Going Essential

The first question

Osho,

Question 1:

Prem Samadhi,

Man is also a seed, a possibility, a potential, a hop, a promise. But the seed is not yet the flower.

In essence it has the capacity of millions of flowers, but not in reality. Those flowers have to be actualized. The essential is that which you are born with, which is your very being.

That's exactly the purpose, or should be the purpose, of education: to help you to seek and search your essential, to help you to grow it. The word "education" means to draw out; that which is in has to be brought out, just as you draw water from a well. But something has gone basically wrong: the whole educational system is doing just the opposite of it. Rather than drawing anything out of you it forces, imposes things upon you.

That which is imposed upon you is non-essential; it creates your personality. The essential is your individuality; the non-essential is your personality. In other words, the essential is your very soul, your being; the non-essential is your ego. All that helps the ego is non-essential; all that helps you to become egoless is essential. Ambition is non-essential, greed is non-essential; desire, any kind of desire, is non-essential.

Meditativeness is essential. To be silent, to be still, just to be alert, aware: that is the first step, the door into the essential. And once you have found in deep, profound since what you are meant to be, you have found your destiny. And then life has a sense of direction not imposed by others but discovered by yourself.

The function of the Master is educative - not informative but educative, educative in the original sense of the word. He is not to give you a certain character because that will be imposed upon you.

He is not to make you a Christian or Hindu or a Buddhist. Hc has to help you to know what you can be, because that which you can be you already are essence, in the potential.

You can be a Christ, you can be a Buddha, you can be a Krishna, but you cannot be a Christian.

Christianity is something imposed from the outside. You cannot be a Hindu. Nobody is born a Hindu; it is nobody's destiny to be a Hindu. It is the effort of others to lead you astray from your destiny.

Nobody is born to be a communist or a fascist, but everybody is born with a certain direction in which hc will find fulfillment.

Maybe you are a painter, but you are functioning in the society as a doctor. You will remain unfulfilled your whole life, because you listened to the parents and the society and the greed and the ambition.

Everybody was saying, "be a doctor. It is a good profession, respectable, and you will be able to earn more money than if you become a painter. Who knows? A painter may not be able to earn money at all, because painting is not something which has any utilitarian purpose. And by being a painter you may remain a beggar. You may never become famous, because painters never become famous - only once in a while."

If you are a musician, a poet, you cannot fulfill the ambitions of your parents, of your society, of all the well-wishers. But one thing is certain: you will be tremendously happy whether you are known or unknown, whether you are poor or rich. YOU will have a tremendous contentment because you are fulfilling something very fundamental at the deepest core of your being. Unless you start moving in the direction of your essential you remain miserable.

Bliss is a consequence, a by-product. Whenever the river starts moving towards the ocean there is bliss. And one never knows what is hidden in you. No astrologer can help you, no palmist can help you. Except with deep meditation you will never be able to feel what is possible for you.

As I see it, almost everybody is in the wrong place. The person who would have been a tremendously happy doctor is a painter and the person who would have been a tremendously happy painter is a doctor. Nobody seems to be in his right place; that's why this whole society is in such a mess. The person is directed by others; he is not directed by his own intuition.

Meditation helps you to grow your own intuitive faculty. It becomes very clear what is going to fulfill you, what is going to help you flower. And whatsoever it is - and it is going to be different for each individual... That is the meaning of the word "individual": everybody is unique. And to seek and search your uniqueness is a great thrill, a great adventure.

Samadhi, your question is significant in many more ways too, because it is not only a question of finding the essential in the individual. In life also we are burdened with the unessential, in religion too, in every dimension.

The religious person goes on doing certain rituals which are taught by others to him. He never finds his own religiousness, a quality which can not be imposed on you, a quality which can only be helped to grow in you. It is not like a plastic flower that can be given to you from the outside, by the priest. It is a real roseflower, and for that you have to be very alert, very aware.

