The secret of coca-cola

Friends, I have heard about an editor who was bitten by a mad dog. When he reached the hospital the doctor said, "It is too late, you are going to be mad."

The editor just said, "Bring me a paper and a fountain pen immediately."

The doctor said, "There is no hurry to make your will."

He said, "Who is making a will? I want to write the names of the people whom I am going to bite when I become mad!"

I have been searching for this editor, and I have found him. He works here in this self- styled cultured city, in a daily newspaper, PRABHAT. He has been writing in editorials absolute nonsense about me.

Before I answer him, I want to thank him, because anybody who writes any nonsense about me simply gives me an occasion, an opportunity to expose this self-styled religiousness, this so-called culture, utterly rotten. Before I answer him, I would tell you one thing more.

The editor did not die. On the contrary, the dog who had bitten him died. There are a few people so poisonous that if a snake bites them, the snake dies.

He is trying in every way to bite me, but I am not so available, so the poor fellow goes on writing editorials. I would love him to continue. I am absolutely grateful to him, for the simple reason that he gives me an occasion to expose this rotten society and its religion and its culture.

He has written about me that I am a "lecherous professor polluting the social and cultural climate." Okay...

This editor should remember that I have not made the statues of Khajuraho; they are one thousand years old. I have not made the sensuous, utterly obscene statues of Puri or Konarak. These statues of naked women in perverted postures in thousands of numbers...

it must have taken hundreds of years for the sculptors to make these temples. And these statues are not just pure works of art, they are part of religion; otherwise why put them in the temples?

India has known the first lecherous man in Vatsyayana. Three thousand years before Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis, he wrote the first book in the world of sexology, KAMASUTRA, aphorisms on sex. Hindus have been calling him maharishi, the great seer. His sutras are so ugly and obscene. He has also a few sketches of sexual postures.

Those sketches are so obscene, so ugly, so unnatural -- and you will not believe that he describes eighty-four postures of making love. You know only one posture: that is the missionary posture.

This man is not called lecherous, he is called the great seer. And this man for three thousand years has never been criticized by anyone; they have worshipped the man. And this poor editor calls me lecherous....

All the scriptures of the Hindus are full of lechery, full of obscene sensuality. I will describe the milestones.

The second man is a Kashmiri brahmin who wrote the KOK-SHASTRA. Koka is his name, Pandit Koka. His sketches are far more ugly than Vatsyayana's KAMASUTRAS, and he used to have a love affair with a woman of the lowest caste, the KOLAS; they are the aboriginals.

Sometimes I wonder... Joining 'koka' and 'kola', perhaps the secret of Coca-Cola is there!

That's why the manufacturers of Coca-Cola don't allow the secret to be known by anybody.

And this poor fellow calls me lecherous, and Koka is called a great scholar, a great researcher in sexology!

In one of the Hindu scriptures you will see the whole scene, what it means to be lecherous.

You have seen the shivalingas all over India. Perhaps there are more shivalingas than anybody else's statues -- shivalinga simply means Shiva's sexual machinery, and it is based in the yoni of Parvati, his wife -- and openly, on the street corners, in the marketplaces. Shivalinga does not need even a temple, not necessarily. Even the poorest can afford it. Just find a piece of marble looking like a phallic symbol and make in the marble the vagina of a woman. Place the phallic symbol in the vagina and you have got the Hindus' mahadeva, the great god.

How did it come to happen that no other god has such symbols? I would like to tell you the story to explain the word 'lecherous'.

Just as the Christians have the trinity, the Hindus have trimurti -- the three faces of God.

The first face is Brahma, who created the world. He has only one temple in the whole of India, because who cares about him? -- he has already done his job, and nobody knows where he has gone.

The second face of God is Vishnu, who has thousands of temples, because his work is to maintain what Brahma has created. Of course, if you can persuade him by your prayers and rituals, it will be a great blessing to you. He is constantly maintaining the universe till the moment when Shiva destroys it. Shiva is God the destroyer.

How did it come to happen that Shiva has got just a phallic symbol to represent him?

One morning, Brahma and Vishnu were arguing about something, and they could not come to a conclusion, so they thought, "It is better to go to Shiva. Perhaps he can help us to come to a conclusion." So they went to Shiva early in the morning.

Americans should not think that only they make love in the morning. Millions of years before, Shiva was making love to Parvati in the morning -- with the door open.

Brahma and Vishnu never thought that this is the time to make love -- but Shiva is a very strange god, a hippy god. He takes marijuana, he takes opium, he drinks alcohol. There is not a single drug that he is not addicted to. Naturally, he has no sense of time, whether it is night or day, or whether the door is open or closed.

So Brahma and Vishnu entered and they could not believe their eyes. I call these fellows lecherous. If they had any gentlemanliness they should have gone out of the house, but they remained there for six hours, because that drug addict, Shiva, went on and on and on, not knowing when to stop. He did not bother that these two fellows were going around, watching what he was doing. These are the lecherous gods of the Hindus!

And when after six hours he came to his senses and recognized these two fellows, they cursed him. They should have cursed themselves, because they had entered into somebody's privacy. Seeing that he was making love, they should have gone out and waited outside. But they went round and round, watching and enjoying: this is lechery.

You will not find another example of such divine lechery.

They should have cursed themselves, but rather than cursing themselves, they cursed Shiva -- "because we were standing here for six hours, and you did not take any notice of us, and you went on making love. It is so uncultured that we curse you, that you will be known in the world only by your genitals." That's the reason for that shivalinga you see all around the country.

