Belief - just a blind man's bluff

Question 1:

I do not deal in theories. I am a simple man, not a theoretician.

A theoretician is a great thinker. He knows nothing about reality, but he goes on creating theories about it. His whole life he goes around and around. That's the actual meaning of the word about. A theory is always about and about; and the truth, the reality, is just at the center, it is never around.

But the theoretician is skilled in beating around the bush.

The moment you ask me, "Is the theory of reincarnation not true?" your question says many things to me. First: you want my support for your belief.

Belief is always in need of support.

Truth is never in need of any support:

It is enough unto itself.

Truth needs no evidence, no witnesses.

Even if the whole world is against the man of truth, he will not care at all - because truth is not something that depends on the number of people who support it. A single man may be right, and the whole world may be wrong. Truth is not something political, that you have to vote for it.

Your question is indicative that you believe in the theory of reincarnation. Belief is always shaky, afraid, because deep down you are aware that you don't know: it may be right, it may not be. You would like somebody in whom you have some kind of trust to support your theory, your belief. From that space comes your question.

You love me, you trust me. If I can say to you, yes, it is true, then it is as if a blood transfusion is given to somebody who has lost too much blood: your theory, your belief starts appearing stronger, more stable. You don't know but at least somebody who knows is supporting it, and you trust that somebody; he cannot lie.

I don't want you to trust me in that way.

Give your love to me but don't trust me.

The moment you start trusting somebody else, you stop enquiring on your own. And I would not like you to stop your own individual enquiry. Loving is perfectly good because you are sharing something, but in the name of trust you are really deceiving yourself.

For thousands of years this is how man has been deceived and exploited. I want to destroy that whole strategy at its very roots.

Trust only your own experience.

It does not matter whether I say yes or no.

What matters is whether you have experienced it or not.

That is going to be decisive, that is going to transform your life.

There are three religions - Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism - which have taken a negative stand on the theory of reincarnation. They say it is not true. This is a negative belief Remember that belief can be either negative or positive, but it does not change its nature. This is a negative belief.

These three religions are under the influence of a negative belief that there is no reincarnation.

Parallel to these three there are three religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism - which have taken a positive attitude. They say yes, reincarnation is a reality. But that is also a belief a positive belief.

My approach is a third one which has not been tried up to now, and which I say is the right approach.

I say to you: accept the theory as hypothetical, neither saying yes nor saying no. Accepting it as hypothetical means, "I am ready to enquire into it with no prejudice, positive or negative. I am ready to go into it without any preconceived idea, to see what is the truth."

Religions have not used the word hypothesis at all. Either you are a believer or you are a non- believer. The non-believer is also a believer, only negatively. They are not qualitatively different, they are the same type of people. And what happens when you take a negative belief or a positive belief is that your mind has already decided; before knowing, before experiencing, you have already decided what the truth is. This I call insincere, dishonest. And once you accept something negatively or positively, it is a capacity of the mind to create the hallucination of your belief.

You can see it. In Mohammedans, in Christians, in Jews, you will not find children born who remember their past lives. But in Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism you will always find, almost every day, somewhere, some child who remembers his past lives. People have tried to see whether his remembrance has any facts behind it or if it is just imagination. And so many cases have been found in which the facts were clearly in support of it.

For example, I myself was deeply involved with such a case. A girl born in Katni - a small city eighty miles away from Jabalpur - remembered that she had been the wife of a certain man who lived in Jabalpur who owned a garage: his name, his age, where his house was, and where his garage was.

Now this man, Ramakant Parakh was his name, lived just four or five houses away from me. That's how I became involved in the whole thing.

One day he came running to me. He said, "A phone call has come from Katni that a girl remembers that she was my wife. My wife has certainly died, and the dates coincide exactly with the date the girl was born. In the evening she was born, and in the morning my wife had died. She remembers my name, she remembers my job, my house, my work. What do you think? What should I do?"

I said, "Just come along with me. We will go to Katni. It is not far away, it is just a two-hour drive, and it is better to go without announcing ourselves. You are not to say that you are Ramakant Parakh; I will say I am Ramakant Parakh, and that I own the garage."

I said to them, "I am Ramakant Parakh," and immediately the girl recognized me as her husband.

Then I told the parents, "Don't try to take advantage of a belief in Hinduism. I am not Ramakant Parakh; I don't own any garage. I don't have any wife, so the question of her death does not arise.

This man is Ramakant Parakh. His wife has died, and you must have known when. Please tell me exactly the truth; otherwise I am going to the police. And you will be in trouble because your daughter has recognized me. She knows nothing about who Ramakant Parakh is. It is not even certain that this is Ramakant Parakh; only I am saying so. So don't think that you can change your mind in the police station and say that this man is Ramakant Parakh. You tell me exactly what you were trying to do."

Her father became very much afraid and told the whole story of how he had prepared the girl. One of his friends had suggested this name, and the date, because he knew Ramakant Parakh. He was going to bring the photo of Ramakant Parakh, and then we were going to Jabalpur with the girl, with the media people, so she could recognize the house. My friend was going to give us all information because he knows everything about Ramakant Parakh - his wife, his house, his garage. Then the girl was to go inside the house and find things that she used to keep. Then she was going to go and find the garage, and show the car that she used to love.

"Please forgive me," he said. "We were just creating a business." In India, once a reincarnation is established, then the girl becomes almost a goddess, and people start worshipping her, bringing money, and bringing sweets and fruits: it is a great business. And he was a brahmin, and the thing would be managed perfectly well.

