Life has no boundaries

Question 1:

Deva Bhasha, love is never enough. There are mysteries in existence which don't have any limitation. Love is the closest experience to understanding all those mysteries - because as far as the mind is concerned, it imposes limits; it cannot accept anything that is unlimited.

Just think of the whole universe. The mind can conceive of it as very vast, perhaps the boundaries of it are not available to us, but the mind finds it intrinsically impossible to conceive that there may be no boundaries at all, anywhere.

The universe has no boundaries; life has no boundaries.

And love is our closest experience of this unbounded, unlimited pure space, extending and extending and you never come to the point where it is written, "This is the end."

Because of this intrinsic incapacity of the mind, it always inquires, "Is it enough?" It wants it to be enough so that it can create a boundary around it. Anything that can be limited by the mind becomes an object. Love is not an object. You cannot put it on the scientist's table to dissect it, to find out what basic elements it is made of.

Because the scientist cannot make love objective, there are only two possibilities for him. If he is authentic and sincere, he will say, "I do not know love," because his way of knowing is only objective and love cannot be reduced to an object. But if he is not a sincere scientific mind but a fanatic, then rather than accepting his own ignorance he will deny the existence of love itself. He will say it is all imagination, it is all emotion, it is all sentimentality; it is not even worth considering.

There is not even a single treatise on love written by any scientist. But that is his general attitude about love, about life, about consciousness - anything that he cannot hold in his hand, he simply denies its very existence. You cannot ask a scientist, "Does beauty exist? Is there something like blissfulness? Is there a possibility of an inner ecstasy?" His answer is going to be consistently "No."

Basically, he denies the inner world of man.

And the most hilarious part is that scientists fall in love, scientists feel hurt if insulted. If there is nobody inside, what does it matter whether somebody insults you, abuses you? And if love is not existential, then no scientist should dare to fall in love. But the scientist is not just a one-dimensional being; science is not his whole life, and cannot be.

Life contains many dimensions. The most important is the fact, the interiority, of man. And the interiority of man is as infinite as the exterior universe.

Love is part of the interiority of man; it has no limits. But there are misunderstandings which have to be clarified.

Deva Bhasha, your question is, "Can you talk about the art of nourishing oneself with love?" There is no art because there is no need of any effort. Love is the nourishment. But humanity has been so confused by its leaders that one does not know the most inner realms of one's own being. Love is nourishment in itself. The more you love, the more you will find untrodden spaces where love goes on and on spreading around you like an aura.

But that kind of love has not been allowed by any culture. They have forced love into a very small tunnel: you can love your wife, your wife can love you; you can love your children, you can love your parents, you can love your friends. And they have made two things so deeply rooted in every human being. One is that love is something very limited - friends, family, children, husband, wife.

And the second thing they have insisted is that there are many kinds of love. You love in one way when you love your husband or your wife; then you have to bring another kind of love when you love your children, and another kind of love when you love your elders, your family, your teachers, and then another kind of love for your friends.

But the truth is, love cannot be categorized the way it has been categorized throughout the whole history of mankind. There were reasons for them to categorize it but their reasons are ugly and inhuman, because in this categorization they killed love.

Either you can have a loving heart... it has nothing to do with who you are loving; the emphasis of existence is that you are loving. It has not to be directed towards a certain person, because that is accepting that if someone is not part of the direction in which you are forcing your love to move, you become indifferent to them; you become even unloving to them. There are possibilities that you may even become hateful to them.

The reason why all the cultures have insisted on categorization is because they have been very much afraid of love, is because if there is existential love, then it does not know boundaries - then you cannot put Hindus against Mohammedans, then you cannot put Protestants against Catholics.

Then you cannot draw a line saying that you cannot love this person because he is Jewish, Chinese.

The leaders of the world wanted to divide the world, but to divide the world they have to do the basic division which is of love. Love is only for our people.

