Every moment god knocks

Question 1:

IT IS NOT ABOUT HUMPTY DUMPTY, It is about you. It is about humanity, the human mind: the fragmented human mind which is not a unity but has become a crowd - a crowd fighting amongst itself, a crowd continuously in war. Look at your own mind and you will find the Humpty Dumpty there. There is no center in your mind. No master exists there, only servants. And each servant has the false idea that he is the master. Each servant has few moments when he is enthroned. He becomes the master: he behaves like a master and promises like a master. Then the next moment his kingdom is gone. Another servant has taken over. The other servant does not even know who the first servant was. He has never heard what the first servant has been promising. How can he fulfill the promises?

When you love a woman or a man, you promise a thousand and one things which you cannot fulfill. You say, "I will be yours for ever and ever." The next moment, when the love has withered. you do not have even a memory of what you had said. If somebody reminds you, you will shrug your shoulders. You will say, "I must have said it in spite of me. I must not have been in my right senses. I was intoxicated, hypnotized." Or, you will say, "Those words were only poetry.

They don't mean much."

For one moment, when you are in love, the servant'love', the emotion'love', sits on the throne, has become the king. The next moment, when love is gone and hate is enthroned, you are totally different. This goes on, the wheel goes on moving. Each moment, go within. You will find a new king being enthroned and the old being thrown out.

You only think that you are. While this state of the mind, this Humpty Dumpty state continues, you cannot say meaningfully that you are. You are a multitude.

It happened: a man came to Jesus and wanted to become his disciple and follow him to the very end of his life. Jesus asked him: "First, please tell me: what is your name? who are you? " In that impact, in that shock, in that light, in that dazzling light of Jesus, the man became aware that he is not. Who will follow?

Who will go with Jesus to the very end of life?

A thought is not a permanent thing. By the time you become aware of it, it has gone. It has faded, withered away. Another thought takes its place. It is a continuous process.

He became aware that he is not. He became aware that he has not one single name. He looked at Jesus and in that impact he said, "My name? You ask my name? My name is legion - a thousand and one are my names. And I don't know really which one is mine."

Watch your life for twenty-four hours. A thousand and one persons you will find within yourself. Then you will become aware that you are not, yet. You are yet unborn; you are still in the womb. The body has come out of the womb, but not the soul. As a body you are born; but as a soul, not yet. As yet, you are hesitating to be born; as yet, you are afraid to be born. As yet, you have not decided to be born.

Each birth is preceded by a death. You are born as a body outside the womb. The life of inside the womb dies before you are born to the life of the outside. And you can be born as ONE, only when all the Humpty Dumptys in you die, when all thoughts disappear, when all moods disappear. When the sky is no more clouded, is empty - when you are empty - the Humpty Dumpty disappears.

When I talk about emptiness, remember, I'm not talking about a negative emptiness. Whenever I say'empty', I mean so empty that you are full. The sky is empty AND is full. Full of itself, empty of the clouds. Empty of the foreign element, full of its own nature.

When you are empty of all thoughts, then you are. When you are empty of all moods, then for the first time you are born, resurrected. Then the son of man that Jesus talks about is born. You have become perfect.

Right now you are a crowd, a madhouse. And yes, it is true: HUMPTY DUMPTY SAT ON, A WALL. You are also sitting on a wall from where any moment you can fall. The ego always goes on finding a higher and higher place to sit; it wants to be at the peak.

HUMPTY DUMPTY SAT ON A WALL. The ego is always sitting on the wall.

And the higher the wall goes, the more dangerous is going to be the fall.

HUMPTY DUMPTY HAD A GREAT FALL. Whenever the ego falls, it falls tremendously - because it was rising and rising. higher and higher, There comes a point where you cannot balance yourself at that height. The whole life is a politics to reach higher and higher. The whole life is a desire and ambition to attain to the highest peak, the Everest - higher than anybody else. But then when you fall, it is going to be a great fall.

HUMPTY DUMPTY HAD A GREAT FALL/ALL THE KING'S HORSES/ AND ALL THE KING'S MEN/COULDN'T PUT HUMPTY DUMPTY/TOGETHER AGAIN. Then nobody can put you together. ALL THE KING'S HORSES AND ALL THE KING'S MEN.... Even if the whole world is engaged in putting you together again, it is impossible. The job is impossible.