The Christian goes to the church every Sunday. It is a formality; it does not make him religious, but it gives him a false sense of religiousness. The Hindu goes on chanting the Gita. It does not make him religious at all; on the contrary it prevents, because by reciting the Gita he becomes very knowledgeable. He becomes a parrot or a computer. He can recite the whole Gita, but he understands nothing because he has not experienced anything. He knows words; he has not encountered the meaning of those words. People go on being imitative.

For example, Mahavira lived naked; that was his individuality. Nobody else is supposed or expected to live naked, unless one finds it an inner, intuitive vision, unless one finds that that is the only way he can be true to his self. Then it is another matter. But the Jaina muni, the Jaina monk, practices nudity - just an imitation, a carbon copy. And remember. imitation is always ugly because it creates a false person; it never gives you authenticity.

Mahavira was naked not because anybody had told him to be naked. He felt the immense urge to be just like a child and he followed his urge, and he suffered for his urge. He was chased from one village to another, mad dogs were put after him, he was stoned, because people thought he was destroying their morality, that he was a dangerous man.

In an orthodox country like the India of twenty-five centuries ago, a man walking naked would have been certainly a nuisance to people, to their conventional way of living, to their traditional style of thinking. Krishna has not lived naked, Rama has not lived naked, no Hindu avatara has lived naked.

This man is destroying the whole tradition, culture, religion. Of course he has to be punished.

But Mahavira was immensely blissful. The Jaina muni does not seem to be blissful at all because he is simply an imitation. He is really torturing himself, forcing himself to be naked, because in his mind now the greed has arisen: unless he looks like Mahavira he is not going to attain the ultimate liberation.

Now nakedness has become an essential thing, which it is not. Nakedness is not an essential thing.

Buddha attained without being naked, Jesus attained without being naked, you can attain. And I am not saying that Mahavira did not attain by being naked. He attained, but these are individual things.

Buddhist monks go on following the Buddha. They sit the same way, they talk the same way, they behave the same way. That is not going to help at all. That is not going to make you religious. That is not going to make you another Buddha. You are being simply stupid. And the more stupid you are the better you can imitate, because imitation needs no intelligence. In fact, only a mediocre mind can be imitative. The more intelligent you are, the more you want to be simply yourself, whatsoever it is. Now the whole thing goes non-essential. For Buddha it was essential to sit that way; that was his intuitive feeling.

When Buddha dropped the ideas imposed on him by others, his followers left him. He had five followers - before he became very famous he had only five followers; that is before he became enlightened. Those five followers were very devoted to him for the simple reason that he was going just like any other Hindu ascetic, only with great stubbornness, doing all kinds of austerities, following all kinds of rules and regulations given in the scriptures. He was so particular about everything that these five followers thought that he was the greatest Master.

Then one day he understood the whole stupidity of it: he is not following his own intelligence, he is simply following others who may be right, may not be right. One thing is certain: that they were a different kind of people and he is not of that kind. He was suffering, but he was thinking that it is necessary to suffer this; this pain is necessary to grow.

The day he realized it he dropped all ascetic practices; he relaxed. That was the first time he ate in the night and he ate food offered by an untouchable woman. All five followers immediately left him, thinking that he had gone astray. First, eating in the night is not right; secondly, the food offered by an untouchable, a poor woman, is not acceptable to a holy man. He is no more holy.

And that very night Buddha became enlightened. Those five fools missed his enlightenment. That very night he became enlightened. And he became enlightened for the simple reason that for the first time he relaxed into his being and simply followed his essential core.

All religions are destroyed by the non-essential. Your whole life is destroyed by the non-essential.

But nobody else can decide for you what is essential and what is non-essential.

Remember that, Samadhi. I cannot say exactly, "This is essential and this is non-essential." Each individual has to discover it. Each individual has to be a light unto himself or herself.

All that I can suggest is: be silent so that you can hear the still small voice of your heart. And it is always speaking, but you are so noisy you go on missing its message.

