Unless you Create Your Face

Question 1:

Life is... unless you give meaning to it. There is no in-built meaning in it; it has to be created. It has to be introduced, it has to be provoked. If you are waiting for some ready-made meaning, you will not get it... and life will seem meaningless.

Life is just blank. It is just an opportunity. You can create meaning, you can create meaninglessness too. You can create freedom, you can create an imprisonment too. It all depends on you. Your freedom is total.

Man is very afraid of this freedom, because this freedom becomes great responsibilities. You would like somebody to give you meaning so that then you are not responsible. Then meaning is given to you.

To create meaning means that if you miss. only you are responsible and nobody else. That creates fear. So man has always been creating gods who Give meaning to Life. What exactly is the notion of a God? Someone to look to, somebody to look up to, somebody who will give meaning to you, somebody who will give salvation, bliss, MOKSHA. YOU want to be on the receiving end, that's why people go to the churches, to the temples, to the mosques - just to pray 'Give us meaning.'

This prayer is impotent The right prayer is to DO something to create meaning. Existence cooperates, it cooperates with you - whatsoever you are doing, God is always there to cooperate.

Even if you are going against him, he cooperates with you. That's the meaning of Jesus' saying that when the clouds shower, they shower on both the just and the unjust, the good and the bad.

When the sunrays fall, they fall on all unconditionally - the sinner and the saint; they don't make any distinction.

If you are simply waiting for some meaning to come into your life, you are waiting like a beggar with a begging-bowl. Then you will never get it. And because you are waiting, you will continuously feel meaninglessness. You have an idea of meaning and you don't create it, and then you go on comparing your life with that idea and life is always falling short... great anxiety. You are creating both.

First this idea that 'I am only to be on the receiving end' that 'I am not to be creative'; and second, carrying this great idea that 'Life should be like THIS, only then it is life, only then there is significance' - and then comparing it with your life. You will not find anywhere that poetry which gives you significance unless you bring it into existence, unless you create it.

Sannyas means a creative approach towards God. Your prayer should not be just impotent. It should show that you really want it to be that way. You should do all that you can do - no stone should be left unturned, only then God's help arises, comes, descends, transforms. God certainly comes, but only when you have done all that you could do, never before.

And the problem has become very very great - particularly for the modern mind. In the past man has always lived with a 'giver-God'. He was there in the heaven and everything was right on the earth. People have lived very lethargically, uncreatively, just dependent on God - praying, praising him, and thinking that they have done all that they can do - prayer and praise. Now that is no more possible - not after Friedrich Nietzsche. That God is dead.

Let me tell you this small parable from Nietzsche.

Have you not heard of the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly 'I seek God! I seek God!' As many of those who do not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter.

'Why, did he get lost?' said one. 'Is he afraid of us? Is he hiding?' said another. 'Has he lost his way? or gone on voyage? or emigrated?' said the third. Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

'Whither is God?' he cried. 'I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and 1. All of us are his murderers. And now we are plunging continuously into nothingness. Do you not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while?

Must not lanterns be lit even in the morning? Do we not hear anything of the noise of the grave- diggers who are digging a grave for God and burying him? Do we not smell.anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.'

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners. And they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. 'I come too early' he said to them; 'my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering. It has not yet reached the ears of man. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time, even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars - and they have done it themselves.'

What Nietzsche's madman has said :I have come a little too early, maybe my right time has not come. People cannot understand it... That time has come now, after one hundred years. The whole world is full of the smell of the decomposing God. But it always happens. This parable is of infinite significance.

Each age has to create its own God, others' gods won't do. They were created by them for their own purposes, for their own ends. They have become irrelevant. They become irrelevant all the time.

And whenever one God becomes irrelevant and dies, decomposes and disappears, in the wake comes great emptiness, great meaninglessness; because that God was giving a certain meaning to people, that God was their meaning. Now he is no more there. Suddenly you are left alone - alone on a dark night, alone on a cold night.

God was a kind of warmth; heaven was not far away, it was very close. You could have almost touched his feet any time. God was all the time looking after you. He was always observing you.

You were a small child and he was your father or mother. Now that God exists no more. Now it has become very difficult to look at the sky and pray like Jesus did.

Jesus used to call God 'my Father'. His exact word is ABBA, which is far more loving, affectionate, closer - like 'daddy'. 'Father' is a little cold. He used to call God AHBA. You cannot call, have you tried? Sometimes look at the sky, and just say 'Daddy' - how foolish it looks.

