A rock among the waves

Question 1:

Deva Ashu, I myself have been watching. On your face there is some stoniness, and you stand out because everybody is bowing down and you remain stiff. Now you yourself have asked the question.

The first thing: it is very difficult to know your heart, and it is very easy to say anything about your heart. It is something invisible, non-objective. But your face, your eyes, your body, give indications of your heart. So please, don't be deluded that your heart is full of grace and the body seems like a rock in the river.

The heart is part of your body. If the heart is graceful, the body is a very obedient servant. It simply follows the heart. But you have not mentioned anything about your face, naturally, because you cannot see it. I have seen your face.

You have been deeply connected with me. Deva Ashu has been my personal dental nurse. That's where the problem is - you must have come with unconscious expectations that you would be received in the same way as you have been received for many years. But life stops for no one; now somebody else is functioning in your place, and that must be the basic wound in your being.

I know you love me, but your love is not unconditional. It is not just a pure gift. Unconsciously it wants to be replied to, recognized - you have been important in the sense that Devageet, my dental surgeon, was working and you were participating. That closeness you are not finding anymore; you are feeling as if you are no longer significant or important. This is how the mind creates stupid expectations and then suffers from them.

Looking at you, I have remembered all these days you have been here. You are showing the face of a martyr. And there must be some jealousy too because now another nurse has replaced you. If your love is unconditional then your concern is not who is helping me to remain in the body - your concern should be that it is more than enough that I am in the body.

It may look hard to you, but there was no other way. You will be surprised to know that when Nityamo replaced you, because you were not here, the first thing I told Nityamo was, "For years I have been accustomed of Ashu, and when I am in the dentist's chair I may use the name 'Ashu' for you. Don't feel offended, because my dentist chair is not just a dental affair...."

With me everything is a little strange. From the dental chair, I have created three books! It must be absolutely unprecedented, because people are so afraid of the dental chair and the dentist. I have enjoyed it so much - but it created difficulties for poor Devageet, because you cannot work on the teeth while I am talking. What he could have done in ten minutes would take two hours!

You are missing that privacy, that intimacy, when I was talking to only two persons, Devageet and you. And I have my own games to play. I had put you against Devageet - you are his dental nurse.

I can experience whatever is happening, even under a high dose of laughing gas, and I used to remind Ashu again and again: "Don't listen to Devageet. As far as this dental room is concerned, I am still your master." Even with closed eyes... because they tried that too. They blindfolded me so I could not see what was going on, but I could see that the gas was not at the maximum. And I was beating Ashu continuously - "You are listening to Devageet!" Devageet stopped talking. He managed to give messages by signal.

It was a beautiful time, and many things that I would have never bothered to talk about, I talked about in the dental chair. I was creating difficulty for them - because how can you work inside the mouth when I am speaking? But my sensitivity is such that just a lower degree of gas and I would hit Ashu immediately. She was in a great difficulty... she has to listen to the doctor, but as far as I am concerned the doctor and the nurse both are my disciples. I have beaten Devageet so much that sometimes I feel sad about the poor fellow. He has been doing his best, but he was doing it according to his medical understanding. With me, things cannot be in any way ordinary.

Ashu has been here - as far as I am concerned there is no change. My love is as available to you, but because you are no more in that intimacy, where you were even put in charge of the doctor to take care that he did not interfere in whatever I wanted to do... It is against medical practice; the doctor should not listen to the patient. But here the situation is totally different - I am the doctor and you are the patient, it does not matter!

So just a little understanding, Ashu, and your stoniness will melt. I know you have a graceful heart, but because of your mind you are feeling almost a foreigner here. Drop all this nonsense. You are the same to me.

Even if people have betrayed me, my love for them remains the same because I had not given my love with any condition. People have lied about me, have written books with complete fictions, but my love for them still remains the same. All that I know is that they are unconscious people, and they don't know what they are doing.