The second question

Question 2:

Satya Vedant,

THE SHANKARACHARYA is right in a way: I do not conform with his ideas about spirituality. Why should I conform to anybody else's ideas of spirituality at all? Spirituality is not an ideology, in fact. It has nothing to do with ideas. It is a state of no-mind. How it can be an ideology? The Shankaracharya has no experience of meditation at all, otherwise he would not have spoken this way.

Spirituality simply means that you have gone beyond the mind, and in that transcendence all ideas are transcended - Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, communist - all ideas. Ideas as such are transcended. There is only silence, and two silences can never be different. They are like two zeros. What difference can there be?

Buddha in his deep meditation is not different from Mahavira. Mahavira in his deep meditation is not different from Zarathustra. Zarathustra in his deep silence is not different from Lao Tzu. And I call THIS the Sanatan Dharma.

The word SANATAN means eternal, and DHARMA means Tao - the law, the ultimate law. Ais DHAMMO SANANTANO, Buddha repeats again and again: This is the eternal law of life. But by Sanatan Dharma the Shankaracharya means Hindu religion. Hindus think that their religion is the eternal religion; that is sheer nonsense.

Religiousness is eternal, but no religion is eternal. Every religion is born and dies in its own time.

No religion is beginningless and no religion is endless. Everything that is born in time is bound to die sooner or later, and it is good that it dies because it creates space for something new to arise.

Sanatan Dharma - eternal religion - cannot be identified with any religion in particular.

Jainas believe that their religion is far older than the religion of the Hindus, and it may be far older because their first TEERTHANKARA, Adinath, is remembered in the Rig Veda, the first Hindu scripture, with great respect. That shows two things: that Adinath must have been already an established, accepted spiritual leader; he must have preceded the Rig Veda, and the Rig Veda is the ancientmost scripture of the Hindus. Jainas say their religion is far older, but older does not mean eternal.

Thousands of religions have existed on the earth and have died, and when they were alive they had millions of followers, but now they have completely disappeared. The followers have disappeared, the priests have disappeared, their gods have disappeared. When they were alive they also used to think they were eternal. But whatsoever happens in time always dies; nothing can be eternal in time.

My meaning of Sanatan Dharma, eternal religion, is: religiousness is eternal. For example, LIFE IS eternal... people come and go. We were not here a few years before and after a few years we will not be here, but PEOPLE were here and people will be here. Life will continue. The forms will go on disappearing and appearing, but that which appears and disappears, that which becomes sometimes manifest and sometimes unmanifest, is eternal. It is religiousness.

Jesus becomes Christ through that religiousness. Buddha becomes Buddha - enlightened - through that religiousness. It cannot be identified with Hinduism.

The Shankaracharya is right: if Sanatan Dharma means Hinduism, then I cannot conform with its ideas. But if Sanatan Dharma means eternal religiousness then there is no question of conforming - I am living it, I AM it. And my whole effort here is to help you to BE religious - neither Hindus nor Christians nor Mohammedans nor Jainas.

Now this may be the only place in the whole world where all religions are meeting and merging into a new kind of religiousness, a totally different quality. Nobody bothers here whether you are a Christian or a Parsi, whether you are a Taoist or a Buddhist, because we have found the source.

And once you know the source it does not matter from what shore you drink, in what kind of bucket you draw the water from the source. The bucket is non-essential; the water is essential. We have found the eternal religion: it can only be a religiousness, a quality, a fragrance.

My meaning of Sanatan Dharma is totally different from the Shankaracharya's meaning. The Shankaracharya of Shardapeeth, Dwarka, simply represents a tradition, a convention which is already dead. All traditions are dead!

What I represent is a living experience.

The Shankaracharya is only an imitator of the Adi Shankaracharya, the original Shankaracharya.

One thousand years have passed. The original Shankaracharya had experienced; now this Shankaracharya is only a priest. These people are the people who destroy spirituality, but they will condemn me, they will criticize me, because I don't conform to their stupid ideas about spirituality.

As far as I see, their spirituality is nothing but hypocrisy. They go on saying one thing and they go on doing just the opposite.