I have heard...

Sherwood Anderson describes his own awakening to this spiritual emptiness. He tells of walking alone late at night along a moonlit road when 'I had suddenly an odd, and to my own seeming, a ridiculous desire to abase myself before something not human. And so, stepping into the moonlit road, I knelt in the dust. Having no God - the gods having been taken away from us... by the life about us, as a personal God has been taken from all modern men... by a force within that man himself does not understand, but calls the intellect, I kept smiling at the figure I cut in my own eyes as I knelt on the road...'

Visualise a moonlit road, a silent night, a cool breeze, and suddenly Anderson is possessed by a desire to pray. But he says 'a desire to ABASE myself...'

When there is no God, how can you pray? When there is no God, it seems to be perfectly logical to say an urge 'to abase myself...' to surrender to the nothing, to surrender to the empty sky, just 'humiliate myself'. Remember that word 'abase'. Nobody who has prayed has said that it is abasing yourself. They have said it is praising God, raising God high. Now that there is no God and you cannot pray to God, then what are you doing kneeling in a dusty road? Maybe it is beautiful, maybe there is moonlight, maybe it is silent. So what? But you are abasing yourself in the dust.

'I kept smiling' he says 'at the figure I cut in my own eyes as I knelt on the road...' There was nobody else, but in his own eyes he is seeing the ridiculousness of it, the absurdity of it. 'There was no God in the sky, no God in myself, no conviction in myself that I had the power to believe in a God. And sol merely knelt in the dust in silence and no words came to my lips.'

This is the situation. You cannot call ABBA - those words won't come to your lips. And even if you do bring them, they will be false and you will be laughing at the whole ridiculousness of it.

Each age has to create a new God. Not that God dies, but the notions of God die. Now man is left in a vacuum, in an existential vacuum. The old gods have gone, and we have not created new gods.

The old temple is a ruin, and we have not built a new temple. Each age has to search again and again, and rediscover God in its own way - that's why life seems to be meaningless. And now the old God cannot be revived, the old God cannot be given breath alone. That's what churches, priests are trying to do: trying to breathe into the dead God. It is not possible; man has become more grown-up. Man needs a more grown-up God. Man needs a God who can fulfil his requirements which are now.

Krishna fulfilled some people's requirement then, five thousand years back. Jesus fulfilled some people's requirement two thousand years back. Moses' God was not relevant to Jesus' time. Jesus'

God cannot be relevant to yours. Things change, but man cannot live without God.

By 'God' I mean MEANING. You can forget the word; the word does not matter. Man cannot live without meaning. He needs to feel that what he is doing has a relevance, that whatsoever he is doing contributes something to the total joy, the total beauty of the existence. Maybe his effort is small, his hands are tiny, but still he is not irrelevant to existence; he is required. He is fulfilling a certain need, that brings meaning to life. When you are fulfilling a need, there is meaning. And with meaning there is joy. When you are not fulfilling any need, you can disappear and there will not be any change in the world; you can be replaced easily, thrown away, and somebody else will do the work. You are only a function - anybody else can fulfil it - then there arises existential vacuum.

Then you start feeling pain in the heart. Then why go on living? For what? What is the point of it all? Then there seems to be no point, and it drives people crazy.

I understand your question. You ask: LIFE SEEMS TO BE SO MEANINGLESS. WHY?

It seems to be so meaningless because you have not yet taken hold of life. You have not created anything that can give significance to it.

Eliot says that man is hollow. Yes, that is true, man is hollow, but so is a bamboo hollow. But when the bamboo becomes a flute there arises meaning. And so man can become a flute. But you are not flutes, you are simply hollow bamboos.

About modern man Eliot says

'Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion...'

This is his description: 'Paralysed force, gesture without motion...' That's how Anderson must have looked in his own eyes, kneeling on a dusty road. He must have cut a very ridiculous figure.

'Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion...'

Then your life seems to be like a wasteland, a desert where no river flows, no trees grow, no birds sing... nothing happens. It is a nightmare. One goes on and on... and nothing happens. And one day one falls down and disappears into the dust - DUST to DUST...

