The twain are already meeting

Question 1:

Sat Vijaya, your question can be answered only if you can understand the phenomenon of energy fields. Every place in the world has its own energy field, created by thousands of people who have lived there. The way they have lived, the way they have loved - they are gone, but they have left behind them a throbbing energy that continues to exist for centuries.

And if it has been a continuous reinforcement of the energy, as it has been in the East... The whole genius of the East has been devoted to a single purpose: for thousands of years they have been trying to look inwards - not one or two people, but millions and millions, generation after generation.

It has created a certain vibe which is missing in the West.

Here in the East, meditation is something that you can float in. The whole energy around you is just like a river; it is already going towards the ocean. You don't have to swim, you have just to float. In the West you have to fight against the current, because for centuries the extrovert mind has created a totally different kind of energy, not just different but absolutely contrary to the East - the outgoing, the extrovert.

If you are working as a scientist in the West you will find an invisible support from the whole atmosphere. In the East this happens only to those who are going on an inward journey; then the skies and the air and the trees, everything starts helping you. Not that they have any intention, but simply that for centuries this is how they have been pulled again and again - towards the inward center.

There are beautiful stories, which may not be factual but I insist on saying that they are true. I want to make a clear-cut distinction between the fact and the truth: something may be factual and still may not be true. Your dreams are factual - when you kill somebody in a dream you really kill them - but they are not true. When you wake up you suddenly find it was just a dream. Just as something can be factual yet not true, the opposite has also to be understood: something may be true, absolutely true, but may not manifest as a fact. The fact is a lower phenomenon. I can explain it only in a way....

On a full-moon night, sitting by the side of a silent lake, you can see the full moon in the lake. It is factual, but not true. And you might not look at the real moon which is far away in the sky; it might not become part of your factual knowledge, but its truth is indubitable.

The beautiful stories that have surrounded people of inner growth create a problem for the historian, but not for the meditator, because the historian is concerned only with the factual. The mystic's concern is far deeper, far higher. He is not interested in the factual, he is devoted absolutely to the truth.

I would like to give you a few examples.

It is said that whenever Gautam Buddha moved - and he was continuously moving, for eight months of the year except the four months of the rains. He might come to rest under a tree whose leaves had fallen, whose branches were standing naked against the sky - it would be the time of fall. But it is related that, seeing Buddha resting under the tree, it would seem very shameful to the tree that there is no foliage, no shade, no flowers rejoicing and welcoming a man who has reached to the ultimate peaks of consciousness. And in the morning when Gautam Buddha would wake up, all his disciples would see a miracle: the tree which had been absolutely without leaves, without flowers, has suddenly become so green, such beautiful foliage around it and hundreds of flowers. And just the evening before, they had seen it - the miracle has happened in the silences of the night, and the flowers are showering on Gautam Buddha.

This incident is repeated so many times, in so many different sources, that it cannot be simply denied as symbolic, as poetic. As far as I am concerned I take it for granted to be a true and existential experience.

Whenever I have read such things - and there are so many instances - I have always remembered the incident in Jesus Christ's life, for which Christians cannot give any explanation. They try to hide it. But before you can understand the incident in Jesus' life I have to give you some relevant information.

Jesus came to India when he was fourteen, and he lived in India for almost fourteen years. Gautam Buddha was still in the air, he had lived just five hundred years before, and he left behind him hundreds of enlightened people. The air was so full of his fragrance that young Jesus must have been tremendously influenced by it. And the route Jesus followed for his traveling proves it: he went to Ladakh, which is where one of the oldest Buddhist monasteries is still functioning, and then to Tibet, which had become more in tune with Gautam Buddha than India itself.

This attraction was pulling him into the very unknown and dangerous spaces of Ladakh, Tibet. The reason was that he wanted to know as much as possible about this strange man, Gautam Buddha, who had transformed the whole atmosphere in the East.

He must have come across these stories that when Buddha passed by, trees blossomed even though it was not the season for them to blossom.

Just one hundred and twenty years ago, one Russian traveler remained in Ladakh for six months, studying the old records. He has reported that those old records remember Jesus as a young man but of immense silence, beauty, and a great search, who had come to the monastery and lived there for three months. They described Jesus exactly: that he was coming from Judea, a faraway country; that it was very difficult for him to understand because of the language barrier, but he tried hard and accumulated as much honey as he could from every possible source which was still available. After Gautam Buddha, although five hundred years had passed, the air was still full of remembrance.