You have to be a little conscious. It is good that you asked the question. There is something more you have made part of your question which needs a totally different dimension of answer. You are saying, "As you greet us and again as you leave, you are pouring your energy on us. How come my body does not gracefully bow down to you? I know my heart does. Am I a rock among the waves?"

As for your own psychology, I have said everything that you needed. Relax - you will remain in my heart just as any sannyasin, with the same love, with the same compassion, because I don't ask anything from you. I have such an abundance flowing that I don't know what to do with it. I have to share.

But the second part of the question takes a totally different dimension. In a flowing river, a few rocks have their own beauty. A river without rocks loses sound. A river with rocks is a singing and dancing river. If your heart feels graceful, flowing, don't be worried about a certain stony feeling in your body.

That too has its own place. Rather than fighting with it, rejoice in it. You are not an ordinary river but a river that sings, a river that dances. Without rocks, rivers are very poor.

I loved the place where I stayed in Kulu Manali for the simple reason that the river passing by was so full of rocks... day in, day out, there was music, there was dance. But as you know about me, even in my own country I am a foreigner. The government to which Kulu Manali belongs started freaking out. They had made a law that a man who is not born in their state cannot purchase any land - just to prevent me. But I needed a vast land for my commune, and it is as retarded a part of the country as you can conceive - uneducated, poor, completely in the grip of the politicians.

You will be surprised that the day I left Kulu Manali, the arrangement was that they were going to arrest me on a very fictitious, absurd account. To them it may have looked like very solid ground....

As I left Kulu Manali, just within one hour the arrest warrant reached the place I had been living in. The arrest warrant was hilarious - and makes me feel about our experts that they are donkeys loaded with knowledge.

The reason for arrest was that I had paid four hundred thousand dollars in fines in America, so I have to pay tax and I have to explain from where I got the money. I have never paid any fine anywhere in the world. I don't know even the names of the people who paid the fine. Even my jailer was surprised, because they were not expecting it, knowing perfectly well that I don't have a single cent to pay. And imposing four hundred thousand dollars... it is nearabout sixty lakh rupees. From where am I going to pay it?

But I am not a man who worries about anything. Not for a single moment did the idea even arise in me that this could be a strategy - to keep me in jail until the fine was paid.

And I never think of the tomorrow. Today is too beautiful and too fulfilling - who cares about tomorrows which never come?

As I was fined... it is a strange thing but it has to be stated publicly to the whole world. They had thirty-four charges against me, all fictitious, and they agreed with my attorneys that if two of the crimes were accepted, I would be freed.

My problem is, what about the other thirty-two crimes that I have committed? The government of America is deceiving their own nation. If I have really committed those thirty-two crimes, then there is no other way; I should be punished. But for the first time I realized that in America, justice is part of business. Accept two crimes and the other thirty-two crimes disappear - and any two crimes; they were not even insistent about what crimes. And the two crimes were so stupid that nobody can think that a person should be fined even if he has committed them.

Four hundred thousand dollars... and to ask a man, knowing perfectly well that he has not touched money for almost thirty years - I had been in America for five years, and I don't know how the dollar bill looks. But I have thousands of people who managed immediately, within ten minutes. Even Judge Leavy was surprised that they paid the fine. And the crimes, if you look into it, are not even worth paying two rupees.

One crime was that I had inside myself an intention to become a resident of America. I never thought that people had yet found any way to know the intentions, the dreams, the imaginations of people's minds - and when I am saying that I don't have any intention to live in this most ugly and obscene society.

And the second crime was that I have arranged thousands of marriages. I was for three and a half years silent, not speaking, not meeting any sannyasins except my secretary, to be informed how the commune was going. I have not told anybody to get married because fundamentally I am against marriage. And if I can manage one thousand, or thousands of marriages, why can I not manage a marriage for myself? If that is the way to get residence, I could have married as many American women as they want! But I am absolutely against marriage, and the man who was making all these charges said such a hilarious thing - that I have arranged thousands of marriages which are fake, but certainly at least one marriage I have arranged....