Every day I encounter people who would like me to put them together.

Impossible! Nobody can put you together, because that togetherness will again be putting you on a wall. That togetherness will again be of the false. That togetherness will again be like a dream, and beneath it the fragments will be continuously fighting; the war will continue.

Yes, somehow it can be managed. That is what psychoanalysts go on doing in the West. They are putting Humpty Dumpty together. Whenever somebody has a fall from the wall.... The wall may be Washington, or the Wall Street of New York; it may be Madison Avenue, or Delhi, or Moscow - the wall may be anything. Whatever gives you a feeling that you are somebody, is the wall.

Whenever somebody falls, psychoanalysts try to put him together. That is what they call'making him normal again'. He has become abnormal. Now he cannot hold his parts together: the parts are moving away from him, from each other.

He's like a cloud dispersing. They force him from every side; they put him back.

They pull him to the earth, they try somehow to give him a readjustment.

This is where western psychoanalysis and eastern approaches differ, and differ tremendously. In the East, if you go to a Buddha, he is not going to put you together. He will say, "Blessed you are that you fell. Now, leave those parts there.

No need to put them together. It is good, it is God's blessing that you became maladjusted" - because only in deep maladjustment does a possibility of revolution exist.

When you are adjusted you are not even aware that you are wasting your life - in the club, in the marketplace, or even in the temple. If you are a respectable citizen that means you are still sitting on the wall. You have not yet had the great fall. Respectable citizen: respected by people, your integrity well-known.

And what sort of integrity is possible to you? It cannot be more than a facade! a camouflage, a false face. The face seems to be one, but behind the mask there are a thousand and one masks hidden. The fall is imminent, any day.

Then psychoanalysts will come together. All the king's horses and all the king's men will try to put you together, they will try to bind you together. But they are not helping you. They are really trying to make you normally abnormal, ordinarily mad, lukewarm mad, so you can fit with the other mad people who are around. They will give tranquilizers, they will give you electric shocks, they will do many things to help you to be back to your own self. And you don't have any self. You never had!

A great fall is a great blessing. Don't try to put the parts together. Leave them there and escape. If you come to a Buddha, he will say, "Leave those parts there, Good that they have fallen apart. Now you rise beyond them." You come out of that Humpty Dumptyness, uncorrupted by it. You become a sky.

Don't be bothered about the clouds. Don't be bothered about thoughts. Become awareness. In awareness, you are not put together. Suddenly, you realize that you have always been together. That Humpty Dumptyness was only on the periphery. Inside, the deepest core, the kernel of your being. has always been one. It has never been otherwise, but you are unaware of it.

When you come to me, I am not here to put you together. In fact, if you come to me feeling that you ARE together, I will push you: push you hard, to the brink of the wall, so you have a great fall. Once scattered, there is a possibility. Once scattered, you can transcend. You can watch what has happened.

The real, innermost core is one. That's what we call ATMAN the supreme self.

That's what we call'Christ'. Jesus is Humpty Dumpty: Christ is the center, Gautama Siddhartha is the Humpty Dumpty; Buddha - that is the innermost center. Vardhman is Humpty Dumpty; Mahavir is the center.

Question 2:

Remain with it.

There are two types of emptinesses. One, negative emptiness; another, positive emptiness.

Negative emptiness is a loneliness. You miss the presence of something or somebody. You are not enjoying the purity of aloneness. You are missing.... The wife has died and now you feel empty. Her presence was a sort of filling, her presence was giving you a feeling of fullness. Now she is dead. Now you feel empty, you miss her. This emptiness is negative.

Then there is a positive emptiness. Positive emptiness does not miss the absence of somebody else. On the contrary, it cherishes, relishes, the presence of oneself.

When you are sitting alone - just enjoying yourself, just delighting in being - you are empty, but this emptiness is positive.

The negative emptiness is of the devil and the positive emptiness is of God. Both are empty, but there is a tremendous difference in quality. One has to move towards the positive emptiness. And this is what is happening.