And it has to be insisted so deeply in your unconscious that in wars, in riots, when you kill other people who don't belong to your clan or to your country or your tribe, you don't feel anything. It is simply the way things are. A German killing an Italian will not think, "I don't have any personal enmity with him, and just as my wife will be waiting for me and my old mother may be praying for me and my children will be hoping that soon I will be back home, the person I am killing is in the same situation. He also has a wife, he also has old parents, he also has children, and they are waiting for him to come back. I don't have any reason to kill him; neither has he any reason to kill me, except that some idiotic politicians are not satisfied with the power they have. They want more power. They want to be world conquerors."

Because of this lust for power, love has been completely destroyed. Both cannot exist together.

I want it to be absolutely clear to you:

Lust for power and the beauty of love cannot exist together.

But religions would like you only to love people of your own religion - others are foreigners. Countries would like you to love only the people who live in that country. And you can see, there are divisions upon divisions.

India became independent in 1947. I was very young, but I had kept my eyes clear and uncontaminated by the older generation. From my very childhood I have insisted on having my own insight, my own intelligence, and I don't want to borrow any knowledge from anybody.

My whole family was involved in the struggle for the freedom of the country. Everybody had been in jail. Although I was never in jail because of the liberation movement, I suffered as much as one can suffer, because all the earning males were forced into jails and the family was left without any source of earning.

I asked my father, "Are you aware that once you are liberated from the British empire... and it is going to happen, because now Britain is burdened. They have exploited the land to the maximum; now the situation has reversed - they have to help the country to survive. It is better for them to escape from here and get rid of a burden which has become absolutely unnecessary." They were not here to serve the people, they were here to exploit. And that's exactly what happened.

The revolution happened in 1942 without any effect. It was quashed completely within nine days, and with those nine days all hope of freedom disappeared. But suddenly, out of the blue, Britain decided in 1947 to make the country free.

I told my father, "Don't think that your freedom movement has succeeded. Between the freedom movement and the actual coming of freedom there is a five-year gap. This is not logical. You are being given freedom because now you have become a burden and a trouble, just your existence."

And I have come to know that researchers, looking into the whole history of the British Parliament and their decisions, found out that the British Prime Minister Attlee sent Mountbatten with the message: "Do it as quickly as possible." He had given him a set time, that, "by 1948 we should get rid of this burden."

Mountbatten proved even more efficient. He managed it one year earlier. But I told my father, "You have been fighting, not knowing that once this country is free it will start having new fights, within itself."

Now Mohammedans have taken Pakistan - it was part and parcel of the freedom, because Mohammedans refused to live with the Hindus. They had lived together for almost fourteen hundred years and there was no problem. In my childhood I have participated in Mohammedan celebrations; Mohammedans were participating in Hindu marriages, Hindu celebrations. There was no question of fight, because everybody was fighting the British empire. Once the British empire was leaving, suddenly the Mohammedans and Hindus became alert - a new division. They declared that they could not live together because their religions are different. Mohammedans became adamant:

"Either the British empire remains... we can risk freedom, but we cannot live with Hindus in an independent country because they are in the majority. They will rule, and Mohammedans don't have any chance of ruling."

The situation became so ugly that there were only two alternatives. Either accept the slavery - which the British empire was not ready to continue - or to accept the division. The division was accepted; the country was divided into two parts. The Mohammedan part became Pakistan. But they were not aware, and neither were Indians aware that the Mohammedans got two parts - one part in the east, Punjab and Sindh, where they were in the majority, and another part far away, thousands of miles away in Bengal. Half of Bengal was Mohammedan.

So Pakistan became a strange country, and immediately... both parts were Mohammedan but Bengalis saw that they were being dominated by the Punjabi Mohammedans. The shift away from the division of religions was immediate; now it became a question of language. Bengali Mohammedans speak Bengali; the Punjabi speaks Punjabi. Now they forgot completely that they were together in the fight to gain Pakistan.

Finally, the Bengalis separated from Pakistan and created a new country, Bangladesh. The distance was so great that it was impossible for Pakistan to keep control over it. But the same situation goes on happening every day.

