An Idea Whose Time has Come

Question 1:

God is everywhere. God is everywhereness. God is not a person. You cannot locate him. God is the totality of all beings, of all things. But down the ages man has looked at the sky overhead for God, for a certain reason. The reason is not that God is overhead, the reason is that to search for God we have to go above our heads, that we have to transcend ourselves, that we have to look upwards.

Not that God is there, God is everywhere - below you, beside you, behind you, in front of you.

But we look up because we are low. We are living in a dark valley, and we look up. This is a kind of inner search. Just as the tree grows upwards, man grows upwards. Man is a kind of tree. But remember always, when the tree grows upwards its roots meanwhile are growing downwards. If the tree only grows upwards it will fall, it will not be able to remain rooted in the soil. The bigger the tree, the deeper it has to go low-wards, downwards. The roots go into the soil and the branches grow into the sky, and there is a great balance. It is almost in proportion. The bigger tree will have bigger roots, and the proportion is almost the same. There is a balance.

If a tree only goes downwards, it will be meaningless; and if a tree only goes upwards, it will not be able to exist. That's what has happened to humanity. A few people live only downwards: in sexuality, in food, in the body - in the lower centres. They go on spreading their roots. Their life becomes meaningless, because meaning arises only when you start rising upwards. The higher you go, the more meaning, the more significance, because there is more light. Clouds become available to you, and the sun and the moon and the stars, and life starts taking the shape of poetry. Life starts becoming a song. You can sway and dance into the sky, and you can whisper with the stars, and you can love the wind and the rains, and you can have a dialogue with the sun - with the source of life and light. Roots remain dismal, sad, dark, lost into the soil. If a tree has only roots and no branches, no foliage, no leaves, no flowers, no fruits, how can it be meaningful? It cannot have fulfilment. Fulfilment comes only from fruition, flowering.

But if a tree simply goes upwards and forgets to grow its roots, it will fall down; it cannot grow very far. It will be at most seasonal. Flowers will come and within weeks they will be gone. It will be very tentative. There cannot be any eternal significance in it. It will be seasonal.

To be really into existence and into God, one needs this proportion. I bring this proportion to you!

That's why I am not against the body, because the body is your soil. I am not against sexuality, because that is where your roots have to grow and become strong. It is there where your roots have to get nourishment, the waters of life. But to stop there is to commit suicide. Take the nourishment from the soil, take the vitality from the body, from sexuality, and then use it for higher purposes, for higher rhythms, for higher harmony. Then bloom. Bloom in meditation, in love, in ecstasy. Then let there be a great rejoicing and a dance.

Only then are you a total man. A total man is a balanced man; he is not extremist. So to look for God upwards does not mean that God is overhead, it simply means that if we grow upwards we will have closer contacts with God. Not that God is upwards, God is downwards too. But you will not have a closer contact with God unless you are fulfilled. In your fulfilment is the experience of God.

Don't seek God. Seek fulfillment and you will find God. Seek God, forget fulfillment, and you will not find God. God cannot come like an accident, God can come as an inner growth. It is something that happens in your innermost core. But in the old days this metaphor of looking overhead, praying to the sky, became very very rigid. People took it literally. They started thinking God is overhead. That is a natural fallacy.

But times have changed; man has come of age. Man is more alert, man is no more childish.

Humanity has come a long way since the Vedas and the Talmud: humanity has passed through many stages. It is no more needed to take God and the metaphors associated with him literally.

Take them metaphorically. They are metaphors.

If you ask me 'Where is God - overhead?' I would like to tell you that the metaphor has become a little bit rotten. Too much used, misused - the associations have gone wrong. That has to be dropped. Instead of saying 'God is overhead' it would be better to say 'God is alongside.' Let God become your 'alongsidedness'. Rather than thinking of God as a father-figure, think of him as a beloved, as a friend, and you will find the approach easier, you will find yourself more open.

Yes, one day it was so - to call God 'the Father' was to bring him very close. When Jesus called him ABBA he was speaking the language of his day. The father was immensely respected, the father was very deeply rooted in the child, in the psyche of the child. To call God 'Father' was valuable: it meant much. Now things have changed, utterly changed. 'Father' is not a respectable word anymore. It smells of authority, authoritarianism. It smells of institutionality. It smells of a power structure. And the moment you say God is the Father, you fall apart rather than being joined by it. Father is no more a hyphen between you and God. The word has fallen, because the institution of fatherhood has deteriorated. You will have to find new words and new metaphors - new language to relate. Let God be your beloved, let God be your friend.

If you are a woman, think of God as your lover. If you are a man, think of God as your beloved.

This has also to be understood. There have been religions - for example, the Sufis - who call God 'the Beloved . But that is man-oriented, what is a Sufi woman going to call God? If God is taken to be a woman, then what is the Sufi woman going to call him? It will be difficult. In the East the BHAKTAS have called God 'the Lover'. But then if the man has to call God 'the Lover' it becomes difficult: it does not sound right. Something seems missing.

There is no need for God to be man or woman. If you are a man, God is a woman; if you are a woman, God is a man. There is no need to have a fixed idea of God. Let the idea of God arise within your soul - whatsoever your need let God be that. So I don t say who God is - he or she, it depends on you. If you are a he, then he is a she; if you are she, then he is a he, Let God become meaningful to you - personally meaningful, intimate - so that you can hug him, so that you can embrace him, so you can have a love affair with him. Without the love affair, you will never find him.