If this man, Ramakant, had not come to a wrong man like me, he would have been befooled perfectly.

Once the girl had seen the picture, then she would have found the man in a crowd of hundreds of people. And behind the whole thing was a friend of Rarnakant's himself I said, "What was he going to gain?"

The man said, "Half-half, fifty-fifty."

In India it happens almost every day, in one place, in another place, that there is a child who remembers; and immediately you have a business without any investment or publicity. And no Hindu, no Buddhist, no Jaina is going to enquire into it really because they are afraid their theory may prove wrong. They are ready to support it.

You will be surprised that when I exposed it and gave a statement to the newspapers that this was all a bogus thing, the brahmins and the Jainas approached me, their leaders approached me; they knew me perfectly well. They said, "You should not have done that. What does it matter if that poor brahmin gets a little money out of this? That is not important. The important thing is our theory, our philosophy. Just to expose a single case of fraud does not mean that the theory is wrong."

I said, "Yes, it does not mean that, so why are you worried? You can still believe in your theory, and if I find anybody else, I am going to expose him too. That too does not mean... hundreds of people can be exposed and still it does not destroy the theory. Perhaps all these people are frauds; that does not mean that reincarnation is wrong. But why have you come to me if it does not mean that reincarnation is wrong? I am not saying it is wrong; all that I have said was that this man was trying to exploit the superstition, the belief of the whole country." Now you cannot do that in a Mohammedan country. You cannot even think of it.

One young boy - perhaps Vivek was there - was brought to Woodlands where I used to live in Bombay. He was not more than nine years old, and he was giving sermons on the SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, the UPANISHADS. I was giving talks on Mahavira in Patkar hall in Bombay. There the father of the boy and the boy himself had come to listen to me. Listening to me, the father thought that if he brought the boy to me, and if I gave him some support, then in Bombay also his boy could be a celebrity.

And the boy was an instant success everywhere, naturally, because you cannot expect that a nine- year old boy can even understand the GITA, or the UPANISHADS; and he was quoting from them in pure Sanskrit, commenting on them. So he was introduced to me there, after the meeting, and I told them to come to my place.

I told the father, "In a way you have come to the wrong person. I can see you have destroyed this small boy's whole mind. This is nothing but a deep experiment in hypnotism. You have been hypnotizing the boy and repeating the shlokas. And in a hypnotic state the age does not matter:

whatsoever is repeated by the hypnotist is simply recorded; it is not a question of memorizing it.

So you have been repeating to this boy, when he is under hypnosis, all these sutras, all these commentaries; nothing is new in them" - because when they came I told the boy to sit on the sofa and start one of his sermons.

He said, "Which one? The one-hour, the thirty-minute one or the ten-minute one?"

I said, "The ten-minute one."

He immediately sat in a lotus posture - he looked beautiful, a very nice child - and he started a ten-minute sermon. I listened to him, and I told his father, "Not a single word is original. It has all been written before. You have been repeating it to the boy while he has been in hypnotic sleep, and you have prepared him." The boy was after all a boy, so when I asked him to start, he asked "Which one?" His father had prepared him because sometimes there was time only for ten minutes in a big conference, so he used the ten-minute sermon; the thirty-minute if they had more time, and if they had the full time, then the sixty-minute.

I said to the boy, "Can you give me a sermon of only three minutes?"

He said, "Three minutes? But I don't know a three-minute sermon. I know only three sermons:

ten minutes, thirty minutes, and sixty minutes. I don't know any other." He repeated, in a beautiful way - and it looked great coming from a nine-year-old child - Upanishadic sutras, their meaning, commentaries.

But I told the father, "What you have done is good business; you are doing good business, but you are destroying this child's intelligence. His whole life he will be a zombie. Withdraw all that you have forced into his mind. Hypnotize him and tell him to forget all that you have taught him."

The father was in shock. He said, "It is strange: how could you discover it so quickly? I have been traveling around the whole world; I earned thousands of rupees, and respect, and publicity everywhere. He has even been invited by the president of India so the president could listen to the boy's sermon in the president's house. And when the president was listening then all the M.P.'s and the ministers and others were bound to be present. The president himself garlanded him and gave him a gold medal. And you are shattering the whole thing.

"I said, "I am shattering the whole thing because I am not concerned with your business, I am concerned with this child's whole life. He is an intelligent child, more intelligent than average. He has a great future, a destiny of his own. Do you want him just to go on doing ten-minute, thirty-minute and sixty-minute sermons? And do you remember what happens to such children?"

In India so many girls and boys, when they are small, are worshipped. Naturally, hearing from a nine-year-old child such beautiful discourses impresses people. But these children are not going to remain nine years old always. The same sermon when the child is thirty will look idiotic. Who is going to listen?

"Can you tell me where all these children disappear to? Every year you will hear somewhere some child expounding great theories. Then what happens when they grow up? Then nobody bothers about them because what they are saying is not a miracle for a thirty-year-old man to say. It may be a mirade for a six-year-old child, a five-year-old child. Your child will also go the same way.

"But for thirty years, remaining in a kind of zombie state, repeating something which has been taught under hypnosis, is dangerous. It is keeping him addicted to a certain drug. And if for thirty years he has been in that drugged state, he will come out mediocre, stupid. And what do you want to prove through it? Reincarnation? - that this is a proof of reincarnation?"