Now, I would like the editor of PRABHAT to answer me: Who is lecherous? Your gods...?

And then I come to the father of this nation, Mahatma Gandhi.

While his wife, Kasturba, was alive... Her grave is just beyond the river in the Aga Khan palace; she died here in the custody of the British Empire. Mahatma Gandhi was also under house arrest in the Aga Khan palace.

Kasturba was very jealous of Gandhi, because he was mixing with so many people, men and women. She kept a constant vigilance.

Once India's great poet, Rabindranath Tagore, was staying in Gandhi's ashram, and Gandhi wanted to discuss many things with him, so he said, "It will be good if we sleep in the same room." Kasturba freaked out. She did not allow them to stay in one room.

So while Kasturba was alive, Gandhi was talking about brahmacharya, celibacy. In fact, everybody wants to be celibate as far as his wife is concerned. He wrote a book saying that celibacy is the true life, but it was just the fear of Kasturba and nothing else.

When Kasturba died, he started sleeping with naked women. All his followers have been trying to hide the fact, because they were worried that his image of the father of the nation would fall down into the mud. And unfortunately the three persons who were constantly harassing him not to do this were all from Maharashtra.

One was Kaka Kalelkar, a long-time, lifelong friend of Mahatma Gandhi. The second was Vinoba Bhave, one of the most intimate followers of Mahatma Gandhi. And the third was Dada Dharmadhikari, a man who has been trying to philosophize Mahatma Gandhi's ordinary statements. All three belonged to Maharashtra, the self-styled cultured and religious society.

But Mahatma Gandhi did not listen to anyone.

Because of his constant repression that he had been calling celibacy... even after fathering five sons he was repressing his sexuality, sensuality, and only repressed people become lecherous.

Once his wife was dead, he forgot all about brahmacharya, celibacy, and started in his old age, at the age of seventy, having sexual dreams. And he is called the mahatma, the great soul -- and he started at the age of seventy sleeping with naked young girls, and the whole of his following was trying to hide the fact.

But they could not hide it for a simple reason. Mahatma Gandhi's secretary, Pyarelal, was one of the most efficient secretaries one can have. But because he fell in love with a woman, Gandhi kicked him out of the ashram. In Gandhi's ashram nobody can fall in love; that is the greatest sin.

Pyarelal was writing a biography of Gandhi. He knew all the secrets -- his sleeping with naked girls -- and because he was kicked out of the ashram he may have had some revenge also in his mind. "The man talks about celibacy to the public, and from the backdoor he sleeps with young girls, and the girls have to be naked."

He wrote the biography, and it is such a big volume, with such accuracy of evidence -- almost two thousand pages, two volumes, so it is beyond the reach of the ordinary public.

Who is going to read two thousand pages? And the sleeping with the naked girls comes in the last one hundred pages, with all the details -- who the girls were, with all the letters that he received from Kaka Kalelkar, Vinoba Bhave, Dada Dharmadhikari, persuading him to stop this practice: "This may destroy your image."

But it was the last period of his life, and what he had repressed for forty or fifty years had become a volcano. It was beyond his control.

And this man, utterly immature, ignorant, calls me lecherous!

Call Mahatma Gandhi lecherous!

Call Brahma and Vishnu lecherous. Call Shiva lecherous -- the first hippy of the world!

But this is the situation with all the religions. Hinduism is not an exception.

Five hundred pages in the Old Testament of the Bible are absolutely obscene. One friend of mine has taken out all the five hundred pages and made a new book, THE X-RATED HOLY BIBLE. Now the Christians are after him. But the book has gone ahead -- although banned by many countries, it has reached an underground market.

Five hundred pages? And no Jew, no Christian -- because both believe in the Old Testament -- has ever objected? Call these people lecherous. And these were the prophets who have been writing all these things.

I am determined to expose everything, without holding anything back. So it is perfectly good that these people should continue to write against me. That will give me material, subject matter. Soon they will realize they are cutting their own heads.

I am not a man who can be suppressed by just calling me names. Criticize what I am saying, look at your face in the mirror, and find the passages in your own scriptures. You will find much more, because I am only giving samples to my people.

Another Marathi newspaper editor has asked me that, "How can two souls live in one body?" -- as if he understands what a soul is!

The soul is pure light, and in a room you can have one candle, you can have one thousand candles, because the light does not take space. The light is not the thing that takes the space. You can have one thousand... You can see around you thousands of bulbs and thousands of lights. The lights are not struggling for space, for territory. Light is not a space thing -- and the soul consists only of the purest light, which does not need any fuel.

So there is no question...

The editor has asked if I can prove this.

It is an already proved fact; I don't have to prove it.

All over the world people know it already, that a man can be possessed by spirits -- and not only one. The highest count has been sixteen, sixteen souls possessing one man's body.

And if you want more data and research on the subject, you should go to Rajasthan, to Jaipur, to have a look in the University of Rajasthan -- that is the only university in India which has a department for parapsychology. They have been collecting all the cases of possession by spirits -- so you will know that it is not a question at all of space. Two souls can be in one body without any difficulty. They don't have any conflict of territory.

Just watch light and you will understand. One candle or one thousand candles in a small room -- do you think there will be great chaos? One thousand candles? -- where will they find the space?

Light does not need space.

I am answering this question, not for your sake, Mr. Editor, I am answering this question for my people to understand that the soul is pure light. That's why it has no weight, it does not occupy space. It has no limit as far as time is concerned.