So don't say 'God is overhead', it is no more relevant. God is to be understood more as 'alongsidedness'.

Martin Buber calls the relationship between man and God an l-thou relationship. It seems a little stiff. It is stuffy and churchy: I-thou. 'Thou' is no more used in ordinary conversation. You don't call your woman 'thou', you don't call your lover 'thou'. It is out of use.

His understanding is right - man and God's relationship is an l-thou relationship; that's how prayer arises. But I would like to tell you: let it be an l-you relationship rather than I-thou. Let God come close. 'Thou' keeps him far away. It is too respectful, and respect is always less than love. When love is possible, forget about respect! When love is not possible, then that is the second best. Let it be an I-you relationship, only then is dialogue possible; then man and God can move hand-in-hand.

Remember, words become useless after a certain time. Not only useless, but sometimes dangerous, harmful. The same words which used to mean much become meaningless. The same words which were very significant go out of-date after a time; then they lose meaning.Words also are born and die. 'God the Father' has died - the word, the metaphor. 'God the Beloved' still can ring bells in your heart.

Victor Hugo has said 'All the forces in the world are not as powerful as an idea whose time has come.' And the time for God to become your beloved, your lover, has come.

We have tried all other relationships with God. There have been religions which have called him 'Mother'; there have been religions which have called him 'Father'; there have been religions which have thought of God as their child. But man now knows that there is only one relationship that goes to the very core; all other relationships are secondary. A child is born to you because you loved a woman or a man. The relationship of the mother or the father with the child is a secondary relationship. Somebody becomes your father because he loved a woman; somebody becomes your mother because she loved a man. All relationships revolve around the single relationship of love.

Love is the shrine, the innermost shrine of the whole temple of relationship.

Man has tried all other relationships. They did well for a time, but now only one relationship can be of any help. All other relationships look a little faint and dull. As man grows in understanding, in maturity, many things happen that go on changing his own world vision.

For example, after Freud, it is very difficult to call God 'the Mother', because ninety-nine per cent of mental problem exist because of the mother. Now, Freud has to be reckoned with, Freud has to be taken in. You cannot neglect him; he has happened. Before Freud, 'mother' was an absolutely pure concept. Nobody then had ever thought that the world was neurotic because of the mother; nobody had ever gone into it. It was taken for granted that the relationship of the mother and the child was the most divine, spiritual relationship. 'There is nothing like it. It is the purest love' - that was thought before Freud. After Freud, things are totally different. And you cannot go on neglecting Freud, because he has some truth in him; it is not just fiction.

Man's problem - almost ninety-nine per cent - exists because of the mother. Now the mother has become the source of all neurosis, schizophrenia, psychosis, madness, suicide, murder. How can you call God 'Mother' anymore? It will be difficult.

After Marx, Engels and others; 'father' is no more a natural relationship; it is institutional. Father has come because of private property. It is economical; it has nothing to do with love. And once the economic structure of the society changes, once there is no more private property in the world, father is going to disappear.

You will be surprised to know that 'uncle' is an older word than 'father'. 'Uncle' existed first, then 'father'. And sooner or later 'uncle' will exist again and 'father' will disappear.

People will live communes. The child will never know who his father is, but he will know that all the people who are of his father's age are uncles. And have you watched it? The relationship with the uncle is always lovely. It is never so lovely with the father. With the uncle the child has a friend-ship.

It is always beautiful. It is very difficult to find a bad relationship between the child and the uncle; it is always a happy relationship. What is the matter? With the father there is possessiveness, with the uncle there is no possessiveness. The uncle cares, just like the father, but without possessing.

He is not authoritative; friendship is possible.

If the word 'father' disappears, then for the first time God will be called 'Uncle'. Nobody has yet called him 'Uncle', but things change.

To me, father is institutional, because in nature he doesn't exist. Mother exists, mother is more natural. So religions who call God 'Mother', are more natural religions. But that too is not possible because of Freud. Freud has looked deep into the mother and has found that all those fictions of the 'spiritual relationship' and 'pure love' etcetera are all nonsense. Mother has to be transformed and changed, otherwise the world will remain neurotic forever.

The mother goes on doing whatsoever she feels is right, but the question is 'What she feels right - is it right? The mother cares about the child, but is the care unconditional, really unconditional. or are there hidden conditions in it?' The mother brings up the child and sacrifices much for the child, but that sacrifice takes its revenge on the child. It goes on taking revenge on the child. The mother starts proving herself to be a kind of martyr - that she has sacrificed for you, now you sacrifice for her! That demand is constantly there - deliberately made or not, but it is always there. 'I have sacrificed my life for you.' Consciously, unconsciously, that is always the message. 'I have destroyed my life, I have sacrificed my life for you - now what about you? Now I am getting old, you sacrifice your life to me!'

And really, she has done much, so the child feels guilty. Every child feels guilty. When a man falls in love with a woman he feels guilty; he is doing something wrong to his mother: because he is moving towards another woman, he is betraying.

Mothers are never happy with the wives of their sons - never! There is a competition, conflict continuous conflict: this other woman has taken their son away. And if the son wants to live his life he has to go away. otherwise the mother will suffocate him. He feels grateful, but that gratefulness does not mean that he has to remain hanging around her apron for his whole life. He has to go. And every mother makes the child feel guilty.

These things have to be transformed. So God cannot be called 'Mother'; and God cannot be called 'Father' because the father has always been the disciplinarian. It was perfectly okay for Moses to call God 'Father' because the whole concept was legal. God was the super-disciplinarian, he was disciplining everybody - punishing those who were going wrong, rewarding those who were following him. It was a kind of court. It was a continuous judgement. You cannot love your judge! You are afraid of the judge, you are always trembling before your judge.