"I feel empty... and a deep yearning. And there seems no way to let go." There is no need. Just allow this emptiness; don't try to change it. That's how the mind enters again from the back door.

The Humpty Dumpty has gone out. Now, remain with this emptiness. Relish it!

It is beautiful; there is nothing like it. It is innocence; it is silence; it is stillness; it is virginity. When the Humpty Dumpty goes out for the first time, because you have never known this positive emptiness - you have always known the negative emptiness - you misinterpret. You think this, too, is empty: the same negative emptiness. You want to come out of it.

There is no need. Relax in it: BE it. Allow it, and don't try in any way to change it or modify it.

Difficult! This is the death, the real death out of which the resurrection comes.

This is the cross, the real cross. And everybody has to carry it daily. And not only to carry it daily, but dancingly - welcoming it, feeling a deep gratitude.

When you enter into this emptiness for the first time, you feel that this is the same emptiness. Natural, because you have never known it before. Allow it, remain with it - that's what I would like to say to you. Don't try in any way to think beyond it. Be it! Suddenly the focus changes, the gestalt changes. The attention shifts: you look into it and it is no longer loneliness; it is aloneness. It is no longer isolation; it is infinite presence. You have disappeared... and in that disappearance, God has appeared.

God and you are just gestalts. If you are there, God remains hidden. When you disappear, He becomes manifest. When you come back again, He becomes hidden. Your very presence hides Him; your presence functions as a cloud.

Enjoy it, allow it... love it. And remain more and more in it. Whenever you have time, don't waste it anywhere. Close your eyes; be empty. Soon the beauty of it will be revealed to you. By and by, you will have a taste of the new wine:

absolutely new, because you have not known it before. Though it has always been there, you have never contacted it before. It will intoxicate you, it will make you ecstatic. You will be transformed through it.

So don't try to find a way out. There is no way out of it because it is ALL. You cannot go anywhere else. The only way out is that you can bring Humpty Dumpty back in. The only out is that the mind starts functioning again, in fear.

You gather thoughts around, you make relationships; you go to the marketplace, you get lost in the crowd. Then you are not empty, but you have missed - you have missed the door that you have been seeking for lives.

Question 3:

This emptiness is negative. Otherwise you will not cry; you will laugh. This emptiness is like loneliness, not like aloneness. This emptiness is not a deep presence; it is simply absence. This emptiness is only death, and there is no resurrection in it.

That's why the crying comes. You are filling your emptiness by crying, by tears.

That is a trick of the mind. And that's why the question arises: "What's next?" - because when you feel negatively empty, you want to fill it with something. You are hankering for something to happen: some relationship, some achievement, some lottery... something to happen. "What next? " Emptiness, when it is negative, is never at ease with itself. It is thinking of the future. It is hoping that in the future this emptiness will not be there "and I will be fulfilled".

Emptiness, when it is negative, creates future. Emptiness, when it is positive, has no future to it. There is nothing next to it; you have arrived home. There is nothing next to it. It is enough unto itself.

This type of emptiness. negative emptiness, has to be dropped. It has not come out of meditation; it is coming out of life's frustrations. It has not come out of love; it is coming out of the frustration that lust gives to everybody. It is a by- product of failure.

Positive emptiness happens when you are in a deep inner contentment; negative emptiness happens when you are deeply frustrated. Your life seems meaningless. Whatsoever you do, you go on doing like a robot, mechanically.

There is no romance in it. You drag your life; there is no dance to it. You cannot sing, you cannot be happy, you cannot celebrate.

Drop this type of emptiness! And this type of emptiness can be dropped only if you try to change the negativity towards positivity. Meditate more, and meditate without expectations. Love more, and love without expectations.

If you expect anything out of love, or meditation, you will get only frustration, and negative emptiness will happen. If you love for the sheer joy of it, if you meditate for the sheer delight of it and you don't have any result in mind - you are not goal-oriented - then there comes an emptiness which is positive. You start feeling full. You start feeling, for the first time, that you ARE. Being is felt, and that being is tremendously beautiful, blissful. It is SATCHITANANDA: it is existence, it is consciousness, it is bliss.