Now the man is only certain about one marriage. On what logical grounds does he stretch it to thousands of marriages? He himself admits that he is certain only about one marriage. And strangely enough, all the other marriages were not recognized - only that marriage was recognized, given a green card for employment and residence. This is strange. This is bribery - they have purchased those two persons, and neither of them has ever talked to me. And as far as marriage is concerned, not even the word had been uttered by those two persons or by me. They had no way to meet me.

On these two flimsy grounds, four hundred thousand dollars as a punishment! I don't know who paid those four hundred thousand dollars, because hundreds of sannyasins were there in the court. The court was almost my court. Strangely enough when I entered the court people stood up, and when the judge entered it was announced: "Stand up; the judge is coming in." Sometimes I wonder... who is the judge?

And now the government of the state of Kulu Manali wants to arrest me. I don't even know the names of those who paid the fine. I have nothing to do with it, I have never paid a single rupee to anybody. In the first place I don't have it - and a very logical thing has to be understood....

I always left in the right time. That's what I say: existence manages things if you leave it to existence.

I left Rajneeshpuram in America. The next day they were going to bring four helicopters - their helicopters were coming every day to find my house, and from the helicopters they were going to drop paratroopers to arrest me. Just a few hours before, I left Rajneeshpuram to go to a beautiful mountain resort that belonged to my sannyasins. They had been insisting for two years - it is strange that on that day I decided that okay, two years were enough. They had prepared the place; they just wanted me to rest there. And the government was in shock - their whole program had failed.

I left Kulu Manali just one hour before - I was still at the airport when they reached the hut where I had been living near the river. And now again the Indian government is continuously sending letters saying that I have to pay taxes. It is such a stupid and illogical step - in logic they call it infinite regression - if I pay the tax, then I have to pay tax on the money that I am paying as tax. Naturally...

where is it going to end? Whenever I pay tax, I owned that money - on that money I have to pay the tax again. And it will go on infinitely. Either you stop at the first step or there is no way to stop. And they know perfectly well that I don't have any money, I don't have any possessions. Everything the people who love me allow me to use, belongs to them.

But governments are always stupid. In fact, if you are not stupid you are not qualified to be in the government. Can't they see the point? If somebody else has paid the fine, and I don't even know their names, how can I be asked to pay tax?

But the same foolishness prevails over the whole world in all the bureaucracies. It seems the moment they become bureaucrats their minds stop functioning.

I have heard about a politician who was going through mind surgery. But when the doctors opened his mind, it was so full of crap that it needed a dry cleaning, so they took out the whole brain and brought it into the other room. While they were cleaning his mind, a man came rushing in and said to the politician, "What are you doing here lying in the hospital? You have been chosen president!"

And the politician disappeared.

When the doctors had finished cleaning they could not find the man. They came to know from the newspapers that he had become the president, so they approached him: "You have left your brain with us."

The president said, "To be a president, the brain is no longer needed. You keep it. When I am defeated or when I am no more in power, perhaps I may need it."

There is a law, which is a very significant law, that all our bureaucracies and governments function in such a way that the most inefficient, inadequate person finally reaches to the top.

Hearing it for the first time it seems, how can it be? But if you see the whole process... A clerk is doing perfectly well. Because he is doing perfectly well as a clerk, he becomes the head clerk. He knows nothing about being the head clerk, but if he still has some sense left he will function better than other head clerks. He will become the superintendent.

You are moving people from places where they are efficient because of their efficiency, but you don't understand a simple thing, that to be efficient as a clerk does not mean that you will be efficient as a corporation commissioner. So all the heads of the bureaucracy are absolutely inefficient. They had been efficient in some area, and that has taken them to higher posts. The higher they go, the less efficient - until they reach to the ultimate inefficiency. Then they become the presidents, the vice-presidents, prime ministers - the whole world is being dominated by all kinds of idiots.