And it is not just accidental that this century has to declare that God is dead - God as the judge is dead, certainly dead! I agree with it. God as Father is dead. God as authority is dead. Now God can be revived only as love - and not the love of the mother towards the child, or the father towards the child, or the love of the child towards the mother or the father.

There is only one natural love, and that is between a couple. That is the only love that descends - one never knows from where; that is the only one that arises spontaneously.

Your love for your mother is not spontaneous, it is a conditioned love. If you had been taken away the day you were born and you were brought up by another woman who told you that she was your mother, you would have loved her. And one day, after twenty years, if you met your real mother, you would not have recognised her at all. It was a conditioning. It comes because you live in close contact with your mother, it is a kind of imprinting, continuous imprinting. She gives you milk, she gives you warmth, she gives you care; when you are ill, she serves you... she does so many things for you. She surrounds you from everywhere. Love arises, but this love is more like a liking than like love; it has no madness in it. It is a liking.

So is the case with the father. He protects you, he finances you - he sends you to the school and the college and the university - he prepares you for your life. You feel obliged. You have a respect for him.

But the only spontaneous love is between man and woman. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you come across a woman and something clicks. You come across a man and your heart starts beating in the same rhythm. You are possessed by something called love!

This is very mysterious. There is no reason for it - the woman has never done anything for you, the man has never done anything for you. There is no past to it, and there is no future either! You don't know this woman - what she will do to you in the future. And you don't know this man - how he is going to prove to you in the future. There is no past - you have met for the first time, and there is no guarantee for the future; still the thing is so tremendous that you forget the past, you forget the future, you start moving in the present. This moment is so valuable in itself that for no other reason you are ready to sacrifice all and everything for it. It is foolish, it is mad - that's why all down the ages the so-called wise people have called love mad.

It is mad, because it has no reason in it. But that is the beauty of it, that is the depth of it. It comes from somewhere beyond the reason, beyond the mind. It has the same quality as God. That's why Jesus says 'Love is God.' Now love is going to be the metaphor for the future. Let God be your boy-friend or your girl-friend. And it will depend on you who he is, not on him. God has no fixed entity, he becomes what you need. He is liquid.

And the day for the idea has come. And when the day for the idea has come, then nothing is more powerful than that. And vice versa it is also true: when the day of the idea has gone, nothing is more impotent than that. God as Father is impotent, God as Mother is impotent. Those ideas will linger because a few people live in the past. You can't help. A few people always live backwards; they only look in the rear-view mirror, they never look ahead. A few people have fixed minds about the past.

They are so afraid of the new that they don't look ahead, they look backwards. All people are not contemporaries. Somebody lives two thousand years back, then for him Jesus' idea 'God is Father' will be appealing. Somebody lives even more backwards, then some other idea will be appealing.

But those who are contemporaries and those who are ahead of their time, for them a new metaphor is needed: the metaphor of love.

God as overhead is out-of-date.

A customs officer at Heathrow opened up the suitcase belonging to an attractive Frenchwoman and found six pairs of saucy panties. 'What are these for?' he demanded.

'I tell you' she replied. 'Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.'

'What about Saturday?' he asked.

'Saturday - oh, la, la.'

He chalked her case and off she went. Next in line was a stout, motherly party from Yorkshire. In her case she had twelve pairs of red flannel drawers.

'What's all this, Ma?' he asked.

And she answered 'January, February, March, April...'

There are people who are not contemporaries.

But remember to be a contemporary, because life belongs to those who are contemporaries. The past is no more - don't cling to it.

Question 2:

It is from Swami Anand Archan.

It is very simple. There is no need to be confused about it. If you are searching for enlightenment here, you will never find it. If you search for enjoyment here, you will find enjoyment and enlightenment comes in its wake.

Enlightenment happens only to a person who lives in immense enjoyment of life. Only he is worthy of it, because enlightenment is a greater joy - the greatest, the highest. You have to train for it. You have to train for it by being happy, joyous, by being in tune with life, by being a celebrator.

Forget about enlightenment. You need not worry about it. It is useless to think about it. Just enjoy!

Get lost in enjoyment. That is the easiest way to lose your ego, and the shortest way to lose your ego. Once the ego is lost and you are really enjoying life, you are delighted with it, a great gratitude arises of its own accord. You suddenly start feeling you are grateful to God; whosoever God may be, whatsoever it means - that doesn't matter anymore. Your life is such a joy, how can you feel ungrateful? Your life is such a joy, it is not possible for you to be complaining.

The complaining mind is the root cause of the atheist's mind. When you complain, when everything is wrong, you cannot believe in God. And even if you try to believe, that belief will just be pseudo; it won't have any depth in you, it vv-ill be superficial. Maybe out of fear or maybe just out of conditioning, but no reality is there in it for you. When you are joyous, when you are enjoying your life - the ordinary life, because there is no other life, only this life is there; when you start enjoying it - your food, your sleep, your bath, your walk early in the morning, the song, the birds, the trees, the people; when you start enjoying all this, gratefulness arises. You start feeling very calm and quiet.

You start feeling a kind of contentment descending on you, slowly slowly.

That contentment becomes part of your being. You become suffused with it, immersed in it. Every cell of your body starts falling into a harmony. In that harmony you will have the first glimpses of enlightenment, not otherwise.