The mountains had not forgotten. And there were hundreds of people who could have been called contemporaries of Gautam Buddha as far as their consciousness was concerned.

I am telling you these facts because now Christian missionaries have removed all those records from Ladakh. There were records in Tibet which were destroyed by Christians in the time of the British empire. They tried to remove any possible evidence that Jesus had been in the East learning the art of inward-going. But in spite of all their efforts, there are intrinsic proofs. And now I come to the story in Jesus' life:

For three days he and his disciples had gone hungry, because the towns they were passing through were very fanatically Jewish and they would not give them shelter. On the contrary, they stoned them and threw them out of their towns. And Jesus came to a fig tree and he was very angry with the tree. He was not a man of anger, certainly. He was a man of immense love and peace. But this incident stands, on its own, without any explanation.

In the first place it is absurd to be angry with a fig tree because they are hungry and the tree is not welcoming them with figs - and it is not the season for figs! It looks simply absurd and insane: Jesus cursed the tree. Now for Christians it is very difficult to explain what happened. A man like Jesus cursing a tree without any reason or rhyme, because it was not even the season. And even if it were the season, the tree has no obligation to anybody. You cannot expect that the tree should welcome you.

From where did he get the idea? because in the whole Jewish tradition there is not a single instance from where he could have got the idea. The only explanation is that he got the idea from the Buddhist stories in which trees are welcoming Gautam Buddha with flowers, with fruits. Even whole forests forget about the season, the climate; they become green, they rejoice in the enlightenment of Gautam Buddha. They rejoice in the company of Gautam Buddha and they show in their own language their joy, their appreciation, their blissfulness - because if even a single man recognizes his enlightenment a part of the universe becomes enlightened. Just because of a single man, the whole level of consciousness in the universe rises.

This has been a recognized truth in the East. Without being in the East, Jesus could not have dared to expect the fig tree... But he forgot completely that the fig tree also needs a certain climate, a certain vibration and a certain tradition. Unless the fig tree knows that for thousands of years its ancestors have always welcomed the buddhas; that this vibration is enough for the tree: a provocation to dance and to express itself in all its beauty....

Neither was the fig tree aware nor was Jesus an enlightened man. He had heard about enlightenment, he may have sat at the feet of enlightened people in the East, he may have created a desire in himself to become enlightened, but enlightenment and its language was foreign to his own people in Judea. They had never heard the word, they had never heard that anybody becomes self-realized. They had lived a totally different kind of religious tradition - of prophets, saviors, messengers, claimers that they are coming from God and if you believe in them you will be saved.

The whole Judeo-Christian tradition takes away the responsibility from every individual of becoming enlightened. And people unconsciously think that it is far easier to believe in someone and to be delivered from misery, from this dark night of the soul, rather than to take the responsibility in their own hands. But they are not aware: the moment you give the responsibility to somebody else, without your knowing you have also given your freedom. Responsibility and freedom are two aspects of the same coin. You cannot give one and save another.

You cannot say, "The responsibility to save me is that of some prophet, and I am still free to be myself." The moment you become a believer and you give your responsibility to Jesus Christ or Moses or Ezekiel you have already given your freedom too. Now it is no longer an urgency for you to realize your being, or even to bother about who you are. It all depends now on the prophet you believe in, it is his responsibility. You think that you have become free from responsibility but you have forgotten that you have also denied your freedom. With your responsibility gone you have reduced yourself to a slave.

Jesus could not speak the language of the East. He had to speak the language of his own people.

But here and there the influence of the East is clear. For example, the Jewish God in the Old Testament says: "I am not a nice fellow. I am a very jealous God, I am very violent, and whoever is going to disobey me is going to suffer indefinitely. Remember," finally he says, "I am not your uncle."

When for the first time I came to the part where he says, "I'm not your uncle..." He is reminding you:

"I am your father! And obedience is the only religion."

That's the whole story of creation in Christianity and Judaism: man was thrown out of the Garden of Eden - not for committing any sin, not for murdering anybody, not for raping; he was thrown out of the garden of God because he disobeyed. That makes the thing absolutely clear: that the Judeo- Christian tradition believes basically that obedience is religion and disobedience is the greatest sin, the original sin.

And it is strange to know what things Adam and Eve disobeyed. If you are impartial, not prejudiced, you can see a very strange scene: God says to Adam and Eve, "In this vast garden you can eat the fruits from any tree; just two trees are prohibited."