A nine-year-old child is not capable of understanding or memorizing such long passages. So they say it is from his past life when he was a scholar, a great scholar, and still that memory persists, that memory is revived. This proves reincarnation, they say. So it is a double business: for his sermons he is earning money and for his reincarnation he is earning.

I said, "Go back home" - he was from Ujjain" - and get this child back to normal. Don't exploit your own child."

I knew he was not going to do it, although he said, "I will try."

I said, "I don't believe that you will try - you have so much invested in the whole thing." And he did not stop it. I went on enquiring from my friends in Ujjain: the show is going on. To every fair and every religious conference the child is brought. It continues, and he is earning a lot of money.

But you cannot do that in a Christian country, in "Jewish community, in a Mohammedan land, because they have accepted that this kind of thing is absolutely unreal.

As far as I am concerned, reincarnation is a reality It is my own experience.

But what is truth to me becomes theory to you.

That is the difficulty.

And I don't want my truth to be your theory.

I want it to be a truth for you also.

That's why I said:

I don't deal in theories, in beliefs.

My profession is truth.

That reminds me of Socrates, who used for the first time "profession" for truth; otherwise you don't use the word profession for truth. When he was sentenced to death by the court they gave him a few alternatives because he was a man of such superior intelligence; even those who were against him were not happy that he should be killed. He was the pride of Athens. Without Socrates what would Athens be? They gave him some alternatives. They said, "If you stop speaking the truth, if you completely stop teach ing people, you can be saved."

Socrates said, "That is impossible. It is my profession to speak the truth and to teach the truth. This is not an alternative. I would rather be dead than drop my profession. At least nobody will be able to say that Socrates was a coward: just to save his life he sold his truth."

They said, "Then the second alternative is that you leave Athens." Greece, in those days, was divided into city democracies; each city was an independent democracy. "So if you go beyond the boundaries of Athens, we have no problem. You can have your school anywhere. Your students can go there, and you can continue your profession."

Socrates said, "Do you want me to face another trial somewhere else? One is enough. And if Athens, which is the pinnacle of Greek civilization, is not able to understand me and absorb me, who is going to understand me and absorb me? And what will Athens be without me? I will miss Athens, Athens will miss me. No, that is not going to be my way. I have made Athens what Athens is."

And he was really right. He had not made the buildings and the roads, but if Athens still lives in the memory of man, it is because of Socrates and his disciples. Plato was his disciple, Aristotle was Plato's disciple; and these three men are the very cream of the Athenian culture, civilization, genius.

Plato and Aristotle don't come anywhere near Socrates; the Master is really incomparable. Plato is a great philosopher, and in the history of philosophy Plato is more important, because Socrates never wrote anything.

This is something to be understood: the people who have known truth have chosen to speak rather than to write. All over the world - it cannot be just coincidence - in all the centuries, all over the world, they have chosen to speak. There is some fundamental significance in it. They all know the word cannot convey the truth, but the spoken word at least can have something alive in it.

The gesture of the Master, the eyes of the Master - something of the Master is bound to be moving with the word, like an aroma, a fragrance which you cannot catch hold of, you cannot pinpoint. But the spoken word has a totally different dimension than the written word. The same word written is just a corpse of the same man who was alive.

The written word is like a corpse, and the spoken word is throbbing with life - at least for the moment when somebody is there to listen to it. Between the listener and the speaker, for a moment, there is an alive vibration. The word is not alone: the gesture, the eyes, the voice, the depth from where it is coming.... On a flat piece of paper where will you find the depth? In ink where will you find the eyes, the gestures, the sound? It will be just dead. It will be the same word but the fire will not be in it. It will be a candle without flame. But the candle is not important; what is important is the alive flame.

But historians have missed, for the simple reason that Plato's books are available, the evidence is there; Aristotle's books are there, the evidence is there. The spoken word was alive, lived and danced, and disappeared. Socrates is remembered only because Plato mentions him and records his dialogues. How much is Socrates in it and how much is Plato is difficult to say because there is no way to judge; there is nothing which Socrates has left. But I know perfectly well because there have been other disciples of Socrates who also wrote notes, and all those notes are different.

Plato's are the most famous because he was really a great writer. The other disciples were simply taking notes, class notes. But I have looked into those class notes, and I can say with certainty that ninety percent in Plato is his imagination. He is imaginative and creative. Something of Socrates is there but it is very difficult to find where: it is mixed too much with Plato. But Plato is important.

Socrates is almost mythological. There are many people who think that Socrates never existed, that he was just a character in Plato's dialogues. In the same way Gurdjieff used to say that Jesus never existed; he was only part of a drama which was played every year in Jerusalem.

It is difficult to prove that Jesus was really a historical person because except for those four gospels - which were written by his own disciples - there is no reference to Jesus in any Jewish literature, no reference in any contemporary scripture, on any stones, on buildings, nowhere at all in any Roman records. If a man is crucified, at least there must be a record that a man is crucified. And if you are going to crucify a man like Jesus, at least you owe him a record. But no record is there. And the poor four disciples - none of them is of the quality of Plato. Nor is Jesus of the quality of Socrates.

Socrates is a giant, a Himalayan giant. His every word is immensely meaningful. He said, "I am not going to leave Athens. Without me, what will Athens be? You kill me - that will make Athens immortal." And those idiots could not understand what he was saying. He was speaking the truth: it is because Socrates was poisoned in Athens by Athenian people that Athens has become immortal.

But I remembered him because he was the first man who used the word profession for truth: "I am not going to leave my profession." In fact, even if he had wanted to he could not have left it.