So if you ask me, I will say: Forget about enlightenment, otherwise the idea of enlightenment will make you more miserable. You are already miserable. Everything is wrong, nothing is ever right.

You are suffering. Now you bring another misery - enlightenment; and this is very difficult. The misery of not having enough money is not very big; make a little effort and you can have it, if not legally then illegally - but you can have it, and there are ways. You are not famous, and you are suffering, you can become notorious - that too is a kind of fame. If people don't know you as a MAHATMA, they can know you as a devil, but you can make yourself known. And the difference is not much between the MAHATMA and the devil; between the saint and the sinner the difference is not much. Both are after fame: the basic urge is the same.

The saint is one who has made it legally. The sinner is one who could not make it legally - was not so clever, was not so intelligent - had to find some illegal ways, some criminal ways. But the reason is the same. These things are possible easily, so the suffering will not be much.

Now, enlightenment... You cannot make it legally, you cannot make it illegally; you CANNOT MAKE IT! YOU AS YOU cannot make it, because you are the problem! So there is no illegal way to enlightenment; there is not even a legal way to enlightenment. In fact, those who know say there is no path to it; it is a pathless path. There is no gate to it; it is a gateless gate. There is no method to it. When all methods disappear, it happens.

So once a person becomes interested in enlightenment, he is getting into eternal trouble. Now, whatsoever he is going to do is going to fail - whatsoever! His failure is predetermined, it is built-in.

In the very effort is the failure. So you do this, you do that and you go on failing. And the more you fail the more DESPERATE you will become, the more and more anguish will be there, the more and more hopelessness will be there. More and more you will feel lost - more lost than ever before, and then you will feel that this idea of enlightenment has been a curse. It has taken your ordinary life from you. It won't allow any other life, it takes possession of you totally, utterly. And the old life is gone, and the new has not happened, and you start hanging in limbo. You are neither here nor there; you become a question mark. Your whole life becomes split.

So remember, never become desirous of enlightenment, that will give you great hell.

This is my basic approach: that you should learn how to enjoy life. Enjoy it more and more, as deeply as possible. Go into it. Small moments can be transformed into eternities of joy. Small things can become celebrations - VERY small things. Just an unknown flower - and if you sit by the side of it, and you look at it, and you are open to it - will give you great ecstasy. You will start swaying and dancing, you will feel drunk. Any small thing is full of God! This ordinary reality is not just ordinary, it is carrying in it the extraordinary, the superb, the suprememost.

So love this life, and don't think of THAT. THAT always brings misery, because that brings conflict.

Let THAT come through THIS! YOU love the woman, you love the man... Let God come through that love, let God center you when you are in a state of orgasm. Eat, enjoy the food; let God come to you as a taste. Listen to music, get lost in it, and let God come to you as sound, as harmony. Let God descend on you slowly slowly, without any hankering to catch hold of him, without any efforts to possess him in your hands. Just open yourself as much as possible - to the trees, to the birds, to the rains, to the sun, to the sands. Open yourself wherever you are, absorb, and gratitude will arise, and that gratitude will become your prayer. And you will not know TOWARDS WHOM this gratitude is arising. When you don't know towards whom this gratitude is arising, it is towards God. When you know that it is towards God, you don't know a thing. Then it is the Christian God, or the Hindu God, or the Mohammedan God - and these are not God.

God is basically hidden. Nobody knows his name. The Jews were right never to spell his name. The name of Yahweh was not allowed to be pronounced, because how can we pronounce his name? - we don't know his name. His whereabouts are unknown. Nobody has ever seen him. Whosoever has seen him has gone into him and disappeared forever; nobody has come back. Nobody knows where he is, who he is. But still, when life is flowing, when life has a flow to it and a dance to it, one feels gratitude. Gratitude comes first and God comes second, not otherwise.

People are trying to bring God first. First they create God, and that is THEIR created God, man- made, home-made, manufactured. Then they bow down to their own manufactured statues. This is utterly stupid - a man bowing down to a statue he has made himself, or has purchased from the market. God is not for sale anywhere! And nobody has seen his face: nobody can make his statue.

And nobody knows where he is: overhead, behind, in front, right, left - nobody knows.

But gratitude arises... just as fragrance arises out of a flower and goes on, not knowing where, unaddressed; so, in the same way - unaddressed - arises gratitude. That is prayer, real prayer, and you start feeling God in your heart. Because of this gratitude, because of this prayerfulness, because of this thankfulness enlightenment is not far away.

First, become joyous! And Jesus goes on saying it, but nobody listens. He says again and again:

Rejoice! Rejoice! I say AGAIN rejoice!

You ask: HAVE I COME HERE TO ENJOY MYSELF OR GET ENLIGHTENED; You have come here to get enlightened, as far as you are concerned. As far as I am concerned, you have come here to enjoy. But through enjoyment comes enlightenment, and through enlightenment just suffering.

These are all ego trips. You find beautiful names, that's all, but they are all ego trips. Now, you want to become enlightened. Why? For what? From where did you get this idea of enlightenment?

And this will create much suffering, because now you will be searching. What to do? Stand on your head to become enlightened? Fast to become enlightened? Go to the mountains to live in a cave?

Become a masochist - to torture yourself? Practise a thousand and one things - which will be of mind, and cannot lead beyond mind?