Hundreds of experiments have been done around the world by the scientists. In one experiment in Germany, they put a man who was just on the verge of death in a box made of absolutely transparent glass, so they could watch him while he was alive, from the outside. The box was completely sealed. They wanted to know that, if the soul leaves the body, how can it leave the box? "We will catch hold of the soul." And if the soul leaves the body, the body must lose some weight, so they weighed the body as accurately as possible.

But the man died, and nothing left the glass box, because for the soul, matter is not a hindrance.

You know that X-rays can enter your body and the body cannot prevent them; you don't feel even that the X-rays are entering in your body when an X-ray is taken. The soul is a far more refined, ultimate light, so when it leaves the body you cannot see it. If you have not seen it already within yourself, you will never be able to see anybody's soul leaving him.

Then they opened the case, and they could not find it. So they weighed the dead man again: he had the same weight. For the materialist it is enough proof that there is no soul, because nothing has left the box and the man's dead body weighs the same as when he was living. For the materialist scientists it was enough to prove that there is no soul.

It is not enough for me.

The soul does not have weight.

Do you think light has weight? Try... put one candle on your weighing machine, unlit.

Weigh it, then give light to the candle and see whether it weighs more. There is no need to go to such lengths as finding a dying man; you can just try to weigh the light. It has no weight, but it does not prove that there is no light. It simply proves that light belongs to a different category. It is not a thing, hence it has no weight.

When you blow out a candle, do you see where the flame is going, finding the door outside into the street? You don't see anything. The flame simply disappears into the universe, leaving no trace behind.

The same is true about the soul.

And the first editor continues that I am "polluting the social and cultural climate."

What social and cultural climate have you got?

It was a man from this social and cultural atmosphere who killed Mahatma Gandhi -- the first murder of its kind in this country. It is perfectly okay in America, but not in India.

In America, twenty percent of the presidents have been murdered -- that is routine -- but Mahatma Gandhi's murder was the first of its kind in this country. And the man who murdered him belonged to this cultural, social society. He was a citizen of this city.

An attempt has been made on my life in this city, by throwing a knife to kill me! I was informed by the police headquarters, before the morning discourse, that "We have received an anonymous phone call that somebody is going to throw a knife at you and kill you, so allow in twenty high-ranking police officers."

But the whole thing was totally different; it came finally to a very different conclusion.

Those twenty police officers were sitting behind the man who had thrown the knife at me.

They immediately surrounded him, in order to arrest him.

Unfortunately for the poor man, he was not an archer, or a man who could manage to hit the target. The knife fell almost six feet away from me. What a great man they had found to kill me! If they had told me, I would have sat six feet away from myself!

They did not allow my people to bring a case. Ten thousand sannyasins were present here, eyewitnesses; you could not find so many eyewitnesses for any murder, or any attempted murder anywhere else. But the police officer said, "We are present, we will take the case to the court ourselves. It is a police case. You don't need to bother at all."

That was the strategy.

They took away the knife also, saying, "We have to present it to the magistrate." The knife was never presented, and the magistrate simply dismissed the case: "There is no case. Where is the evidence?" And those twenty police officers remained silent.

It was a good conspiracy between the magistrate and the police officers and the cultured citizens of this city.

How am I polluting the social and cultural climate? I don't enter in your city at all; it is too polluted for me. It is the most polluted city in the whole of Asia, and soon it will be the most polluted city in the whole world.

I talk to my people; I never see the editors of PRABHAT, and editors of other Marathi daily papers, weekly papers, monthly magazines. I don't see people from the city here.

My people belong to the whole globe, and those few people from the city who are here, they have been with me for twenty years. They are now beyond any cure. I have corrupted them so much that now there is no medicine, no deprogramming that can bring them back to the normal lunacy of this city.

Just by the way, I would like to tell you a very beautiful case of a great evangelist who had millions of listeners on the radio, and watchers on the television.

In America, a new phenomenon is growing: TV evangelism. What is the need to go to the people? You just give the sermon in the television studio and it reaches to millions of homes.

This man, television evangelist Jim Bakker, has returned to American TV again. Where had he gone and why? He had admitted to having sexual intercourse with his secretary and homosexual relations with a male preacher.

This happened a few months ago. Then he went into seclusion just to avoid the public -- because he was a great preacher, and they thought that God speaks through him. But when they found that he was having intercourse with his secretary, and is not only heterosexual, he is perverted -- he was having a relationship with a male preacher... And on the television he was talking to everybody about the greatness of celibacy.

These are the people who really destroy humanity and its trust.

Now he is coming back. What excuse has he found? -- a great excuse, but it won't do as far as I am concerned.

Now he is saying that the devil made him do it. He was a representative of God, and God even did not care to interfere. And it was not only one time, but for years the devil was telling him to do it, to make love to the secretary, to have homosexual relations with the preacher; it was the devil.

What was God doing? If he cannot save his own preachers, do you think he will save you? The devil seems to be more powerful.

He said, "The devil was jealous because I was forming a new church."

But what about God? You were making a new church for God.... God seems to be absolutely impotent; the devil was directing you for years. And you had been preaching about celibacy.... You could not say to the people, "The devil has been forcing me to do things which I don't want to do." You were found red-handed making love to the secretary, and there was no devil present who was forcing you, on the point of a gun, to make love. You could have at least reported to the police station.

It is not a coincidence that devil-worship is growing all over the world, particularly in Christian countries. In England, there are now thousands and thousands of people who worship the devil. In Australia, thousands of people worship the devil. And these devil- worshippers are Christians who have seen that God is impotent; the devil is a far more powerful being. Obviously, everybody wants to be on the side of the victorious.