Forty years ago the constitution decided that Hindi should be the national language. But it has not been implemented because in India there are thirty languages. Taken as a whole the Hindi- speaking people are the majority, but if those twenty-nine languages are against it, then they are in the majority. Each single language is not capable of fighting against Hindi, but those twenty-nine languages together are a tremendous force. Now you cannot believe it - that they are all Hindus, and they have been killing other Hindus because they speak different languages! It is not a question that you can give all these thirty languages the status of a national language. Then suddenly you will find... for example Hindi is spoken in one way in one state, a slightly different way in another state. And there are five states - soon they will be fighting: "Our Hindi is the RIGHT Hindi and the others are only distortions."

Man has been trained to cut humanity into so many pieces on any excuse: religion, country, language, color. But the basic root is in teaching human beings that love is a limited phenomenon, and secondly, that love has varieties.

I am trying to say to you that love has no varieties. It may have different expressions - certainly the love between husband and wife will have a different expression than the love between the couple and their children. It will have a different expression, but the expression does not change the quality.

It is the same love.

And its center is not the other - that's how we have been taught, that the center of love is the other: you love somebody. The emphasis has to be completely changed. It is not a question of loving somebody, it is a question of being a loving human being. Love should not have an address; it should be simply a radiation of your being. Whoever comes in contact with you will find the immensely nourishing energy of love.

You are saying, "I feel so much love for you." I would like you to feel the same love for the whole existence - for the trees and for the birds and for the oceans and for the stars. Your love should not be confined. You can love me as much as you want, but that does not mean that I should become the only object of your love. Then it is not nourishing. On the contrary, it starts becoming a poisoning force.

Love is a nourishing force if it spreads all around just the way the sun rises, and it showers its light, its rays, to all the trees without any discrimination. Not thinking that "this is just a poor marigold, just a little bit less will do. This is a beautiful rose, a little more. This is a lotus, shower as much as you can." No, the sunlight showers over the whole planet without any discrimination.

Your love should become subjective, not objective. It should become a radiation, from the center of your being to all directions. Then it is nourishing and then it has a certain quality which can only be called divine.

Our so-called love only creates jealousy, only creates conflict, only creates two people living in intimate enmity, judging, looking, watching. Just look on the road and you can decide without asking anybody whether the couples who are walking together are husband and wives, or just boyfriends and girlfriends. I have never seen a husband and wife together smiling. What kind of love is this?

Yes, they are both detecting each other.... The husband cannot look around if a beautiful woman passes by. Just looking at that beautiful woman can create so much harassment that it is not worth it.

What kind of society have you created? Is it human? It is absolutely human that if a beautiful woman passes by, the husband should tell his wife, "Look, a beautiful woman!" Beauty should not be made a question of jealousy or comparison. You can say that the roseflower is beautiful and your husband or your wife will not object to it, because you can't have any relationship with it.

Just the other day I was listening to a song of one of the most beautiful singers of India. The meaning of the song is, "I was just passing by here and I thought just to say hello to you, although I know if my wife comes to know about it, this hello is going to be very dangerous. Because her insistence is, 'You should not see anybody else except me. Your whole love is monopolized by me.'" And the singer says - his name is Jagjit Singh - "That is her insistence. But my hobby is that wherever there is beauty, I should at least be respectful to it."

We have created an idea of love as a possession. And all kinds of possessions ultimately turn into poisons. One should live a life non-possessive, available, open, respectful. There is so much beauty around you and so many different ways the beauty is expressing itself; to confine you is to destroy you.

And remember: anyone who confines you, you are not going to be loving to that person. Husbands don't love their wives, wives don't love their husbands. How can a wife love a husband who has confined her infinite capacity of radiating love, who has forced her to accept that he is the only one that all her love should be directed to? This is insulting and this is against nature, against existence.

But religions have been doing everything to destroy the individuality of man. It seems to be that without destroying man, they cannot exist. Either man can exist in his dignity or your so-called churches and popes and priests can exist, with great power.

Just the other day... I could not believe it, but I have to believe because it is a fact. Anando brought me the news that the Catholic church has decided that there will not be any other kind of music in the churches than that which is absolutely devoted to the church. Even in weddings - and it has been going on for centuries; it is not something new. Even the classical music and the geniuses of the past are no longer allowed in the church. In a church wedding the music should be only what is approved by the church, and its function should be religious - no other music.