Leo Tolstoy used to ask his friends - he Was very much interested in their dreams - he asked Maxim Gorky... Sitting together, they were talking of things, gossiping, and suddenly he asked Gorky 'Can you tell me one of your dreams which you have not forgotten? which has remained special to you in your whole life's dreams?'

And Gorky said 'Yes, there has been one dream that I cannot forget. And it has not happened once, it has happened many times in the same way again and again. So it goes on being more and more impressed onto my consciousness.'

Tolstoy became very interested. He said 'You tell me. You tell me immediately.'

And Gorky said 'The dream is that I see a vast desert with no trees, no people, no animals, utterly utterly empty, sands and sands and sands. And the sun is burning so hot, it is fire. And I see myself walking to nowhere in particular. There is nowhere to go, no destination. Not only that, the strange thing is that I see only my feet and my shoes. I cannot see anything else. I try and I try, and it becomes very very crazy. I cannot see my face, I cannot see my body, I cannot see my hands - just two feet covered in leather shoes. I can hear the noise that they are making, and those two feet go on and on and on in that desert - to nowhere! And it seems to continue for ages! Nothing happens, just those two legs without the body, without the soul, without the face. Where are they going? And why are they going in the first place? And what is the point of going? Why can't they stop? - all these questions arise, and great fear grips my soul. And I always awake out of it trembling, shaking, perspiring.'

The dream is symbolic. That dream is what modern man has become.

Unless you create your face you will not find any face. You come faceless into the world. Unless you create your soul you don't have any. You can have only that which you create.

A Buddha has a soul, a Jesus has a soul - you don't have. Don't take it for granted. That has been one of the causes of greatest miseries to humanity, that people think they have souls. How can you have if you have not created it in the first place? You can have only that which you create. You can possess only that which you have created.

Religion should be that creativity - creating a soul, creating a face, creating a being out of nothingness. Then there is joy, then there is great exaltation. Then life has zest, juice, flow, thrill.

Then life pulsates, is adventure; is not a monotony, is not a nightmare. Then trees start growing in your desert, birds start singing in your wasteland, flowers come, clouds come, and the emptiness is no more empty; it is full of life.

Let me repeat: the meaning has to be created.

Question 2:

That's possible. I am not a scholar, and if sometimes it is correct, it is a miracle. It must be coincidence. I am not a Christian either. I am not concerned with what exactly is written in the book, I am more concerned with what happened to Jesus in his innermost core. It has happened to me too, so I know what it is. When I am saying anything, I am not saying it according to the Bible, but according to the Christ-consciousness. And if sometimes you find that I am saying something which is not in the Bible, then at least in your Bible you can add it. And it will be absolutely true.

It is possible... because I am a drunkard. I speak out of my drunkenness. If you are listening from a scholarly standpoint, you may be worried, puzzled; and you will miss much.

You will have to remember it again and again: that I may not be true to the letter but I am true to the spirit. But you have been taught what is in the Bible, you have been forced to learn it. It is crammed into your heads, and whenever you see something different, naturally you become puzzled.

Somebody else has also asked 'It seems that Christ is not the type for you. He seems to be too much of a moralist. And the sutras that you have covered' he has said 'were very different to the meaning that you have given to them.' That too will be apparent to you many times, but it is only apparent, it is not true. In fact you don't know Jesus as he was. You know the Jesus that Christianity has depicted for you. You know a Jesus through the Christian interpretation, and you have believed that this is so. Those moralistic interpretations are Christian interpretations. Jesus needs better treatment. He needs to be brought to the world again in his originality.

He was one of the most amoral persons. That's why the Jews were so much against him. The Jews of his day were very moralistic people, very law-abiding. Their anger against Jesus was this basically: that he was not law-abiding, and he was bringing dangerous intuitions to people. He was bringing a kind of lawlessness.

Jews have always been a law-abiding people. That's why all the great revolutionaries of the world have come from the Jews. It is not accidental. When a society is very law-abiding, as a reaction it creates the revolutionary. Jesus is a great revolutionary. Karl Marx is also a Jew, and a great revolutionary. Sigmund Freud is also a Jew, and a great revolutionary. So is Albert Einstein.

These four people have influenced the history of humanity as nobody else has ever done. Why?

Jews are so law-abiding, so righteous that sooner or later somebody is born who rebels against it.