Just go and look at the people. The East has been on this trip very long. The West is new and unaware of the pitfalls. The East has been too long into it. Just go and see Eastern seekers after enlightenment and you will find all kinds of pathologies. Somebody is fasting for months, his body has become just bones, sunken eyes, no energy left, torturing himself in the hope that this is the way - as if God were a sadist, as if God would like you to torture yourself. 'The more you torture yourself the more valuable you will become' - this is just something that has gone deep in the psychology of the man.

The child learns this from the parents. Whenever the child is happy, the parents are not happy.

Whenever the parents are happy the child is not happy. The child learns one basic fundamental of life: 'The parents can be happy only when I am not happy.' For example, the child is ready to go out.

It is raining and the rains are calling him. And it is so beautiful outside... and the sound of the rain...

and it is so cool. And he wants to go out and stand in the rain. But the mother is not ready to allow him, the father is not ready to allow him. They shout at him! He remains in the house. With greedy eyes he looks outside the window; it is so beautiful there, and the trees are so happy; and the trees are so moved by the rains. And he also would like to go into this world and he would like to stand like a tree, but he is not allowed. The parents are happy if he does not go, if he suffers. If he goes, then the parents suffer. When he comes back, then he has been a nuisance to the parents; he will be punished. And the parents will be angry for days together.

Now, one thing the child goes on learning every day: 'Whatsoever I feel is joyous, is wrong, and whatsoever I feel as painful, boring, is right.'

He is so full of energy he wants to play with the dog outside or he wants to go and run around the house - but the parents say 'Do the homework'. Now he does not like that homework. He hates it!

But parents are happy only when he is in some sad situation. So he has learned one thing - and God is 'Father' so the logic reaches easily to this conclusion: that if you are enjoying food, God will be very angry at you, he will throw you in hell - God the Father. If you are fasting and suffering, God will be very happy, he will send you to heaven. If you love a woman and are feeling immensely happy, guilt arises. God must be watching!

God seems to be continuously watching! That's what people have been told, that he is a kind of peeping Tom - whatsoever you are doing, wherever you are, he is watching. Just think of him also - he must get tired of all this nonsense. And watching and watching and watching... he must have gone mad by now. Millions and millions of people have been doing... How many things are people doing? and he is watching! And he has nothing else to do, he is just a 'watcher'

But you have been taught: he is watching everywhere, wherever you go he is there, following you - those two eyes, or, if you are Hindu, then three eyes, watching you. And continuous fear. You are happy, and he is watching. You will suffer for it. Have you not observed that whenever you are happy you feel a certain kind of guilt arising in you?

Every day somebody or other comes to me and says 'Osho I am feeling very happy. But why? Guilt arises in me, why?' It arises because of your wrong association. You have been taught a very wrong philosophy of life. You have not been taught the grammar of joy, you have been taught the grammar of suffering.

So you ask: DOES ONE NEED TO SUFFER TO BECOME ENLIGHTENED? I FLUCTUATE BETWEEN THE TWO. I'M VERY CONFUSED.

Naturally, you will have to be confused. You will have to drop one, otherwise you will continuously fluctuate. There is no enlightenment without enjoyment! Let this become your rule, the golden rule:

that God comes through joy, that God comes only when you are happy, immensely happy, that God flows only towards those hearts which are glad, that God comes only to those who are dancing, that God comes to you or, if you are Hindu, then three eyes, watching you. And laughter.

Let your laughter be your only prayer. Let your joy be your only offering. Love life! Love small things!

Don't miss a single moment. Go on getting more and more joyful, and you will find God is coming to you more and more.

Hindus are right when they say that God is ANAND, bliss. It is true: that is his ultimate definition.

So he can be attained only through bliss, not through suffering. The suffering will help your ego to become more strong, and the more the ego is strong, the farther away you are from God. Only when you melt in happiness, you become liquid in happiness, you start flowing in happiness, you are no more frozen... And when you are not frozen where can you flow? There is only God all around you!

Once you melt, you flow into him; and when you flow, he flows into you. It is reciprocal. God comes to you only in that proportion in which you go into him.

A man who is trying to achieve God, enlightenment, NIRVANA, becomes more and more egoistic, becomes more and more self-centered. His whole effort is how to attain and possess God. But how can you possess God? You can only be possessed by him, you cannot possess him. He is not smaller than you, he is bigger. How can the river possess the ocean? The river can only disappear into the ocean. The ocean will possess the river, and that is the only way for the river to possess the ocean. The man who is seeking enlightenment is trying to do the impossible. It is not possible in the very nature of things.

Here, being close to me, learn one thing, that is: joy. Rejoice! and forget all about enlightenment, otherwise that will create continuous suffering in you, anxiety And naturally, enlightenment can happen only in the future, so the future comes in. Then you start planning for it and you go on missing the present. Live the moment as if it is all, and enlightenment will find you. You need not find it.

Question 3:

I am not a person. You can love me. I am love. If you think of me as a person, you have not seen me yet; you are missing. There is nobody here! Or, only nobody is here. Look on me as love, not as a person.

If you look to me as a person you will become attached, and attachment brings misery. If you look to me as love you cannot be attached, and if you look at me as love you can dissolve with me. You cannot dissolve with a person; you can dissolve only with an energy, not with a person. Persons collide: that is the misery of all the lovers in the world. Persons collide, because persons are two egos. When two egos come close, sooner or later, the clash, the conflict, because each wants to possess the other, and the other cannot like it. Nobody wants to be possessed. So the natural calamity of love arises because you have not understood love as energy. Don't think of me as a person, otherwise you will start possessing me, and then there will be inner conflict. Think of me as love, as energy, as space; then you can dissolve in me, and you can allow me to dissolve in you.