Why are these people afraid of people becoming light, rejoicing, enjoying? They have a certain investment in your misery. The more miserable you are, the better, because only the miserable people go to the churches. Only the miserable people are in the bondage of the past. Only the miserable people are under the domination of the dead.

A man who is alive can be alive only if he is allowed total expression of his individuality.

Who are these people to decide? On what authority do these people go on deciding things for millions of people? A very strange strategy has been used. First they invented God, then they invented his son Jesus Christ, and now they have imposed themselves as his representatives. Only they have the direct line to God.

A few months ago the Catholic church has prohibited that anybody should confess to God directly.

He has to confess to the priest, everything through the right channel. Then the priest will inform Jesus Christ, then Jesus Christ will persuade God the Father - "Let this poor man be freed from his sin." But directly you cannot confess to God. And not a single Catholic in the whole world revolted against the idea.

At least man should be given the freedom to be in direct relationship with existence.

But the business point is clear: unless you confess to the priest, the priest cannot punish you. And what is the punishment? Five dollars, ten dollars... and I don't understand how these dollars reach to Jesus Christ. And then he gives the bribe to God the Father: "Just forgive this man, he is a good man. Just look, he has sent ten dollars." Those ten dollars disappear in the pocket of the priest.

They have nothing to do with Jesus Christ or with God.

I have heard that one rabbi and one bishop were very friendly. The friendship had arisen because both were golf lovers, and they decided that on the next Sunday they were going to the golf club.

The rabbi waited and waited outside, but it was getting late so he entered the church. The bishop was in the confession booth - it is a small room, partitioned. On one side sits the bishop with a small window; on the other side stands the confessor. The strategy is that the confessor should not be made embarrassed; his face should not be seen, so that he can confess wholeheartedly because unless he confesses wholeheartedly he is not going to be contributing dollars wholeheartedly either.

The rabbi entered the booth and said to the bishop, "We are going to be late."

The bishop said, "I am doing everything as quickly as possible, but there is still a queue."

The rabbi said, "I don't know what this confession is, just let me see what you are doing. And then you can get ready while I function in your place, because nobody can see from the other side."

The bishop said, "It is very simple; you just watch."

One man came and he said, "I have committed a rape."

The bishop said, "Don't be worried. Just contribute ten dollars to the charity box and I will pray for you."

The rabbi said, "It is very simple. Now you go and get ready." He sat in the bishop's chair. Another man came and he said, "I have committed two rapes this week."

The rabbi said, "My son, don't be worried. Thirty dollars."

The man said, "Thirty dollars? Has the rate increased? Just in front of me, for one rape you asked ten dollars."

The rabbi said, "Don't be worried. You just put thirty dollars in the box - ten dollars are in advance."

These are the people who have destroyed everything that is beautiful in man. But they are exploiting and they will cling to their exploitation to the very last. Otherwise, there is no reason for all these organized religions to exist.

Each individual should have a direct contact with the universe, its beauty, its tremendous glory - which creates without any effort a gratitude, a prayer, perhaps a song, a dance. If we can remove all these organized religions from the world, organized nations from the world, and allow each individual his dignity and respect, there will be immense love, immense respect, immense understanding. We can change this ugly world which has been created by the past, into a beautiful garden where everyone can rise to his potential height, can shower his flowers and can release his fragrance.

I stand for the individual.

All organizations have proved criminal. There is no need of any organization either in the name of politics or in the name of religion or in any other name. And the world will be an ocean of love, an ocean of beauty.

But this needs, Deva Bhasha, a tremendous courage to revolt and assert your individuality, whatever the consequences. It is long enough that we have been exploited, sucked, destroyed. And the end result is this miserable world - where once in a while perhaps you can smile, but even that smile does not come from your deepest core; where once in awhile you can love, but even that love is surrounded by all kinds of fears. Nothing in you has been left in freedom. And the people who have done this greatest crime are the people you worship. That makes it more difficult to take humanity out of their clutches.

You have to learn to love yourself first, to respect yourself first. And then certainly it will give you tremendous nourishment and it will start spreading around you.

