now has existed in a very insane way. It has continuously been preparing for war.

There are only two periods in history: either people are fighting -- that is war time, hot war -- or people are preparing for the war that is going to happen sooner or later. You can call it peace time, but it is not peace time at all; it is only a gap between two wars. It is needed because unless you prepare, how are you going to fight? It is cold war.

The whole of human history up to now can be divided into two periods: hot war and cold war. And because man has been continuously fighting, destroying, murdering, there is no possibility of growing roses of love. We have to make factories for war; we have to create soldiers, not lovers.

My sannyasins are lovers, not soldiers.

They herald a new beginning.

To me, love is synonymous with God.

These words of Graves are tremendously significant:

THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING....

They look a little crazy because they are illogical, they are unmathematical -- but they are absolutely true. They transcend ordinary economics and its laws; they indicate a meta- economics.

THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING....

Beware! While the time is there, give, give as much as you can, give whatsoever you can.

Sing a song, share a joke, dance! Give whatsoever you can give. It costs you nothing, but it will bring you more and more joys.

Existence goes on repaying you tremendously. Whatsoever you give to existence, it returns a thousandfold; it comes back to you. You give one flower, and a thousand flowers shower on you. Don't be clingers. If you really want to be rich, if you want to have an enriched inner world, then learn the art of giving.

THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING; DEAR HEART, YOU GIVE ME EVERYTHING, WHICH LEAVES YOU MORE THAN EVERYTHING -- THOUGH THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING MIGHT JUDGE IT LEFT YOU NOTHING.

GIVING YOU EVERYTHING, I TOO, WHO ONCE HAD NOTHING, AM LEFT WITH MORE THAN EVERYTHING AS GIFTS FOR THOSE WITH NOTHING WHO NEED, IF NOT OUR EVERYTHING, AT LEAST A LOVING SOMETHING.

I don't have any other source than you have, but you are not ready to accept that source; it goes against your ego. You want to be an island unto yourself, and that is your misery, that is your poverty. Your soul will remain undernourished. You will not know how beautiful existence is, how blissful every moment can be, what an ecstasy it is just to breathe and to be.

Give, give for giving's sake.

Share for sharing's sake.

Don't ask anything in return, because then it becomes a business -- and love is not a business. In fact, there is no need to be worried whether anything returns or not, because the very giving is such an ecstasy that who cares whether anything returns or not? Be obliged to the person who receives anything from you. Don't think that he has to be obliged to you. That is wrong, that is absolutely wrong. That is still clinging to the miser's mind.

You can be as vast as God himself, but your vastness is possible only if you start giving.

And it is not a question of what you give; just a smile or just a gesture of love is enough.

It costs nothing to be loving, to be kind, and still it brings you a great harvest -- thousands of flowers start blossoming in your being.

Chandrikanta Bharti, you ask me, "What is the source of your infinite spring of giving?"

I am not the source, I am not at all, because the more you are, the less is the flow from the source; the less you are, the more the flow from the source.

When YOU are not at all, then you are just a hollow bamboo which becomes a flute on the lips of God. Then the song starts flowing. And to sing the song of God, to allow God to sing a song through you, is the greatest joy of life.

The second question:

Question 2:

Corry, to know is one thing and to imagine is totally different. Imagination can deceive you, it can go on giving you false coins. But remember: All that glitters is not gold.

Imagination can give you very glittering coins, but they will not be real gold. You will have to know, and my knowing cannot be of any help to you. The moment I share my knowing with you, only imagination will be triggered in you; you will start imagining.

There is no need to ask me why it happened originally; you can go to the origin within yourself and see why it happens. It is not a question of going into the past, going back to Adam and Eve; you have to go within yourself, because it is happening every moment.

You are at the source, at the very origin of things, and still you are conditioned. And if you can watch the process within yourself, you will have known the whole of history.

Then you will be able to understand the story, the biblical story, which is really beautiful and significant, of how Adam and Eve became conditioned.

It was God the Father who started the whole nonsense....

In the Garden of Eden there were millions of trees, and he pointed out two trees in particular -- the fruits from these trees were not to be eaten. One was the Tree of Knowledge, and the other was the Tree of Immortal Life. My feeling is that if God had not prohibited it, Adam and Eve would never have been able to find those two trees in that tremendously vast garden. But because he pointedly said to them, "Don't eat the fruit from these two trees," naturally they became obsessed. It must have started their fantasies. They must have started dreaming about those two trees. They must have started thinking, "Why has God prohibited us? There must be something in it."