Always remember to beware of the negative. Move from the negative towards the positive; and when the positive happens, then stay with it. Then allow it.

Open yourself to it totally, be vulnerable to it - all doors and windows open so it can come from everywhere and it can drown you completely. Then it becomes a resurrection.

Question 4:

This is an intellectual question. Futile. Rot. It arises in the intellect because the intellect cannot understand. Remember always, intellect is not intelligence. You cannot find more stupid a thing than intellect.

Intellect is not intelligence. Intelligence is existential, intellect is borrowed. You don't know what divine will is, you don't know what a surrendered individual is - hence, the question.

The question is like this: if you have not known what light is and you ask, "When we bring light in the room, does it have to fight with darkness to destroy it? " Or, "When we bring light into the room, how much time does it take for darkness to leave the room?"

The question is absurd because you know, stupid because you know. The question looks stupid because you know that darkness has no existence of its own. When you bring light in, it is not that darkness goes out. Close all the doors and see! Put guards on the doors and see! Ask them, "Have you seen darkness going out?"

When you bring light in, the very presence of light is the death, because darkness has no existence of its own. It is just the absence of light. When light is there, darkness is not there. In fact, it has never been there. It was just an absence.

That's why you cannot bring darkness. If you need a little more darkness in your room you cannot bring it. You cannot go to the neighbor and ask for some, you cannot bring it in bags, you cannot force or persuade it to come.

You cannot do anything directly with darkness. Have you observed the fact that if you want to do anything with darkness you will have to do something with light, not with darkness? If you want more darkness, you will have to put curtains on the windows. You are doing something with light, so that light cannot come in; that's all. If you want more darkness, then you have to put the light off. If you don't want darkness, you have to put light on. But you do something with light, you cannot do anything with darkness. It is an absence, it is nonexistential.

Now look at the question: "What is divine will, and how does it act through the surrendered individual?" A surrendered will is divine; an unsurrendered will is not divine. Other than the surrendered will there is no will somewhere else which is divine.

A surrendered will is divine; an unsurrendered will is not divine. An unsurrendered will is the ego and a surrendered will is the absence of the ego.

When the ego disappears, how can the individual exist? With the disappearance of the ego, the individual also disappears, dies.

It is not that there is a surrendered individual and a divine will working through him. A surrendered individual is the divine will. Now he is no more. Only God is. He has vacated, he has become empty. In that emptiness, God has entered. He is no more there.

This word'individual' is very beautiful, but it has been very much misused.

Individual means'indivisible': that which cannot be divided. You should not be called individuals, that is wrong language. You are DIVIDUALS, you can be divided. Only God is individual. When the DIVIDUAL disappears, the individual is. But there is no duality. It is not you, and God functioning through you. That is again the ego.

One day a Gandhian came to me and he said, "Mahatma Gandhi used to say that'I am just an instrument of the divine will.' But Krishna says,'I am God'; Jesus says,'I am God'; Mansoor says,'I am God'. The seers of the Upanishads say,'AHAM BRAMHASMI... I am the absolute.' " The Gandhian said to me:

"These people look egoistic. Gandhi is humble."

I told him, "Don't be deceived by the appearance. In fact, Gandhi is egoistic when he says,'I am an instrument of the divine.' The ego is there, functioning now as an instrument. If the ego is gone, then even that much difference is not possible: that God is doing something through me. That difference is not possible when the ego has gone completely. Then it is not God coming through something within you. YOU are God. You are not an instrument; you have become God himself."

This is very difficult to understand. When Krishna says, "I am God!" it looks egoistic. It sounds egoistic; Gandhi sounds more humble, less egoistic. But don't be deceived by the appearance. Gandhi is more egoistic. Of course the ego is very humble, very pious - you can call it religious - but it is there: polished, decorated, refined. And a refined poison is more poisonous, a refined ego is more dangerous.

Krishna can say, "I am God," because he is not. In fact, it is not Krishna saying, "I am God." It is God saying, "I am." Krishna is not there. He appears to Arjuna because our eyes are blind. He appears to us because we cannot see. When Krishna says, "I am God," we think it is Krishna saying, "I am God." In fact, Krishna is no more there. It is God saying, "I am! I am! " - that's all.