It is not within the capacity of a man who has arrived to stop the process of spreading what he has attained.

I say: to me, reincarnation is a truth. But I am not telling you to believe in my experience, because by believing it is not going to become your experience, nor is it going to help you in any way to experience it; on the contrary it will be a hindrance for you to experience it. If you believe in what I say then there is no need to enquire.

Religious truth, subjective truth, is different from obJective truth, scientific truth.

Albert Einstein finds out a certain truth about physics. Now, everybody need not go through the whole enquiry again - that would be stupid. What Albert Einstein had to work on for years, you can do in hours. It depends on your intelligence; you may even get hold of it within minutes. There is no need for you to search.

Edison worked for three years to make the first electric bulb. Now, if everyone is going to work for three years to produce one electric bulb, it would be stupid. Bulbs are available in the market.

Nobody ever thinks that there was a concentrated enquiry for three years.... And Edison was working sixteen hours a day, eighteen hours a day, late in the night. I am reminded of the last night when he discovered it.

You can understand his ecstasy: three years of arduous work and finally the bulb is there. The light has come on. He was sitting there, dazed; he could not believe it. Although he had been working for three years, hoping that someday he was going to find the right clue.... If this due failed, he would try another: he went on trying, went on trying. His disciples got fed up and left him; only his wife remained with him. She loved the poor man and she felt sorry for him. She used to suggest to him, "Stop this nonsense. You are so capable of making so many things."

Edison has discovered the greatest number of things in the whole history of man - he has one thousand discoveries to his name. His wife was saying, "Wasting your whole life doesn't seem rational. In three years you could have worked on many more things. Three years are just gone and you are becoming old: in three years you look as if you have aged thirty years." But she remained with him.

That last night, the night when he discovered it - he discovered it nearabout twelve - Edison was so dazed with his own discovery, in such ecstasy, that it was three o'clock in the morning when his wife shouted, "Will you put that light out" - she had no idea what light was there - "and come to bed, or...!"

Then he realized it was three o' clock. He rushed to his wife and said, "First, come and see the light."

She said, "Put the light out!"she was thinking of the lamp that he used to work by.

Edison said, "It is not the lamp that I used to turn on and off; it is the light that I have been working on for three years - and you say to me,'Put the light out'! Just for a moment come and see that it has happened."

You don't have to work for three years just to make a light bulb. You don't have to work for years to make a radio. No, in science it is objective truth. Once the principles of something are known, then anybody can make it in a very short period. In fact there is no need to make it, it is being manufactured.

But the subjective truth cannot be manufactured - although the priests have tried exactly that. What are their holy scriptures? - they have tried to manufacture truth. They have tried to put truth into words. They have tried to sell the holy books: "You have the BIBLE and what more did Jesus have?

Just keep those four gospels close to your heart, and that's enough."

Jesus of course had them a little closer to his heart, behind his ribs; your BIBLE will be just in front of the ribs - but a difference of a few inches does not make much difference. Or if you are really a Jesus freak, you can have an operation and have the BIBLE sewed to your heart, your lungs, and declare yourself Jesus Christ - because these are the words he had in his heart; you have them now. That's what thousands of Christian priests are doing around the world, these Bible-bashing Christians. One feels a little sorry for poor Jesus. And what are they doing to his BIBLE? Bashing!

And why they are bashing it?

One of my vice-chancellors was a great law expert - Doctor Harisingh Gaud. He was a world authority. I don't think there has been another man again of his caliber and fame in the world of law. He had one office in Peking, another in New Delhi, and another in London, and he was just continually moving from this office to that office. He was fighting cases in China, in India, in England, and in other countries. Wherever there was some case that was impossible to deal with, he was the man.

He used to say in his law classes, which I used to attend.... I was not a law student, but he loved me, and he even waited for me. If sometimes I was late he would say to his students, "Just wait:

one of my students is on the way. He will be coming because I can hear his wooden sandals. He is coming in just a few minutes."

And his students were really angry; they said, "He is not even enrolled in the law department and you pay him more respect than you even bother to pay us."

He said, "You will not understand it - you just try to understand law. But that young man is trying something totally different, that you cannot understand. He is continually trying to find out if law is nothing but an extension of logic. And I am interested in his enquiry; I want to wait for him."

He used to say to his students, "When you have a case which is absolutely favorable - the facts are with you, the case is going to be won by you absolutely - then be very humble before the court, very polite, just suggestive. Bring out all the facts, but don't be aggressive; there is no need, the facts are enough.

"But when you don't have a case which you are sure to win and you are hesitant - it is a fifty-fifty chance - then don't be humble, don't be meek. Bring as many law books as you can bring into the court, with quotations from laws and from other cases and other precedents. Facts you don't have, so you have to create a great smoke of words, and laws, and precedents, and clauses, and amendments. You have to create so much legal jargon that the facts are completely hidden behind the cloud.

"But if you are one hundred percent certain that you are going to lose the case, because all the facts are against you, all the witnesses are against you - your client has been caught red-handed - then be aggressive, violent. Throw the law books, bash the books and beat the table. Be a nuisance - less than that won't do. You don't have any chance unless you are so violent and so aggressive, throwing the books and laws around and bashing them, that you create a confusion. Perhaps that may help.

"Just confuse the court, and let the court know.... If a man is so assertive and so violent and so certain, then there must be something in it, that he is so bravely facing them; otherwise.... So create the suspicion, the doubt, and take advantage of the doubt."