Deva Ashu, you should not feel at all tense; my love is not the love that disappears. It goes on growing - whether you are close to me or far away, it does not matter. And remember that your body is a very significant signal. To know about the heart is a difficult job. Your body indicates that your heart is no longer graceful, no longer loving - listen to the body first because that is the most visible sign. And then move inwards... the body has to be graceful, the body has to be beautiful, the body has to be deeply alive, and then only can you find the grace of the heart and ultimately, the grace of your being.

But start from the door and then enter into the temple. Don't be disturbed because you have recognized that the body is not so graceful, is not so receptive - it is a great insight. Look around at all the causes that have made it so, and immediately the ungracefulness will disappear.

And whenever you can manage here, you can be my dental nurse, because Nityamo was very graceful when I told her, "If I sometimes call you Ashu, don't feel offended." She said to me, "Ashu is my friend, and if you call me Ashu it is perfectly good." Nityamo is not your competitor. Here, nobody is a competitor. Only once in a while some idiot enters.

One German has written a letter to me. Only a German can do it..."You have been pouring so much juice over Deva Amrito, why don't you declare him your ambassador?" But he is not aware: there are three Amritos here. And as far as his suggestion is concerned, although it is coming out of jealousy the suggestion is perfectly right. Even before receiving his letter I had told Deva Amrito that he is going to be my ambassador in Holland.

Once in awhile somebody brings the outside world into this oasis of different consciousnesses.

Certainly he is not aware that he has become jealous, but I have my own reasons why I have answered Amrito's questions. He is writing a book. I don't have time to answer all his questions, because he wants it to be his whole pilgrimage, the seeking and the search, and he wants to end it by finding me. He has already written eight books on me and he thinks this book is going to be very comprehensive - answering everything, destroying all lies that have been spread by governments, by politicians, by journalists, by all kinds of criminal people who are around.

It was because of this reason that I took his questions and answered them, and his questions were significant for you too. But the German mind becomes tense. Don't be worried. Meditate so that you are no more a German. The day I see that you are no more a German, I will also make you the ambassador for Germany.

In fact, every sannyasin is my ambassador. To make a certain man responsible is not making him a dictator for you. It is making him a help, a contact center, because the fight is going to be all over the world. Twenty-five countries have prevented me from entering them. Now I have to find my own ways to enter. And in each country I am going to have my embassy.

For the first time, a single individual is going to have embassies around the world.

And those embassies will be your meeting places, because the fight is going to become more and more intense. Because I cannot enter, in every country sannyasins have to fight their own governments and their stupidity.

And the fight is so total that I disagree with the past on every point. It is not a question of choice - it is a question of breaking away with the past completely and creating a new man. I can see the new man arising in you on the horizon. And with this new man will be born a new humanity, a new vision, and a new way of life.

I am not interested in creating a religion, which is a very simple affair. I am interested to create as many religious people as possible - an atmosphere of religiousness, with no organized church but every individual having his own individuality as his religion.

Man has never been given that freedom. I want every individual to have his own religion - in other words his own lifestyle, his own philosophy - and to live according to his own deepening insight.

You have to be alert of a tremendous responsibility that I am handing over to you:

You have to be the harbingers, you have to be the dawn of a new, totally new humanity, completely discontinuous with the past.

The past has played tricks with you to keep you encaged. Every religion condemns jealousy and every religion creates jealousy. I am surprised that for thousands of years nobody has seen the connection. If you are competitive you cannot drop jealousy. Jealousy is the energy in you - ugly, stinking, but it keeps you competitive. And every religion teaches you to be competitive, to be more "good," to be a greater saint, to be a more moral person. But then when you come across a person who is a bigger saint than you, jealousy will be the by-product. And they all condemn jealousy.

All the religions have condemned stealing, but no religion has condemned people accumulating riches. And these are two sides of the same thing. If people go on accumulating riches, they are forcing people to be poor, to such an extent that the poor has only one choice if he wants to survive - he has to become a thief.

All the religions are against sex, but they all preach celibacy. And celibacy makes sex unnatural, perverted.

The responsibility that I am giving to you is to see clearly how the past has destroyed man - beautiful names hiding ugly realities. And unless you drop those beautiful names, you cannot discover those ugly realities. They live together, they are part of one another.

