Asking the experts

Is existence a problem? If it is a problem, then philosophers can help, then experts are useful. But philosophers have failed utterly. For centuries and centuries they have been thinking and thinking.

Nothing comes out of their grinding, no conclusion is reached, no truth arrived at. Something is basically wrong with their attitude.

It is not that their competence is lacking, their competence is perfect. They are absolutely efficient.

But somehow they have mistaken existence for a problem. It is not. It is not there to be solved, it is there to be lived! If it was a problem it could have been solved long ago. It is not a problem at all. It has to be lived. Life is not separate from you, to be tackled as a problem, it is YOU. Who is going to solve whom?

Existence is not there outside you. It is inside you, it is your very inside. And existence is not apart; you are part of it, organically one with it. How can a wave solve the ocean? The ocean is not a problem for the wave, it is something to be lived. And the ocean is not separate; in fact the ocean is waving in the wave. The wave and the ocean are not two things: they are one unity.

You are existence, existence is you. Who is going to solve it and how?

Philosophy starts from a wrong beginning. It takes it for granted that there IS a problem. It never doubts the very ground - that maybe there is no problem. Once you start wrongly you go on and on, and if the first step has been wrong, the last is already missed. From a wrong beginning nobody can come to a right ending; that's why philosophy goes on theorizing, philosophizing. Its very attitude is such that it turns everything into a problem.

A great philosopher, a professor of philosophy, was ill, mentally ill. He was psychoanalyzed, treated.

He started feeling a little better. And then the psychoanalyst said, "Now it will be good if you go to the hills. It is hot on the plains and the climatic change will help you. So go to the Himalayas."

The philosopher went. There he felt very good. The hills were covered with ice, and it was so silent that he felt a sort of euphoria bursting in him. Immediately he telegraphed his psychoanalyst: "I am feeling happy. Why?"

The very attitude of philosophy is to make a problem out of any and every thing. If you are happy - why? That too becomes a problem. How to solve it? If you are sad, of course, why? If you are happy, again: why? It makes no difference to a philosopher what the case is - he creates problems out of it. A philosopher is a problem-creator. First he creates the problems, and then he starts solving them.

In the first place the problems are false, they are not there. Happiness is there. There is no question mark around it, the question mark has been added by the philosopher. Happiness simply exists, there is no why. Existence IS, there is no why. Trees are, flowers are... birds singing, clouds floating in the sky - there is no why. The why is added by the philosopher, and once the why is added and the question mark is there, of course he has to solve it. And how can you solve a problem which doesn't exist? Whatsoever you do will create more problems. You will find one answer - you think it solves. Immediately that answer creates more questions.

So philosophy has been simply a search for more questions, more whys. Not even a single answer has been given by it. For millennia philosophers have been grinding. Nothing comes out of it because in the first place nothing has been put in. The why is empty. Philosophy is the most absurd effort of humanity.

Existence is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived. And you should be perfectly aware what the difference is between a mystery and a problem. A problem is something created by the mind; a mystery is something which is there, not created by the mind. A problem has an ugliness in it, like disease. A mystery is beautiful. With a problem, immediately a fight arises. You have to solve it; something is wrong, you have to put it right; something is missing, you have to supply the missing link. With a mystery there is no question like that.

The moon arises in the night.... It is not a problem, it is a mystery. You have to live with it. You have to dance with it. You have to sing with it, or you can be just silent with it. Something mysterious surrounds you.

A philosopher has completely forgotten the language of mystery. Mystery is natural. Problems are man-created. If man is not on the earth, the mystery will be there, but there will be no problems.

Crows will caw, and they will not ask why. Cuckoos will go on singing, and nobody will ask why.

Trees will flower as they have been flowering always; nobody will sit underneath and philosophize.

Life doesn't bother about philosophization. It is a foolish effort - but very ego-fulfilling, because you create the problem, then you try to find the solution, then more problems are created.... You start feeling that you are doing something great.

You are not doing anything. Nothing is there, just hot air, bubbles of hot air in the mind that you call thoughts. Ripples, confusion, chaos. A philosopher misses life completely. He bypasses life, completely unaware that there was something to be lived, loved; that there was something to be merged with; that there was something to float with; that there was something to dance with and become one with. A philosopher is a closed mind, completely life-proof. Life does not penetrate him.

And these philosophers become great experts about life because they can talk, they are articulate people. They can create problems where none exist, and then they go on supplying answers for them. They are self-sufficient, they don't need anybody. They create the problems and then they create the solution. And then they create more questions and questions, and they go on and on.

They create an illusion around them that they know.

In India, we don't have a word like philosophy in Indian languages. This Greek word philosophy means love of knowledge. We don't have any word like that. And the word that we have is totally different: it is DARSHAN. It means the capacity to SEE. Not love of knowledge, but love of realization.