The original Shankaracharya has said: The world is illusory, it is maya. If the world is illusory, if it is maya, if it does not exist at all, then why do these priests go on preaching to people to renounce it?

That is their whole life work: to tell people to renounce the world - the world which does not exist in the first place! It is like telling people to renounce their shadows. If you are right, there is no world to renounce; if there is a world to renounce, then you are not right.

Because of such stupid ideas people become hypocrites. They go on condemning the world on the one hand, and on the other hand they go on grabbing the same world.

You will not find more greedy people anywhere in the world than you will find in India, and the Indian goes on condemning the whole world as materialist.

One of our sannyasins, Kamal Bharti, had gone to America and traveled all over the world. He wrote a letter to me saying, "It is strange, Osho, that I traveled all over the world without any money, just sannyasins and friends were supporting me, and I never ran out of money. I never was in any difficulty anywhere in the whole world. But the moment I landed at the Bombay airport my money and my things were all stolen!" This is a religious land! People are spiritual!

Kamal Bharti, that shows that somebody who thinks the world is maya has taken your things. What does it matter? Why allow you to carry such illusory things? He has helped you to unburden!

These people have created such a hypocrisy by telling people to do something anti-life. The Shankaracharyas, the priests of the Hindus, go on condemning life and go on also praising God for creating the world. And they don't see the illogicality of it, the ridiculousness of it. They are blind people! They cannot understand me because what they think is spirituality is nothing but hypocrisy.

The Pope lay dying. His doctor called the cardinals together and announced: "We can only save his life with a heart transplant."

"We must tell the people," said one of the cardinals. "Perhaps a donor will volunteer to give his heart for the Pontiff.

The announcement was made and thousands gathered beneath the Pop's balcony, shouting, "Take- a my heart! Take-a my heart!"

The cardinals now had to decide on the person who would donate his heart to the Holy Father. "We will drop a feather from His Holiness' hat," said the head cardinal. "Whoever it lands upon will be the lucky person."

The feather floated down from the balcony. From the multitude below came: "Take-a my heart! Phoo, phoo! Take-a my heart! Phoo, phoo!"

They were doing both things: "Take-a my heart!" and blowing the feather as far away as possible!

That's what these people call spirituality.

"The world is illusory." And these temples of Shankaracharya accumulate as much money as possible. And "Money is dirt"... and they collect gold. And gold is nothing, it is dust. These people are against everything, and yet from the back door they go on doing the same as anybody else.

My spirituality is not hypocrisy; it is authentic living. I don't tell you to be life-negative. I tell you to be life-loving, life-affirmative, because God is nothing but life. The aliveness of existence is what God is all about.

These people are afraid that I may destroy the spiritual atmosphere - as if the spiritual atmosphere exists! I have traveled all over India - there exists no spiritual atmosphere. Spiritual atmosphere exists only around a Buddha. It is like light: if there is a flame, there is light around it. Once the flame is gone, the light disappears.

When Gautam the Buddha was alive there was a spiritual atmosphere that surrounded him.

Wherever he went that spiritual atmosphere went with him; it was his light. There was light when Krishna was alive, when Christ was alive, but now Christianity is only talking about light.

Maybe they have paintings about light, of light, but those paintings will not give light in darkness.

The Mother Superior of the convent awoke in a happy mood, dressed and set off to visit her flock.

"Good morning, Sister Augusta, God bless you! Are you happy at your work?

"Yes, Reverend Mother, but I am sorry to see you got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.

The Mother Superior ignored the remark and passed on to another nun. "Good morning, Sister Georgina, you look pleased with yourself!"

"I am, Reverend Mother, but it is a pity you got out of bed on the wrong side today."

The Mother Superior, greatly puzzled, moved on to a young novice. "Tell me, little Sister, do you also feel I got out of bed on the wrong side?"

"I am afraid so," said the nun.

"But why? Am I not as happy as a song-bird and pleasant to you all?"

"Yes, Mother, but you are wearing Father Vincenzo's house slippers!"