Each sannyasin has to be a revolt in himself - transforming his own being, cleaning his own mind, and spreading the message of freedom. Not of Christianity, not of Hinduism, but simply the dignity of the individual and his total freedom.

Unless we can create this planet consisting of free individuals, we cannot survive anymore. The old, the past, has come to its very end. It can only manage a global suicide. I am fighting against the global suicide of a beautiful planet which has evolved more than any other planet in the world, which has come to some consciousness that can be increased very easily.

My teaching is very simple: the whole man, inside a meditator and outside a creator.

But if you get into small jealousies that you have been carrying from your heritage... rather than making it a problem simply drop it. It has not helped you, it has only made you more miserable.

Paddy is on his deathbed, groaning, when his wife Maureen walks into the room and asks if he has any last requests.

"Yes dear," says Paddy, "there is one thing I really would like before I go off to that great shamrock patch in the sky." And then he whispers, "A piece of that wonderful chocolate cake of yours."

"Ah, Patrick," says Maureen, "have a potato instead. I am saving the cake for the party after the funeral."

Five of the most important men in a woman's life are, THE DOCTOR: He says, "Take off your clothes."

THE DENTIST: He says, "Open wide."

THE HAIRDRESSER: He says: "Do you want it teased or blown?"

THE INTERIOR DECORATOR: He says, "You will like it once it is in."

And, THE MILKMAN: He says, "Do you want it in front or in the back?"

Paddy and Sean are watching Molly being chatted up in the pub. When she leaves with the man, Sean turns to Paddy and says, "I can't understand it. Molly is one of the ugliest girls around, and yet all the men seem to find her attractive."

"It's because of her speech impediment," says Paddy, sagely.

"Her speech impediment?" asks Sean astonished.

"Yes," says Paddy, "she can't say 'no'."

Ashu, you have to learn to say yes. Yes to the rocks, yes to the flowing river, yes to your totality as you are. And your song and your dance will return to you. In my vision there is no greater word than yes. Yes to existence without any conditions. And you will find relaxation and you will find a communion and you will find both the worlds, the inner and the outer.

You can call my approach the philosophy of yes. All other philosophies and all other religions are more interested in teaching you no's. I teach you, without any conditions, to say yes to yourself in whatever situation you find. And each situation is changed miraculously the moment you are capable to say yes.

This silence is immense... but I always like you, when I leave you, to be in as hilarious a mood as possible. I know the trees also understand the jokes, and I have a deep compassion for them because they cannot laugh.

Man is the only being on the earth who has come to the understanding of laughter. Buffaloes don't laugh - they are very saintly. Donkeys don't laugh - they are too philosophic. Idiots don't laugh because they are afraid of being caught doing something that they don't understand.

The Englishman laughs only once, not to let anybody understand that he has not understood. The Frenchman laughs twice - once to accompany other people out of courtesy and then, in the middle of the night when he gets it. Germans simply don't laugh. On the contrary, they are worried - why are people laughing? They inquire of others - what was the matter? Jews don't laugh; on the contrary they say, "Shut up, it is an old joke and moreover you are telling it all wrong."

But I want my people to understand that because only man is capable to laugh, that means laughter is the highest point of consciousness, the highest point of understanding, the highest point of evolution. That's why I have started calling laughter "the prayer time."

Waking up with a terrible hangover after the office party, Paddy turns to his wife Maureen and says, "Jesus! Would you believe, I can't remember a thing that happened last night!"

"It's just as well," replies Maureen. "You got into an argument with the boss and he fired you."

"He did?" shouts Paddy. "After all I've done for him? Well, screw the bastard!"

"I did," says Maureen. "You go back to work tomorrow."

Moishe Finkelstein is walking down the street one night in New York. Suddenly a man jumps out from the side alley and puts a gun to Moishe's head.

"Give me your money," he threatens, "or I'll blow out your brains!"

"Blow away," says Moishe. "In America you can live without brains, but you can't live without money."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.