Not love towards more and more knowledge, no, but towards a greater, clearer vision. That's why we call those who have known, seers - those who have seen. Life has to be lived and seen, not thought about. Philosophy creates experts, and those experts go on giving answers to you which are false. The whole effort of philosophy is a false effort, and this is one of the greatest systems of human effort to know.

The second system is science. Science again takes it for granted that life is a challenge; not a problem in the sense of a philosopher, but a challenge. One has to fight. That's why scientists go on in terms of conquering nature: as if there is an enemy, not a problem, but an enemy who is challenging you and whom you have to conquer. Scientists become warriors, conquerors. They fight with nature. But how can you live if you start with hate? Science is based on hatred, enmity, fear, as if life is there surrounding you like an enemy: not like your mother, not something beloved, not caring about you, but ready to kill and destroy you. Science has taken the attitude of hatred, and through that, science goes on fighting. If you fight, you miss again.

Philosophy theorizes, and misses. Science fights, and misses. How can you live if from the very beginning your whole attitude is based on enmity?

A scientist lives a desert life. He may get the Nobel prize award, but LIFE never awards him. Life never comes any nearer to him. He does not allow that closeness with life. He is always in search of ways and means to conquer. The system of science is aggressive, it is violent. It is a rape against nature.

So scientists may get a few facts here and there. They may snatch something, just as a robber can.

It is possible: you can steal, you can rob life of a few facts. Life will give those few facts to you very reluctantly. It is as if you gather a few crumbs from the table of an emperor, but you don't become the emperor... you remain a beggar, or a robber, and life was there ready to crown you as the emperor.

There was no need to fight because life is the mother - you come out of it! You are born out of existence, existence carried you in its womb; how can existence be inimical to you? It has given birth to you, it has protected you, it still protects you. You come out of it and you dissolve into it again. You are part of it: a hand raised by nature. Eyes, ears... through all your being nature is trying to reach a certain height of consciousness. You are not the enemy, you are the beloved son.

That is the meaning of Jesus' saying of himself, "I am the son and God is my father." The Jews never understood him, what he was saying: he was saying that life is a family, existence is not inimical, it mothers you, it fathers you. You are the son, loved by it, nourished by it. Something is meant through you, some greater significance has to evolve in you. Don't fight, because if you start fighting the friend you will create unnecessary barriers for yourself.

Science creates the attitude of fight; that's why science has been very very destructive. Philosophers have failed, but they have not done any harm to anybody. They have failed so utterly they cannot do any harm. Science has been a success, and science has completely crippled life. Now, in all the countries where science has become very developed, it has become a menace. The whole ecology is suffering. Rivers and lakes are becoming dead, trees are dying. The earth itself is dying, on its deathbed. The whole atmosphere is poisoned. And there is panic in those who know, for there seems to be no possibility of stopping it - because who will stop it? Scientists themselves are impotent now. They have released the demon; now they don't know how to put it back in the bottle again. And the politicians won't allow them to put it back in the bottle.

Two types of mad people have joined together: the politicians and the scientists. The scientists go on supplying them with secrets and the politicians go on using those secrets in Hiroshima, in Nagasaki, and in everyday life. Technology is killing completely the whole of nature. Things are disappearing... because existence is a coherent whole: if you destroy one part of it, the whole is affected. Finally one day the whole system collapses. This is how it is happening.

Science has been a dagger driven into the back of nature. Philosophers have not done much harm - they cannot because they are absolute failures - but science has done much harm. Now the greatest enemy today is science. And why has it been so harmful? - because from the very beginning enmity has been at the base. Hatred, not love... enmity with life, not friendship. Science has created the idea in humanity that you are unaccepted guests here and you are not at home. You have to fight.

From Darwin to Einstein they have been teaching survival of the fittest - as if life is just a struggle!

The fact is otherwise, just the contrary. Life is a vast cooperation.

Prince Kropotkin is nearer to the truth than Charles Darwin. Prince Kropotkin says - and he is a religious man, a really religious man - he says that cooperation is the base of life, not struggle, and it is not a question of survival of the fittest, because if it is a question of the survival of the fittest, then might becomes right. It is not a question of survival of the fittest; most tender things also survive. Look at the flowers! They are not Adolf Hitlers, and they have survived. Look at the birds, the small birds, singing beautiful songs: they are not Genghis Khans and Alexanders, and they have survived. Life must be a deep cooperation - it is. Everything is cooperating; it is a cosmic whole, interdependent.

Look: the earth goes on feeding the tree, the sun goes on feeding the tree, the air goes on feeding the tree, and then a fruit is born. That fruit feeds you. It becomes your body, it circulates in your blood. It becomes your bones, it becomes your heart, it becomes your brain, it becomes the very marrow of your brain. Then one day you die. Insects start eating you. Then the insects die, they are reabsorbed in the earth. The trees start eating the earth. Again fruits will come. Your grandchildren will eat you in the fruits. Everything related, interrelated, connected. You have been eating your grandfathers, your grandmothers; they are again reabsorbed! You will be reabsorbed.