These Bible-bashing people are simply trying to be assertive, aggressive. Facts are not in their favor; facts are never in your favor when you believe in something. Only when you experience something is there no need to be so aggressive. Then you can talk with a sense of humor.

Then you need not throw out a rabbi because of a very healthy and hygienic clean joke. And it is more puzzling that the council of the rabbis.... I could have understood it if the Catholics had expelled some bishop or cardinal or even the pope, but I don't understand the rabbis because they have the most beautiful jokes in the world. There is no comparison; they have the best sense of humor. But England is such a dump! - even Jewish rabbis have lost their sense of humor Just a few days ago a bishop was expelled. Perhaps the Jews are trying to compete - now a rabbi has to be expelled. Nobody wants to be behind anybody else: If you can do that, we can also do it.

But that bishop was certainly responsible for saying something which is destructive to Christianity. I am not saying that he should be expelled, but what he said was certainly dangerous to Christianity.

I would have supported him if I were the archbishop, and I would have told all other bishops to follow him.

He should not be expelled; he should be exalted, praised, because at least once in two thousand years, one bishop has spoken the truth - half the truth, not the full truth. But even to speak half the truth needs courage. But this poor rabbi has done nothing at all! And this is really a shame, that a rabbi should be expelled for telling a joke. Jews have survived just because of their sense of humor. There was nothing else to support them. They lost their country, they lost everything; in every country they were persecuted, killed, murdered. But they have certainly proved that they have some mettle, that you cannot destroy them.

And what has been their power? As far as I can see their power has been their sense of humor.

Even in the greatest misery they could joke and laugh. I can see, even in gas chambers, before the switch was turned on the Jews must have been joking. And it was a beautiful scene, worth joking about. This Adolf Hitler was mad, but he did some really humorous things.

Before sending anybody to the gas chamber he used to shave them completely. Most of the rabbis had beards; they were shaved of all their hair. Strange; why was he against hair? They were forced to be naked, and then they were told that they were going to have a shower. The gas chamber was known as "the great shower." Of course, nobody returned from the great shower, so nobody could say what happened inside. But every day the people who went were told, "Now you take a shower."

So, naked and completely shaved, thousands of Jews, including hundreds of rabbis, went inside.

What do you think they would have been doing there? Before the switch was turned on and they all evaporated, they must have been joking and laughing. They could survive in a very antagonistic world for the simple reason that they never lost their sense of humor. Howsoever great the misery and the anguish, they were able to laugh.

This is the first case in the whole history of Judaism where a rabbi has been expelled for telling a joke which is not dirty at all. In fact no joke is dirty. The jokes which are called dirty are called dirty because first you think sex is dirty. It is a corollary: because sex is dirty, any joke that has something to do with sex becomes dirty. Now, it is very strange: you are born out of sex, and you are not dirty.

According to Christians, you are. You are born out of original sin; that is their way of saying utterly dirty, ultimately dirty. There is no way to clean you - even dry cleaning won't help.

Dry cleaning reminds me that one man was washing his cat with soap. The cat was trying to run away, and he was forcing her to keep still. Somebody passing by looked in and said, "What are you doing? Such an old-fashioned fellow! This way the cat will make the whole house and all your clothes wet. These days you can get a dry cleaner."

He said, "That's a good idea. I'll use a dry cleaner."

Next day the passerby met him and said, "How are things going?"

He said, "Things are really bad - the cat died."

The man said, "The cat died? What happened?"

He said, "She was fine after the dry cleaning, but the tumble-dryer finished her." He had gone ultramodern: he bought a dry-cleaner and a drying machine!

Once you have accepted that sex is dirty then there is no way to have anything clean in the world, because everything arises out of the same sexual energy. Then the birds calling their mates are dirty - expel them from existence. The peacocks dancing to attract the female - expel them, they are being really dirty fellows. And what a dirty trick to spread your tail so colorfully. The poor female is bound to be attracted to these really dirty fellows doing their tricks. If you expel sex from the world, life is expelled.

No joke is dirty. By expelling that rabbi, the council of the rabbis in England has proved only one thing: that they are dirty old fellows. It shows their mind.

A psychoanalyst was checking a patient. He drew a line on the paper and asked, "Just look, concentrate on the line. What does it remind you of?"

He said, "Of a beautiful woman."

The psychiatrist said, "We are on the right track." He drew a triangle and again he asked, "Now concentrate."

The patient said, "There is no need to concentrate - it reminds me of a very beautiful woman."

The psychiatrist said, "Strange." He drew a round circle, and he said, "Now...?"

The psychiatrist was shocked because the patient said, "Your mind is full of sex and nothing else - continually drawing naked women, this way, that way, this way. Can't you draw anything else?" That fellow thinks that the psychiatrist's mind is so full of sex!

These rabbis and their council - they must have been really sex-obsessed.

All these people have been telling you what is right, what is wrong, what is true, what is untrue; and you have been believing them. This believing has brought the whole of humanity to this mess. My effort is to completely stop the process of believing. You are not to believe in me. If I say that this is the truth that I have experienced, all that you have to do is to take it as a hypothesis and try it.

There are ways to remember your past lives, simple methods to remember your past lives. There is no need to believe. We have the rebirthing process - just go a little deeper. When you have reached to the point of birth, the same process has to be followed You will come to the point of impregnation.

Continue the same process and you will come to your death in the past life. Go on, and you will be surprised that all that has happened to you in millions of lives is still contained in the deep reservoirs of your memory. In your collective unconscious nothing has ever been missed out.