Only in a law-abiding society can the rebel be born. You will be surprised: here also, more than half the people are Jews, which is strange. It is out of all proportion. Again and again Vivek brings the news that 'This sannyasin is also a Jew! That sannyasin is also a Jew!' And sometimes I start suspecting - maybe I am a Jew, or what? If everybody is a Jew, then I must be a Jew...

In India Jews are non-existent. This may be the only place where you can find Jews, and they are so many that this is almost a Jewish place, a Jerusalem. But why? The society is too law-abiding, too traditional, so anybody who has some intelligence starts rebelling. He starts escaping, he starts finding new ways of being. That's why so many Jews are here.

The Jews were angry because he was amoral - not immoral, but amoral. By 'amoral' I mean his morality was inner, it was not from the outside. His morality was spontaneous. He lived each moment, he had no plan, he had no blueprint for how to live. He was a conscious being, and each moment he would decide again and again. He would not carry any conclusion from the past. He would simply be there in the situation and let the situation decide. His response was always fresh, that's why there are so many contradictions in the Bible - there are bound to be.

A man who lives moment-to-moment will have many contradictions. He cannot be very consistent; only dead people can be consistent. A man who is really alive each moment goes on changing, because life changes so he changes. He is never out of tune with life, he is always in tune with life. And LIFE IS inconsistent so he becomes inconsistent. A truly great man is so vast, he contains contradictions.

Jesus contains great contradictions. One of the logicians of the French Revolution, Voltaire, has shouted almost madly 'Down with this scoundrel!' - and by 'this scoundrel' he means Jesus. Why?

Why should Voltaire, a man of very rational grounding, logic, philosophy, why should he call Jesus a scoundrel? 'Down with this scoundrel!' - because Jesus is so contradictory. In fact you cannot follow Jesus without going crazy. You cannot follow me without going crazy. That's why I say: Don't follow me. Just understand me.

And sol say about Jesus: understand him; there is no need to follow. If you follow, that will be against Jesus, because he never followed anybody. If you follow Jesus you will be carrying a blueprint in your head, and you will always be looking from that blueprint: what to do? what not to do? And he never carried any conclusions. He lived an open life.

When I am responding on Jesus' sayings, many times you will feel that I am not saying that which has been taught to you.

My situation is like this:

A new priest at his first mass was so scared, he couldn't even speak. After mass he asked the Monsignor how he had got on, and the Monsignor said fine, only next week it might help if he put vodka or gin in his water glass to help relax him. The next Sunday the priest put vodka in his glass and really talked a storm. After mass he again asked the Monsignor how he had done. The Monsignor said fine, but that there were a few things that should be straightened out. First, there are TEN commandments, not TWELVE. Second, there are TWELVE disciples, not TEN. Third David slew Goliath with a sling, he didn't knock his head off with the jawbone of an ass. We do not refer to Jesus Christ as 'the late J.C.'. And next Sunday there is a Taffy-pulling contest at St. Peter's, not a Peter-pulling contest at St. Taffy's. And sixth, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are not referred to as 'Big Daddy', 'Junior', and 'Spook'.

I am a drunkard... too much vodka in me. So sometimes if I go a little astray, forgive me.

Question 3:

The question is from Nirvat.

First, it need not be mutated, it has only to be dropped - not mutated. You don't mutate a disease, you drop it. You don't mutate something that is wrong inside you, you simply get rid of it. Mind needs no mutation. Just see the point that this is a kind of cancerous growth in you, then drop it. In fact, in understanding that this is a cancerous growth, you WILL drop it. The very seeing will become the dropping of it.

You still want to mutate it? You still want to keep it - I little more painted, polished, a change here and there, a little whitewash and renovation? Then you are not really fed-up with it. You still have some infatuation with it, you want to keep it. You want to keep it, maybe in a little reformed, modified way, but the continuity you want to keep. And that is the whole point, the very crux of the whole problem.

You should become discontinuous with the mind, that is mutation, that is revolution - discontinuous...

When you become very intensely aware of all the nonsense and nuisance that the mind has done to you - then you don't ask how to transform it, how to reform it, how to make it a little more civilised and tame, how to make it a little more sophisticated, how to make it so one can live with it conveniently, comfortably, how to rub its corners a little bit and make them smooth. Then it will be the same thing.

Maybe the disease will be there in a subtle form, and the subtle form is more dangerous than the gross form, because the subtle goes deeper than the gross.

You say: HOW RAN MY JUDGMENTAL, SELF-OPINIONATED, GUILT-INDUCING, FEARFUL MIND HE MUTATED?