I was a small child and my father told me, "Listen, you are mixing with a few people who smoke cigarettes -- don't ever start smoking!"

I said, "You have started me on it! I have never thought about it; in fact I have always thought how foolish these people are. Rather than breathing the pure air, they waste money and breathe smoke! Taking the smoke in and out looks very stupid!"

Things like that have always looked stupid to me. From my very childhood I have never taken part in any game -- volleyball, football...because I cannot imagine what the point is!

You throw the ball from here to the other side; they throw the ball back to this side. You can have two balls and both go home! What is the point of it? And people are perspiring - - and not only the players, but the others who have gathered to watch...!

So I told my father, "I was never interested, but now, because you tell me not to smoke I am going to! Why are you preventing me? If there is nothing in it, can't you trust my intelligence? And if YOU can't trust my intelligence, why should I trust your intelligence? It has to be a mutual understanding. You are not trusting my intelligence -- you are telling me not to smoke. If it is foolish I am not going to do it myself; if it is not foolish then nobody can prevent me. And how long can you prevent me? In what ways can you prevent me?"

And he understood the point. He was a rare man in many ways. He brought home a packet of cigarettes, handed it over to me and he said, "You experiment, you be finished with it! I have understood your point."

And I tried and I was finished. Tears started coming to my eyes, I started coughing, and I could not understand why people should do such stupid things and torture themselves.

Since then, whenever I see anybody smoking, I think he must be an ascetic, a great saint doing some penance!

But Adam and Eve were treated by God the Father as every father treats every child. No father trusts the intelligence of the child. And in fact, the child has more intelligence than the father because the father has lived, experienced many things. His mirror has become covered with many experiences, with much knowledge. His clarity is no longer the same as that of the child. The child is utterly perceptive, he can see immediately; there is nothing to hinder him. The father's intelligence is covered with much dust.

But the father on his side feels afraid. He thinks the child is still a child who does not know what to do, what not to do. He may go astray. Out of his concern, he prevents -- and that's how conditioning begins.

The biblical story is significant. It is not an historical story because the world never began in that sense, it has always been there. There is no beginning and no end. The whole idea of beginning and end is absurd; the world is eternal. But the story is significant, and it is repeated in each child's life. It is a psychological story, not historical, of tremendous importance. Every father, every mother is doing the same.

I have come across thousands of parables, but there is no parable comparable to this story. The Father was anxious that Adam and Eve should not become interested in two things: one was the Tree of Knowledge...because the moment you become knowledgeable you lose your intelligence.

That's my whole teaching: unburden yourself of knowledge so that you can again discover the purity of your intelligence. Wisdom is freedom from knowledge. And God wanted Adam to be wise, not knowledgeable. He wanted him to be intelligent, not an intellectual. Hence he prohibited him: "Don't eat from the Tree of Knowledge."

This is significant; it shows the father's concern, his love, but it also shows that he does not trust the child's own perceptiveness. No father ever trusts, no mother ever trusts, howsoever old the son may be.

Makima's mother, Shunyo, is old. She must be over sixty-five, and HER mother who is ninety goes on writing letters to her: "You are still a fool! What are you doing there?

Come home! Have you gone crazy or something? I have always known that you would do something like this!"

Now, the ninety-year-old mother giving messages to the seventy-year-old daughter...! But one can see the point because the distance is the same -- twenty years' distance. When Shunyo was one year old, the mother must have been twenty-one years old; now she is seventy, and the mother is ninety. When she will be ninety, if the mother is still alive she will be one hundred and ten -- the difference will remain the same! And the mother will always go on thinking in those terms -- that she is a fool, she does not know anything.

Now what is she doing with these orange people and meditating and wearing orange clothes? She has gone crazy! The mother wants to protect her.

The Father was concerned for Adam and Eve, and his concern is significant: "Don't become knowledgeable." It is a tremendously meaningful story, because if you become knowledgeable you will lose your intelligence. Intellectuals have no intelligence at all.