Waves come and go, the ocean remains - and each wave is connected with each other wave.

Past and future - you are related to the whole past, you are a link; and you are related to the whole future that is going to be there. You are a link in the chain, and if one chain link is broken, the whole chain suffers. It is a cooperation. Nobody is independent and nobody is dependent.

because even to be dependent you have to be separate. No, it is not a question of independence or dependence. Life is INTERDEPENDENCE. Nobody is independent and nobody is dependent, everybody is interdependent.

So I call those messiahs pseudo who teach people independence, because it is a false attitude, untrue to life. Nobody can be independent. If you try it, you are being stupid. You can go to the Himalayas and you can try to be independent: you cannot be, because there also you will be part of the interdependence that is life.

Monks have been trying over all the centuries to become totally independent because they think if you are dependent then you are in bondage. So escape from the wife, escape from the children, escape from society; but where will you escape from oxygen? Where will you escape from water?

Where will you escape from food? Where will you escape from the sun and the moon? Wherever you go you will remain part of the interconnected pattern of life.

You can never become independent, absolute independence is not possible, because that means you become an isolated unit, you become an island - and there exists no island. Islands that you see in the ocean, they also are not separate, they also are part of continents hidden under the sea.

No island exists. Nobody can be independent. It is interdependence. It is a deep cooperation.

Don't start with enmity; otherwise you will destroy life and your whole energy will be engaged in destruction - and existence is creative. You can enjoy it, you can become one with it, only when you are creative. And science has been destructive. It is not needed. Or, a totally different type of science is needed, based more on Kropotkin and less on Darwin. A totally different science is needed based on love, not on hate, based on Lao Tzu and not on Aristotle.

Science has to be Eastern if it is to be right. It need not be so logical. It has to be a little more loving, then it is not against nature, then it is not a rape, rather it is a courting. You court nature. Nature becomes the bride, you become the bridegroom. You court nature, you persuade her to reveal her secrets. A lover also persuades a woman, and the woman reveals everything that she can reveal, everything that she has. She reveals her very heart.

And then a man can rape a woman. The rape and the lovemaking may look similar from the outside, but they are not, because when you violate a woman she simply shrinks, she closes. You may violate the body, but you cannot violate the soul. The soul remains virgin. It simply shrinks back. A man who rapes a woman never touches her soul - he cannot. And that is what has happened with science. It has been a rape of nature. It could have been love.

And science has accumulated much expertise about everything. If you have to prove anything you have only to say that science says so: enough! - nobody questions it. It is proved already if science says so. Science is the model superstition. In the old days it was enough to say that the Vedas say so, or The Bible says so, or it is written in the Koran; and if you could show that it was written in the Koran - finished, then nobody asked whether it is right or wrong. If it was written in the Koran, in the Vedas, it had to be right; it was enough if you could prove that it was in the Vedas. Now it is enough if you can prove that scientists say so.

Who are these scientists? What have they been doing? They are experts. They have gathered a few facts. But they don't know what life is because life can never be known through analysis, through dissection.

You love a woman, a beautiful body, but you don't go to a surgeon to ask whether this body is beautiful or not. A surgeon of course knows many bodies, deeper than anybody else; he has been dissecting, he has cut thousands of bodies. But don't go to a surgeon because a dissected body is no longer alive, and beauty belongs to life. Analyzed, a thing becomes dead. Life exists as a whole.

You cannot dissect it. If you want to know it, and the beauty and grace of it, you have to watch it while it is alive. You have to love it as it is - alive. If you try to cut it and find the innermost parts, and how they function and what is happening inside, you may come to know the mechanism of the body but you have missed the soul.

The soul lives in the unity - the unity IS the soul. And the soul is greater than all the parts put together. The soul surrounds all the parts - in fact the soul keeps all the parts together. Once the soul has left a body, it starts deteriorating. Within hours it is dying, things are falling apart. You leave the body there a few days and it is already becoming one with the earth. Who was holding the whole as a whole? Who was keeping things together? What was the source of the togetherness?

A desire arises in me - I feel thirsty; my hand immediately reaches towards water. From where comes this unity? A desire arises - the desire is not in the hand, the hand never feels thirsty. My throat is feeling dry. I feel thirst. That thirst is recorded in the brain, is witnessed by the soul. The hand never feels thirst, but immediately, without any order, without any message given to the hand, if the throat feels thirsty the brain immediately starts functioning. Not a single moment is lost - the hand reaches towards water. The hand, the throat, the brain - they are functioning together.

There must exist an organic whole which keeps all parts together. That whole is the soul. You cannot dissect a body and come to know the soul, because the moment you dissect, it is gone. It is there only when the unity is functioning. It is the very unity.