These are the people who go on talking about spirituality, celibacy, renunciation! And if you look deep down into the world that surrounds you and these spiritual - so-called spiritual - people, you will be very much puzzled they live a double kind of life.

Yes, I will destroy this double kind of life wherever I go! He is right in that way. Whatsoever he calls "spiritual environment" exists nowhere. Whatsoever exists is hypocrisy, and I am going to destroy it, certainly, because that is the only way to create a spiritual atmosphere. Something that is destroying people's very life has to be ruthlessly uprooted. All the weeds have to be uprooted so we can grow roses.

He says that Sanatan Dharma - by which he means Hindu Dharma, Hindu religion - gives Great importance to self-control. I don't give any importance to self-control, because all control is ugly, because all control is repressive. Life should be spontaneous, not controlled. Yes, your inner world should be so clear and transparent that you can see what is right and what is wrong, and you should live according to it, not by any dictates in any scriptures.

He says: Hindu Dharma lives according to prescribed rules. All prescribed rules create slavery.

I don't prescribe any rules for my sannyasins. I don't give you a character from the outside, but I give you something far more valuable: I give you meditativeness, out of which a character arises which is your own, out of which you start living a life full of insight. Then you know what is right and what is wrong and you live accordingly, but not according to Krishna or Manu or Rama. They may have been right - that was THEIR intuition - but to live according to any prescribed rule is to live the life of a slave. And I am against slavery.

I teach people rebellion. In that way the Shankaracharya of Shardapeeth is right: that wherever I go I will destroy their so-called spiritual atmosphere. He has not really criticized me, he has praised me - unknowingly of course, unconsciously of course, because these people have no consciousness.

A man of consciousness cannot be a priest. He cannot be part of any tradition or convention. He is bound to be free from all conventions and all traditions. He lives a life of freedom, spontaneity, love, joy.

The third question

Question 3:

Yoga Amrita,

IT'S TRUE. The Master only knocks on your door, but if you are too much identified with your sleep the knock on the door hurts you. It feels as if you are knocked by a hammer on the head. When you want to sleep and somebody tries to wake you up, he looks like an enemy.

Otherwise, the function of the Master is to wake you up. It depends on your sleep how many and how loud the knocks you will need. Sometimes he even has to knock exactly on your head because you don't listen to the knocks on the door. He has to throw a bucket of cold water on you!

Mulla Nasruddin was saying to his wife, "What makes you think, dear, that I am a loafer?"

The wife said, "Because when opportunity knocks you complain about the noise!"

The Master knocks because there is an opportunity. He knocks only when there is an opportunity.

When he sees that the opportunity is waiting at the door and you are fast asleep he knocks.

Unless you love the Master deeply you will not be able to understand his knocks; they will look inimical. They are out of his compassion, out of his love.

Amrita, you have understood well: it is a knock on the door. Wake up and open the door! because the sun has risen, the birds are singing. It is not time to sleep any more. Come out of your slumber of many many lives! And then you will be grateful to the Master who knocked on the door, because the sun will not knock on the door, the flowers will not knock on the door. They will go on flowering, the sun will go on shining, the moon will come, the stars will come, but nobody will knock on your door. God goes on without knocking on your door.

Kabir has a beautiful poem in which he says:

GURU GOVIND DOI KHARE, KAKE LAAGUN PAE BALIHARI GURU AAPAKI, GOVIND DIYO BATAE Kabir says: The Master and God both are standing in front of me, and I am in a confusion: whose feet to touch first? The Master's feet or God's feet? - because it is the Master who has shown me God; he should be respected first. But when God is standing there, how can you respect the Master first? You have to bow down to God.

And Kabir says: But my Master was so great that he immediately looked at me and showed me the feet of God. "Touch the feet of God, forget all about me."

Buddha says: If you meet me on the way, kill me imme-diately. Don't let me stand between you and the ultimate.

The Master knocks on the door and goes on knocking. The moment you will open the door, the Master will disappear; he will not stand in the way. That is the differ-ence between the true Master and the pseudo Master. The pseudo Master will stand between you and God. The true Master will disappear. The moment you are awake you will find God, and the Master is not standing there any-where. But because the Master disappears he creates more respect and more love in you.