No need to go on having your mind. It is not of any worth. Drop it, and then you will have the universal mind functioning in you. Because of your mind the universal cannot function, you go on interfering. You don't allow the cosmic mind to function in you. You are the barrier, the hindrance, the obstruction. Now the obstruction is not to be made better, the obstruction has to be removed - utterly removed.

And you say: IT IS GIVING ME THE SHITS. I'M COMPLETELY FED-UP WITH IT.

Not completely, Nirvat. If you are completely fed-up with it, you will not even ask the question. Who is forcing you to keep this mind? You are not completely fed-up with it. There must be some subtle infatuation still lingering. You are still hoping against hope that maybe something better can come out of it. 'It is such a beautiful mind, maybe something is wrong that can be put right Some nuts and bolts are loose, they can be tightened. something is missing, it can be brought from the outside.

Something is non-functioning, it can be cleaned, made to function.' But this will be just a reformation.

You will have a better cultured mind.

That does not make any difference. The mind will be there, and the mind creates the barrier between you and God. Because your mind means the cosmic mind is not allowed to function unhindered. You are standing there, choosing, deciding, concluding - according to your notions, ideologies, ideas, scriptures, experiences. God comes to you, but your mind colours the whole thing so much that you cannot know what is coming to you.

Open the window, let there be no hindrance, no curtain. Look directly into existence without your mind coming in. Even if it happens for a single moment, you will have such a great insight. It can happen. It has happened to me, it has happened to Jesus, it has happened to Buddha, it can happen to you. Because you all carry the seed; the essential seed of it is in you.

So don't be in a hurry. If you are not fed-up totally with it, get a little more fed-up with it. But it needs a let-go.

Nartan has sent a beautiful anecdote:

A mountain climber was halfway up a steep precipice when suddenly he slipped and began plummeting towards the valley below. After falling several hundred feet he luckily was able to grab on to a small tree growing out of a crack in the sheer vertical face of the mountain.

As he was clinging on for dear life, he looked up into the sky and said 'Lord, please save me.'

A booming voice answered back and said 'Let go and have faith!'

The man, still hanging on, thought for a moment and then looked up again and said 'Is there anyone else up there?'

That is the situation. I am telling you: Let go of it. In its very dropping is the benediction. But you are afraid of dropping it. You are so much identified with it: you think it is you! That is the problem.

And when you say 'I am fed-up with it', who is this 'I am'? It is again part of the same mind. And the mind is very cunning in playing games. It divides itself and goes on playing games. This one who says 'I am fed-up' is but a part of the mind and this is the same of the mind: it divides and then goes on playing the game of hide-and-seek. The one that you are fed-up with and the one which is fed-up - both are the same. The object and subject are both the same.

See it! Look into it, and you will be able to see because it is so.l am just stating a fact. Seeing it, you will start laughing. If you listen to this mind which says 'I am fed-up with the mind' you will again strengthen the mind from another side. They are complementary to each other. They are not enemies, they supplement each other.

Just be choiceless. Don't choose. Choice brings the mind in. Choice is mind. That's why all the ancient scriptures and all the ancient Masters have been talking about only one thing: Be a witness.

Just watch what is happening.

Ask 'Who is fed-up with the mind?' And you will see that it is the mind creating a new game - deceiving you again on a subtler and deeper level. And it can go on and on.

Just watch. Don't decide. Don't take sides. Go on watching. Watching is a little arduous, because the mind says 'DO something. Either be for this side or that, but DO something. Don't just go on sitting there silently and watching' - because mind becomes very much afraid when you simply watch.

My suggestion for you, Nirvat, is that for three months you simply watch without deciding that you have to do anything about the mind. Go on watching. On each subtler level you go on watching.

And in those three months some day you will have the first glimpse of no-mind. It may only be for a moment, but that will become the turning-point in your life. From that moment, more and more moments will be coming to you. And soon you will see that without doing anything about the mind, the mind has started receding backwards. It is going far away. It still makes a noise, but it is very distant: you remain unperturbed by it. One day, suddenly it is gone: you are left alone. And when you are left alone, you are in God.

You have always been in God. Because of the interference of the mind, it was not possible for you to look into your own self.

Question 4:

There are three stages of enlightenment.