Even when you are not paying attention to some thing, your collective unconscious is collecting it.

Now they call it subliminal memory, and they are using it in a few countries. In some countries it has been banned, but nobody knows... because even if you ban it, it can be used: you go to see a movie, and in the movie they can use subliminal advertisements. Just in between two frames, a dozen times during the film, the word "Coca-Cola" appears, but it comes and goes so fast that you can't see it with your eyes; you don't see it.

If you have seen a movie you will know how the movie film functions. All the pictures are still. For example, I raise my hand: in the film there will be hundreds of pictures - one position, another position, another position. Just raising this hand means hundreds of still pictures of different positions, and they are moving so fast that you don't see them as separate, static pictures. The pictures move so fast that you can see the hand moving, but not the still pictures of different postures of the hand.

If you wind the film slowly you will be able to see. Just in the gap in between two pictures of the hands moving - and they are moving so fast that you cannot see the gap - is put "Coca-Cola,"

perhaps twelve times in the whole film. You will not be able to remember that you have seen it, but that day outside the movie house sales of Coca-Cola will be doubled, trebled.

There is an average for how much is sold every day, but on that day treble the number is sold. What happened? Your unconscious mind goes on collecting even those things which your eyes are not seeing, your ears are not hearing, your body is not feeling.

You will be surprised. If you are hypnotized and you are asked what happened on the first of January 1971, from the very early morning when you got up, to the end when you went to bed again, consciously you will say, "The first of January'71? - I don't remember." Who remembers the first of January'71, unless something very important happened: your mother died, your father died, you got divorced from your wife or something. Ordinarily, if it was a usual day you cannot remember it, but if you are put into hypnosis - and it is a very simple affair to put you into hypnosis.

You just have to be told to look at any shining thing, hanging above your head, to relax your body, and go on looking at it without blinking your eyes. And the person who is hypnotizing you will go on saying, "You are falling asleep. Your eyes are becoming heavy, heavy, heavy, heavier, heavier."

And you will start feeling your lids becoming heavier, but you have to keep them open as long as you can. You are not to close them, he is not telling you to close them. You have been instructed to keep them open to the very last. So you are trying hard, and the eyes go on becoming heavier and heavier, and you start feeling that the body is becoming numb.

The hypnotist goes on saying, "Your whole body is numb. You cannot even move your hand if you want, you cannot move your leg if you want: your body has become almost a stone," and your eyes are just about to close. You make a last effort, just as a drowning man makes his last effort for help, and then drowns and is gone. You can see that now you cannot keep your eyes open, they are really heavy; stones are hanging from your eyelids.

This takes not more than three minutes; you fall asleep. But the difference between ordinary sleep and hypnosis is that in ordinary sleep you are oblivious of everything around you. In hypnosis, you are available to the hypnotist and oblivious of everything else. If somebody else says something, you won't listen; even if he calls your name, you won't answer. But if the hypnotist even whispers something, you will hear it.

The hypnotist can tell you, "Please go back to 1971, the first of January. What happened in the morning, from when you got up?" And you will start relating everything. It can be recorded: "When I got up, the first thing was that I was missing my shoes for the bathroom. In the bathroom I was holding the brush and it fell on the floor" - such things which have no significance. What you ate for breakfast, what you did after that - you will go into absolute detail, up to the time when you went to bed again.

You can be awakened by just the reverse process: "Now the time is over, and your body is becoming lighter, and your eyes are becoming less heavy, less heavy, less heavy, and now you can open your eyes." And you will not remember that you have related all the incidents of the first of January 1971.

But if they are shown to you, you will recognize them: "Yes, this did happen, but how did you get to know about it?" You will not be aware that you yourself have given the whole thing.

Hypnosis is one of the great dimensions which has not yet been explored. And there is nothing wrong in it, but all the religions have been against it. Religions are strange: they are against everything that can lead you to some truth. They have created this atmosphere all around the earth that hypnosis is something wrong. It is a condemnation if somebody says, "You are hypnotized." It is a humiliation: hypnotized? - me?

But you will be surprised that only very intelligent people can be hypnotized. Mediocre people are very difficult to hypnotize, and idiots, impossible. That is a simple criterion; if you try it on three people you can find who the idiot is. Now this is a scientifically established fact, that idiots cannot be hypnotized, for the simple reason - first, you tell them to look at the shiny object and they will look somewhere else. You tell them to keep their eyes open; they will keep them closed. For an idiot everything is possible. You tell them to lie down; they will stand up. Hypnosis is impossible because they don't have any intelligence to grasp the idea, and it all depends on them.

A wrong notion is rumored around the world, that it is the power of the hypnotist. Absolutely wrong:

the hypnotist has no power. There is nothing like hypnotic power - that it is the hypnotist's power that makes you hypnotized. That is not true, not at all, scientifically. It is your intelligence cooperating with the directions given by the hypnotist, which can be given by a tape recorder. The hypnotist is not needed at all. You can't say, "This tape recorder has hypnotic power." The hypnotist is simply repeating certain suggestions. If you are cooperating with him intelligently the sleep will come to you.

I used to live with one of my cousin-brothers. He had one strange habit: it was difficult for him to leave anything. I had found him a beautiful job, and he was working in a third-rate place; the salary was not good and the work was too much. But that was his habit, that he could not leave anything that he was doing. I tried to tell him, "You are just foolish. Here you will be a boss. You will have three times the salary, a good office. You will be a boss: only your signature will be needed a few times in the day, and that's all. And here you are just a third-rate clerk: the whole day writing, copying, and doing overtime every day."