I have always wondered about this small statement of Kabir: Whose feet to touch first? And great is my Master who has shown immediately the feet of God to me.

But I have wondered whose feet Kabir really DID touch first. As far as I can see, he must have touched the feet of the Master, because he says: Great is the Master who has shown me the feet of God. Now how can you help not touching the feet of the Master first?

Buddha says: Kill me if I come in the way. And the disciples who became enlightened continued to touch Buddha's feet. Buddha said, "Now there is no need. You are as much enlightened as I am, because in enlightenment there are no degrees. You have come home, you are a Buddha yourself - no need to touch my feet." But they continued, out of deep gratitude.

The fourth question

Question 4:

Prem Francesco,

THE WHOLE OF HUMANITY is in the same situation. We have worked for thousands of years to make the earth a big madhouse, and we have succeeded, unfortunately. It is not only in Italy, it is everywhere the same: people are killing each other. There is violence everywhere for the simple reason that we have, in subtle ways, not allowed people's energies to be creative, and whenever creative energies are prevented they become destructive.

Violence is not the real problem. The real problem is how to help people to be creative. A creative person cannot be violent because his energies are moving in the direction of God. We call God the creator. Whenever you are creating something you participate in God's being. You cannot be violent, you cannot be destructive; it is impossible.

But for thousands of years we have destroyed every possible door to creativity. Instead of helping people to be creative we train them to be destructive. The warrior, the soldier, we have respected too much. In fact, the warrior is someone who should be condemned not respected - he is destructive.

The soldier should not be respected.

We need sannyasins, not soldiers. We need lovers, not fighters. But love is condemned and violence is praised. What is great in Alexander the Great? - nothing but violence. He is great because he was the greatest violent person in those days. He killed over almost all the known world of his day - he killed millions - and still we go on calling him Alexander the Great. What is great in your kings and emperors and their history? Why do you go on praising them? They should be completely forgotten. Nadir Shah, Genghis Khan, Tamurlaine, why should they be remembered? Why should small children be told all the stupidities that man has done to man? - because we still want people to fight.

The politician LIVES on violence, the nations LIVE on violence. If the violence disappears there will be no Italy, no India, no Japan. There will be only one humanity. Why these boundaries? But without these boundaries the politician disappears, and he does not want to disappear, obviously. He has a great vested interest in the boundaries and the boundaries have to be defended. And the only way to defend is to kill, and whosoever is the bigger killer is the winner.

And the same is true on a smaller scale in people's lives. People are taught to be violent because unless you are violent you are not going to succeed in life. YOU have to be very violent, only then you can fulfill your ambitions. A gentle person cannot succeed, he is bound to fail, because he cannot be competitive. He cannot push and pull people; he cannot step over people's heads.

All the politicians are criminals for the simple reason that crime pays. YOU only have to be cunning enough not to be caught. The most fundamental rule of this violent life is: all means are good if they fulfill the end. And of course, rather than arguing - because argumentation is a long thing and it may never come to any conclusion - it is better to pull the sword; it decides things immediately. It is easier to fight with a person and decide who is right. "Might is right." That rule still remains - the rule of the jungle.

We call man civilized? He has yet to be civilized. Civilization is only an idea which has not yet been realized. Man is just superficially civilized, not even skin-deep. Just scratch a little and you will find the animal coming out - a ferocious animal, far more ferocious than any wild animals because wild animals, howsoever wild they are, don't carry bombs - atom bombs, hydrogen bombs. Compared to man and his violence all animals are left far behind.

And in the past this has been the rule. The Buddhas are exceptions. Of course, they are the only civilized human beings The remaining crowd of people, the mob, is very uncivilized.

It is not, Francesco, only in Italy; it is the same here in this country - a great spiritual country, a long long heritage of religion, and still people are killing. It makes no difference to people.