If you go to the scientists to ask about life they have many answers, but all their answers belong more to death than to life, because they have been fighting, destroying, dissecting, analyzing. In the whole process they have missed life. They will never come to encounter it; that's why they always say that there is no soul - because they never encounter it in their lab. They have dissected many bodies and they have never come to see any soul. Before they start dissecting, the soul has left.

They will never come to know it, and science will go on denying that there is any soul, and science will go on denying that there is any God. But this is not the point, whether there is or is not a God, because the very method of science prohibits... the very method becomes the barrier.

Then there is a third system, which is art. These three systems produce experts: philosophy, science and art. These are the three dimensions in which the human mind functions. Art is not interested in theorizing, and art is not interested in dissecting; that's why art is closer to religion than anything else. Philosophers are the farthest. You may have thought otherwise, but philosophers are the farthest from religion. Even scientists are nearer, because if there exists a hate relationship it can be converted into a love relationship, because hate is nothing but love upside down.

So an Einstein can become religious more easily than a Bertrand Russell. At least he hates. At least he is fighting life - even fighting is a way to live; even fighting is an alive moment. A scientist is not just in theories, he is experimenting. A philosopher is sitting with closed eyes, thinking about "woman": much fantasy. A scientist is raping a woman. At least that is better than the philosopher, at least a real woman is there. Maybe a right relationship doesn't exist between the man who rapes and the woman raped, but some type of relationship exists. Even the enemy is related to you.

The scientist can be converted - and it happens that many scientists by and by, as they grow older, with more understanding, start turning towards religion. But philosophers remain stubborn. To the very end they go on talking their nonsense and theories and this and that. A scientist by his whole life's effort of struggle, fight, murdering nature, may suddenly awake. His whole life may take a turn of one-hundred-eighty degrees. That's possible. An enemy can any day become a friend. You are related at least - wrongly, but related at least.

Farthest from religion is the philosopher, the system of philosophy. Closer than philosophy is science, and closer than science is art.

What is art? What is art doing in the world? Art is just like a child - enjoying the butterflies, running after them. Art is a childlike attitude. It tries to make life a little more beautiful. It is an interior decoration; it decorates life. It gives a quality of dream to life. Through painting, through poetry, through music, it enhances the beauty, the euphoria. It tries to give momentary pleasures, a quality, something resembling permanence. It is an effort to live, but it is still not religion. It does not accept life as it is, it tries to improve it; it tries to make it more beautiful. It feels as if raw life is not worth living. It tries to improve existence. It is nearer to religion because it tries to live, but still it is not religion.

Religion is the jump into raw existence as it is. Religion accepts totally. It says there is no need to decorate life; it is already such a beautiful poem that no Shakespeares can improve it, no Kalidases are needed. It is already such a tremendous poetry that all improvements are just futile. It is as if you are trying to put legs on a snake. Foolish! The snake is perfect, there is no need to put legs on the snake. And if you put legs on it then sooner or later somebody will come and try to fix shoes on the legs, and you will kill the snake!

Art is trying to put legs on the snake. There is no need - life in the raw is tremendously beautiful, it is utterly wonderful. To enjoy it nothing is lacking. The more you decorate it, the more false it becomes. It becomes like the painted face of a woman.

I have heard one anecdote. It happened that one saint was very much against women using any decorations for the face, powder, lipstick, this and that - he was very much against them. Another saint lived there also, just in the neighborhood, who was very much in favor of it. The first one used to say that as life is, it is beautiful, there is no need to improve upon it, and you cannot improve on it, it is the final word. The other used to say life is ugly, one has to hide it.

A woman used to go to listen to both the saints and she was very troubled and puzzled. She went to an expert, a logician, to ask what to do because one saint said this and another saint said that.

The philosopher, the logician, pondered over it, meditated upon the matter, and he said, "You do one thing: paint half your face... because when two saints are against each other this is the only logical answer. Be in the middle, follow the middle path."

This has happened, this IS happening every day to you. Somebody is saying something, somebody else is against it. What do you do? You compromise. You paint half your face. You become uglier.

Life as it is is perfect. That's why we say life is God. God means perfection; there is no beyond to it.

But art comes closer, because it doesn't bother about theories, it does not bother about any fight. It simply tries to decorate. It simply tries to make it a little more beautiful so that you can enjoy it. But there it misses also, because life can be enjoyed as it is. In fact it can be enjoyed only as it is.

Art is childlike. Philosophy belongs to old age, to the cunning mind. That's why whenever you think of philosophers you always think them very ancient, old. Artists are always children, playing on the beach, trying to accumulate colored stones.

It happens again and again that there come periods in art when the art simply becomes absolutely unsophisticated and childlike. That has happened with Picasso, and that is his appeal: he paints like a child. There is great art in it, but the painting looks like a child's, as if he has been playing with colors with no idea what to do... as if just by playing with colors it has happened. But a child has to grow because a child is only the beginning, not the end, and if the child grows rightly he becomes religious. If an artist grows rightly he becomes religious. If he does not grow, then he remains an artist.

