Simply singing my own song

Question 1:

Deva Pagalo, it is not a coincidence that I have given you a name which means "the madman." It is a very rare and unique situation to be meditative and to be mad. There have been millions of mad people but their madness is a sickness, their madness means they have fallen below the mind and they have to be brought back at least to the normal state of mind. That's the whole profession of the psychoanalyst, the psychiatrist, the therapist.

But there have also been a very few mad people who have not fallen below mind but who have gone beyond mind. As far as mind is concerned, both are out of the mind. Both are mad, but the man who has gone beyond the mind has come to a state which is the ultimate blessing in this existence.

When I gave you the name Deva Pagalo I had seen the possibility in your eyes that you can be one day a madman of the highest quality, a divine madman. It is not sickness, it is the ultimate in health.

What you are saying actually needs to be understood by everyone. You are saying, "There is nothing I need to know."

Certainly, there is nothing that one needs to know. In a deeper sense, there is no one who can have the need to know. You are an utter emptiness, silence, serenity.

This silence is not ignorance; hence the need for knowledge is not there at all.

Knowledge is needed by ignorant people - this is so simple - and the more ignorant they are, the more knowledge they need. It creates a vicious circle. The more knowledgeable they become, the more they become aware of their ignorance. As they advance in knowledge they become aware of a tremendous space which has not been traveled yet, and a vast possibility of knowing more. It is unlimited, they will never come to a point where they can say, "Now I have known all."

These are the scholars, the pundits, the rabbis. These people have dominated humanity simply because they have more information than you have. They have made a tremendous treasure of their information. For centuries, they have been defending the citadel of knowledge and not allowing everybody to enter into their world.

For example in this country, brahmins for ten thousand years have not allowed one fourth of the population of the country to read or to learn writing. It was the greatest crime for these simple, innocent people even to hear a few words of the Hindu Vedas, which are the Hindu ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. It hurts and it makes me utterly sad to say to you that even a man like Rama, who is being worshipped by the Hindus as an incarnation of God, punished a young poor sudra because the brahmins reported that while they were reading the Vedas he was hiding behind the trees and trying to listen.

In the first place, even if he was trying to listen he could not have understood, because brahmins never allowed their language, Sanskrit, to become the language of the people. It has remained a language monopolized by the brahmins, by the learned, by the scholars. Even though he could not understand, Rama punished that young man by pouring melted, burning hot lead into both his ears.

The young man was killed. And nobody has even objected against Rama, that even this single act is enough to prove that he is a murderer - and murderer of a man who has not committed any crime.

But instead of being condemned as a murderer, he is worshipped as God - of course by the brahmins, and when the brahmins worship him as God, everybody else follows. And this is the case not only in this country; in every country of the world, all kinds of information has been monopolized.

Lord Acton was right when he said that power is the reason why people have tried to monopolize knowledge. Because knowledge is power. Perhaps it was not such a great power in the past, but today science has become the greatest power. And the word 'science' simply means knowledge.

Only a man of silence, innocence, has no need for knowledge. He is not sick; hence he does not need any medicine to cure him.

To go beyond mind is to go beyond all pathology that mind creates. To be in the mind, you can be either normally mad or abnormally mad. If you are abnormally mad, you will be in the minority. The normally mad, who are the majority, will bring you back into their fold. It is strange to say, but it has to be said that all the branches of psychology are in the service of the normally mad. Their function is only to bring the abnormally mad back into the normal fold.

But there is a totally different kind of madness which is not of the mind; hence no psychiatry, no psychoanalysis is needed - neither can it disturb it. Meditation takes you beyond your mind into a deep innocence which has no need to know, which is absolutely blissful as it is.

Your saying, "There is nothing I need to know," makes me immensely happy. Don't fall from this state. The mind will try to pull you back by creating new questions, new queries - persuading you, seducing you to explore new areas. Be very alert. And be on guard, because there is no treasure which is more valuable than innocence. That needs no knowledge.

In other words, this is your second childhood. You are born again. Your eyes are no longer filled with the dust of knowing. But this not-knowing is a tremendous perceptivity, a great clarity. It does not need to know, because it feels, and feeling is a higher state than knowing. As the clarity becomes more and more transparent, instead of feeling it becomes your being.

The moment your very being is nothing but a simple, silent clarity, perceptivity, you don't need even to feel. Let me say, the man who knows is a scholar; the man who feels is a poet, a painter, a dancer. But the man who simply is, is a mystic. He has entered into the mystery of existence - not as separate from it... but as a dewdrop slips from the lotus leaf into the ocean, he has also slipped into the oceanic that surrounds you.

Now, in a sense you are no more, and in another sense you are the whole ocean. There is no knower and there is no question to know.

Your second statement is also important to be understood. You are saying, "I just love the sound of your voice." I really want you not to take my words the way they are being ordinarily taken and understood - as meaningful, as imparting some information to you. I am not teaching you anything.