Question 5:

For you, it is going to be a learning process. For me, it is a happening.

If I say it is a happening, you will say, "Then what can we do? We have to wait" - - and you will wait as you are. It has not happened up to now because, the way you are, it cannot happen. You will wait in the same way. It will never happen.

I know it is a happening, but it happens in right moments. It happens when you are in a tuned existence. It happens when you are harmonious, when you are not a chaos, a conflict, but in a deep harmony.

Yes, it cannot be learned. Because who will learn it? You? - you are the barrier.

And a learned barrier is even more of a barrier than an ignorant one. Who will practice it? All that is practiced is practiced by the ego. The ego is strengthened through all practices. So you cannot, in fact, learn it. You have to allow it.

But that allowing has to be learned! You have to give way, and you are very stubborn. All that can be learned is a learning in a negative sense. Just like giving way: allowing, not resisting. These things have to be learned. Once you have learned these things, surrender happens.

Surrender is nothing that you can do... but you can prevent. This has to be understood. It is just like you are sitting in your room: it is dark and the doors are closed. The light is waiting outside. You open the doors. When you open the doors, the light comes in. Not that you bring it in. How can you bring it in? There is no way. How can you bring the light in? You just open the door: it comes in.

Coming-in happens, but the opening of the door has to be done. That is the negative part of it.

You have to learn how to let go, you have to learn how to relax, you have to learn how not to resist, how not to be stubborn, how not to be negative when God knocks at your door. How to say YES and not say NO - that has to be learned.

And remember, God knocks every moment. Every beat of the heart may be His knocking. Every time you breathe in, He goes in; and every time you move, He surrounds you. He is always by the corner. Jesus goes on saying: "Return, repent, the kingdom of God is at hand." AT HAND is the emphasis.

Surrender cannot be learned, it is a happening. And it is good that it is a happening. If you could learn it, it would be less than you. It is such a vast phenomenon. It is not like a drop falling in the ocean. It is just the reverse: the ocean falling in the drop, God descending in you.

You just have to be not trembling and afraid, that's all. When He comes you say, "Yes, come in. Welcome." Bow down. Open the doors of your heart, be vulnerable. Let Him move through and through you.

You can learn how to let go; you cannot learn how to surrender. When you are in a let-go, suddenly one day.... Nobody can predict when. Don't be concerned about it; the'when' is irrelevant. When you are waiting, in a let-go, one day the tuning happens. By and by, you are becoming one with the whole; the fear is disappearing. You are no longer defensive, you are no longer afraid. You say, "Everything is welcome."

That's why I go on telling you: learn to say YES more. And watch: your NO is too much. In fact, your very tendency is always to say NO. You say YES, but very reluctantly; you say NO with great gusto. Your NO has power; your YES is almost impotent. You have to say it, that's why you say. If there was any possibility to say NO, you would have said NO.

Become a yea-sayer. Not only verbally, but existentially. Allow more and more yes in your being. That's what I call being a theist. A theist is one who says yes. A moment comes when he says YES even to suffering, even to pain, even to death.

Then you are completely vulnerable. You are not defending yourself: you have no armor around you; you are totally naked. In that moment, someday, sometime, somewhere, tuning happens. You are in tune with the whole, and the whole drops in you. It is a happening.

You cannot learn it. And it is good that you cannot learn it, otherwise you would make it a technique. It is not a technique. Finally, all that is beautiful, true and good is nontechnical. You cannot make a technology out of it. That's what religions have been doing - trying to create a technology - and they have destroyed everything beautiful.

A prayer is nontechnical. It is a heart-to-heart talk. Or, a silence between two hearts. It is a deep understanding, a reverence. A feeling of the presence of the unknown all around, a deep reverence. You may not say a single word. In fact, how can you say anything? When you are really in deep reverence, all words look useless; all words look like a disturbance. When the silence and the music of silence surrounds you, to say a word will be foolish. You are in deep awe.

Everything stops. Then, there is prayer.