These Christians are throwing stones at churches, throwing stones at Christian preachers, saying "You are misleading people. You are telling people that God will save you. God cannot do anything! The devil is more powerful."

It was the devil to whom Adam and Eve listened, not to God. God behaved like a self- styled, cultured Poona-ite. Rather than persuading them, or going with them, the way the devil had argued, God had told Adam and Eve that they should not eat the fruits from two trees: one was the tree of wisdom, and the other was the tree of eternal life.

I cannot in any way... I have tried in thousands of ways somehow to see the point. A father is preventing his own creation from being wise, from having eternal life? What kind of father...? He must be counted as the greatest enemy, the archenemy of humanity.

It was the devil who argued with Eve. He said, "Do you understand why God has prevented you from eating from these two trees? It is because he is very jealous. He is afraid if you eat from these two trees you will be a god yourself. He does not want you to be a god, he wants you to live naked like animals in the forest." And he said, "If you don't believe me, you just eat and see."

Eve could see the argument clearly. If the father loved you, he would have insisted, "Eat more of the tree of wisdom and of the tree of eternal life, so that you will soon be grown up, so that you will soon realize your godliness." That would have been compassion, love. This is simply cruelty, violence, evil.

The devil was the first revolutionary friend of humanity. And when Eve ate the fruit, her eyes opened. She saw a totally different world. She ran to Adam and told him to eat the fruit. They were caught red-handed by God. Rather than giving any argument against the devil, he behaved just like an idiot. He drove them away, out of paradise.

In a small school a teacher was telling the story, and she asked, "Can you say something about the story?"

One small boy, Albert, stood up, and he said, "As far as I can understand, he must have driven them in an old Ford car." Driving them out of paradise... what kind of car was he using? It must have been a Model-T Ford car, the oldest, the ancientmost.

The teacher was aghast. She said, "I had never mentioned a car."

Albert said, "You said he drove them out..."

This is ugly behavior on the part of God.

Telling them, "You have committed the greatest sin..."

Wisdom is sin? -- then ignorance must be a virtue. Searching for eternal life is sin? Then committing suicide must be a virtue.

Adam and Eve could not reach to the other tree. Since then man has been searching for eternal life. Have you ever realized what you are searching for?

You are searching for more wisdom -- enlightenment. You are searching for eternal life -- a force which has no beginning and no end.

I cannot say anything against the devil worshippers. They are doing the right thing. It is perfectly good if devil worshippers and god worshippers fight and destroy each other. It will be a great blessing to humanity. Whoever remains out of it will have all the joys of this planet, and all the possibilities of growing in his potentiality to ultimate wisdom and to eternal life.

Those two trees have to be found! If God comes in between, throw him away. Adam and Eve were very poor, naked -- only two! Now humanity is big enough. Rather than being driven by God, it can drive God out of paradise. He has lived in paradise long enough.

Now just get lost!

Strange... you don't read me -- the self-styled city of culture -- you don't listen to me. Just my presence...?

I never go out, I never come into the ashram either, except these two hours in the evening. Living in my small room almost twenty-four hours a day, if my presence is corrupting your city, then it needs to be corrupted. Then it is not worth saving.

This ugly city will be destroyed by this egoist attitude, not by me; by these people who have been puffing the balloon of the ego that the city is cultural, religious. Go on puffing:

soon the balloon will burst. It will be you, the editors and the political leaders, and the religious fanatics, who will destroy whatsoever culture you have. I don't know whether you have any or not.

As far as I'm concerned, culture has not happened yet in the world. And you are giving all proofs of being UNcultured. Making a procession with my effigy on a donkey, you are showing your real faces.

Not a single newspaper, not a single citizen has condemned the procession, that it is polluting the culture and the religious heritage. No, this is your culture.

Bring as many donkeys as possible into your city, and they will purify your city. The day is not far away when only donkeys will be living in this city. Of course, donkeys don't corrupt anybody's culture; they are such silent, philosophical creatures.

I have always loved them from my very childhood. I have always wondered why these poor creatures are condemned. They look so silent, standing in the shadows of the walls or the trees. Just watch their faces: they look like Aristotle or Kant or Hegel or Feuerbach -- great philosophers, thinking, thinking about great problems. Once in a while they give a shout -- that is the shout that wakes other donkeys who are falling asleep.

Except that shout, they don't do any harm to anybody. They don't make processions, they don't shout ugly slogans. They are not worried at all that somebody will corrupt their culture.

If you have culture, nobody can corrupt it.

If you have religion, nobody can destroy it.

Because you don't have them -- you have only fallacy, fantasy, imagination, belief, but no reality -- that's why you are so afraid. Anybody can destroy your false belief systems.

That is the fear, the paranoia.

But I am going to strike hard on all your false shadows, so you can be discovered in your true, authentic, original face.

The sutras:

Zen always has many similar puzzles that cannot be solved. The ancientmost puzzle, out of which many such puzzles have arisen, is that one man was growing a goose in a bottle.

When the goose was small, just out of the egg, he put it into the bottle. Then he went on feeding the goose in the bottle, until the whole bottle was full of the goose.

Now the goose is too big, it cannot be taken out from the mouth of the bottle. And the Zen masters have been asking: How to take the goose out without breaking the bottle, and without killing the goose? And people have been meditating on this: how to take the goose out without destroying the bottle, or destroying the goose. There seems to be no solution.

These riddles, these puzzles, are not for solutions; they bring a revolution when you get an insight. Hundreds of people have become enlightened through such small, absurd puzzles. Months and years they would meditate, and they would not find any way. There is no way... there is no question of finding any way. But because they were thinking only about the goose in the bottle for years, the whole mind dropped, all thinking stopped.