Then there will be no clash.

That is the real relationship between a disciple and a Master - a non-clashing relationship. There is no conflict, there is only harmony, attunement. They move on the same wave length. I am not a person.

If you really love me, you will also become a non-person. And when you have also become a non-person there will be a meeting, not before it.

Question 4:

Shiva... again?

I don't think so, because he would not go into that tedium. But there is a man... Just the other day I was reading about him, he lives in Srinagar, Kashmir, his name is Sahib Zadda Basarat Salim.

He claims that he is the direct descendant of Jesus Christ. He has in his possession even today, a complete genealogical table which traces his direct ancestry from Jesus Christ.

People go for non-essential things. Now this genealogy must be fictitious. It is true that Jesus lived in Kashmir for many years, but there is not any possibility of him fathering children, because once a Master starts creating disciples, they are his children. And then giving birth to children will simply be a conflict. It will create problems, it will not help anybody. And the Master is no more interested in his physical persis-tence through children, his whole interest has moved to a higher plane. Now he would like to persist as a spiritual force through his disciples. They ARE his children, they are his real children - spiritual children. And when you can have spiritual children, who bothers to have physical children?

The disciple is the real child. And only the disciple can take the message of the Master to the future.

So I don't think that Jesus fathered any children. And my feeling is that the Bible is correct, because it stops at Jesus, the son of Mariam. It starts from the very beginning: fourteen generations - it gives the chart, and then it stops at Jesus. It seems to be perfectly as it should be.

With Jesus things have come to the climax. In Jesus the revolution has happened: the body has disappeared into the soul. Now Jesus no more functions like a body; to have children means that he still functions like a body. He functions as a spiritual force, as a spiritual magnetism; he functions as a soul, not as a body. The body is there but it is just the abode. The identity is no more there; he does not think of himself as the body.

So, don't get involved in such unnecessary things. They are unnecessary, they don't lead you to any understanding.

Question 5:

You ask why? Just observe yourself and you will find all these things there - lameness... A man is lame if he has not yet reached God. What use are your legs if they have not led you to God? What use are they? - you are lame. A man is deaf if he has not yet heard the song, the music of God. It is all around, and you have not heard it yet?

Jesus has to say again and again 'If you have ears, listen! If you have eyes, see!' To whom is he talking? To you! Don't think that he is visiting some institution where only blind people live, or only deaf people live. He is talking to people just like you who have eyes and ears, but who have not seen the real and who have not heard the real; and who go on seeing dreams, and who go on hearing whatsoever they want to hear - not that which is.

Man is deaf, man is blind.

What have you seen? You have not seen the real, you have not seen the miraculous, the mysterious.

And the irony is that the mysterious surrounds you from everywhere - day in, day out, year in, year out. You will live in the mysterious like a fish lives in the ocean, and the fish has not seen the ocean yet!

Kabir says: I wonder and I laugh why the fish is thirsty living in the ocean.

And there is an old Hindu parable that a fish became philosophic and started inquiring 'Where is the ocean?' And she moved in the ocean all the time: And she went from one place to another in search of enlightenment - she wanted to know where the ocean was - because she had heard that in the ocean we are born and into the ocean we disappear, and the ocean is our source and our goal: ocean is God. So she started searching for the ocean, and she asked many people and they said 'We have heard also, but we have never known.' They were all living in the ocean, those philosophers, those professors - they were all fish. How do you know the ocean if you have never been out if it? To know, a little distance is needed. The fish sometimes comes to know when she is thrown out of the ocean. When somebody catches her in a net and takes her onto the hot sands, then she knows what the ocean is.

That is possible with a fish - for a fish, but what about man? Man cannot be taken out of God. There is no place which is outside God. So we are born in him, we breathe in him. We breathe him, we eat him, we love him, we are loved by him, we tight with him, we quarrel with him; we are young in him and we become old in him. And one day we die in him as one day we were born in him. You must be blind because you don't see him and you go on asking 'Where is God?'

And you ask: WHY DOES THE BIBLE TALK ABOUT MAN'S STATE WITH METAPHORS SUCH AS LAMENESS, DEAFNESS, BLINDNESS, DRUNKENNESS, SLEEP AND DEATH?

This life is not life. It cannot be called life yet because joy has not happened. What kind of life is this? Maybe just a preparation, a rehearsal for the real life, but the real has not happened because it does not show in the glow of your being. That splendour is not there, present within you, that aura does not surround you. Yes, you go on dragging, hoping that some day life will happen, but it has not happened yet.

So Jesus is right, the Bible is right that you are dead, that you are sleep. Jesus goes on saying again and again 'Awake! Be wakeful because one never knows when the Beloved will come. Don't fall asleep. He may come and you may be asleep.

But there is no need for you to fall asleep, people ARE asleep! Only with conscious meditation, only with awareness, living moment to moment with absolute alertness does one come to be out of sleep.

And you ARE drunk - drunk with money, drunk with ego, drunk with power, prestige. And there are a thousand kinds of alcoholic beverages available: money is alcohol, power is alcohol, politics is alcohol. Beware of these things. And people are so clever, they can turn anything into alcohol.