Question 2:

Anand Anupam, perhaps you are not aware that you are again asking for another structure. I will read your question so that you can become conscious of what you are asking:

"Why does spontaneity create so much fear in me?" It creates fear in everybody, because spontaneity means you are taking the responsibility for your act, whatever it may be. If you rely on the conditionings you have been given by your parents, by your teachers, professors, priests, leaders, and instead of being spontaneous just act out of your past conditioning, there is no fear.

Because you know you are not alone; you know your action is approved.

The fear arises when you find yourself alone and you are doing something which goes against the whole training. You know you are revolting; you are going against your parents, you are going against the whole heritage of humanity. The weight of the past is so big and huge, so Himalayan, and you seem to be such a small individual, afraid of going against it. You may be crushed.

In my childhood I loved having hair as long as possible. My father had a shop and the house together, and I used to move in and out through his shop. He felt very embarrassed because people asked him, "Whose girl is this?" Such long hair in India is allowed only to the girls, and naturally he felt embarrassed and angry that I was creating every day some trouble. Finally he became so angry that he took his scissors, caught hold of me and cut my hair.

I said, "You can cut my hair but remember, I am not going to leave it at that."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "You will see tomorrow."

And I went just on the other side of the road, where all the hair-cutting salons were. I had a friend, an old opium addict. I loved the man, because sometimes he would cut half somebody's mustache and say, "Wait, I have to go somewhere." And he would be gone for hours, and the man would be caught because he could not leave with the half mustache. Sometimes people would ask him for a shave and he would shave their heads. And by the time they became aware, he had already done some work - now there is no point in preventing him. And he was such a nice man; he would say, "There is no need to worry - if you don't like it, don't pay me anything."

I used to sit in his small salon discussing with him, because it was a joy. He used to come up with really original ideas. One day he told me, "If all the opium addicts of India are organized, we can take over the whole country."

I said, "The idea is very good."

He said, "But you will have to help, because these opium addicts don't listen to anybody."

I said, "I will try to contact first all the opium addicts in this town. Let us create one small organization here. If it succeeds in taking over the municipal corporation..."

So I went to him, because he was the only man who could have done this. In India a child's head is completely shaved only if his father dies. So I told him, "I am tired of this long hair. You simply shave my head completely clean."

For a moment he hesitated. He said, "Your father will be very angry, I am telling you!"

I said, "You don't be worried. It is my responsibility. And you are the only man of guts; no other barber is going to cut my hair."

So he said okay. He finished all my hair and I entered my father's shop. Looking at me, immediately his customers asked, "What happened to this poor boy? His father has died?"

Now it was even more embarrassing for him to admit, "I am the father."

He came to me inside the house and he said, "This is too much."

I said, "I have warned you. Whenever I do anything I do it totally. From now onwards if you interfere with me, remember, I can move to the other extreme."

People from the neighborhood started coming to inquire... and when they saw my father they said, "What is the matter? You are alive? And I have seen with my own eyes that your son is completely shaved."

From my school, my teachers, my headmaster, seeing that my father must have died were very sorry. They told me, "We are going to your house to express our sadness and our mourning. Your father was a good man." I allowed them to go, and when they would see my father sitting there they were in such a strange situation - what to do? because it had never happened.

And my father would ask, "Why have you come? There must be some reason."

They said, "There was... but your son is so strange that we were telling him, 'He was a good man' and he did not even tell us that you were still alive." That was the last time he interfered with me. He knew perfectly well that it was going to be dangerous.

Spontaneity means you are acting in the moment - not reacting, but acting. That is the difference between those two words. When you react it comes from your past accumulation of knowledge, experience. But when you respond, it is a pure act out of your present consciousness - not from memory. These are two different sources within you. Memory is comfortable, because everybody will appreciate that you are doing the right thing because they also have the same memory. But if you act on your own, then you are taking a risk. It may not fit. Most probably it is not going to fit with the structure which has been created around you. Hence, fear arises.

But I would say to you, it is better to suffer fear rather than remain a slave of those who had no idea in what situations you are going to be. They have given you fixed ideas, answers to questions and they don't know in what form the question is going to arise in your life.