Just now all over the country there are riots. And strange: in Moradabad where the riots started, the Mohammedans had gathered to pray. It was their religious festival, Id, and they had gathered to pray. And after the prayer meeting the violence erupted. It means the people who had come to pray had brought weapons with them. Immediately one hundred thirty people were killed. What kind of hypocrisy? What kind of insanity? People who have come to pray are hiding knives, swords, bottles full of acid. They have come ready, prepared. Everything seems to be pre-planned. And they have been there to pray. What kind of prayer can be possible in such a situation?

The word "Islam" means peace - and Islam has created more violence in the world than any other religion - and the word means peace.

Christianity says "God is love" and Christianity has killed millions of people, burned people alive.

And God is love!

It is a very unconscious state of affairs. People are living unconsciously, not knowing what they are doing, why they are doing, not even pondering over it.

Manetti, the mechanic, woke up one morning with a black eye. "What happened?" he asked his wife.

"While you were sleeping," she explained, "you reached over and felt my arms and said, 'What a smooth finish!' Then you reached over further and said, 'What perfect headlights!' Then you reached down further and said, 'Who left the garage door open?' And that is when I let you have it!"

People are almost asleep. Even when you think they are awake they are not awake.

Rigamonte was visiting a small town in the Italian Alps. After a few lonely nights he began feeling the need for a woman. He asked the local barkeep how to find the ladies of the town.

"We ain't gotta no prostitutes. The church would never allow it. But the thing-a you want-a is kept-a out of sight-a."

"What I gotta do?" asked Rigamonte.

The bartender explained that up in the mountains were caves. "Go up there at dusk-a and shout-a Yoo-hoo!' And if the lady yoo-hoos back-a you work out-a the price. If she's-a busy you no get-a an answer."

That evening Rigamonte yoo-hoos his way from cave to cave, but without luck. He finally decided to go back and get drunk, but at the foot of the mountain he found a fresh cave. "Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!"

he shouted.

"Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!" came back so clearly... he rushed into the cave and was killed by a train.

Francesco, people have to be helped to be a little more aware, a little more alert. They need a little more clarity to see what they are doing. But there is no clarity, and the vested interests don't want any clarity. They want more confusion. The more confusion there is, the politicians have more power. The more confusion there is, the priests have more power. They don't want man to become aware; they want him to live as unconsciously as possible.

Rinaldo returned to Italy to see his relatives. One day he tried to ride his uncle's horse. "Giddy up!

Giddy up!" he said to the animal, but it did not move. "Hey," he said to his relatives, "why this thing-a no move-a?"

"You no say giddy-up," said his uncle. "You gotta say 'Mamma mia' to make-a him go and 'Mangiare' to make him-a stop."

"Mamma mia!" he yelled and the horse galloped off into a clearing. Ahead was a steep cliff and Rinaldo noticed it almost too late. He pulled back on the reins and screamed "Mangiare!" The horse came to a screeching halt at the edge of the cliff. Looking down and then up at the sky, Rinaldo whispered, "Mamma mia!"

And this is not so only with the people, this is so with everybody else - the so-called intellectuals, the intelligentsia, the politicians, the religious. It is applicable to all except a very few people, and those few people cannot be of much help.

That's why my effort is to create a great Buddhafield, to release as much energy as is released in an atomic explosion. Sannyas is an effort to collect all those people who are ready to be aware, to be intelligent. And we have to spread the color all over the world. This is the color of spring.

Man needs a new life, a new birth. And all that has been told and taught up to now has failed. It was bound to fail because it was not meant to create a better humanity; it was meant to keep man as much enslaved as he is.

A Polack was badly injured in an automobile crash and had to have a brain transplant. A team of surgeons put him under anaesthesia, removed his brain, and went into the next room to get the new one. When they returned to the operating room the Polack was gone. The police searched everywhere for him but to no avail - he had vanished. The doctors contacted Interpol and they checked throughout the world trying to find this poor Pole who had left the hospital without his brain.

Finally, five years later, he was found. The Polack was now the Pope!