In a right moment

The first question:

Question 1:

Richard, sannyas has nothing to do with thinking at all. It is the crazy man's way to enlightenment! By thinking you can never come to a decision as far as sannyas is concerned. Thinking, at the most, can only help you to postpone it, and you can go on postponing it ad infinitum. Thinking, in fact, is a process of postponement.

Sannyas is not something that you can think about. You don't know it, you have not experienced it. Thinking moves within the world of the known; it has no approach towards the unknown, no bridge with the unknown. And sannyas is unknown for you.

You may have seen sannyasins; that does not mean that you know what sannyas is. By seeing lovers you cannot know what love is. By seeing meditators you cannot know what meditation is. There are things which are known only existentially.

Sannyas is not a philosophical phenomenon, it is something existential. You have to take the jump... then think later on, then think as much as you want, to your heart's content. But once you have tasted it, then there is no way of going back.

Thinking is part of the head and sannyas happens in the heart; it is a love affair. It is utterly mad, as mad as love or even madder, because love happens biologically and sannyas happens spiritually.

Sannyas happens only to a very few, rare human beings. Love is ordinary; it happens to animals, to birds, even to trees. It is nothing special. Religion is absolutely supernatural:

it surpasses your instinctive world. But our hearts are not functioning, and the head cannot work in the place of the heart.

That's what you are doing, Richard. You can go on doing it, but you will never arrive in the world of sannyas. The head is impotent; it cannot act because it is never spontaneous. It is only the heart that acts. The head only reacts; the head only goes on repeating the past. You have not been a sannyasin before, so how can you think about it? What can you think about it? There is no base to begin with.

Only the heart is courageous enough to take a jump into the unknown, into the unfamiliar. But with the unfamiliar open up millions of possibilities. With the unknown you start growing. With the known you go on moving in circles. Be a little heartful, not so thoughtful.

Richard, your name means hard. Transcend hardness, become a little soft, a little more feminine, a little more round. Losing a few corners will be of tremendous help. Logic is hard, love is soft. Logic is square, love is hip! Logic is always a coward; it thinks and thinks before it acts. And, in fact, by the time it comes to act it is already too late; the moment has passed.

Life is not static. It won't stand still for you, it won't wait for you. Who knows?

Tomorrow I may stop giving sannyas - then what? Then you will have missed the train! And remember, the sannyas I am giving to you nobody else can give to you.

Gather a little courage. Today is the day!

The two skeletons in the corner closet were grumbling about the heat, the dust, the boredom.

"What are we staying here for anyhow?" one asked.

"Damned if I know," the second skeleton answered. "I would leave in a minute if I had any guts."

The second question:

Question 2:

Yogananda, it must be possible if it is happening to you! Do you think you are managing the impossible? In fact, it is a very common phenomenon, nothing extraordinary about it - very normal. Nobody is more afraid of dying than of living.

The fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of life.

That's why thousands of people around the earth commit suicide, and many more think many times in their lives of committing suicide. Many try but are prevented; many try but try halfheartedly. But very few people try to live. The number of people who try to live life is much less than those who try to commit suicide or actually commit suicide.

The man who lives life becomes a buddha. How many buddhas do you have? They can be counted on your fingers. Only once in a while is there a man like Jesus, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu. Centuries pass; millions of people come and go, then only is there a man who really lives, authentically lives, lives to the utmost, lives fearlessly. Then what are the others doing? Their life is not life; on the contrary, it is a constant avoidance of life. They are simply protecting themselves from life. They are hiding in their black holes in the name of security, safety, comfort. They are simply trying to evade life.

You can watch yourself - have you lived? You can watch others around you - are they really living? People only become aware that they were alive when they die. When death knocks on your door, suddenly you become aware: "My God, I was alive! And now death has come." But when death comes, millions of people feel relieved - relieved of the burden, of the anxiety, of the constant fear of life.

Death has no fear in it. When you are no more, what fear can there be? Death cannot hurt you - life can hurt you. Life hurts because one needs to be very intelligent, alert, to live. If you live unconsciously, life is bound to be a painful experience, an agony. Life can be ecstatic too, but only when you are alert, aware. Life is an opportunity, but it demands; it is a challenge, it is an adventure, a moment-to-moment adventure into the uncharted.