I don't have any message. I am not converting you.

I am simply singing my own song. The meaning is not in the words, the meaning is in the silences between the words.

So many times people have wondered, how can I go on speaking four hours a day? And I have stopped reading for fifteen years. I don't know what my next sentence is going to be and I don't know why I am going to say it. Because I am not speaking out of knowledge, I can go on speaking for eternity. Knowledge is very small.

The man of knowledge is really repeating something which he has accumulated in his memory. He is behaving like a computer. I am speaking because I simply enjoy to see the moments of silence when you are waiting and I don't know what I am going to say. It is a miracle that somehow sentences make themselves, somehow the whole appears to have some interconnection, but I am not making any effort.

Even if people find contradictions, it is perfectly good, because only a very ordinary knowledgeable person is concerned about consistency. A man who is speaking, using speech as a means to convey not meaning but poetry, not meaning but some significance, not meaning but some fragrance, not message but presence....

I have nothing to say to you, but I have much to share with you. Speaking to you is just an arbitrary method to be with you and to allow my heart and your hearts to dance in the same rhythm, on the same wavelength. The moment your heart starts dancing in the same rhythm, I have reached you.

Without converting you, I have transformed you; without even touching you, I have brought a new light and a new joy into your being.

I have sown the seeds which, in the right time, are going to blossom into beautiful madness.

If I can create as many people as possible who can dance madly, laugh madly, sing madly, who can make every moment of their life just a celebration, I have introduced you to the authentic religion for which man has been searching for centuries but has not been able to find. I have found it and I want you also to be partners in this immense finding:

Religion without words, religion without creeds, religion without fictions of God, heaven and hell.

A religion without sins and virtues, a religion with no condemnation, no appreciation.

A simple religion that transforms each moment into a glory, into a gratitude, into a prayer.

I have not said anything to you, although I have been speaking for thirty-five years continuously. And as long as I live - or even a few minutes afterwards - I am going to speak. If I see the moment when there is still an opportunity for someone to be involved in the universal madness, I can even speak after my death, it doesn't matter. Death can wait a few moments. I have been keeping it waiting for thirty-five years, so there is no problem. A few minutes more....

As far as I understand, thirty-five years is such a long time that death itself may have forgotten. It has to take care of so many people - a file that has been hidden behind thirty-five years... it will take too much time for death itself to discover.

One thing is certain: whether I live or I die, my every gesture, my every word has a single purpose - to help you get rid of knowledge, to help you to become again a small child with eyes of wonder and a heart which cannot believe! - wildflowers, clouds in the sky, the sun rising and all the colors that the rising sun spreads over the horizon! This amazement is the authentic religious element, and if you can keep this amazement fresh without being covered by any experience and dust, you have attained that which was your birthright - what I have called enlightenment.

Solomon Finkelstein at his annual checkup is given a clean bill of health. "It must run in your family,"

comments the doctor. "How old was your dad when he died?"

"What makes you think that he is dead?" asks Sollie. "He is ninety and going strong."

"Aha, and how long did your grandfather, old man Finkelstein, live?"

"What makes you think that he is dead, Doc?" replies Sollie. "He is a hundred and ten years old and getting married to a twenty-two year old next week."

"At his age?" exclaims the doctor. "Why does he want to get married to a twenty-two year old?"

"Doc," says Sollie, "what makes you think he wants to? He has to!"

Grandma Schaeferstein is a feisty old bird. So when she gets admitted to the old people's home, she is constantly in trouble. One morning, just for a laugh, she comes downstairs stark naked and, letting out a wild shriek, runs through the entire length of the dayroom before disappearing into the garden.

Old man Finkelstein and old man Kravitz are watching TV at the time. And Fink turns to Kravitz and says, "Who was that Mendel, making all that noise?"

"I don't know," replies Kravitz, "but whoever it was, her clothes need ironing."

And the last....

One day Herman Horowitz goes into a pet shop and says, "I want a parrot. I don't care what it looks like, as long as it talks."

"Okay, Sir," says the assistant. "I have got just the bird for you. That blue and green one talks very well."

Herman likes it, but the assistant warns him that it does not have any feet. "No feet?" cries Herman.

"Then how does he stay on his perch?"

"Simple," says the man. "You may have noticed, he is a male bird. He just wraps his prick around the perch and stays up that way."

So Herman takes the parrot home and has a very long talk with him. The next evening, when Herman gets home from work, the parrot says, "Thank God you are back, I have got something to tell you."

"What is it?" asks Herman.

"Well," begins the parrot, "when you went to work, a man came to the door and your wife let him in and they sat on the sofa together."

"What happened next?" cries Herman.

"And then he opened her blouse and sucked her tits," says the parrot.

"And then what?" cries Herman.

"I don't know," says the parrot, "I got an erection and fell off my perch."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.