It is a parable, but immensely significant. It may not be factual but is certainly true. One is the tree of wisdom, which God is denying you. You can translate it: one is the tree of enlightenment that God is denying you, because enlightenment is nothing but wisdom. And the second tree is of eternal life.

He is forbiding man to eat the fruits from these two trees.

He has taken away everything that can make life an ecstasy. He has taken away your enlightenment and he has taken away your experience of the eternal. What else is left? He has taken your very dignity. He has destroyed your freedom. He has taken away even the urge to go inwards, because those two trees grow inside you. The tree of wisdom and the tree of eternal life are not really two trees. It is one experience with two fragrances.

Unfortunately, Jesus became acquainted with words which don't fit the tradition from where he was coming. He went back when he was nearabout twenty-eight; it took two years for him to travel back to Judea. It is natural that he would have to speak the language that could be understood.

For example, if he talked about nirvana, enlightenment, inner ecstasy, he would not have been understood. He had to translate it into a language that might have some meaning to the people he was talking to. He talked about the "Kingdom of God" and he tried his best to manage somehow to bring in the flavor that he had learned in the East.

That's why he is the first man in the West to say that "The kingdom of God is within you." It is not in the Old Testament. Nobody had ever heard that the kingdom of God is within you. This was simply a very clever translation to say that you are the god. "The kingdom of God is within you" is a way of saying that looking outside is not the way of the seeker; you have to go inwards.

This created the whole trouble. The Jews could see that he was using words from their tradition but he was giving them some strange meanings. It was absolutely clear: the Jewish God says, "I am a jealous god, very angry god, I will not forgive you if you commit any sin." And it is proved by the expulsion of Eve and Adam because they committed the sin of eating the fruit from the tree of wisdom.

They were not quick enough to eat from the other tree too. They were caught red-handed on the first tree. That is the only sad part in it.

And sometimes, if you are unprejudiced, you can see things which prejudiced minds are absolutely incapable to see. Eve is persuaded by the Devil to eat from the tree of wisdom. Eve is naturally afraid - God has prohibited it - but the reasoning that convinces Eve is very significant. The Devil said, "You don't understand why. He has prohibited you from the two most significant experiences.

He has prohibited you from wisdom, he has prohibited you from immortality, because he is very jealous. If you are also enlightened, and you are also immortal, you will become a god in your own right. And that is his jealousy. He wants to remain as the only god and does not want anybody else to attain to that position."

I am surprised that nobody has appreciated the Devil, because what he is saying is more significant - in comparison to God's orders, which are fascist. God looks like any Adolf Hitler.

I should remind you that the word 'devil' and the word 'divine' both come from the same Sanskrit root. Both mean the same. Perhaps the Devil is the first great revolutionary. His own crime was that he had revolted against God; otherwise he himself used to be an angel, but because he had the mind of a revolutionary he was thrown out of the company of God, condemned as evil. But the way he persuaded Eve makes me deeply respectful to the man. He is teaching exactly what all the enlightened people of the world have been teaching, that you can become a god. You are essentially a god, it is just that you have forgotten it. Perhaps you are asleep and you don't know who you are; all that you need is an awakening.

Jesus tried, and that very effort became the cause for his crucifixion. He was not yet enlightened - that can be said without any difficulty, because he was still believing that he was superior, the only begotten son of God, and every other human creature is inferior, needs support. No one can become part of the kingdom of God without believing in him. Now this is not the way of an enlightened man.

The moment Gautam Buddha became enlightened the first thing that he suddenly became aware of was that the whole existence is enlightened... just unawareness, people are just fast asleep.

Perhaps trees are more deeply asleep; perhaps mountains are in a coma, but the essential core of every being - asleep or awake - is the same. There is no qualitative difference.

Jesus could not be enlightened, because he still believes in phony ideas of virtue. What is virtue? - obedience, slavery. And what is sin? - disobedience, revolt. And he was teaching the same things, but he got mixed up. Being in the East he could not say that God is jealous. That was impossible.

He had seen in the East a totally different atmosphere: he had seen godly people and he had seen millions of people who did not have any idea of a ruling god.

Existence has been accepted in the East as autonomous; it is not a creation. Long before Charles Darwin, very long, thousands of years before, the East had come to understand that existence is an evolution with no beginning and no end. And you will not believe that Ronald Reagan is trying to prohibit in America - he has already prohibited - Charles Darwin. Books on evolution have been burned, universities have been forced to teach the idea of creation, not evolution. Charles Darwin's name is no longer mentioned in American universities, in American colleges. Strange! And the whole world is simply silent; nobody says anything.