Five thousand years ago, they wrote RIG VEDA, and Hindus are still following the structure. It is no longer relevant. But the same is the situation everywhere. Mohammed allowed Mohammedans to have four wives. It was perfectly right at that moment because in Arabia the proportion was exactly one man and four wives, because men were continuously being killed. They were continuously fighting; war was their life. They would rape the woman, but they would not kill her. That was not according to their culture, to kill a woman. So there were four times more women than men and naturally it was creating a very difficult situation. If three women remained unmarried, there was going to be great prostitution, corruption of all kinds. To avoid the situation, Mohammed suggested that every man marries four women. It was perfectly right in Saudi Arabia fourteen hundred years ago, but they are doing the same in India even today.

Now India wants fewer people. It is already past the limit; it has never been so crowded in the whole of history. In 1947, when India became independent, the population was four hundred million, and just in forty years the population has gone to nine hundred million. By the end of this century it is going beyond one billion. For the first time India will have a greater population than China. But Mohammedans insist that it is their religion and the government cannot interfere with their religion.

It is difficult, because in India the proportion of men and women is almost equal. They go on raping women who are not Mohammedans; and once a woman, whether raped or not, has been kept in a Mohammedan house - Hindus are following another tradition five thousand years old - she has fallen, she is no longer acceptable. Neither her parents will allow her into the house nor her own husband. She has to become a Mohammedan or commit suicide.

And when Mohammedans go on marrying four women, naturally they produce four times more people than Hindus. Soon this country will have more Mohammedans than Hindus. Already, you will be surprised to know, India has the largest Mohammedan population in the whole world. There are Mohammedan countries - Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan - but no country has a greater Mohammedan population than India. And the reason is simple, because in those countries there are only Mohammedans and the proportion between men and women is equal. It is very difficult in a Mohammedan country to find four women. What will happen to the three other men whose wives you have taken? So it is only in India where they have a good pasture around to get more and more women and more and more children.

To respond to the situation that is facing you needs intelligence, not memory; needs awareness, not your past heritage. So even though it creates fear, which is natural, decide to be spontaneous in spite of all the fears. Soon those fears will disappear.

It is only a question of acting out of spontaneity more and more, and then you will see your individuality becoming more integrated, more solid, freer from all the chains that the past has put around you. The fear will disappear, but it will take a little time. If you listen to the fear you will never be able to gain your dignity as an individual.

Even trees have their individuality. Every animal has his own individuality. It is simply shameful that man has lost his individuality. So in spite of all your fears, take the risk. Be courageous and act according to your own consciousness. And soon you will see that whenever you act spontaneously you are right, because you are answering the situation directly.

But you are asking, "Having no structure feels like a death." There is no harm. Die! Your life is not much more valuable. Rather than be a prisoner of all the dead, it is better to die spontaneously. At least you will have the dignity to say, "At one point I am at least free from the whole past and all the prisons of religion, nation, race, color."

Then you are asking, "How can I turn this fear into a let-go?" Do you understand? "How" means again filling your memory with a new structure. But no structure can be spontaneous. You cannot know what is going to happen the next moment. You cannot conceive of what tomorrow is going to bring to you. So whatever structure you make, whatever homework you do, is going to be irrelevant to the situation.

I have never done any homework. In my schools, colleges, universities, I made it absolutely clear to all my teachers and professors, "Never ask for any homework from me."

And they said, "But this is so strange, nobody has ever said such a thing."

I said, "I don't care whether anybody has said such a thing or not. One thing is certain: you can answer me, you can question me, you can do anything you want - I will be spontaneous, I will not be prepared."

Homework is preparation; you have already prepared everything. In my final examinations of post- graduation, the professors who loved me very much were so afraid, because I was not preparing anything for the examination. I was still reading whatever I wanted to read in the library. It had no concern with the examination. I was asking questions in the classes and one professor had to say to me, "Now only one month is left, and you should not bring such questions which have no relevance to your examination."

I said, "I am not here to be worried about an examination which is going to happen one month later.

My concern is this moment, and this is my question."