For a philosopher to become religious is a long journey... very very difficult, almost impossible.

Seems arduous. His whole being is at stake, he has to destroy himself completely; only then can he become religious. That's why philosophers have created a game. The name of the game is theology. It is not religion, it is just a trick of philosophers to feel as if they are religious. They have been thinking about truth, beauty, this and that, then they think about God. Theology means logic about THEOS, logic about God. They make God a problem also, and they start thinking about it.

Theology is a false religion. It is part of philosophy, it has nothing to do with religion.

For a scientist it is difficult, but possible, to turn and take a hundred-and-eighty-degree conversion and become a religious man, because science and religion both belong to the age of youth. Just try to understand it: art belongs to the child, philosophy belongs to the old man, science and religion both belong to the young man. Both need energy. Science is hate, religion is love. Science fights with life, religion loves it.

A child is nearer to the young man because he will have to grow up sooner or later. Unless he is a retarded child he is bound to become religious. Every artist, if he moves, grows, will find one day he has entered the temple of the divine. Every poet, every musician, every dancer, if he goes on growing, if his growth is not stopped somewhere in the middle, then he will become religious. That is a natural consequence of being an artist.

A scientist will have to take a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. He cannot grow into religion; he has to change himself, his direction. He can grow easily into a philosopher. So many scientists in their old age - Eddington, James Jeans - they all become philosophers. It is easy.

For a religious man it is impossible to grow into old age because a religious man never grows old; he grows and grows and grows, and becomes younger and younger. He never becomes old. Old age does not belong to the religious man because he lives moment to moment so fresh. He remains young. He loves life so deeply that life nourishes his youth. An old man simply means somebody who has been rejected by life and is now getting ready for the garbage can, being thrown away.

Used, now there is no need for him.

A religious man never grows old, that's why you never see a statue of Buddha as an old man. He became old, he lived for eighty years, but you never see a statue of Buddha, or Mahavira or Krishna or Rama as old, no. We have never painted a single picture of them as old because we know a religious man never grows old. The body grows old, but that is not the point; consciousness remains young and fresh.

A religious man never becomes a philosopher. It is impossible. It is not in the very nature of things.

It is difficult for a philosopher to become religious, because he will have to go back. It is against nature to go back, but it is possible. Rarely it happens, very rarely, but it is possible; one can go back. Much is involved, investment is there - a whole life invested in philosophy; it is difficult to move back. Philosophers, to the very last, go on insisting on their theories, remain confined in them.

These are the four ways of living life. A religious man lives life without becoming an expert, he never becomes an expert because life is so vast - how can you claim expertise? Life is so infinite, beginningless, endless, how can you become knowledgeable about it? In fact the more you know, the less you feel that you know. The greater your knowing becomes, the more intensely ignorance is felt. When knowledge becomes absolute, the man of religion simply feels that he doesn't know anything. He is not an expert.

So if you find anybody expert in religion, know well he is not a religious man. He may belong to the false discipline of theology. Theology is the false coin which tries to deceive people that it is a religion. Christianity died because of theology; too much theology suffocated it.

The Jews could not kill Jesus. They crucified him, but he survived. Then the theologians - and Christianity has produced great theologians; in fact Christianity has not produced anything else, just rotten theology that has suffocated Jesus completely - they murdered him. Jesus was not murdered on the hill of Golgotha, he was murdered in the Vatican.

Religion is always killed by theology; it is a dangerous, cancerous growth. Religion never makes you an expert, it never makes you a pundit. A man with eyes can never become a pundit because life is not a theory, it is not a scripture; it is not a hypothesis to be learned, it is a mystery to be lived. And the more you move into this mystery the more you are lost.

A day comes when life is and you are not. A day comes when you are dissolved completely. The wave has disappeared into the ocean. This is the final, the ultimate - what in India we have been calling SAMADHI, the enlightenment, SAMBODHI. When you are no more you have become a buddha.

Now, this small parable.

A MAN WHO WAS BELIEVED TO HAVE DIED AND WAS BEING PREPARED FOR BURIAL, REVIVED. HE SAT UP, BUT HE WAS SO SHOCKED AT THE SCENE SURROUNDING HIM THAT HE FAINTED. HE WAS PUT IN THE COFFIN AND THE FUNERAL PARTY SET OFF FOR THE CEMETERY.

JUST AS THEY ARRIVED AT THE GRAVE HE REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS, LIFTED THE LID, AND CRIED OUT FOR HELP.

IT IS NOT POSSIBLE THAT HE HAS REVIVED, SAID THE MOURNERS, BECAUSE HE HAS BEEN CERTIFIED DEAD BY COMPETENT EXPERTS.

When competent experts have said that he is dead, how is it possible that he has revived? People believe in theories, not in life. The man is there alive and crying for help, but no, their eyes are closed by theories, knowledge, and competent experts have given the certificate that he is dead.