You cannot be imitators if you really want to live. You cannot be Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans. If you really want to live you have to be yourself - simply yourself. You cannot be anybody else; that is a way of avoiding true life.

God never repeats. He creates each and every individual unique, absolutely unique.

You are not manufactured like cars on an assembly line. Hence Jesus will never be again, Krishna will never be again, howsoever beautiful they were. God does not believe in carbon copies; he always creates individuals. He is a creator and no creator would like to repeat.

But that's what you have been told to do, and you are doing it. Somebody is trying to be like Krishna or like Confucius or like Mohammed; these have become your ideals. Then you go on missing that which you are - and that is the only way you can be. You become pseudo. Yes, to be pseudo seems to be a little more comfortable than to be original, because you can adjust to a pseudo society more easily, more comfortably.

When everybody is false like you, you can easily become part of the crowd. When you are true and authentic, living your life on your own, in your own light, with no blueprints given by others to you - by the parents, by the priests, by the politicians - when you are moving every day into the unknown with no idea of what is going to happen, with great creativity, sensitivity, awareness, but with no fixed ideology; when you are exploring newer pastures, new peaks of being, then certainly you are no more a part of the crowd.

And the crowd hates individuals for the simple reason that they are so different. It hates them because they are rebels. It hates them because they cannot be enslaved easily; in fact, it is impossible to enslave them. It hates them for their intelligence, it hates them for their joy, it hates them for their creativity. It wants to destroy them.

Yogananda, that's why people are afraid of life: life has many dangers. The path of life is full of hazards. One never knows what is going to happen the next moment; everything is possible. You cannot live with expectations because life has no obligation to fulfill your desires. You can live with an open heart, but you cannot live with expectations. The more expectations you have, the more frustrated you will be.

And then you can go astray. In death, nobody can go astray; in life you can go astray. In life you can commit errors, mistakes. In fact, if you really want to live you will have to commit many errors and many mistakes. Remember it: never be afraid of committing errors and mistakes; otherwise you will be paralyzed because of the fear. Go on committing mistakes and errors. Remember only one thing: don't commit the same mistake again. Once is enough. Invent new mistakes, discover new errors! Don't go on falling in the same ditch - find new ditches! By committing mistakes, by going astray, you grow. That's the only way to grow.

Life is dangerous; death is very cozy, very comfortable. Lying down in your grave, what danger is there? There is no problem, no anxiety. You can't go bankrupt, your wife cannot leave you, you cannot die anymore. You are so safe in death! Life is not safe - anything is possible. Life is full of accidents. Some madman may cut off your head...!

I have heard:

A great psychoanalyst was reading, sitting in his garden underneath a tree, and his only daughter, just eight, nine years old was playing with one of her friends on the lawn.

Suddenly she hit her friend on the head with a stick so hard that blood started coming out of her head. The psychoanalyst rushed over, but before he could say anything his daughter turned towards him and asked, "Daddy, now tell me why I did this!"

She must have been hearing again and again that her father goes on finding reasons for every act, unconscious reasons and this and that, so now she asks, "Now tell me WHY I have done this."

Life can do anything and you cannot even ask why: you have to accept it. There is nobody to answer. Hence the fear, Yogananda. You say, "I am more afraid of living than of dying."

Everybody is more afraid of living; that's why people are dead. People die nearabout the age of thirty. Of course, they are not put into their graves at that time; they go to their graves nearabout seventy, eighty. The fifty years between their death and their entry into the grave are just a drag. It is a miracle to see dead people walking, talking, doing all kinds of things. It certainly is a miracle!

Love life. That's why to me life is the only religion, the only god. Live life in its totality.

And the beauty is that if you live life in its totality there is no death. The body is bound to die one day, but you are not the body. If you have lived your life totally, if you have loved your life totally, you will have come across the eternal in you. That is the meeting with God. That is the encounter with truth that transcends time. And to know it is to know bliss; to know it is to know all that is worth knowing.