We have become accustomed to think that we are already civilized and cultured. Now, what Ronald Reagan is doing is so uncivilized and so uncultured that even a primitive society will be ashamed of it. We have heard stories that in the Middle Ages, Mohammedans burned libraries, the great library of Alexandria. That library was so big that it took six months for the fire to settle down. It contained all the ancient scriptures from Atlantis, the continent that had drowned. And we have thought that this was absolutely primitive behavior, but it is being done in the most pretentious country of the world - which thinks it is democratic, which thinks it allows freedom of speech, but there is no freedom for Charles Darwin. Books have been burned this very year! And whole educational systems have been completely cleaned of the idea of evolution: creation should be taught. Why? - because creation is the Christian idea.

There is no scientific evidence for creation. There is every evidence for evolution. The Christian idea of creation is so foolish that one feels not angry but hilarious: God created the world four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ was born. That means the world has existed only six thousand years. It is such utter stupidity.

Because of this idea they have not much space, so they have to fix everything within six thousand years. They cannot accept the Hindu idea, which has absolutely scientific grounds, that RIG VEDA was written ninety thousand years ago. How can it be arranged in the Christian compass?

Everything has to happen within these six thousand years. At the most, Christian scholars have agreed, RIG VEDA can be five thousand years old.

But they are not aware that RIG VEDA contains intrinsic proof that it is ninety thousand years old. It describes a certain constellation of stars which happened ninety thousand years ago. Astronomers of all the world are absolutely agreed that that kind of constellation has not happened since. And if it is described in RIG VEDA, that means the people must have seen it, there is no other way. The description is in such detail that there is no need for any other proof. The book must have been written when the constellation happened.

There have been found fifty-thousand-year-old skeletons of human beings in China. Christian theologians have been in such a great difficulty - how to manage? But there are always great idiots.... One great theologian has proposed a theory that God created the world exactly as it is described in the Bible four thousand and four years before Jesus was born, but he also made things look like fifty-thousand-year-old skeletons simply to test your faith. Now, these are the great idiots of the world.

And Ronald Reagan is forcing on America the idea of God creating the world - against the constitution of America, because the constitution wants the state and the religion to be kept absolutely separate. But he is being cunning. He is saying, "This is not a religious idea, it is a scientific idea."

The idea of evolution means existence is eternal. It has never been created. It has always been here and it goes on evolving to new peaks of consciousness.

Now it was very difficult for Jesus to say such things, but a few things he managed. He said that God is love. Now that is absolutely against the Jewish tradition: God is not even your uncle and you are saying God is love!

Of course for Gautam Buddha the ultimate consciousness is nothing but pure love. Jesus has taken those ideas and tried to give them a Jewish flavor, but he could not deceive the Jews. They immediately suspected he was bringing foreign and strange ideas which would corrupt their tradition, their religion - particularly their younger generation. Jesus was crucified because he was the first man, according to me, who was trying to introduce a few Eastern experiences into the West. The climate was not ready.

The climate is not ready even today.

I have been to the West and I have seen the difference of the climate. I have seen a different vibe, in which meditation becomes fighting against the current. It is not a let-go; it is not easy simply to flow in. All the forces around you are pulling you out.

This idea is a little difficult to comprehend, that we are surrounded by different kinds of waves. The people who are outgoing will find meditation to be the most difficult thing. The people who easily relax inwards will find scientific projects, experiments with objects, very difficult and against their innermost desire to relax. They will become tense and will feel a certain anguish. It is unfortunate that this is so, and it has to be changed.

Man is both, in and out, and humanity should have both kinds of small pools of energy. For example there can be universities absolutely devoted to outer exploration, and there should be universities absolutely dedicated to the inner exploration. Then those universities will slowly become more and more different from each other and finally completely separate from each other.

In India there have been universities - long before Oxford or Cambridge existed, there was one university, Nalanda. Every professor in Nalanda - and Nalanda had almost one thousand professors - had to be a meditator. Unless a person had meditated for years there was no possibility for him even to become a student in Nalanda. Nalanda had four gates... and it is beautiful to remember that at these gates, the gatekeepers were no ordinary people. Unless a person was able to answer their questions, unless they were satisfied that he had a possibility to become a meditator, the person was refused from the very gate. There was no question of entering and having an interview with the professors. The gatekeepers were as much meditators as the professors.