How can they be wrong? It must be an illusion: "Maybe we are hallucinating, or maybe this man is hallucinating: he is dead and he thinks he is not. Something has gone wrong, because how can the experts be wrong?"

And don't laugh, because this is your attitude also. If something is said in the Vedas and life denies it, you will forget life and you will believe in the Vedas. You will say, "How is it possible? The RISHIS of the Vedas, the great experts, they say this is not so. Something must be wrong in life. Life can go wrong, experts never go wrong."

It has happened so many times, it is happening every day, with you, with others.

When for the first time astrologers and astronomers proved that the earth is round-shaped, not flat, the pope of the Vatican denied it. He said, "How is it possible? because in The Bible it is said that the earth is flat."

They had all the proofs that the earth is round but the Christian theologians wouldn't listen. They said, "How is it possible? The earth HAS to be flat. How can The Bible be wrong? The Devil must be playing tricks with your minds; that's why you are finding these arguments. But you cannot deceive us, we know the word of God."

Then it was proved that the sun is not moving around the earth as it was believed. Just the contrary, the earth is moving around the sun. Every proof was there, and not a single proof existed against it.

But again Galileo was called to the court of the pope, and he was forced to take his statement back.

Galileo, on his knees in the court, said, "I also believe that the sun must be moving around the earth, because it says so in the scriptures, and I must apologize for making a statement that the earth moves around the sun." And he said to the pope, "My Lord, if you wish I can write another book to prove that the scripture is true. But one thing I must say: Even if I prove it, it makes no difference, the earth is moving around the sun. Nothing can be done about it. I can write a book to disprove my argument - that is nothing, that is not the point."

Galileo must have been a rare man. People think that he was a coward; I don't think so. People think that he was a coward because why should he apologize? He should have become a martyr.

But as my feeling goes martyrs are almost always foolish, stupid people. Ninety-nine percent are stupid. Galileo must have been a very very understanding man.

If you live with fools you have to accept their foolishness. Why unnecessarily become a martyr for just this ordinary thing? And whether the earth moves around the sun or the sun moves around the earth, what difference does it make? Why waste your life for it? He must have been a very rare, understanding man. He was not a coward at all. He was not foolhardy, that's right, but his statement is beautiful in the end. He says, "But I cannot do anything. I can prove it, but that sun won't listen, and neither will the earth follow."

It happened that Galileo made the first telescope, and he asked his friends - university professors, priests - to come and see through it, because many stars were there which could not be seen by the naked eye but they could be seen through this telescope. Nobody was ready to look through it, because everything is counted in The Bible, and it is said how many stars are there, and God created only that amount, that number, and how can you suddenly find more with an instrument?

That instrument must have been supplied by the Devil!

Nobody was ready to look through it - so afraid... because maybe you can see some stars there which are not written about in the scriptures. Then there will be trouble. When a few courageous people tried to look, they looked and they laughed and they said, "You must have been playing tricks!" The stars were there; this Galileo must be playing tricks.

This has been the attitude, that life has to follow the scriptures, life has to follow the theory. So don't laugh about these people - they are following a well-established law of foolishness.

IT IS NOT POSSIBLE, they said, THAT HE HAS REVIVED, BECAUSE HE HAS BEEN CERTIFIED DEAD BY COMPETENT EXPERTS.

I have heard: It happened that somehow Mulla Nasruddin's wife's name was missed in the voters' list. Then there was an election, and his wife was very anxious to vote, but her name was not there.

So Nasruddin took his wife to the election commissioner - and not only was the name not there on the list, it was said that his wife was dead. Of course his wife was very furious, and she was more furious because Nasruddin was taking the thing with much ease. He was not disturbed and he was not angry, and he should have been because how dare these people count her as dead when she was alive? She was very angry. They went to the commissioner and she told him, "This is not right.

I am alive! And in your list it is said that I am dead. What is this?"

She was so angry that Nasruddin said, "Wait. You cannot fight with the officers. They must be right; how can they be wrong? Of course they know better than we do, and you, a foolish woman, not educated at all, trying to argue with a great officer? If they write that you are dead, you must be dead. Experts cannot be wrong."

BUT I AM ALIVE! SHOUTED THE MAN.

And life is shouting all around you, but you have never listened to it. You are too engaged with experts. You go on reading your Ramayana, your Bible, and life is all around shouting, "I am here!

Look at me!" It shouts through the birds, through the trees, through the rocks, through the clouds - but you are deaf. Your ears are filled with the scriptures and the experts and the theoreticians. You are reading your book, you are looking in the book, you are searching for life in the book.

Ramakrishna used to say that it happened: The wife of a disciple of Ramakrishna told her husband that in the neighborhood, just two or three houses away, a house had burned down in the night.