I have come across thousands of intellectuals, the so-called intelligentsia, and they are the most stupid people you can ever come across. You will find farmers, gardeners, carpenters, who are far more intelligent than professors, theologians, scholars. They are full of rubbish! Of course, they have read much and they can repeat all that they have read; they have great information, but information is not wisdom. Information can be collected by a computer, and far more efficiently, but a computer is never wise. I don't think there will come a time when you will come across a computer who has become a buddha! It is not going to happen ever. Yes, a computer can become an Albert Einstein, certainly, there is no doubt about it. And he will function far better than Albert Einstein, because it will be just a mechanical thing.

Mathematics is mechanical, but love is not mechanical. No computer is going to fall in love, no computer is going to experience beauty, no computer is going to understand truth. Yes, facts it can accumulate....

God wanted Adam and Eve not to become computers; hence he told them, "Beware of this tree." But his telling them not to eat from this Tree of Knowledge became a temptation.

That's how conditioning begins: with should nots, with all good intentions -- but the ultimate result is harmful. Even God committed the same mistake; he had to commit it if he was to be a father. And he is the supreme father, hence he committed the supreme mistake!

And the poor serpent is unnecessarily dragged into the story. It has nothing to do with the serpent. How can the serpent seduce Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge? God had already done the basic work; he had already triggered their desires for knowledge. The serpent only convinced them about their own suspicions.

The serpent told them something very significant. He told them, "God has prohibited you from eating of this tree because he is afraid if you become knowledgeable you will be just as great as he is. So he wants to eat the fruit of this tree himself and he does not want you to eat from the same tree, so you will remain always inferior and lower."

Now the ego is set on fire! And the logic seems to be very relevant. Adam and Eve are convinced that this must be the cause. Knowledge cannot be a bad thing -- how can knowledge be bad? God must have been afraid; that's why he has prohibited it.

And the serpent told them, "He has also prohibited you from eating from a second tree, because if you eat from it you will also become immortal just like God. Then there will be no difference between you and God; you will be equal."

Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. They were not given the chance to eat from the other tree. But why had God prohibited them from eating from the other tree? There is also some significance on his side. God wanted them to live in the immediate, because that is true life -- to live now and here. The moment you start thinking of immortality, you enter into the world of the future, you enter into the world of time. You lose contact with the real moment, you lose your grounding in the now; that's how mind is created.

These are the two ways in which the mind is created. These are the two parents -- father and mother. They give birth to the mind. One is the desire for the future -- the desire, the ultimate desire, to become deathless so that the future is absolutely certain. And the other is the desire to accumulate knowledge. These two desires function as father and mother for the mind. The mind is the child of these two desires meeting; the mind is a by- product.

God was basically right. He wanted Adam and Eve to live in the present, because reality is always present. But he was wrong psychologically. To tell them not to eat from the Tree of Immortality made them suspicious, and the suspicion was exploited by the serpent. Of course, they were thrown out before they could eat from the second tree, but since then man has been searching for immortality. And the search still goes on.

Science is still working continuously to find a way to prolong life -- to make it longer and longer and longer, and then ultimately to make life immortal. And now science says that the body has no need to die; maybe they have come very close to the Tree of Knowledge and to the Tree of Immortality. Science says the body can go on renewing itself. If it can renew itself for seventy years, why not seven hundred years? Or if some parts become useless, then they can be replaced.

Sooner or later science is going to replace many of your parts. Then it will be very simple. If something goes wrong, you go to the workshop and your parts can be replaced.

Your heart is not functioning well -- you go to the garage and a plastic heart can be implanted in you. Slowly slowly, all the parts will become plastic, because plastic is the most immortal thing in existence. It goes on living and living. You cannot destroy plastic.

There is no natural process for plastic to dissolve into the earth. That is creating a problem for ecologists, because so many plastic bottles and jugs and toys are gathering under the earth, in the riverbeds, in the ocean. There is a danger that because plastic is never reabsorbed by the earth like everything else, it creates a hindrance to the natural rhythm and cycle of nature. Sooner or later there will be so much plastic that it will hinder all natural processes. Plastic is very immortal!

But just think of a man who slowly slowly becomes plastic: his head goes cuckoo, it is changed; his heart is not functioning well, it is changed; his hands, his legs...slowly slowly all is changed. Nothing is left of the old man, just the name, the label.

Once I saw Mulla Nasruddin with a very beautiful umbrella, and I asked him, "Nasruddin, when did you purchase it?"