The third question:

Question 3:

Niranjan, Perce walked in to where the Last Supper was being held, sat down at the table and said to the waiter, "Give me a scotch and soda!"

"I am sorry, sir," said the waiter, "all we are serving is wine."

"Okay, give me a nice steak with a baked potato and salad."

"Sorry, but all we are serving is bread."

"Holy mackerel! Only bread and wine! The guy who is giving this party ought to be crucified!"

Niranjan, please don't crucify me! This is not the Last Supper! And if you cannot find the right beer, the reason is because you are not the right person. You are so full of beer already, how can you find the right beer? How can you manage to know what is right and what is wrong? I don't think that in Niranjan's veins there is blood - just beer! Go to the Medical Center and be examined. You can't have blood in your veins: you are really full of beer!

If some cannibals ever find you they will dance with joy. They will have found the right beer! And they are not going to kill you or cook you - they will sip you!

Michael picked up a blonde at a bar and after quite a few drinks they went to a hotel room and made love. In the middle of the night Michael woke up to go to the bathroom and noticed that the woman had taken off a wooden leg and laid it by the bed.

As the girl slept Michael began fiddling with its springs and braces and finally found he had taken the wooden leg apart and could not put it back together again.

He went out into the hall and stopped a man perfumed with booze, saying, "Can you help me? I've got a woman in my room with one leg apart and I can't seem to get it back together."

"Hell!" said the drunk, "I got a woman in my room with BOTH legs apart and I can't even find the goddamn room!"

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Deva Louis, it all depends. Growth in itself has no suffering in it; suffering comes from your resistance towards growth. Suffering is created by you because you resist continuously, you don't allow it to happen. You are afraid to go totally with it; you go only halfheartedly. Hence the suffering - because you become divided, you become split. A part of you cooperates and a part of you is against it, resists it. This conflict inside you creates suffering.

So drop the idea - many people have that idea - that you have to suffer if you are to grow. It is sheer nonsense. If you cooperate totally there is no suffering at all. If you are in a let-go, instead of suffering you will rejoice. Every moment of it will be a moment of bliss and benediction.

So don't throw the responsibility on growth. Our mind is very tricky and cunning: it always throws the responsibility on somebody, on something; it never takes the responsibility on itself. YOU are the cause of suffering.

If you can remember three things.... The first is: drop the past if you want to grow, because it is from the past that resistance arises. You are always judging from the past.

The past is no more, it is absolutely irrelevant, but it goes on interfering. You go on judging according to it; you go on saying, "This is right and that is wrong," and all those ideas of right and wrong, all those judgments are coming from something which is dead. Your dead past remains so heavy on you that it does not allow you to move.

Drop the past completely and you will be surprised: much of the suffering has disappeared.

The second thing to remember is: don't create expectations for the future. If you are expecting, then again you will create suffering, because things are not going to happen according to YOU; things are going to happen according to the whole. The wave, the small wave in the ocean, cannot be the deciding factor. The ocean decides; the wave has to be in a state of let-go. If the wave wants to go to the east, then there is going to be trouble, then there is going to be pain. If the winds are not going to the east, if the ocean is not willing, then what is the wave going to do? It will suffer. It will call it fate, it will call it circumstances, social conditions, the economic structure, the capitalist society, the bourgeois culture, the Freudian unconscious... and now you will call it growing pains.

But you are simply shifting the responsibility.

The real thing is that you are suffering from your expectations. When they are not fulfilled - and they are never going to be fulfilled - frustration arises, failure arises, and you feel neglected, as if existence does not care for you.

Drop expectations for the future. Remain open, remain available to whatsoever happens, but don't plan ahead. Don't make any psychological, fixed ideas about the future - that things should be like this - and much more suffering will disappear.

These two are the root causes of suffering.

And the third is: the Human Potential movement lacks something essential. It tries to help you to grow, but it has not yet been able to create a meditative space in you. So there is constant struggle, effort, will, but no relaxation, no rest. Hence the third thing to be remembered and all suffering will disappear: create meditative energy, create a meditative space within you. Western methods lack that something which is very essential.