The first is when the first glimpse happens. I call it mini-satori. When, for the first time, for a single moment mind is not functioning, there is a gap - no thought between you and existence. You and existence, you and existence... for a moment... and the meeting, and the merging, and the communion, and the orgasm... but for a moment. And from that moment the seed will be in your heart and growing.

The second I call satori: that is when you have become capable of retaining this gap as long as you want. For hours together, for days together you can remain in this interval, in this utter aloneness, in God, with God, as God. But a little effort is still needed on your part. If you drop the effort the SATORI disappears. the first SATORI, the mini-SATORI, happened almost an accident - you were not even expecting it. How can you expect? You had not known it before, you had never tasted it.

How can you expect it? It came just out of the blue. Yes, you were doing many things - praying, meditating, dancing, singing - but they were all like groping in the dark. You were groping.

It will not happen if you are not groping at all. It happens only to 'gropers', real gropers - they go on groping, they never feel tired and exhausted, and they never feel hopeless. Millions of times they are defeated in their effort, and nothing happens, but they go on and on. Their passion for God is so tremendous. They can accept all kinds of defeats and frustrations, but their search continues.

Unwavering, they go on groping. The darkness is great, it seems to be almost endless, but their hope is greater than the darkness. That is the meaning of faith; they grope through faith.

Faith means hoping for that which seems almost impossible. Faith means hoping against all hope.

Faith means trying to see that which you have not seen, and you cannot even be certain whether it exists or not. A great passion is needed to have that much faith.

So to a groper who lives in faith and goes on and on, nothing ever prevents him. No failure ever settles in him; his journey continues. He is the pilgrim. Then one day it comes just out of the blue.

You were not expecting. Unawares, it comes close to you and surrounds you. For a moment you cannot even believe... How can you believe? - for millions of lives a person has been groping, and it has not happened. The first time it looks almost like imagination, dream. But it is there, and it is so real that all that you have known before as real pales before it, becomes very faint. It is so real that it carries its certainty intrinsically. It is self-evident. You cannot suspect it. That is the criterion of whether the mini-satori has happened or not: you cannot doubt it. You can try, but you cannot doubt it. It is so certain that no doubt arises in that moment. It is simply there.

It is like the sun has risen... how can you doubt?

Then the second becomes a more conscious groping. Now you know it is, now you know it has happened. Now you know it has even happened to you! Now there is a great certainty. Now faith is not needed, now experience is enough. Now belief is not needed. Now its certainty permeates your whole being, you are full of it. Now you grope more consciously, you make efforts in the right direction. Now you know how it happened, when it happened, in what space it became possible.

You were dancing? - then what was happening when it happened? In what way did the contact become possible? By and by, it happens again and again, and you can make out, figure out, reckon out how it happens, in what mood. In what mood do you fall in tune with it and it happens? Now things become more clear, now it is not just waiting in the darkness. You can start moving, you can have a direction.

Still you falter, still sometimes you fall, still sometimes it disappears for months. But never again can doubt arise in you. The doubt has been killed by the first satori. Then, more and more, it will come.

And sooner or later you will become capable of bringing it on order. Whenever you want you can create that milieu in you which brings it. You can relax, if it comes in relaxation; you can dance, if it comes, in dance. You can go under the sky if it comes there. You can watch a rose flower if it happens there. You can go and float in a river if it happens there.

That's how all the methods have been discovered. They have been discovered by people when they found out that in a certain situation - make certain arrangements - it happens. Those became methods. By and by you become very very certain that if you desire it, any moment you will be able, because you can move your focus towards it. You can move your whole consciousness, you can direct your being.

Now you become able to see that it is always there; just your contact is needed. It is almost like your radio or like your TV: it is always there, sounds are always passing; you just have to tune the radio to a certain station - and the song, and the news. This is the second stage. But still, effort is needed to tune. You are not continuously tuned on your own, you have to work it out. Some days it is easy, some days it is hard. If you are in a negative mood it is hard, if you are angry, it is hard. If you are loving it is easier. In the early morning it is easier, in the evening it is more difficult. Alone on a mountain it is easier, in the market-place it is more difficult. So you start coming closer and closer, but still effort is needed.

Then the third thing happens. When you become so capable of finding it that any moment, whenever you want it - not a single moment is lost - you immediately can pinpoint it, then the third thing happens. It becomes a natural quality. That I call samadhi.