Their only concern was how to bring the goose out from the bottle.

All logic failed, all reasoning failed, all thinking failed; the mind was of no help. They put the mind aside, and as they came to the space of no-mind, they laughed. They ran to the master, and seeing their smiling faces, the master would say, "So, the goose is out?"

And the disciple would touch the feet of the master. He would say, "Yes, she has always been out. The bottle was an illusion."

You are always a buddha; your not being a buddha is an illusion. The bottle is an illusion, you are always out of the bottle. All prisons that surround you -- of the mind, of the body, of money, of the world -- are all irrelevant. As far as your innermost being is concerned, it is not touched by anything. It is always out. It just needs you to see the fact, and freedom comes from all directions to you.

SEPPO SAID, "WHEN YOU HAVE GOT OUT OF THE NET, I WILL TELL YOU."

Seppo was a great master, just as Rinzai was a great master. Sansho was only a disciple.

Seppo said to Sansho, "When you have got out of the net, I will tell you. Right now, I don't see the point of wasting my time. You are not out, you will not understand. Just go and meditate. First get out of the net, and then I will answer you. In fact, then there is no need to answer."

This is the beauty of Zen. It brings your own consciousness to a point where there is no question, and no answer is needed. You have simply gone beyond questions and answers.

You can sing a song, you can paint a beautiful painting, you can play music, you can dance, you can laugh, but you cannot say anything about what has happened to you.

Seppo said, "Just get out of the net, then come to me and I will tell you."

SANSHO SAID, "THE RENOWNED TEACHER OF FIFTEEN HUNDRED MONKS CANNOT FIND EVEN ONE WORD TO SAY ABOUT THIS TOPIC."

Seppo had a great monastery of fifteen hundred disciples. Sansho taunts him, provokes him:

In fact, nobody can say a single word about the innermost freedom. Either you have it or you don't have it, but nobody can say anything about it. Even when you have it, you will not be able to say a single word. That, Sansho does not understand yet.

SEPPO SAID, "I AM THE CHIEF ABBOT AND HAVE MUCH TO ATTEND TO.

"You just move away. First get out of the net and then come. Right now, I don't have any time to waste with you."

It seems to be very unkind of Seppo, but it is not. He is helpless, as every buddha is helpless; there are things about which nothing can be said. You have to find them on your own accord.

If somebody says something, he is your enemy not a friend, because whatever he says will become a block in your search. You will start thinking you know the answer, what is the need of seeking? And the answer is borrowed, it is not yours.

If I drink water, my thirst is quenched.

If you drink the water, your thirst is quenched.

So are the eternal waters of life. Drink out of them. Nobody can give you an explanation - - not even a single word -- to indicate the direction.

Seppo was not unkind, he was simply telling him, "You are too childish, you don't understand what you are asking. You will have to find it yourself. First, get out of the net.

Right now I have to attend to many affairs of my commune. I am the chief abbot."

Sansho could not understand. He said, "Kwatz? You are coming from Kwatz?"

THE MONK SAID, "IF YOU STRIKE ME BLINDLY, I SHALL SAY 'KWATZ!'"

It will be easy to understand if you just for a moment look at the scientific theory of from where the universe has come. It was an explosion: Kwatz! -- just a tremendous explosion, a chaos, and out of the chaos slowly things started solidifying.

The word 'kwatz' does not mean anything; it simply means an explosion of sound. That's what our 'Yaa-Hoo' means.

When you shout "Kwatz!" -- watch where it hits you. It hits just under your navel. That's where you are coming from. The life center is just under your navel, two inches under the navel.

Hence in Japan -- where they have found exactly the right center from where life has arisen in your body -- when they want to commit suicide, they don't shoot themselves in the head, they don't shoot themselves in the heart, they stab underneath the navel, exactly two inches underneath. Just a good knife, and without any sound, without any torture, the man simply falls dead. Once the knife enters the center of your being, your life immediately leaves this body; this body is of no more use.

That is spoken of in Japan very respectfully, because unless a man knows through meditation where exactly the point is, he cannot commit suicide by hitting that point.

Hitting that point is just like making a puncture in a tire. The air goes out. Hitting at the center of your being, the being simply flies out, searching for another womb if you are not yet enlightened. If you are enlightened, it disappears into the blue sky of the ultimate.

But "Kwatz!" is a beautiful sound. There are very few sounds which have no meaning, but immense significance.

When Sansho said again, "Kwatz!"

THE MONK SAID, "IF YOU STRIKE ME BLINDLY, I SHALL SAY 'KWATZ!'"

I am always coming from Kwatz, if you are coming from Kwatz.

It looks very absurd to the outsiders, but not to the Zen people. Zen has a multidimensional environment of its own. It is very difficult to understand Japan if you don't understand Zen.

Here in the therapy groups there is a problem. So many Japanese are coming -- and more will be on the way....

Sigmund Freud, and Carl Gustav Jung, and Alfred Adler, and Assagioli, and Fritz Perls -- all the psychoanalysts of the West know only Christianity and Judaism. Christianity is just a branch of Judaism, nothing more. They don't understand anything about the East.

All these therapies were developed in the West.

So every therapist tells his participants, "Deep down you must hate your father" -- because Sigmund Freud's idea is that every girl is competitive with the mother, she hates the mother. She is jealous because the mother is monopolizing the father. She wants to have the father. So every girl hates the mother and loves the father, and vice versa: every boy loves the mother and hates the father. All these therapies basically are founded on father or mother fixation.