He said, "I have not purchased it, it is very old, twenty years old."

So I said, "It is a miracle -- twenty years old! It looks so fresh and so new! How did you manage that for twenty years?"

He said, "I am absolutely certain it is twenty years old. Of course, it got changed at least two hundred times. Just the other day, when I was coming out of the mosque, it got changed again -- but it is twenty years old."

Man can be changed, and still the label will remain the same. Man is coming closer and closer to discovering the secret of immortality. Scientists say that if we can reprogram the basic cell out of which man grows, then everything is possible. When your mother's and your father's basic cells meet and you are created, many things are determined at that moment. For example, what kind of body you will have, what kind of hair you will have, how long you will live. Those two cells meeting and merging decide it; they are programmed. Their meeting becomes a new program: you will live seventy years, eighty years.... If that program can be changed -- for example if they can be told that you will live seven hundred years -- just a little change, in some hormones, in some chemicals, that will do the miracle. And it is very close. My feeling is that within this century we will be able to discover the secret.

Since Adam was thrown out of the garden he has been working, looking, searching, for some way to find the secret of immortality. In the past, alchemists were doing the same -- trying to find the way, some alchemical way, for man to be immortal. And now science is trying to do the same. The obsession is still there.

You ask me, Corry, "How did conditioning start originally?" It starts with every child, because the parents would like the child to be just a carbon copy of them. Their ego would like the child to represent them -- their philosophy, their religion, their ideology, their politics, their nationality, their race, everything. The child has to be the carrier, the vehicle, the medium of all their ambitions and desires, of all their frustrations, failures.

They are hoping, "We will die but part of us will live in the child" -- so program the child in such a way that "what we have not been able to achieve, he will achieve."

They are trying to enforce their ambitions on the child; that's how conditioning begins.

They are not allowing the child to be himself. No parent ever allows the child to be himself; it has not happened up to now. That's why humanity is living in such misery:

because no child is allowed to be himself. How can he be happy? Happiness happens only when you are authentically yourself.

And don't ask me how it happened in the very beginning, because there has been no beginning. Whenever a child is born there is a beginning; otherwise existence has continued forever and forever.

And you also ask, "And if existence is just a flowing, why is it important that many people become enlightened?" That's why: existence is just a flowing, and many people are not flowing.

Only the buddhas know how to flow. The enlightened person knows how to flow, how to be in tune with existence, how to relax, how to let go. The others are fighting, not flowing; they are pushing the river. And you are taught to fight, to compete, to struggle, to achieve, to be ambitious; to be this, to be that, to become a president or a prime minister. You are told from the very beginning until you come back from the university that you have to become this -- and others are deciding it. Nobody is bothered about your intrinsic nature.

It is as if marigolds are being educated in the university and told, "Become roses." They will go berserk! They cannot become roses; that is not possible. At the most they can pretend -- they can pretend that they are roses, they can put up masks. They will become deceivers, hypocrites, but deep down they will know, "We are marigolds" -- and they will hate that they are marigolds. But that's what they are. They cannot become roses because that is not in their nature, and they cannot allow their marigolds to dance in the sun because that is against their education.

You have created a real problem; now the person will always remain schizophrenic. If he tries to be a rose he will know that he is just a hypocrite. If he tries to be a marigold he will know that he is falling short of the ambitions of his parents, teachers, professors, priests, politicians. He will feel guilty. You will not allow him to rest in any way; either he will feel guilty or he will feel unnatural. In both ways he will remain tense, anxiety ridden, full of anguish. The same energy that might have become a dance, a song, an ecstasy, has become poisoned. It is now only anguish and nothing else, an agony and nothing else.

Enlightenment does not mean any ambition. If it is an ambition, then again you will start fighting for it. Enlightenment simply means being in a state of let-go. Enlightenment simply means undoing what the society has done to you. What your parents have imposed upon you, throw it away; what the society has conditioned you to be, put it aside. Reassert your being. Love yourself and respect yourself, and try to be just yourself.

Socrates says, "Know thyself." That is not possible. First BE thyself; otherwise how will you know? If you try right now to know yourself you will not be able to; you will know somebody else who you are not but you are supposed to be. You will know only that which you are supposed to be; you will not know yourself.

Hence I say to you, first BE thyself. And the miracle is, if you ARE just yourself, knowing is not difficult at all; that is very simple. Being oneself, one knows automatically who one is.