That's why here in my commune the effort is to use all the Western methods side by side with all the Eastern methods. This may be the only place in the whole world today where East and West are REALLY meeting, and not meeting in a diplomatic way as they meet in the UNO. Here they are really merging - not politically, not diplomatically, because a diplomatic meeting is not a meeting, it is only a facade, it is pseudo. It is a love meeting that is happening here. For the first time East and West are in a love affair.

The West has grown a few very important methods: gestalt, encounter, primal, bioenergetics and many more. The East has also grown many methods: zazen, vipassana, Sufi whirling, yoga, tantra. Their approaches are different, so different that both are only halves of one whole; hence both lack something. The Eastern methods can create a meditative space, but they make you so introverted that you start escaping from life; all Eastern methods have proved escapist in the past. You want to go to a monastery, you want to go to the Himalayas, you want to go to a cave somewhere and to live alone. They teach you how to be alone, joyously alone - but then something is missed.

Life is also relationship, life is also togetherness, life is also communion. It is beautiful to be blissful when you are alone, but that is only half the story; you should be blissful also when you are together with someone. And when you are blissful with someone, the bliss reaches a higher peak. When you are alone you are like a solo flute player; when you are blissful together in relationship, the music is more like an orchestra.

The West has created methods which give you more impetus to be extroverts. They allow you methods, skills to relate, and to enjoy relationship. They are love methods, but something is missing. You enjoy relationship, but whenever you are alone... and essentially you ARE alone. You are born alone and you will die alone, and at the deepest core of your being you are always alone. So on the surface you remain happy, but deep down a subtle current of misery continues. You cannot encounter yourself, you cannot face yourself, you cannot meet yourself.

The West has failed because all that it has developed is extroversion; the East has failed because all that it has developed is introversion. And man is neither extrovert nor introvert.

I would like it to be on record that Carl Gustav Jung's typology is absolutely wrong.

Man cannot be divided so easily into categories - that somebody is an extrovert and somebody is an introvert - because man is a totality, a wholeness. He has an inside and he has an outside, and both have to be nourished and both have to be fulfilled.

So if you are only following Western methods you will be going through much pain because you will not be able to create a meditative space through them. If you are following only Eastern methods you will be able to create a meditative space, but you will become absolutely useless in the world, and you will miss the enrichment that comes with communion with other human beings.

My effort here is to create the first synthesis between extroversion and introversion and help man to become so capable of both, together, simultaneously, so easily able to move from extroversion to introversion and from introversion to extroversion, that there is no need to divide man into such categories. Man can become so fluid.

It is as simple as when you come out of your house: you don't think that you are becoming extrovert coming out of your house. When you feel it is cold inside and outside there are no clouds and it is so sunny, you come out, but you don't think at all.

You don't decide, "Now I want to be an extrovert." Or when the sun becomes too hot and you start feeling the heat, you don't make a deliberate decision, "I should go in.

Now I want to be an introvert." No, when the sun is too hot you simply move in! And when inside it is cold you come out. Coming out of your house or going into the house is not a problem at all, because you are free from the inner and the outer.

My effort here is to help you to be free from the inner and the outer, because you are neither the inner nor the outer, you are something transcendental to both. The inner and the outer are just parts of your personality; it is the house in which you live which has an outside and an inside. But your awareness has no inside and no outside.

So these three things are to be remembered: drop the past, drop future expectations, and third, create a synthesis between extroversion and introversion... and all misery disappears.

Deva Louis, it is not inevitable for a spiritual seeker to suffer. You suffer because you are not aware of your own responsibility. It is not because of growth that you suffer.

You suffer because you are unconscious of your resistance, of your past-orientation, of your future expectations, and you are unaware that you don't have any meditative space within you.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

Prem Maitri, it depends how conscious you are. If you are conscious it is impossible to miss. If you really know the perfect jewel, if you recognize it, if it is your own vision, your own understanding, it is impossible to miss it. But it may not be so. You may have heard others say, "This is a perfect jewel"; it may be a borrowed understanding. Then it is not only possible to miss it, it is absolutely inevitable that you will miss it - it is impossible not to miss it.