Churches and temples go on teaching you prayer. They tell you how to do it. It cannot be done that way. That way you can learn something which is absolutely false, pseudo. All that is great, all that is beyond, happens. It is nothing to do with your doing.

But don't misunderstand me and don't think: then what is the point of doing anything? Meditating, praying - what is the point? No, I am simply saying: you will have to meditate, you will have to pray, you will have to do many things to prepare yourself. When the cup is ready, God pours himself in you. You cannot force Him to pour himself, that's perfectly true, but you have to prepare the cup.

You will have to produce the cup from your heart.

He is already pouring. It has never been otherwise. He is raining, He is pouring, but your cup is not ready. Or, even if it is ready, it is upside down. He goes on pouring, and you remain empty. You are doing a SHIRSHASAN, a headstand.

He goes on pouring but your cup cannot receive. It is not in the right position where contact is possible.

Learn how to be a cup. Learn how to put the cup rightside up.

Question 6:

"What is it that I can give to you? " You can give me nothing. And what is it that you can take of me? You can take nothing. But your nothingness is negative, and my nothingness is positive.

"And who am l?" Between these two nothingnesses - just a momentary wave between these two banks of nothingness. Between the nothingness which is negative and the nothingness which is positive, you ARE. Just a wave.

Try to understand this. You cannot give me anything because you have nothing.

I can give you everything, because I also have nothing. And between these two is your ego: just a trembling, just a wave, a tension. If you receive me, the ego will disappear. If you are ready to receive me, you would have already surrendered the ego.

To move from a nothingness which is negative towards a nothingness which is positive is to move from the world to God. Between the two is the ego.

Question 7:

It will not help your head! The wall may become enlightened...!

Banging of the head won't do, but dropping of the head can do. Banging: the head always wants to do it. That's what you are doing your whole life - banging heads, fighting. Don't try to bang. Just drop it, be headless.

Try it as a meditation. It is one of the most beautiful tantra meditations. Walk, and think that the head is no more there - just the body. Sit, and think that the head is no more there - just the body. Continuously remember that the head is not there. Visualize yourself without the head. Have a picture of yourself enlarged - without the head. Look at it. Let your mirror be lowered in the bathroom so when you see, you cannot see your head - just the body.

A few days of remembrance, and you will feel such weightlessness happening to you, such tremendous silence, because it is the head that is the problem. If you can conceive of yourself as headless.... And that can be conceived, there is no trouble in it. Then more and more, you'll be centered near the heart.

Just this very moment you can visualize yourself headless. Then you will understand what I am saying immediately. There will not be a gap between what I say and what you understand. It is the head creating the whole nonsense in between.

But please don't bang it against the wall, because the wall might not like it. The wall might not be ready yet to get enlightened. Bang it with emptiness, not with the wall. Then it drops.

To be headless is to be meditative. To be completely headless is to attain to the unattainable. Your head is your madness. If you can conceive of yourself without the head, all madness will disappear. Just try it. Give it a try. It is one of the most potential methods.

Question 8:

Not only possible - whenever it happens, it always happens in a dream.

Whatsoever you think is your waking consciousness, that too is not waking; that too is dreaming. While sitting here in front of me, do you think you are awake? I don't see it. I can hear your snore. And if you listen minutely, you will be able to hear it yourself: a deep snoring inside, a deep sleep - and dreams and dreams.

In sleep, only dreams can happen. That's what we have been insisting in this country continuously: that your world is illusory, it is MAYA. When Shankara says the world is MAYA, he's not talking about HIS world. He's talking about YOUR world. Because in sleep, how can you know that which is real? The sleep distorts. A totally different world is created by sleep: a world of dream.

Whatsoever you call your life is made of the same stuff as dreams. It is dream- stuff.

So whenever you become awakened and enlightened, it will always be in a dream. Buddha became enlightened - or Jesus, or Zarathustra, or Lao Tzu - they all became enlightened in a dream. The dream was shattered; they awoke out of sleep. They looked around: the dream was never found anywhere; it was a totally different thing. That's what they call God, nirvana, truth, brahma, the kingdom of God. That's what they call it. It is not your world; it is a waking.