But therapists have been coming to me saying, "We are in a difficulty. If you tell a Japanese that he hates his mother, either he will kill himself or he will kill you." In Japan, to tell somebody that "You hate your mother," you have insulted his dignity. And when the dignity is insulted, humiliated, there are only two ways: either he kills you or he kills himself. But both cannot exist together anymore.

So the therapists have been asking me, "What to do? Our whole therapy is Jewish and Christian, and with the Japanese it does not apply at all." They have been brought up in a totally different atmosphere, where the mother is respected and loved, where the father is respected and loved. From the very childhood the father and mother persuade the child to go to the monastery to learn meditation, to go to a Zen monk to sit by his side just absorbing his fragrance, his presence, "because ultimately you have to reach to the flowering of buddhahood." It is a totally different orientation.

How can a boy hate his mother who has been telling him just to be himself? "Go to the monastery. Learn how to be self-centered" -- and ultimately how to dissolve the center also, just to be nothing and pure, utterly empty. Only in emptiness no dust gathers; otherwise, everywhere dust gathers.

The father is persuading the child to learn from the masters, great masters. Even the emperors are sent by their fathers, "to learn something of your innermost being. If you don't know yourself, you are not worthy to be an emperor. First be an emperor of yourself."

How can you hate your father, who made you an emperor of yourself before giving you the succession of the outside empire? He has given you the inside empire.

Zen has certainly created a tremendous rebellion against all cultures, all civilizations.

As far as I can see, Zen is going to be paving the path for the new man to come, and for the new humanity to emerge. That's why I am talking so much on Zen. It is not without purpose. I want you to understand as deeply as possible.

SANSHO PICKED UP HIS STAFF, AND THE MONK PUT HIMSELF IN READINESS TO RECEIVE A HIT.

Can you find anywhere else in the world, somebody getting ready, bowing down, giving his head to be hit? Nowhere in the world. Either, if you are powerful, you will jump upon the person who is going to hit you; or if you are weak, you will escape in time before he hits you.

But this is absolutely Zen. The monk gets ready, on his knees, as if to pray, bowing down, giving his head -- "Hit me." He has not said it, but his readiness says it: "If you hit me... even the hit from a master is a gift, a present which has no value in the marketplace, but which has value in the eternity of time."

Sansho said, "YOU GO DOWN A SLOPE.... When I hit you, you go down the slope of the mountain. There is no pleasure unless you run down it. And remember not to go slowly:

"THERE'S NO PLEASURE UNLESS YOU RUN DOWN -- with a tremendous urgency as if you are going somewhere.

"Then the cool breeze, and the beautiful sunrays, and your running down... Perhaps you may understand what you have not understood while you have been with me."

I am reminded of my own days of search.

I used to get up early, three o'clock in the morning, when it was absolutely dark and there were still three or four hours before the sunrise.

I was living by the side of a beautiful park, and there used to be nobody there. I used to run -- it is a tremendous joy. You are again a deer in the park, again a lion in the forest.

Something of tremendous spirit arises in you.

One old Sindhi used to have a small teashop -- that was the only shop, by the corner of the garden -- for people coming in the daytime to the garden. That was the only garden, with very beautiful and ancient trees. He had a good business selling tea. He used to sleep in a small shelter in the night.

When I used to run, many times he said, "Forgive me, sir. You wake me up. I know it's you, but I come out of my sleep perspiring and trembling, because at this time nobody comes here, and sometimes you are too much" -- because sometimes I used to run backwards.

There was a huge field full of bamboos. They made such a great shadow that in the fullmoon night the road was covered with the shadows of the bamboos. So when I used to enter the shadows, nobody could see me, and when I would come out of the shadows suddenly, that old Sindhi would jump up from his cot.

He would say, "Again? How many times I have convinced myself that this is that same young man, utterly crazy! But you will kill me one day, my heart beats so hard. Suddenly out of the shadows somebody comes, and that too, running backwards...!" In India, the mythology is that ghosts run backwards, that was the trouble. "How to make the distinction that you are really you, not a ghost?"

One day it happened -- it was three o'clock -- a milkman must have awoken early. He used to come nearer five or six, but perhaps he was not having a good sleep, perhaps there were too many mosquitoes, something may have been... He arrived early, and he had two buckets full of milk.

When I came out of the shadows, dancing backwards, he threw away both the buckets and ran. And I, thinking that he had misunderstood me, ran after him! The more I ran, the faster he ran. I said, "It is strange...."

The old Sindhi was watching the whole scene. He said, "You will kill him! Why are you following him?"

I said, "I simply want to tell him that I am not a ghost."

The old Sindhi said, "Nobody will believe it. Ghosts always say that! You just give me those two buckets. In the morning that fellow will come, and I will give him the buckets and explain the situation."

For years I inquired of the old Sindhi whether the man had come. He said, "No, those two buckets are still there."

I said, "Have you got any idea where he has gone?"

He said, "No idea. Oftentimes I think you have killed him. He could not have survived that strange experience of a ghost following him."

But I made every effort to find the man. Finally I found him; he lived in a nearby village.

So I went there with those two buckets.

The moment he saw me, he started, jumping. He said, "No! Don't come here!"

I said, "I have come just to give back your buckets."

He said, "I don't want anything!" -- with closed eyes, so he wouldn't see me.

I said, "At least see me, just look at my feet. They are not the way ghosts' feet are, backwards!"

The man looked at my feet. He said, "So you are not a ghost?"

I said, "One day I will become one, but right now I am not."