If you come across a buddha and you pay your respects just because others are paying their respects, because others are saying, "He is a buddha, he is enlightened, he is awakened," you will miss. But if you have even a glimpse of your own into the being of the buddha, just a little taste of his milieu, just a small experience of his perfume, that's enough; it is impossible to miss. Then no force in the world can distract you. But it has to be your own experience. And we are so unconscious that nothing seems to be our own experience.

People say that Jesus is Christ, so you believe it. But the people who crucified him, they could not see anything in him; otherwise, do you think it would have been possible for them to crucify a man like Jesus? They crucified him so easily. No problem was felt; their conscience was not disturbed. They did it just as they used to kill criminals every year. The day they crucified Jesus they also crucified two thieves. They treated all three persons in the same way; in fact, they treated the thieves in a far more human way because the thieves were more like them.

Thousands of people had gathered to see. Nobody was crying, nobody was weeping, nobody had any pain in the heart. Even Jesus' own disciples had escaped, fearing that they may be caught.

When the people had gone - when the show was over - and Jesus was almost dead on the cross, three soldiers were there just playing cards. They were on duty so nobody could steal the dead body of Jesus. So just sitting underneath the cross they were playing cards!

And Maitri, you ask, "Is it possible to miss the perfect jewel?"

Those three soldiers were just people like you. Of course, now you will think, "Those soldiers must have been utterly stupid, great sinners, unconscious, not knowing what they were doing - we could not have done it," because now you have heard for two thousand years continuous propaganda that Jesus was Christ. But Jews still don't think that he was Christ; they still think that he was a charlatan, that he was a deceiver, that he was a false messiah. Two thousand years' continuous propaganda has not helped at all; they have kept on clinging to their idea.

Do you think you would have recognized Buddha? Now, of course - because now twenty-five centuries have passed and Buddha has become bigger and bigger, so huge; he looms large on the horizon like a beautiful sunrise - you cannot believe that people could have missed him. But they were missing him! Even his own father could not recognize that he was enlightened; even his own wife could not recognize that he was enlightened. There were only a few people who had the courage to recognize him - because to recognize him means you have to change your life-style, to recognize him means you can't remain the same anymore. To recognize a buddha as a buddha means you are waking up.

The big cafeteria was crowded. A long line of people carrying trays was slowly moving along the counter when someone shouted, "Fire! McGinty's house is on fire!"

Came the crash of a tray of dishes as an Italian near the front of the line made a mad dash out of the restaurant, around the corner, and up the side street, bumping into people and knocking several of them down as he worked his way homeward.

Then, just as suddenly, after he had narrowly escaped death several times, the man stopped short, clapped his hand to his head and moaned, "Hey, what am I doing? My name ain't McGinty!"

People are living in such unconsciousness. What to say about recognizing a buddha? - you don't even know who YOU are!

Maitri, it is possible to miss the perfect jewel if you are not aware. But if you are aware then it is impossible. It all depends on your awareness.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

Sujata, looking at the world, one thing is certain: it has been made in a hurry. Whoever made it, it is in such a mess that it must have been made in six days. Whether God made it or not I cannot say, because if you look at the world it seems more like a creation of the Devil than of God!

Man is so destructive, so violent, so mad, that it is very improbable that God made this kind of mind. Either the Devil made it or it was only the first time that God was making it so he made many mistakes. And he became so afraid of his own creation that he has not tried again. It seems he has escaped! Seeing what he has done he must have become frightened.

The story is that he made trees and mountains and rivers and animals. On the sixth day he made man and since then he has not made anything. It seems man brought him to his senses: "What are you doing?" He simply stopped absolutely.

But, Sujata, why do such questions bother YOU? It is none of your business! One thing is certain: you have not made it, so why should you be worried? You are not responsible, I am not responsible either - I have not made it. So why should we waste our time with it? There are many crazy people who have nothing else to do - leave it for them to think about. These are great subjects; one can go on thinking about them for ever and ever; they are unending. That's why philosophy begins but never ends, theology begins but never ends. It goes in circles. Each answer brings more questions than it answers.