But he said, "I like the people here. My friends are here, and everybody knows me. In a new place"

- he was very nervous - "in a new place, new people...."

I said, "I will come with you. I will introduce you to everybody." No way. Then I said, "I'd better try hypnosis on you," because I had tried hypnosis on him before. And he was a very intelligent person who always came first in all his examinations - he is now a professor.

I was continually experimenting on him - he was a good medium for hypnosis - and everything that I suggested, he did. Even post-hypnotic suggestions, minute to minute, he had followed. For example, one time I had told him in hypnosis, "Tomorrow at exactly twelve o' clock when the tower"

- the tower was very near to us - "when the tower clock strikes twelve, you will kiss your pillow." And I took him out of his hypnosis.

The next day, from eleven forty-five I was standing near his bed so he could not go to it. He had no idea what was going on, but he wanted to go there. I was standing there so he couldn't. Then I took his pillow and went out into the garden. He came following me, not knowing what was happening, and exactly when the clock struck twelve, he jumped, took the pillow, kissed it and became so ashamed that he ran away.

I said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I myself don't know. I have never kissed my pillow - I tell you truly! Why should I kiss the pillow? But for a few moments I was not thinking of anything else but the pillow; I was worried. And why are you carrying my pillow in the garden? I have never seen you carrying my pillow. And I feel so ashamed; I am sorry that I had to pull the pillow from you, and did such a stupid act, kissing the pillow."

I said, "It's nothing to be worried about. This was a post-hypnotic suggestion. You were simply following instructions. You were unable to prevent it, it was unconscious." You will be puzzled that when I tried hypnosis to persuade him to change his job - he was afraid, because I had been trying for two, three days to persuade him without hypnosis and he was reluctant. So he went into hypnosis, but the moment I said to him, "You change your job from the old office which is rotten," he just sat up immediately.

He said, "No!"

I said, "But you were in hypnosis."

He said, "I was, but this one thing kept coming to me, that you are going to say something to me about my job." That much he remembered even in his hypnosis, that if his job was mentioned he would come out immediately.

So it is not the power of the hypnotist, it is the intelligence and the cooperation - because he was uncooperative on one point, but ninety-nine percent he listened to me, did whatever I said.

You can say, "Just sit down. A cow is standing there; milk the cow," and the person will sit there and start milking the cow which is not there. You can say anything and the person will do it - but against his will there is no way. So people who think you can be hypnotized against your will are absolutely wrong. It is not a power in the hands of the hypnotist, it is your power. If you allow the hypnotist to suggest to you and you cooperate.... If you resist, you cannot be hypnotized. So very great intelligence is needed, trust is needed. Only intelligent and trusting people can be hypnotized.

Hypnosis is one of the ignored, rejected dimensions of life. This can help you reveal all your past lives so quickly that there is no problem in it - you need not believe in them; first go into hypnosis.

And in hypnosis you can be given a post-hypnotic suggestion that now the hypnotist will not be needed. Instead, you count from one to one hundred, and by the time you reach one hundred you will fall into hypnosis on your own.

And whatsoever you want to happen in your hypnosis you have to remind yourself of before you start counting from one to a hundred. You just say, "I want to go into my past life," and start counting from one to a hundred, and you will fall asleep. And the second thing that you have to say is, "After ten minutes or fifteen minutes I will come out again on my own." Because there is no hypnotist, you are doing it on your own. But a hypnotist is very helpful; he can easily break the ice, make the road, and give you the key. Anything will work: "Repeat your own name three times and you will be hypnotized."

So my suggestion is, don't ask me whether the theory of reincarnation is true or not. To me it is true, to you it is not - not yet. Don't take any position, negative or positive. Just remain open to the hypothesis. Explore. If you can go into your own past lives, that's enough proof that everybody has a long, long past. And that gives another insight: if there are past lives, that means there are going to be future lives; this life is only just in the middle. Of course, to enter future lives is not possible because the future has not happened yet. But to enter the past is absolutely easy because it has already happened; the memory is there and the record is there. It is just that you have forgotten the way to the record room where it is recorded.

Take it as a hypothesis.

With me everything is a hypothesis.

If you can trust me only this much, that you are ready to explore, enquire, that will do.

I have no doctrines to teach you, but only methods for you to find out the truth by yourself.

Any truth that is not found by you is not truth.

Truth is truth only when you have found it.

That is an essential quality of the truth, that it has been found by you, that it is authentically yours, that you can say on your own authority that it is so.

But don't become authoritative.

Do you see the difference between the two words? I say on my own authority that reincarnation is true, but I am not authoritative. If I say that you have to believe it, that it is true, then I am authoritative. The authority is simply my experience. To be authoritative means I want to enforce it on you and make it a belief for you.

My religion has no doctrines, no tenets, no theories. It is a strange religion. No such thing has happened before, but that's the beauty of it. It leaves you totally free.

If I can give you only freedom I have given you everything.

If I can help you to be free from all the nonsense that others have tied around you, that is more than can be expected.

Once you are free, then all dimensions are there, open; you can travel on your own. And to travel on your own is so beautiful.

Have you watched little children? When they start walking, if you want to hold their hand they are not willing. You are trying to be helpful, you are afraid the child may fall, but you don't understand the child's ecstasy. You are destroying his ecstasy by holding his hand. He would rather fall but be on his own. And what is the harm if he falls once, twice, thrice? - he will learn how not to fall. Simply watch so that he does not move into some danger. Otherwise, if he is falling just on the plain ground and not into an abyss, there is no need to be worried. Let him learn, because it is better he falls and learns how not to fall. Then your watching will not be needed; then he can be left alone even by the side of an abyss.