He said, "My God! I have been going around almost two miles unnecessarily just to avoid that spot where you came running backwards! Don't do that. Anybody..."

I said, "You don't know the beauty of it."

He said, "Beauty?"

I said, "You don't know the blessing of it."

He said, "Don't persuade me."

I said, "Just once, you come along with me."

He thought for a moment, and he said, "It is better I should come so that the fear of that place is gone."

So the next day I picked him up from this village in my car, and brought him to my house, and we both went jogging backwards.

The old Sindhi jumped out of his cot. He said, "My God! Where have you found this other ghost?"

I said, "He is not a ghost."

He said, "I have told you, all ghosts say that!"

I said, "This is the same man who has dropped his milk buckets."

He said, "Where did you find him? You dug him up from the grave?"

I said, "You bring your torch and look at his feet. He is a live man, he has not died. And look at the buckets: you know the buckets, they have been lying with you for years."

He said, "It is better I should change from this place; it is becoming too heavy. Tomorrow you may bring a third one -- and in the darkness it is very difficult to distinguish. Can't you stop this jogging backwards?"

I said, "It is so beautiful... it is such an ecstasy."

He said, "What?"

I said, "Unless you taste it..." I said, "Ask the milkman."

The milkman said, "It is true, it makes you feel so free."

The old man said, "Then I will try tomorrow."

His wife said, "No! You are not going to join these people. They are crazy, and they are persuading you."

I said, "Let him have a taste. Don't be worried, nothing will happen. I take the responsibility. And one day you will join us."

She said, "You think I will join you? Then it is better we both join together. If something happens, it happens to both of us. I don't want to live alone without my husband." So they both joined.

I used to live with a friend, a very rich man. He had given me half of his bungalow. When he saw four people -- three men and one woman -- he freaked out!

He said, "It was okay when you were doing it alone. I know you. But I don't know these people -- whether they are men, women, or just ghosts. And where have you found this woman? Either you drop this or you take possession of the whole bungalow. I have another bungalow, I will leave."

I said, "That will be just great, because then I can entertain new ghosts, even allow them to sleep here just to get them up in time -- three o'clock."

Actually he moved.

Sansho is saying rightly,

THE MONK SAID, "YOU ROBBER!" AND WENT OFF,

running on the slope.

Zen creates beautiful anecdotes.

What he is trying to say, I am telling you every day.

Go in -- not slowly, but with your total consciousness, with an urgency as if this is the last moment, just like a spear, piercing more than running, because the slope is very small. From your head to your being, there is very little distance. Unless you go really fast, breaking all the bridges, breaking all the obstacles, you will not reach to your ultimate being.

That's what Sansho meant, and the monk understood when he said, "YOU ROBBER!" It is a very loving expression. He is saying, "You have robbed me completely. You have convinced me completely. My heart is your heart, my being is in your hands."

He understood -- he was a follower of Sansho -- he understood what Sansho meant by running and not going slowly.

The monk asked, "HOW CAN HE ENTER by running down the slope?"

"He has gone running to see his old master. The old master could not convince him; I have managed to convince him. The old master was saying the same thing to him, but he missed. Now he has gone back to the old master saying, 'You were right. It was just my thickness of intelligence, my hard skin, that nothing penetrated. But Sansho did the job within a minute. He gave me such a hit on the head, and I ran down the whole slope of the mountain.'"

He was right. These are symbolic words.

Sansho is saying, "I am hitting you, and from that point there is a slope from the head to the heart to the being. Go running, don't stop anywhere, and don't be slow. Nobody knows about the next second; this second may be the last one." So he has gone to pay his respects to his old master.

Buson wrote:

THE SEA AT SPRINGTIME.

ALL DAY IT RISES AND FALLS, YES, RISES AND FALLS.

You have to visualize again:

THE SEA AT SPRINGTIME. ALL DAY IT RISES AND FALLS, YES, RISES AND FALLS.

He is saying, without saying it, the ultimate truth of your being: "You rise but you don't rise to the ultimate peak from where there is no fall. You rise a little bit and fall again.

Again you hear another master, you rise a little more and you fall again.

"Unless you rise to the ultimate peak, to the hilltop from where there is no coming back, you have been doing just a futile exercise like the ocean waves: rising and falling, rising and falling, since eternity. When will you stop this? When will you rise and rise and rise to where there is no fall again?"

This I call buddhahood.

This I call the awakened being.

Question 1:

Maneesha has asked a question:

Maneesha, I have Nivedano ready. The moment I see you are going beyond the limit from where you will not be able to return, I immediately call Nivedano.

You have to be here with me. So much has to be done for humanity. So I take you to the point, but not to the ultimate point. I just allow you a glimpse, and the moment I see you are going ahead, I immediately call you back.

You have to be here while I am here. So much remains undone. The whole of humanity, without knowing it, is waiting for someone to make them conscious, alert, to help them to become buddhas. They may not know, they may even fight you.

It used to happen... The most important German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, never married -- not that he was in favor of celibacy, but because he was a great thinker.

A woman had asked him; he said, "I will have to think about it, it is a great matter."

He took three years of deep research about all the points in favor of marriage and against marriage. They were equal.

His servant said, "Don't waste time. Although you have found the pros and cons equal, one thing more remains in favor of marriage."

He said, "What is that?"

The servant said, "The experience. Without marriage you will not have any experience.

With marriage you will have some experience -- I don't say good or bad -- but some experience certainly. That remains one point more in favor."

It was so convincing that he went immediately to the house of the woman and knocked on the door. The father opened it, and Kant said, "I am willing to marry your daughter."