If I say, "Yes, God made it," then immediately many questions will arise: "Why did he make it in the first place? Why did he not ask us whether we wanted to be made or not?

This seems to be such a dictatorial act, not democratic at all - people are being made without even asking them! And why did he make THIS kind of world when he is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient? He must have seen what was going to happen, he must have seen the future. He must have seen that there would be Genghis Khan and Tamerlane and Adolf Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo; he must have seen all these people. He must have seen that man would fight thousands of wars. He must have seen that sooner or later man would discover atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs and deathrays and whatnot. Then why did he create this world? Is he a sadist? Is he enjoying all this misery? And millions of people live in such misery - and what does he go on doing? Can't he come and help?"

In scriptures it is said... in the SRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA Krishna declares: I will come whenever there is too much misery. Is it not enough, the misery that man is living in now? When is he going to come? And what did he do when he really came? He didn't help anybody. In fact, in his days the greatest war in India was fought. If we believe the scriptures, so many people died in that war... the whole of India could not have contained so many people. Even now the whole world contains only three times as many. It must have been some war! Today it would have been one person out of three; in those days, five thousand years ago, the population was not so large. It could have been the end of the whole of humanity. What kind of help was that?

And God comes in Jesus: he sends his only begotten Son to save humanity. Nobody seems to have been saved. Jesus could not even save himself - he was crucified! The savior was crucified by those for whom he had come; he had come to save them.

Thousands of questions will arise. Leave these questions to mad people.

Two inmates of a Michigan mental institution were chatting in the recreation room. The first loony said, "Don't talk to me, I am Napoleon!"

"What do you mean, you are Napoleon?" asked the second nut.

"I told you not to speak to me. I am Napoleon."

"How do you know you are Napoleon?"

"God told me I am Napoleon."

A little voice from the corner piped, "I did not!"

Leave such theological problems to nuts!

Some visitors to an insane asylum were being shown around by a guard.

"You see that man over there?" said the guard. "He thinks he is the Lord."

One of the visitors approached the lunatic and asked, "Did you really make the earth in seven days?"

The nut sneered at him, "I'm not in the mood to talk shop!"

Sujata, these are not really religious questions, although religious people have been talking about these questions for centuries - because religion has been dominated by lunatics for centuries.

The really religious questions are concerned with YOU, with your unconsciousness and how to transform your unconsciousness into consciousness. Real religion is not metaphysical; it is rooted in psychology, it is psychological, because real religion means a way to transcend the mind. Unless you understand the mind you cannot transcend it.

The seventh question:

Question 7:

Sarjano, now you have told him, what happened? The little man has not come to me yet. Just your telling him is not going to make any difference; he will simply think that you are crazy.

The miserable people think that if you are looking blissful you are mad. They can't believe that anybody can be blissful; that is beyond their grasp. Their whole life is such a misery, how can they believe there is any possibility of being blissful? - unless you are mad. If you tell them that you have found a master they may not say anything to your face, but behind your back they will laugh at you; they will think something has gone wrong. They are not going to believe you. How can one become blissful by finding a master? They can't see any relatedness between their problems and finding a master.

If their wives are nagging them to death, how is finding a master going to change it?

Now the master will nag you more! If they are suffering from nightmares - and everybody is suffering from nightmares, day in, day out - how is finding a master going to help? They can't make any sense out of the statement.

I can understand your difficulty, Sarjano. It is very difficult to keep silent when you know the answer, but part of being a bodhisattva is to learn the art of being silent. Let them ask again and again. Let them feel that your bliss is not just something crazy, that your bliss is something real, authentic. Let them feel it of their own accord. Let them come and knock at your doors again and again.

Only in a right moment, when you see that they can understand, when you feel that their hearts are open, when you see a real thirst, a longing in them, when a search has arisen in them, only then tell them; otherwise you will simply be wasting your breath.

And if you go on telling everybody and nobody listens, sooner or later you will feel very tired of the whole thing.