Enlightenment is just an awakening out of sleep. It is to become aware.

You are lost in your dreams. Your subjectivity is completely engulfed by the dreams. It is just like when you go to see a movie. You know well that there is nothing on the screen. Still, you get deceived. When the movie starts, the screen is full of pictures. Just a play of light and darkness, just very subtle dream-stuff, and you are lost. You forget yourself. You forget the spectator, you become part of it. Sometimes you cry and weep when some tragedy happens on the screen.

Sometimes you laugh; sometimes you become very tense. You follow all that is happening on the screen. There is nothing happening, but for two, three hours, you are completely lost.

This is what life is..For seventy years, eighty years, you are completely lost.

Buddha is one who becomes awakened in a movie house and suddenly shakes himself and understands that there is nothing - only a wide screen covered with white and black shades; just covered with false, dreamlike stuff. He laughs - not at what he is seeing; he laughs at himself - and comes back home. There is no point being there now. He has understood. He is no more a part of sleep; he has become awakened.

Try this. One day, go to the movies and watch how you become so unaware that that which is not real starts becoming real. Then bring yourself back and back, again and again. Become aware. Give a jerk to the body, look again, and remember it is a white screen and there is nothing there. Then again watch.

Within seconds you are again gone. Again your consciousness has been taken possession of by the dreamstuff. Again you are enjoying, or moving with the story. Remember again!

This is the same process that a Buddha is doing in the world. A movie house can be a perfect meditation place if you can remember. The day you can remember continuously for three hours that there is nothing.... And remember, don't repeat this: that there is nothing. That won't help. It has to be KNOWN that there is nothing. You have to remember constantly that you are a witness, you have to watch that you are not affected by anything happening there.

When three-dimensional movies came for the first time, they created a stir in the world. When a new three-dimensional movie was shown for the first time in London.... A horse was coming, running. People got scared. It was a three- dimensional movie; the horse was almost real. People even gave way for the horse to pass by. It looked so real!

Your reality is just a three-dimensional dream. One has to awake. And awakening is always bound to be in a dream, so it matters not what type of dream you are seeing.

That's why I say there is no need to change the dream. You can wake up wherever you are. You may be seeing yourself as a sinner, a criminal; you may be in a prison. Or, you may be thinking of yourself as a great mahatma. You may be in a temple being worshipped by thousands and thousands of people. It makes no difference. The mahatma is as much in a dream if he believes what he is seeing and if he's affected by the worship that is being done to him. If somebody insults him and he feels angry, annoyed, then he is in a dream as much as the sinner in prison.

It is not at all relevant to change the dream: to first become a mahatma instead of a criminal. From the sinner you become a saint. It is foolish. Why waste time when you can wake up directly from wherever you are? You can become enlightened while you are imprisoned, you can become enlightened directly from where you are. You are a sinner, okay - because sin is as much a dream as all your sainthood. The awakening is the same.

In the night, you dreamt that you are a murderer. By the morning, when you wake up, you are not worried. You don't go on saying, "I will repent. I have been a murderer in my dream." You simply laugh at the whole thing. You don't condemn yourself, because it was a dream. Or, you see in a dream that you have become a great mahatma, a great soul: a saint, worshipped by millions. In the morning when you wake up, you don't go on telling people how great a mahatma you were in the dream!

There is a Zen story. A great master woke up in the morning. He called his chief disciple and said, "Come to me. I had a dream, I will tell it to you. Interpret it."

If the disciple was a Freud or a Jung or an Adler, he would have been tremendously happy, and he would have immediately started interpreting the dream. But the disciple was a meditator, not a Jung, not a Freud. He said, "You wait. Don't talk rubbish. I will bring water so you can wash your face."

He brought a bowl of water. While the master was washing his face, another disciple passed. The master said, "Come here. I had a dream. Would you like to interpret it?"

The disciple looked. He said, "Wait. The tea is ready and I will bring you a cup of tea. Then you will come to your senses!" A dream is not worth even interpretation.

The master was happy. It is said he danced that day. He said, "At least two disciples...." He said, "If you had interpreted my dream, I would have thrown you out of my monastery" - because a dream is nonsense, and then trying to interpret it is even a higher nonsense.