He was an educated man. Immediately he took his newspaper and went through it. The wife said, "What are you doing?" He said, "If the house has really burned down then there must be news of it in the newspaper, and it is not there. I don't think that house could have burned down, it must be a rumor." Just three houses away - but you have to look in the newspaper, you have to check in the newspaper. The newspaper has become more alive than life. Words have become more meaningful than facts.

Existence has gone far away from you. Between you and existence there is a vast wall of China, made of words, theories, scriptures, religions, philosophies. It is difficult to penetrate the wall and reach existence; that's why you are so miserable, so thirsty, so starved. You have not lived at all.

You have been just dragging.

BUT I AM ALIVE! SHOUTED THE MAN. HE APPEALED TO A WELL KNOWN AND IMPARTIAL SCIENTIST AND JURISPRUDENT WHO WAS PRESENT.

There he also committed the same mistake as the mourners were committing, because he also belonged to the same crowd. Sometimes I think, reading this story, that he may also be thinking inside: Maybe they are right, because how can the experts be wrong? Maybe I am deceived!...

because he was part of these mourners, of the same crowd. He was not a different man but a member of the same group. He must also be thinking inside: I feel that I am alive, but who relies on his own feelings? You also don't rely on your own feelings. You feel suspicious. Who knows? - you may be wrong. The man was alive, he was feeling alive, he was shouting, "I am alive!" but still he appealed to the wrong man - a well known and impartial scientist.

First, he was a scientist, which means he was an expert about dead things. No scientist ever encounters life, he cannot. His methodology debars it. A man who knows about dead things - appealing to him about life was a wrong step, and the step was even more wrong because the man was well known. When an expert is not well known sometimes he can put his expertise aside; nothing much is at stake. But when a well known expert is there he has to save his expertise. The question is not whether this man is alive or not; the question is, he has to save his prestige of being a well known scientist. A small man can commit suicide but not a well known scientist. An immature scientist may have looked at the man and thought: Maybe he is alive. But that would mean that he was immature, not really well established.

The more a man is established the more he has invested in it and the less is the possibility for him to allow any new fact to arise. He will have to push away the new fact because the new fact, if accepted, will destroy the whole old pattern. More established people are less rebellious, they have to be. They cannot afford rebellion. This is one of the basic tricks that societies play against revolution.

In India, for five thousand years there has been no revolution because we gave the brahmins so much prestige. The man of knowledge was made the highest, the topmost; the man of knowledge was the base of the whole establishment. Who will rebel? Because to rebel you first have to be a brahmin, an intellectual. Only the intelligentsia rebels. But if the intelligentsia is made the very base of the establishment, then nobody can rebel, there is no possibility. All the brahmins in India were the topmost people. They could not afford to be rebellious because in rebellion their prestige would be lost. If the establishment is lost, they are lost. They exist with the establishment. They cannot afford rebellion.

And the same trick is being played in Soviet Russia. That's why in Soviet Russia there is no possibility of any revolution, no possibility at all. The same trick. They must have learned it from Hindus, because India is the only country which has been on Earth for thousands of years without revolution, the only social structure with no rebellion, no possibility of any rebellion - they must know some secret. The man who gave Hindu society its foundation, Manu, must have known the secret.

And now, Marx plus Manu is the structure of Soviet Russia. They pay much respect to authors, professors, writers, novelists, scientists - the brahmins, the intelligentsia. Again, in Russia the brahmin is the highest, the top class. Now there is no possibility of any revolution there, because who will revolt? Laborers, SUDRAS, never revolt; on their own they will never revolt. The intelligentsia is needed to provoke them, but who will provoke them? - because a revolution will go against the intelligentsia itself. Warriors, soldiers, they never revolt, they are the most obedient people in the world, soldiers - the MOST obedient, even foolishly obedient. Their whole training is for obedience.

They never revolt. And business people of course cannot revolt, because they will be robbed in a revolution. They have much to lose. Business people never revolt, VAISHYAS never revolt - they cannot. They are always against revolution. That's why in America revolution is not possible, because the whole country consists of the middle class, the whole country is the business class, vaishyas. In America revolution is not possible - who will revolt? The major part of the country is middle class. A middle-class mind is always trying to reach to the topmost. He has no time for revolution, and any revolution will disturb his own ambition. Vaishyas are never revolutionaries.

Warriors, soldiers, KSHATRIYAS, are the most obedient part of a country. They never revolt.

Whosoever rules, they follow him. Sudras have no mind - laborers, the proletariat, they have no mind to revolt. They are contented with whatsoever they have. They drag on with it. They don't hope much. They are not frustrated. To create the frustrations, brahmins are needed. The brahmin is the only revolutionary class, and if you make the brahmins the top, then revolution is killed from the very seed, burned. Experts can never be revolutionaries. They are the brahmins. They are already so established that they would not like any change.

The man appealed to the wrong person. He appealed to a well known and "impartial" scientist - and there is one more condition: impartial.