And once you were accepted by the gatekeepers into Nalanda it was more than you could have ever expected: a great opportunity opening before you. The whole university was concerned with only one thing, that everybody has to be reminded of enlightenment. All scriptures indicated towards it, every sermon, every act, every exercise, was meant purposefully to take you inwards. There were a few other universities... Takshila... but they were all concerned with the interiority of man.

We can create a world where each university can have two different areas. There is no need for any conflict; both the areas can become complimentary. But something has to be done urgently to destroy this difference between the East and the West.

One of the great English poets was Rudyard Kipling, who was named by the British empire as the royal poet, the poet laureate. He lived mostly in India, and his experience of India and England is condensed in his two lines: "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." I can see that he had a certain insight, and what he was saying was factual. But if what he is saying becomes the prophecy of the future, if it is forever going to be a fact, then there is no hope for humanity to survive. Then humanity is going to remain schizophrenic.

I would like to say that at least in this temple West is not West, East is not East, and the twain are already meeting. I don't see that there is any existential reason for their not meeting. We have lived wrongly in the whole past and this is the ultimate consequence of it. Our whole reasoning about man has to be completely transformed.

If man has an inside - and certainly he has an outside - then any worldview, any lifestyle must be inclusive of both; nothing should be excluded. In this possibility of a whole man, of man as an organic unity of the inner and the outer, of the mundane and the sacred, is the whole hope of allowing this beautiful planet to survive. Otherwise we are already on the brink of committing a global suicide.

Sat Vijaya, you are right that you find it difficult in the West to go inwards and here it happens easily.

There is certainly this alchemy: the East is vibrating with so many enlightened people that when you meditate here, everything around you invisibly helps you.

We are aware now of radio waves; radio waves are always passing all over you, although you cannot hear them. Just a mechanism, a receptive mechanism is needed, a radio, and immediately you can catch almost all the broadcasting stations in the world. Do you think when the radio is tuned to a certain station, then the waves start coming here? The waves are already passing by; it is just that there is no receptive center for them, so you remain unaware of it.

It happened in the last world war... A man was very badly damaged, and as he regained consciousness he felt a strange thing: he felt as if he were listening to some broadcast from a radio station. He could not believe it. He looked all around... there was no radio. He finally told the doctor. The doctor laughed and said, "You must have imagined it."

He said, "It is not imagination. The exact time is announced; the broadcasts, the news..."

At first nobody believed him, because how can it be?

But finally they had to try in some way to figure out what was happening. They put a radio in another room and told the man, "Whatever you hear, go on writing down." The man wrote down exactly everything that was being broadcast!

But it was a very difficult situation. It opened a new door; it made it clear that our ears are capable to receive radio waves. Perhaps one day we may have some mechanism, just a small mechanism attached to the ear. But that man was going mad, because he could not sleep - and as he became more and more clear, it was not only one station that he was hearing; he was receiving many stations simultaneously. He was going mad. He told his doctor, "Stop your experiments and your findings; otherwise I am going to commit suicide! You fix my ear back as it used to be, normal." An operation had to be done.

But an accident suddenly made it clear that we are capable; all that we need is a switch to turn the radio on or off. Or just a small mechanism so that we can fix which station we want to listen to. One day it can be - it has to be. It has been delayed because radio has almost become out of fashion.

The television has taken its place.

But what has happened with radio waves could also happen with your eyes. We may have to wait for some accident, but the possibility is there, because those are also certain kinds of waves that are bringing pictures to your television screen. Why couldn't they bring them directly to your eyes?

Scientists say that our capacity to see is very limited. We can hear only certain wavelengths, we can see only certain areas. For example the owl can see more than we can see; its capacity of seeing is far bigger, far stronger. That's why it can see in the night when we can see only darkness. But because of this, his eyes have become so delicate that he cannot open them when the sun is there.

He can catch only very delicate rays; the sun is too much, too harsh. And we are perfectly aware that when we think it is day, for the owl it is night. The owls have lived for millions of years, perfectly capable of seeing in the darkest night. The darker the night the more receptive the owl becomes, because his eyes are so delicate.

There are other waves of which a few people become aware, and they are thought to be a little crazy, nuts. But they are not nuts. They may not be normal....