One of my professors was so concerned that he gave me one of the questionnaires, telling me, "I have made this so that you can at least be ready for these five questions. They are going to be asked because I am the composer of the paper."

Without reading it, I threw it away and I said, "You should not insult me in this way. I want to live life unprepared. Whether I fail or succeed, it doesn't matter."

He used to come to my hostel room just fifteen minutes before the examination was going to commence. Everybody had gone into the examination hall. He would pick me in his car and tell me, "Unless you enter the examination hall, I cannot feel at ease. I am always afraid you may be sleeping, you may be discussing things which have nothing to do with the examination, you may be reading things." And he used to say to the superintendent of the examination, "Don't let him out before three hours."

I used to answer those questions in one hour or one and a half hours. The superintendent would say, "I am sorry but I have promised your professor that I will not allow you to leave."

I said, "It is up to you. If you don't allow me to go out... has he told you that I cannot even sleep here?"

He said, "He has not said anything about sleep."

I said, "That's okay. You take this paper; I am finished with it. And for one and a half hours let me rest."

When my professor came to know, he said, "It is very impossible to deal with you. I prevented you from going out but you managed to go out! And how can you answer those five questions in three hours? Others find that they have answered only four; somebody has answered only three."

I said, "They are prepared people. They have done so much preparation that they want to impress the examiner with how much they are informed. I am absolutely uninformed. Sometimes I simply write one sentence as an answer and sometimes I ask another question because I cannot agree that the question is right. But I am absolutely free. I have no preparation."

One professor had asked the question, "Can you define Indian philosophy?" And I simply answered him that "There is no such thing as Indian philosophy so the question of defining it does not arise.

There is Western philosophy because the very word philosophy means a search for knowledge, a search for wisdom, a love for wisdom." In India we don't have any word which can be translated as philosophy....

The Indian word is darshan and its approach is totally different. It means an inquiry to see the truth.

Darshan means seeing. It is not a question of thinking. A blind man can think about the light and can be a great philosopher, can propose hypotheses about light. In India there has never existed anything like philosophy. What has existed is seeing. We want to see the light, we don't want to philosophize about it.

Just by coincidence that paper was sent to one very eccentric retired professor, Dr. Ranade of Allahabad. Basically he belonged to Poona. And he gave me ninety-nine percent out of one hundred, with a note to the vice-chancellor saying that "I always wanted somebody to answer spontaneously, and I always wanted somebody to answer as sharply as possible." He had never given a first class to anybody else in his whole life. With him, even to pass was a difficult job. But he wrote the note and he also wrote, "What I am writing you should show to the student. I loved his answers and I loved the way he made me aware that Western philosophy is one thing and there is no equivalent in India for it."

He has written books on Indian philosophy and he said in his note, "I am too old now to change it, but your point is absolutely right. We don't have anything similar to what has happened in the West."

It is because of this difference that Western philosophy has never come to meditation. It was always contemplation. And the Indian counterpart has never bothered about thinking, contemplation, concentration; its whole concern is meditation. In fact they are two such different directions that a single word cannot describe both.

My professor was amazed. He said, "I was thinking you were going to fail, you were so unprepared."

I said, "Your whole idea is preparation and my whole idea is to be simply spontaneous." I got the gold medal, topped the whole university, shocking everybody. And as I came out of the auditorium I threw that gold medal into the well. A professor was standing by my side. He said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "I have nothing to do with gold, and I don't want to be appreciated as topping the whole university. I would love it if somebody appreciated that spontaneity has its own beauty, freshness.

Whether it fails or succeeds is irrelevant."

You should not ask, "How can I turn this fear into a let-go?" Because whatever I say to you will be your structure again.

Just be simple.

Whenever you find a situation, act!

Put the fear aside and rejoice in the spontaneous response. It is only a question of a few times and you will find the fear has disappeared. Because the spontaneous response gives you such a joy, such an opening of the heart, such freshness... as if you have just taken a shower. But don't ask for any strategy - "How to be spontaneous" - because how simply means a structure.

Just be spontaneous. Don't ask how.