Enlightenment is not a desire, is not a goal, is not an ambition. It is a dropping of all goals, a dropping of all desires, a dropping of all ambitions. It is just being natural. That's what is meant by flowing.

You ask, "And if existence is just a flowing" -- yes it is -- "why is it important that many people become enlightened?"

It is important because people are not natural -- they have not been allowed to be natural.

Your parents are sitting on your shoulders, they are guiding you. Maybe they are dead, but still their voices are alive in you. Try to do something against your father, and you will immediately hear his voice saying: "Don't do this, you are offending me!" Try to do something which your mother has put inside you, and immediately you will hear your mama's voice -- immediately! Whether she is alive or not, that's not the question; it's now inbuilt in you. It is there like a gramophone record; it will immediately start playing. It will immediately say, "Stop! Think of your dead mother! She never wanted you to do this. Be respectful at least to your dead mother! You were never respectful while she was alive, but at least now one should be respectful towards the dead."

This is bondage. But everybody is living in bondage, because everybody who brought you up wanted to have power over you, to enjoy the mastery over you. And children are the most helpless people in the world, the most exploited class. It is not the proletariat who are the most exploited class, it is not women who are the most exploited class. It is the children who are the most exploited class -- and so helpless. The proletariat can revolt -- they have revolted in Russia, in China and in other communist countries. The women all over the world are making efforts to revolt, but it is impossible to imagine how children will revolt. They are so helplessly dependent on their parents, they cannot think of any revolt. And unless revolution happens in them all other revolutions are going to be superficial. The basic conditioning, the basic imprisonment is created in childhood when the child is so helpless that he has to accept whatsoever conditions you put upon him just to survive.

Corry, enlightenment simply means putting aside all that has been imposed upon you forcibly. It is coming back to your nature; it is a second birth. Jesus says, "Unless you are born again you shall not enter into my kingdom of God." That's what he means.

In the East, particularly in India, the person who comes to know existence is called DWIJ. Dwij means twice born, one who has attained the second birth. The first birth is destroyed by others; now you can have a second birth and it will not be destroyed by others because now you are on your feet, strong enough to survive.

You ask me, "Why do you make the effort, or don't you make any? And is your being here, and everything, also just flowing?"

I am not making any effort at all. It is not an effort, it is not work, it is just play. I am enjoying it -- it is a beautiful drama. These orange people, this Buddha Hall...this is just a stage and all my sannyasins are just actors. It is just a play. It is rooted in playfulness. I am not doing anything. I am the laziest person you can find in the world. That's why I say I am the lazy man's guide to enlightenment!

The third question:

Question 3:

Sharon, I am just crazy! I was just fooling around with the idea of enlightenment and went a little too far!

An unhappy elderly woman was pushing a baby in a pram down the street when she encountered an acquaintance.

"Whose baby is it, Mrs. Johnson?" asked the other. "I know it is not yours."

"It is, my dear," said Mrs. Johnson; "it is my husband. He was fooling around with a rejuvenation remedy and he went too far!"

The last question:

Question 4:

Gandharva, why not? The last time they missed Jesus; this time they don't want to miss!

It is so simple. And they are very intelligent people: once they missed -- and they really missed! -- and now they feel very sorry because if they had been with Jesus they would have been doing the greatest business in the world! They feel very jealous of the Vatican.

They cannot believe how these dumb Italians defeated them! It was basically their right.

This time they don't want to miss. They have arrived.

A Jewish father and his son are standing in front of a cathedral.

"Father, what is this house with the high steeple?"

"Son, you should know this. It is a church."

"What is a church?"

"Well, the Christians say that God lives there."

"But, Father, isn't God living in Heaven?"

"Yes, son, you're right. But this is where he does his business."

Gandharva, they are really some of the most intelligent people on the earth; hence they can see what is going to happen.

During the second world war, a German officer went into Moishe Finkelstein's grocery shop to buy some matches.

"Matches!" he ordered.

Finkelstein passed him some matches.

"I want the tips on the left side instead of the right!" the officer demanded.

Finkelstein acted as though he was finding another box of matches, but instead he gave the officer back the same box of matches, reversed.

Satisfied, the officer left the shop. Once outside, he said to his friend, "Fucking Jews -- always trying to fool you!"

Enough for today.

Come, Come, Yet Again Come