For example in India, medical science developed in a totally different way - ayurveda, the Indian medical science. Even its name is indicative of its difference. "Medicine" simply means that you have accepted the disease and you are trying to cure it. Medicine is curative. "Ayurveda" means the science, or more accurately, the "wisdom of life." It has nothing to do with disease. Its emphasis is that life should be made stronger so that disease cannot happen. It is not curative, it is preventive.

Just a few days ago, one Japanese sannyasin, Masashi Murakoshi, was here. He is a great scientist, particularly about atomic radiation. He has been working for twenty years in Hiroshima, and he has discovered... He has brought a few things and he is going to bring more. He discovered these things by chance, because for twenty years he has been working in Hiroshima, where the radiation is becoming less and less.

The bomb was thrown on Hiroshima forty years ago. In forty years' time, the intensity of radiation has become very much lower. And he was surprised: when he came back from Hiroshima after twenty years, his colleagues in the university could not believe it. He had gone there when he was forty-five and when he came back again he was still forty-five! His colleagues were already retired.

That made him aware that a small amount of radioactivity, atomic radiation, can be not destructive to life, but on the contrary can be immensely protective to life. So he has created a few things. He has created belts - you can wear the belt twenty-four hours a day. The belt is filled with radioactive material, and it goes on radiating into your body. A few of the sannyasins here have used it and they all say it feels just great. One feels younger, one feels more energetic. He has made small plates to put in your bathtub while you just rest in the bath. And that radioactive material will make the water radioactive around you.

His understanding is that life can be prolonged, many diseases can be prevented; those which have already happened can be cured. And he is making many different kinds of things. He has been reading me, and he was very much interested when he heard that I have been poisoned by the American government. That was the reason for his coming, to bring a few things which according to him can take the poison out of the body. Those things he has made for the emperor of Japan, Hirohito. A special tea with radioactive material....

Those small belts... One belt costs two thousand dollars, but they look just like a belt not worth more than five rupees. The real material is inside; it can be simply anything that has been exposed to radiation. It can be earth, it can be any rubbish, but because it is still radiating, it is costly.

This scientist was told by America's biggest manufacturer of nuclear bombs that they wanted to purchase - whatever the cost - all his inventions and their patents. He refused because he knew: the idea must be not to let those inventions reach the market for everyone to use. Because if everybody is using radioactivity and radiation, he will become less and less receptive to any dangerous amount.

He will create a certain wall within himself; he can survive any atomic explosion. He will have enough atomic energy in himself to resist it.

There are other spheres of energy, and particularly you can try some small experiments. You can plant a few rose bushes of the same height, in the same soil, using the same fertilizers, taking the same care, but do one thing: with one bush, be very loving. Just talk to it, sit by its side. And you will see a strange phenomenon: they are all receiving the same nourishment, same food, same soil, same water, but because this bush is receiving something which the others are not receiving, this bush will become bigger, with more foliage, greener, and it will bring bigger flowers than the others.

You have created a certain energy field of love around the bush. Neither can you see it, nor are there scientific instruments available to judge, but your eyes can see the difference.

If for thousands of years a country has been producing meditators it is filled with invisible vibrations.

It is not a coincidence that for centuries, seekers of the inner have come towards the East. A certain pull, a certain magnetic energy has accumulated, and it is still functioning. Although the East has fallen into dark days of poverty and slavery, of hunger, famine, not even water to drink - but still the vibrations of Mahavira, Parshvanatha, Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, continue to reach those who are ready to receive them.

It all depends on you. If you have an honest search, then the East is the place for you. Here you can blossom more easily, more spontaneously, more effortlessly. This may not be possible anywhere else - you will have to fight for it, you will have to struggle against forces that you cannot see.

An Englishman, an American and a Frenchman are on a sea cruise, when the ship hits a rock and begins to sink. "Women and children first!" cries the Englishman. "Women and children first!"

"Fuck the women and children!" shouts the American.

"Oo la la!" says the Frenchman. "Do we have time?"

An Englishman goes to visit his doctor. "Doc," he says, "I'm madly in love with this Polish girl. You've got to help me become a Polack."

"Are you sure?" says the doctor. "In order to do that, we've got to surgically remove half your brain."

The man says that it doesn't matter what it takes, he wants the operation anyway.

Afterwards, when he wakes up, he finds the doctor standing beside his bed. "I'm terribly sorry," says the doctor, "we made a bad mistake. We removed three quarters of your brain."

The man slaps his forehead and cries, "Ah, mama mia!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.