Work becomes alcohol; there are 'workoholics' who cannot remain without work. They have to do something. They feel good when they are involved in doing something. When they have a little gap and they don't know what to do, they start getting crazy. They HAVE to DO! They will read the same newspaper again that they have read. They will rush to the TV or the radio and listen to the same news that they had listened to before. Or they may go to the same movie to see it again. Or they will start talking about the things that they have talked about a thousand and one times; and nobody listens, and they know it! They are bored, others are bored - but what to do? 'Workoholics'... a great organisation, greater than Alcoholics Anonymous is needed: 'Workoholics Anonymous'. Politicians will be there, scientists will be there, artists will be there, millionaires will be there - all kinds of people will be there. Anything that possesses you so much so that you cannot be without it is alcohol.

Mind is very cunning. Your MANTRA may become your alcohol; your TM may become your alcohol.

Every morning you have to do your MANTRA for twenty minutes, you have to repeat in a stupid way 'Ram, Ram, Ram'. If you repeat, you don't get anything; if you don't repeat, you feel lost. If you repeat you know nothing is happening, but if you don't repeat then you feel you are missing something. Then a great urge arises to repeat the MANTRA - the same kind of urge that comes.to a smoker. He knows that by smoking cigarettes he is not getting anything - there is no need to say that he is not getting anything. And if he is getting something, that is wrong - maybe tuberculosis, asthma, great things like that he is getting; otherwise he is not getting anything. He also knows it.

But the problem is that if he does not smoke, he starts feeling a great urge. That urge becomes more and more powerful; it possesses him. He HAS to smoke. He knows it is not good, he has decided not to smoke, he has taken a vow, but it doesn't help. He has to go and smoke, otherwise he feels very nervous, tense. Smoking helps him. Just an old habit...

Habits are very relaxing. You feel comfortable, cosy in them. Your MANTRA can become your alcohol. Beware. One has to be very conscious, otherwise anything can become your alcohol. And man is drunk.

Man is ordinarily like a person living in a trance induced by post-hypnotic suggestions. Jesus says there is only one cure: METANOIA - turning backwards, turning into yourself, turning your consciousness towards your inner being.

Unless you start looking into your being and become very very alert... And you can. You know there are moments when you are more alert and there are moments when you are less alert. There is the key! Why are you more alert in a certain moment? A beautiful woman passes by and you become more alert. What has happened? You wanted to see her well, you wanted not to miss the opportunity, that's why you became more alert. If you can look at a tree in the same way... Because an opportunity may be missed - you may never come across this rose bush again. Who knows?

The rose bush may not be there tomorrow, you may not be tomorrow. Who knows? This may be your last meeting - the first and the last. Have a look, a total look at the rose and you will be alert.

The bird is singing. This may be the last time. You may never listen to the song of a bird again; you will be lying down in your grave tomorrow. It is not worth missing. It is so precious. How can you be unalert? Be alert.

A friend has come to your home. Be alert. Each moment has to be taken as if this were the last moment. And there is every possibility this may be the last moment! So use it totally. Squeeze the juices out of it totally. In that very totality you will be alert and the drunkenness will be gone. This is what Jesus calls METANOIA.

A drunk staggered up to a policeman, and said 'Officer, Officer, where am I?'

'You are in front of the Shree Rajneesh Ashram' said the policeman. 'It is Koregaon Park.'

'Never mind the details' said the drunk. 'What town am I in?'

A drunk is drunk. He is not interested in details. He is not even aware what town this is.

Are you aware of where you are? Are you aware of what planet this is? Are you aware of what life you have got which is slipping by through your hands without being used at all? Are you aware of the opportunity? Are you aware of WHO you are?

So if Jesus says you are drunk, he is perfectly right. Don't feel offended.

A fire-engine, with its siren screaming, tore up St. Martin's Lane towards New Oxford Street. At the same moment, a drunk staggered out of the Salisbury and immediately set off in hot pursuit. He was soon outdistanced, and collapsed, panting on the pavement. As the fire-engine receded into the distance, he shook his fist at it and shouted 'All right then! Keep your rotten old ice-cream!'

What are you running after? Please. first have a look, then start running. Your desire is not enough proof that things exist there to satisfy your desires. They may not exist, and then your whole life will prove a futile effort, in vain. That's how it proves to millions of people. Rarely does a man come to fulfilment. You can also be that rare man. You can be a Jesus or a Buddha, but that is possible only if you drop your drunkenness.

During the match, the batsman heard a cry from the crowd 'Smith! Smith! Your house is on fire!'

He dropped his bat and ran off the field, through the crowd and into the road. Breathlessly he pounded along and then stopped. 'Why am I running?' he said. 'My name is not Smith.'

Have a look again at who you are, and why you are running. Is YOUR house really on fire? Where are you going so fast? And people are going very fast. If they don't reach, they think they have not been fast enough. So they develop, invent more speedy ways to reach, without knowing where exactly they want to reach! Man becomes more and more powerful TO REACH without knowing where he is going, without knowing where he really wants to reach.

Three drunks rushed onto the platform at Cannon Street Station just as the last train to Greenwich Was pulling out. With great difficulty, and with much shoving and pushing, two of them managed to get a door open and tumble in before the train picked up speed and disappeared. The man who was left behind collapsed on the platform, roared with laughter.

'Your friends just managed to catch the train, sir,' said a porter who was watching.

'Yes, they did' said the drunk, still laughing. 'And the funny thing is they came to see me off!'

And you ask why the Bible calls you drunk and asleep? You ARE, that's why.

Question 6:

In one of the ancient monastery papers, the following foot-note is recorded just opposite the passage where Jesus said: LET HE AMONG YOU WHO IS WITHOUT SIN THROW THE FIRST STONE. His mother, Mary, was also there in the crowd and he was afraid that she, being the Virgin, may throw the first stone. And he actually saw the thought cross his mother's mind. So he was writing again and again on the sand: I really wish you wouldn't do that, Mother!