This is something to be understood, it is a very delicate point. Science thinks that it is impartial, science thinks that it is impersonal knowledge. This is wrong. No knowledge is ever impersonal, all knowledge is personal. No knowledge is impartial, all knowledge is partial, because the knower enters into the knowledge, he cannot remain outside of it. Whenever you know something, YOU know. You have entered into it, you have become part of it. That's why in Soviet Russia a different type of science exists than in America - because they have different investments, different commitments.

In Stalin's Russia many scientific theories were denied. They were not accepted because they were against Marxism, so nobody would talk about them, nobody would discover them. They were discovering something else. In Soviet Russia, Freud's psychoanalysis is not accepted. Not a single psychologist there says that Freudian analysis is right, no. The whole world has said so, but not Russia.

They have their own psychology - Pavlovian. Pavlov is their Freud because he supports communism, because he says there is no soul, no mind: man is nothing but behavior, a mechanism; biological, but still a mechanism. And the whole point is how to condition it. Wrong conditioning leads to psychic illnesses, right conditioning will change the man. There is no need for psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis is bourgeois, it is capitalistic. Freud has not entered into the Soviet bloc. They have their own psychology, and they also think they are impartial, and Freud also thought he was impartial. In fact, impartial knowledge is not possible, because the man who finds it, he has his own bias, his own prejudice. He has his own knowledge, he has his own mind; it colors the whole thing.

Nothing is impartial.

Only one possibility exists of impartial knowledge, and that is when you have lost your mind completely. We in the East say: Only a buddha can be impartial, a buddha, who has no mind, who has no self, who has no prejudice, no ideology, who lives in emptiness - he can be impartial.

But a man who lives in mind - how can he be impartial? His mind is going to color, his mind is going to interpret.

This man must have been a very well-known scientist, "impartial" - because what he did proves that he must have been well known, and he must have been thinking that he was impartial. That impartiality killed the man. He appealed to the wrong man.

JUST A MOMENT, SAID THE EXPERT. HE THEN TURNED TO THE MOURNERS, COUNTING THEM. NOW, WE HAVE HEARD WHAT THE ALLEGED DECEASED HAS HAD TO SAY. YOU FIFTY WITNESSES TELL ME WHAT YOU REGARD AS THE TRUTH.

Of course, this is the only way to be impartial: Take votes. And of course the majority is always right, truth is to be proved by majority. This is how the whole world is run by experts - truth is to be proved by majority. And in fact just the reverse is the case: the majority always believes in lies, because the majority consists of fools.

Democracy basically is mobocracy. It cannot be otherwise. You have to ask the fools who is right, what is right, and there is a tendency in the mob to follow others. The mob has no standpoint of its own. It is a chaos. Somebody raises his hand, the others follow. The mob are like sheep.

One teacher was asking a small boy - because the boy was the son of a shepherd - he asked, "You have ten sheep. Five jump out of the fence, how many are left behind?"

The boy said, "None."

The teacher said, "What! You can't even figure it out? Five have jumped out, and there were ten in the beginning, so how many are left?"

The boy said again, "None."

The teacher was at a loss. He said, "Then you can't figure it out?"

The child said, "You may know figures, but I know sheep. None is left. Even if one jumps out, that will be enough; the other nine will follow."

And he is right. What did this impartial, well known scientist do? He did a democratic thing.

JUST A MOMENT, SAID THE EXPERT. HE THEN TURNED TO THE MOURNERS, COUNTING THEM. NOW WE HAVE HEARD WHAT THE ALLEGED DECEASED HAS HAD TO SAY. YOU FIFTY WITNESSES TELL ME WHAT YOU REGARD AS THE TRUTH. HE IS DEAD, SAID THE WITNESSES. BURY HIM, SAID THE EXPERT. AND SO HE WAS BURIED.

And so you have been buried. Your experts have buried you. Your scriptures have buried you. Your theologies have buried you. You were alive but you went to ask the experts.

Don't go to the experts, go to life itself. Don't go to the scriptures, go to existence itself. Don't ask the theoreticians, ask life itself.

The man was just foolish. He should have run from the expert. The moment he had seen that a well known scientist, an impartial man, was there, he should have jumped out of the coffin and run as fast as possible - that was the only way to save himself.

And you also should do the same: jump out of your coffin and run as fast as you can from all your experts; otherwise they will kill you. They have already killed you. They will bury you. If you want to be alive, listen to life, not to knowledge. If you want to be alive, listen to your own heart. What a foolish man that man must have been who asked the expert to decide!

Remember, your own HEART is the only judge. No other judge exists. Listen to it. Listen to the inner voice, and follow it, wheresoever it leads. If you listen to the inner voice, if you don't bother about theories, if you make contact with life itself, direct and immediate, you will attain to the ultimate.

God is waiting there, alive and kicking. And there is nobody who is hindering you except yourself.

Just don't come in your own way.

Enough for today.