Buddha is right - that guy is almost always right. Of course, he was not talking to Italians! That was not his problem, that is MY problem! But I know how to manage it.

Truth insists that it should be spoken, although it cannot be spoken - that is the paradox - but it insists that it should be spoken.

When you know and you see that others can be helped, it is impossible to resist the temptation to tell them - but that is part of being a bodhisattva.

Somebody else has asked: "Beloved Master, you say fifty percent of enlightened people become arhatas and fifty percent become bodhisattvas. Still you say again and again that there are many mystics but very few masters - there seems to be a contradiction in it...?"

There is no contradiction in it. Yes, apparently there is, but only apparently. Not all bodhisattvas are masters. The bodhisattva is one who tries to help others; the master is one who SUCCEEDS in helping others. Just trying does not mean that you will succeed.

Many try, very few succeed. Whosoever attains truth is bound to have the temptation to tell it. If he is not by nature an arhata then he will try to say it to each and everybody, and he will be thought just crazy. Communication is a difficult art, and communicating the ultimate truth is the most difficult phenomenon in the world. A master is one who waits for the right time.

Many people have asked me why I kept silent although I became enlightened in 1953.

For almost twenty years I never said anything about it to anybody, unless somebody suspected it himself, unless somebody said to me on his own, "We feel that something has happened to you. We don't know what it is, but one thing is certain: that something has happened and you are no more the same as we are - and you are hiding it."

In those twenty years not more than ten people asked me, and even then I avoided them as much as I could unless I felt that their desire was genuine. And I told them only when they had promised to keep it a secret. And they all fulfilled it. Now they are all sannyasins, but they all fulfilled it, they kept it a secret. I said, "You wait. Wait for the right moment. Only then will I declare it."

I have learned much from the past buddhas. If Jesus had kept a little quieter about being the Son of God it would have been far more beneficial to humanity. I had made it a point that until I stopped traveling in the country I was not going to declare it; otherwise I would have been killed - you would not be here.

Once I had finished with traveling, mixing with the masses, moving from one town to another.... For twenty years continuously I was moving, and there was not a single bodyguard. Shiva and his samurai had not yet arrived! And I was in constant danger.

Stones were being thrown at me, shoes were being thrown at me.

I would reach a town after traveling for twenty-four hours in a train and the crowd wouldn't allow me to get down at the station; they would force me to go back. A fight would ensue between those who wanted me to get down from the train and those who did not want me to get down, in their town at least.

If I had declared it I would have been killed very easily. There would have been no problem in it; it would have been so simple. But for twenty years I kept absolutely silent about it. I declared it only when I saw that now I had gathered enough people who could understand it. I had gathered enough people who were mine, who belonged to me. I declared it only when I knew that now I could create my own small world and I was no more concerned with the crowds and the masses and the stupid mob.

Sarjano, there IS a difficulty. I can understand your difficulty. But please keep your big mouth shut - Italian or not Italian! Otherwise you will simply be thought crazy. And if you cannot keep your mouth shut, then I will declare, "He is crazy!" Then nobody will listen to you. Then you can go on saying to these little men, "I have found the master," but they will say, "The master says you are crazy!"

The last question:

Question 8:

Anurati, it must be because of the Italians! One has to find some reason....

The Italian died and went to the Pearly Gates where he was greeted by Saint Peter and his impressive Golden Book. After staring intently at the new applicant's sallow face, weak chin and shifty eyes, Saint Peter declared in thunderous tones, "I trust you are not Italian?"

Saint Peter's voice became stentorian, "Are you Italian?"

The Italian's reply was meek, "No, sir, I am Puerto Rican."

Saint Peter smiled. "Pass, friend," he said, "Come in."

Even Saint Peter is afraid!

And then there was one Italian chick - so ugly that when she came into a room all the mice jumped up on the chairs.

Can anyone doubt that New York is a great city?

The Jews own it, the Irish run it - and the Italians after fifty years are still wondering what happened!

How did Columbus happen to discover America?

He was trying to get away from Italy.

What did God say when he made the first Italian?

"Shit! I fucked up again!"

Enough for today.