Question 7:

It is just the other way round.

Little Tom and his dad went to the circus. After the show on the way home the father said to little Tom 'Wasn't that clever to time the horses so finely with the music?'

'Yes indeed' answered little Tom, yet not totally convinced.

Suddenly a few steps further, little Tom stops and facing his father, said in a sure voice 'What about timing the music with the horses?'

It can be the other way round, too.

It seems natural for you, as it looked to the father, that 'Wasn't that clever to time the horses so finely with the music?' But to little Tom, the horses are more important than the musicians.

Little children live in a different world; their perspective is different. He was not totally convinced of it. He said 'What about timing the music with the horses?' Rather than the horses being timed with the music, it can be otherwise.

I love jokes. When I find a joke, I try to find a question for it. When I love a joke, then sooner or later somebody or other is going to ask the question which the joke is going to fit.

Question 8:

Now this is strange. It reminds me of a story.

A cricket fan took his girlfriend for a date - it was a full moon night and the beach was silent and they were sitting on the beach, and it was beautiful. They were holding hands and hugging each other. And the cricket fan continued to talk about cricket for three hours. Then, suddenly he became aware that he must be boring the girl. Three hours is too long! So he said 'Sorry, forgive me. I have been talking for three hours about my hobby. I am a fan, I am mad about cricket. I must have bored you utterly?'

The girl said 'Not at all, not at all. But do tell me what IS cricket?'

Now you ask 'What is meditation?' and my whole life I have been talking about meditation. But still, I understand why the question arises. You listen, but you can't get it. You understand intellectually what meditation is, but still it remains elusive. You cannot catch hold of it. And you CANNOT catch hold of it!

It is not that something is wrong with you. Meditation cannot be caught hold of, you have to allow it to happen so that it can catch hold of you. Meditation is not something that you have to do; meditation is something for which you have to wait! It is something that comes, and comes on its own. It is like a breeze. It is not that you can pull it in, that you can manage and order it. You cannot order anything that is valuable. Ordered things are ordered things.

You cannot order God. So meditation, SATORI, SAMADHI, enlightenment, NIRVANA, God - they cannot be ordered. The very idea is silly. You.cannot order. You can receive. Certainly you can receive. You can invite, you can wait in patience. So whenever you are feeling happy, whenever you are feeling joyous, whenever you are feeling harmonious, in tune, then just sit silently. Wait for it.

Just wait for it! Nothing else is needed to be done.

Meditation is not an action. You just wait. Relax and wait. Lie down or sit or stand - as you feel good - and wait for it. Wait, alert, and soon you will hear the whisperings, the silent steps of something which is coming closer to you. Soon you will see something is entering into your heart, into your being. You cannot see it, but it is there. You can feel it. It is like a fragrance that fills your nostrils. It is like light. Keep the window open. That's all you need to do: just keep the window open, so when the light arises and the clouds are not there and the sun is high, the rays can enter in you.

About meditation you can do only negative things. Keep the door open, keep the eyes open, keep yourself alert, and it comes. It certainly comes. It immediately starts flowing in you. It is a benediction. You cannot pull, you cannot manipulate it. A manipulated meditation will not be of any value. That's what people are doing. Somebody is doing TM, somebody is doing something else - trying to manipulate.

Here, when you are doing the Chaotic Meditation or the Kundalini or the Nadabrahma, these are not really meditations, you are just getting in tune. If you have seen them, it is like Indian classical musicians playing. For half an hour, or sometimes even more, they simply go on fixing their instruments. They will move the knobs, they will make the strings tight or loose, and the drum player will go on checking his drum - whether it is perfect or not. For half an hour they go on doing this. This is not music, this is just preparation.

Kundalini is not really meditation, it is just preparation. You are preparing your instrument. When it is ready, then you stand in silence. Then meditation starts. Then you are utterly there. You have woken yourself up by jumping, by dancing, by breathing, by shouting - these are all devices to make you a little more alert than you ordinarily are. Once you are alert, then the waiting.

Waiting is meditation - waiting with full awareness. And then it comes, it descends on you, it surrounds you, it plays around you, it dances around you, it cleanses you, it purifies you, it transforms you.

Question 9:

Because I don't know much English.

I somehow go on expressing myself. I am not at home with English. The problem is: first, I am not at home with any language at all - the first, the basic problem - because what I want to say is beyond language. Then. English is unacquainted to me, sol have to create my own English. And I know English through the books, so maybe sometimes big words filter in, but I don't know smaller words for them; otherwise, I would have used the smaller, because the smaller word is more expressive.

The bigger the word, the less expressive; the bigger the word, the more scholastic.

Listen to this anecdote:

An African diplomat, paying his first visit to England, was met at the airport by the usual gaggle of media men.

'Did you have a good flight, Sir?' asked one reporter.

'Wowie, ssssh! Yes, yes, very comfortable, thank you' replied the African.

'And how long will you be here?' asked another.

'Wowie, ssssh! About three weeks.'

'And will you be going straight to see the Prime Minister today?'

'Wowie ssssh! Yes, I am going as soon as I have answered your questions.'

'How did you learn such a distinctive style of speaking?' asked another journalist, intrigued by the strange noises which preceded each of the African's replies.

'Wowie ssssh! The English by Radio service of the BBC.'