SATORI one, SATORI two, SATORI three... The first SATORI must have happened somewhere in the East - in Tibet or in India. Jesus was with Buddhist Masters. The first SATORI must have happened somewhere here, because to the Jews SAMADHI had never been a concern.

Jesus brings something very foreign to the Jewish world: he introduces Buddha into the Jewish world. It must have happened somewhere in Nalanda, where he stayed for many years. But he was travelling - he was in Egypt, he was in India, in Tibet. So nobody can be certain of where it happened. But more possibility is India: it remains, for centuries, the country where satori has been more available than anywhere else - for a certain reason - because so many people have been meditating here. Their meditation has created very potential spots, very available spots. It must have happened somewhere here, but no record is there, so I'm not saying anything historical.

But about the second: it is certain it happened in the River Jordan with John the Baptist when he initiated Jesus into his path - the path of the Essenes. He was a great Master, John the Baptist, a very revolutionary prophet. The second SATORI must have happened there. It is depicted as a white dove descending on Jesus. The white dove has always been the symbol of peace, silence.

That is the symbol for SATORI - the unknown descending. The second satori must have happened there. And John the Baptist said 'My work is finished. The man has come who will take it over from me. Now I can renounce and go into the mountains. I was waiting for this man.'

And the third happened just on the cross - the last effort of the ego - very tiny, but still... Jesus must have desired how things should be in some way. Deep down, in some unconscious nook or comer of his being, he must have been hoping that God would save him. And God never moves according to you. Man proposes and God disposes - that's how he teaches you to disappear, that's how he teaches you not to will on your own, not to have a private will. And the last lesson happened on the cross, at the last moment. Jesus shouted, almost in agony 'Why have you forsaken me? Why have you deserted me? What wrong have I done?' But he was a man of great insight - the man of second SATORI. Immediately he must have become aware that this was wrong: 'That means I still have a desire of my own, a will of my own. That means I still am not totally in God. My surrender is still only ninety-nine per cent.' And a surrender that is ninety-nine per cent is a no-surrender, because surrender is one hundred per cent. A circle is a circle only when it is complete. You can't call a half-circle a half-circle, because 'circle' means complete. There are no half-circles. There is no approximate truth. The approximate truth is still a lie; either it is true or it is not true. There is nothing like approximate truth, and there is nothing like approximate surrender.

In that moment he realised. He relaxed, he surrendered. He said 'Let Thy kingdom come. Who am I to interfere? Let THY will be done'... and the third SATORI, SAMADHI. That moment, Jesus disappeared. And I call THAT moment his resurrection. That is the moment Buddha says: GATE, GATE, PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE, BODHI SVAHA: Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. What ecstasy! Alleluia! That is the moment of absolute benediction. Jesus became God.

The Son became Father in that moment; all distinction disappeared. The last barrier dissolved, Jesus had come home.

Question 5:

Then relationship happens. Before that it is just an empty name. Relationship cannot happen before the egos are gone.

You only believe that it is a relationship. It is a conflict, it is enmity, it is jealousy, it is aggression, it is domination, it is possession, and many things - but not relationship. How can you relate with two egos there? When there are two egos, then there are four persons.

In every bed you will find four persons sleeping together. It is very rare to find a double bed, because then four persons are there overcrowding it. The wife is there and the ego, and the husband is there and the ego - husband is hidden behind his ego, wife is hidden behind her ego, and those two egos go on making love. The real contact never happens.

The word 'relationship' is beautiful. The original meaning of the root from which the word 'to relate' comes is exactly the same as 'to respond'. Relationship comes from that word 'respond'. If you have any image of your wife or husband, you cannot respond, and hence relate, to the truth of the person.

And we all go on carrying images.

First, we have our image that is our ego - 'who I am'. And then we have the image of the other - who she is, or he is. The husband relates not to the woman that is there, he relates to the woman he thinks is there. So now, four are not there, six there are, and it goes on crowding. Now you are there - that is one thing, your ego is there - that is another thing. And now you don't relate to the woman who is there, you relate to the idea of your woman - 'My wife is such and such, or should be such and such' and he is also having these things - so six persons. It is really a miracle how people go on managing. It is very complicated. Relationship is not possible, there are too many people in between.

You go on reacting to the image not to the person, and hence there is no relationship. When there is no image, then there is relationship.