In my childhood I used to have one strange game, invented by myself - very dangerous. I would challenge the neighborhood children to walk on a plank of wood that was just lying there. Our new house was being built, and there were many planks of wood; this was a long, flat plank. I would tell the children to walk on it, and they would; there was no problem. I would say, "You can walk on it?

Then I will put it across two balconies." Then I would say, "Now walk on it. It is the same plank: you walked on it when it was on the floor. There is no difference, except that now it is high above."

And they would say, "We cannot walk on it."

But I said, "What is the difference? It is the same plank which you have walked along many times, and you did not fall." I would show them, I would walk on it. And my mother used to run out when she saw me on the plank again. I would tell her with my finger, "Keep quiet, because if you say anything I may fall," so she would stand there not even breathing.

I would walk the plank and she would go crazy and scream and say, "What is this?"

I told my mother, "This is a game that I have invented, and this is the game I am going to play my whole life."

She said, "What! Your whole life, this game?"

I said, "This is the game. Later on I may call it a different name, but this is the game." And I am still playing the same game. Awareness - that's all you need. On the ground you can walk very easily because you know there is no fear of falling. It is the same plank, the same size, the same breadth, but the fear has arisen that you can fall. But if you are alert you can walk on it; there is no problem.

Just be alert, then you can walk on any hypothesis and there is no danger of falling into belief.

Remain alert. Use any hypothesis. You are bound to find some truth, and any truth is good because it is an aspect of the whole truth; from that you can move and find the whole truth.

Just catch the tail of the elephant, that is enough: you have found the elephant. It may take a little time to discover the rest - the elephant is big - but the whole problem is to catch hold of the right tail. Belief is not the right thing.

And I will not support any kind of belief, positive or negative.

I support only hypotheses.

The second question?

Question 2:

YES, that is true: one cannot pull the leg of a man of awareness. But the second part is a little complex, because the man of awareness will not want to pull your leg. He pulls your head up. That expression - pulling somebody's head up - is not in any language, but that is the work of the man of awareness.

In this life everybody is pulling everybody's legs to pull you down so they go up. The man of awareness is far above you. It is very difficult for him to reach your leg - and particularly in the Big Muddy Ranch. He will have to dive deep into the mud to find your leg. No man of awareness is going to do that.

But he will pull something, he will not leave you alone. He will pull your head up, and that's the only way when somebody is deep in the mud. This big, muddy ranch is really very representative of the whole world, because everybody is in mud, deep in the mud, going down and down. Even to find your head is so difficult, what to say about your leg - unless you are standing on your head! Then perhaps you will have to be pulled by your leg, but that is very rare. People don't do headstands in mud.

That kind of practice happens - I am reminded of a story. It is sometime in the future when Morarji Desai dies. He was hoping to go to heaven of course, but the devil welcomed him into hell. Morarji Desai said, "What! I am the ex-prime minister, Morarji Desai, don't you know?"

The devil said, "We know you well. We have been waiting for you a long time, but you went on drinking your urine, and you stink so much that death went many times to take you away, but went away - just the stink was too much. But finally we had to force death, telling him,'Now something has to be done. This man has lived too long.' And you can choose... you are a very great politician, leader, celebrity, so this much of a favor I can do. We have three sections in hell, you can choose."

In the first one Morarji Desai looked: people were being thrown into fire. And although they were being thrown into fire, they were burning but they were not dying; it was tremendously painful. They were being pulled out again and thrown back again. He said, "No, this is not the place."

The second one he saw was a little better than the first, but not for him. Strange, so many insects he had never seen before were passing through people's bodies, making holes, going in and coming out from another hole. Each man's body was nothing but holes because those insects went on coming in, going out, coming in, going out. Morarji Desai said, "No, this is not the place for me. I would like to see the third."

The third one he saw he felt at ease with, because it was not much trouble compared to those other two. And he was also a little bit accustomed to this place: it was full of shit and urine. Fifty percent he was acquainted with, fifty percent he would learn, what else to do? - these were the three places.

One thing was good, it was only up to the knees, and people were standing in it and drinking coffee.

Morarji Desai said, "This is perfectly good - this will do."

As he entered the devil shouted, "Now the coffee break is over." So everybody finished his coffee.

"Now be in the headstand." Then Morarji Desai understood that this was not at all so easy.

So only in that third kind of hell are people standing on their heads. In the world people are deep in mud but still standing on their feet. The enlightened person pulls you by your head, up. There is no expression like that because languages are not made by men of enlightenment; they are made by unconscious people, for unconscious people, for unconscious purposes.

For the enlightened... no language exists in the world which is made by enlightened people, for enlightened people, for the purpose of enlightenment That's the difficulty; that's why they all feel that truth cannot be expressed. There is no language which has been made by people who know the truth. In fact, there have never been so many people knowing truth that there was any need to create a language. It happens rarely, once in a while, that somebody is enlightened; of what use is language? To whom is he going to talk the enlightened language?

But my problem is that I am trying to pull your head up, so on the way I go on making up my own phrases, creating my own language, my own words. Somehow, if the message reaches you, even a little bit of it, that will be enough. Because even a little bit of fire is enough to put the whole jungle on fire. Your whole life can be aflame by just a little flame jumping into you.