What the disciples did was the best interpretation. The first one brought a bowl of water and said to the old master, "You just wash your face so that you become more awake."

The other brought tea. "Just drink tea, a little hot tea, and that will bring you back to your senses. You will be more conscious."

Consciousness is needed, not interpretation. All dreams are the same: there are not good dreams and bad dreams. How can there be good dreams and bad dreams? Both are unreal. In unreality you cannot make a distinction between good and bad. Moral, immoral; sinner, saint - all are dreams. Don't try to change one dream for another. All are chains. Steel or gold, it doesn't matter.

Wake up! All the awakened ones are just standing there with bowls of water and a hot cup of tea....

Question 9:

It is just thinking about waking up. A little more, one jump more.

Don't be deceived by it. It is good as far as it goes, but it does not go very far, or far enough. It is good that you understand it, but it is still an intellectual understanding. Good - at least you have not misunderstood. Feel blissful for it, feel fortunate. You have not misunderstood. That's what I'm saying: that it is simple, simple to be. But don't think that this is already waking up.

I am talking about food. I am talking about it; you are understanding it. Then, the search for food begins. Don't try to eat the menu; it is not food. Don't try to enjoy the map so much that you completely forget about the goal. The map is not the territory. Even a beautiful picture of the Himalayas, perfectly true to it, even that is not the Himalayas.

But good that you have understood. This is waking up: you have understood the point. Now let the point become your very being. Don't allow it to remain in the intellect, because sooner or later, if it remains there too much, it will be a dead concept. Let it become existential.

Yes, it is simple. It is so simple that you can become awakened this very moment.

Don't ask how, because once you ask how then it is no longer simple; then it becomes difficult. Because of your'hows' there are people who go on answering you. You ask how; they show you the way. In fact, there is no way: it is a pathless path. In fact, there is no how to it. It is just an understanding, a turning in.

If you have understood the point, live it. Because only through living will it become a concrete reality.

Question 10:

Be cheated. It is worth it. What have you got that you are so much afraid of being cheated? A naked fakir - worried where he will dry his clothes if he takes a bath.

Be cheated! You have nothing.

This idea that "... with an innocent childlike mind into this world, he will probably be cheated," is already cunning, clever, calculating. If you want to become childlike, even then you calculate what will happen? A child is just a child. Whatsoever happens, happens.

And I tell you, if you allow yourself to be cheated, in the end you will find that those who were cheating you were really the victims. They have been cheated.

They could not take anything from you because, in the first place, you had nothing.

When death knocks at your door, you will be happy that you allowed people to cheat you rather than cheating them. Because there are only two possibilities:

either you cheat or you allow people to cheat you. There is no other possibility. If you think: "I will not cheat others, but I will not allow anybody to cheat me," you have the wrong attitude. You don't understand what you are thinking, It is impossible.

The only way not to be cheated is to cheat. Ask Machiavelli, he knows. Ask Kautilya or Chanakya, they know. Machiavelli says: "The only way to defend yourself is to attack." He is exactly your cunningness, embodied. He is the incarnation of cunningness. But he's saying a perfectly logical thing: if you want not to be cheated, cheat. That is the only way not to be cheated; there is no other way. But I tell you, if you cheat people, in the end you will find that you have been doing much and your hands are empty.

When Alexander was dying he told his people, "My hands should be hanging out of the coffin, outside it."

They were worried. They said, "This has never been done. What are you thinking, and why? Why should your hands be hanging out of the coffin?"

He said, "So that people can see that I am going empty handed." A great understanding dawned on him. But very late, when nothing could be done. He had been accumulating the things of the world, he had become almost the conqueror of the world, and at the end he realized that his hands were empty.

Hands will always be empty if you go on cheating people. Once you understand that there is nothing to fear, let them cheat. In their cheating you, they are not very clever; they are simply foolish.

And the more you allow them to cheat you, the more you trust them, the more a different kind of treasure will open its doors to you. It is available only to a childlike consciousness - innocent.

Question 11:

[Osho was silent, a long silence. The audience laughed... and the discourse ended.]