See it! And see it immediately, without the interference of thought. Don't have any image of the person you love. If you love me, don't have any image of me. There is no need. Just look into me as I am. The image will not allow you to see who I am. Don't have any image of the person you love; the person is enough. The truth of the person is enough whatsoever it is. And don't have any image of yourself, just be true, authentic, as you are. And there will be relationship. Then there will be a response. Then two realities will respond to each other. And when realities respond there is great harmony, melody, joy. There is great beauty.

Don't have any image of me, don't have any image of your husband, don't have any image of your son, don't have any image of Jesus, and don't have any image of God. If you can drop all your images, you will enter into a totally different dimension - the separate reality, the other shore.

Approach truth imageless, thoughtless, nude, empty, uncovered. And the response will come out of your being of its own accord.

You ask me: WHAT HAPPENS IN AND WITH THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO PARTNERS IF THEIR EGOS DROP?

Then love happens, then ecstasy happens. Then that very relationship becomes sacred, it becomes a shrine. And through that door you can reach to God. You have to grow more and more towards the state where the 'I' is not present at all.

This is the goal of all love, and this is the misery of all lovers. Because they want this to happen and it doesn't happen, then there is great misery, then they feel cheated, then they feel frustrated. Then they start thinking of changing the partner.

Every day some couple comes to me and says 'We would like to change the partners. Enough is enough. We are tired.' But what will you do? You will do the same with the other person. It is not going to make much difference. Maybe for a few days, the fantasy, the romance, the honeymoon, and again... And they know it - because they have done it before too. And they nod their heads in agreement. And they say 'Yes, that's true. I have been doing this to many women. But what to do?

I am stuck again.'

Rather than changing the partner, rather than dropping your woman or man, drop your ego.

Dropping that ego, a different quality starts taking shape in your life, a different light, a different vision. And things settle in that vision. With that light coming in, all old miseries and conflicts and anguishes disappear.

The same energy that was becoming conflict starts becoming your joy. That's what Jesus means when he says: Don't go on squandering your energies in fighting, anger, objecting.

Veetmoha's mother has come here, a beautiful old woman. She has heard me - I think only once, yesterday. And she was puzzled about one thing. She told Veetmoha 'What is the matter? I like what Osho says, but nobody objects! Whatsoever he goes on saying, people listen. Nobody is objecting, what is the matter?'

Her question is very natural. She must have seen lectures where somebody speaks, somebody objects - raises a question - and there is a quarrel, and discussion and argument. She must have been hoping for something like that. Here she sees people just sitting silently, utterly in silence, listening. This is the whole approach here. Objecting has to be dropped. Listening has to be evolved. Argument has to be dropped. A no-arguing communion has to be developed. That is the difference between an ordinary meeting and a meeting of the Master and the disciples.

The disciples are not there with their egos to object or to argue. They are there to dissolve themselves, they are there to fall in tune with the Master. It is not relevant what he is saying, it is not a question of agreeing or not agreeing. That is irrelevant. What I go on saying to you is just an excuse to allow you to be here with me. It will be difficult for you to be with me if I go on sitting in silence. Your mind has to be kept engaged. Your mind remains engaged, your heart opens. And the real thing is going to happen there in the heart, not in the mind. If the mind starts objecting, the heart closes. Then you become too much hung-up in the head.

Yes, for the head I go on giving you toys. These are all toys. Your head goes on playing with the toys, and the real work is happening somewhere else. It is happening in the heart. If you are arguing, it will be difficult. Then your heart cannot open. And remember, let me repeat again - it is not a question of agreeing with me or not agreeing, that is irrelevant. There is no need to agree and no need to disagree. You can just be here without agreeing, without disagreeing, and something will start growing in you. And that is the REAL THING.

WHAT I SAY is just an excuse. WHAT I AM is the real thing.

Question 6:

I don't know. I don't even know why my parents named me Rajneesh. I have never asked them. But I have heard one story. Maybe that will help you a little bit.

I have heard...

It was in Bethlehem. The child had just been born and the three wise men were paying their respects.

Each of them took it in turn to bow and present their gift.

The first said 'Truly a saviour' and went out.

The second: 'He will influence the whole world.'

The third, overcome with emotion and awe, silently placed his gift at the babe's feet and left. As he passed out of the stable door he bashed his head on the low beam and cried out 'Jesus!'

Mary smiled and said 'That's nice! - we were going to call him Fred.'