Try it. Without knowing, innocently, respond to a situation and you will learn out of it the great experience of let-go. And you will rejoice because you have attained your freedom from all kinds of fears.

In my childhood I had a friend whose father was a magician. They had a very good business - the business was that they had a few snakes. Being continually in their house, slowly I learned that ninety-seven percent of snakes don't have any poison. Only three percent of snakes have poison, and only one percent, the cobra, is very dangerous. Once the cobra bites you it is very difficult to save you. Death is almost certain. But the snakes all look alike.

The father used to have non-poisonous snakes, and he would send his son - who was my friend, and I accompanied him many times - to somebody's house. There we would leave two or three snakes around, and then the father would come with his special musical instrument that was used for snakes. He would announce, "If anybody has snakes in his house, I can catch them." As he started playing on his instrument, the snakes that we had left around the house would start coming, and for that service the housekeeper had to pay. He would say, "It is very good of you - once in a while you should come back, because we were not aware that there were snakes in our garden."

Knowing that there are snakes which don't have any poison, I would enter into my class with a snake in my pocket. I would just leave it on the table of the teacher, and he would stand on his chair and shout, "Save me!" The other students are running out... who is going to save him except me? And I would tell him, "I will save you, but remember that I have saved your life. You should not be nasty with me. Promise?" And with that snake sitting on his table, you could have taken any kind of promise.

Finally it was reported to the principal that a strange thing was going on. But a principal is just the same as anybody else. When he called me, I went there with two snakes. And I left them on his table, and he stood on his chair, and everybody in the whole school was looking through the windows - what is happening? I said, "Now, do you have something to say to me?"

He said, "No. Just don't bring these things in my office!"

I said, "I have not come on my own, you have called me. Now I cannot go without your promising me that you will not be nasty to me."

He said, "This is strange... but I promise, I will not be nasty to you."

I said, "That's okay; then I can persuade the snakes."

People have lived with such fear. Fear always seems to be around them - anything can create fear.

And if the man had been a little spontaneous, he could have seen that if I can manage those snakes, certainly there must be some trick and there is no need to be afraid. But the very word snake is enough to trigger all the fears, of centuries of humanity, that you are carrying within you.

To my father it was reported, "Now your son is becoming more and more dangerous." My father said, "I have promised him, just as you have promised, not to interfere. Otherwise he will start bringing those snakes in the house!"

What are your fears? What can you lose? The only thing that you can lose is your life. And that does not belong to you, that belongs to the universe. One day you are going to lose it, so what does it matter? In a week there are only seven days. Either you will lose your life on Monday or on Tuesday... so it is only a question of seven days. But I have never thought for a single moment that I have anything to lose.

I don't have anything to lose.

That has given me a tremendous freedom to act spontaneously, to act without any fear, to say whatever I want to say - to be against all the governments of the world, to be against all the religions of the world. And I don't think that even a shadow of fear arises in my heart.

On the contrary, the more I hit these idiots the more I rejoice, because according to me they are criminals. According to me they are the greatest calamities that have happened to humanity. There is nothing to fear from these people. There is nothing to be afraid of in the ghosts who are lying in their graves. But everybody is injected with fear from the very beginning, so that his whole blood becomes full of fear. This fearfulness helps all these criminals to dominate you, to destroy you, not to let you live your life of love and blissfulness.

As far as my sannyasins are concerned, fear should not be at all a part of their being. The fear exists in the darker corners of your being - bring more light. Bring more consciousness, bring more awareness, and the fear will disappear.

A lady health inspector, after checking the sanitary conditions in Boccala's Bakery, summons the proprietor.

"Listen," she complains. "One of the bakers back there is throwing the dough against his bare chest to flatten it out for pizzas!"

"That's-a not-a so bad-a," says Boccala. "You should-a be here yesterday when he make-a the doughnuts!"

The newlywed Greek couple is in a deep embrace. While kissing and caressing her, he whispers, "My love, now I will put it where nobody else ever has!"

In a frightened voice she cries, "No, no! In my ears? Never!"

What is there to fear? There is everything to laugh and there is nothing to fear. Laughter has to be our sword to cut all these heads who have been torturing humanity for centuries.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.