He said, "My son, you are too late. She is married, she has two children. What have you been doing all this time?"

He said, "I have been researching all the points pro and con."

The old man said, "You found more points favorable?"

He said, "No, it was my servant who said to me that it is always better to have the experience than not to have it. One never knows, something good may come out of it.

And even if it turns out something bad, it makes you more experienced."

So he remained a bachelor. No other woman ever asked him, and he was not a man to ask anybody.

He was dependent on this servant. The servant went on asking for more salary, and he had to give it, because no other servant was able to stay with him. He was a very strange fellow, and the most strange thing was that he used to work like a clock.

When he used to go to the university, people would fix their watches. It was enough that he was going; that meant their watches were not right. When he would come back, every day at the same time... Even on Sundays when there was no need to go to the university, just to keep the routine he would go to the university, sit in the library and come back at the same time as usual.

At three o'clock in the morning he had to be awakened, and at nine o'clock in the evening he had to be forced into bed. That all had to be done by the servant. He was paying him an immense salary, with the condition that when it was nine, "Whatever happens -- I may fight with you, that I have some immediately urgent work to do -- don't listen to me. You have to force me into bed. Even if you have to beat me, you are allowed. But remember, I will give you a good fight!"

It was a strange scene. Every evening at nine o'clock, every morning at three o'clock -- it was such a chaos that the whole neighborhood woke up. The servant would be pulling him out, and he would be going back under the blanket. He would be shouting, abusing him, and the servant would be beating him, slapping him.

This is the situation of the whole of humanity.

Maneesha, you all have to live to wake up people even against their will, in spite of them.

Don't bother if they hit you, if they cry, if they shout; you go on pulling them. They have to be made buddhas!

That's why I don't allow you to go beyond the limit. I am watching everyone closely.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

Hiram T. Horace III, the American diplomat in Paris, is approached by his son, Hiram Junior.

"Dad," asks Hiram Junior, "what does inflation mean?"

"Well, son," says Hiram Senior, "it means a general price increase."

"Really?" asks Hiram Junior. "And what difference does that make?"

"Well, son," explains Hiram T. Horace III, "I would put it this way: here in Paris, before inflation, for me life was wine, restaurants and women. Since inflation, now it is beer, eating at home and your mother!"

Ziggy Zoldoz, a Czechoslovakian citizen, is condemned to a jail sentence of fifteen years for calling the Communist Party chairman an idiot.

Bernie Beanball, the foreign correspondent for the NEW AGE TIMES, asks a government official why Ziggy's sentence is so severe. "Surely," says Bernie, "the jail sentence for personal insults is never more than twelve months?"

"That's right," snaps the party man, "but he was not condemned for insults. He was convicted for revealing a state secret!"

Farmer Scrumpy decides to pay a call on his old friend, Farmer Zeke. He finds Zeke leaning on the fence of the hog pen, smoking his pipe and humming a song.

"Hi, Zeke," says Scrumpy, looking around the farm. "How have things been with you lately?"

"Ah, pretty tolerable," replies Zeke. "I had some trees that needed cutting down, but a tornado came along and saved me the trouble."

"Really?" asks Scrumpy.

"Yup," says Zeke. "Then the branches were lying there and needed burning, but lightning set fire to them and saved me the trouble."

"Really?" asks Scrumpy. "So what are you going to do now?"

"Well, nothing much," replies Zeke, sucking on his pipe. "I figured I would just wait here until the potatoes get shaken out of the ground by an earthquake!"

Nivedano...

(drumbeat) (gibberish) Nivedano...

(drumbeat) Be silent... Close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards. But go running, with your full consciousness, your total life energy, and an urgency that -- one never knows -- this may be the last moment of your life.

You have to become a buddha. Go just piercing your astral body to the very center of your being.

As you go closer, as you go deeper, a great silence descends on you. A little more... and a peace that you have never known before surrounds you. A little more... and you are at the center of your being. This moment you are the most fortunate beings on the earth.

A great ecstasy starts flowering in the very center of your being, like a lotus. The fragrance is of another world.

The only quality you have to remember is: Witness everything, but don't get identified with anything.

You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the astral body full of light. You are only a witness, centered, just watching, reflecting like a mirror. On this mirror no dust ever gathers.

To make it clear, Nivedano...

(drumbeat) Relax, but remember to witness.

Just be a witness of everything that is happening.

The moment you are only a witness, you will feel you are melting into an ocean, just like ice melts.

Gautama the Buddha Auditorium at this moment has become an ocean of consciousness without any ripples. You have merged into each other. This is the first experience, the first glimpse.

This seed will grow in time, and suddenly one day you will find the spring has come!

You are a buddha, the awakened one -- the ultimate search of all seekers of truth.

Collect as much ecstasy, as much blissfulness, as much benediction... and persuade the buddha to come with you to the circumference of your life. In your everyday work, in your words, in your gestures, in your silences, he has to be present.

Slowly slowly you disappear, and only buddha remains. From that point, when only the buddha remains, you can jump into the cosmos, a quantum leap, and disappear without leaving any trace behind.

This is the ultimate goal of existence for all living beings -- particularly for human beings, because they are the highest evolved.

Before Nivedano calls you back, persuade the buddha. It is not someone else, it is your very being.

Nivedano...

(drumbeat) Come back...

But now come back as the buddha, filled with joy, blissfulness, grace, a deep silence.

Sit for a few moments just to remember the path, the golden path that you have traveled.

And just rejoice in the fact that you have been able to melt and merge, that you have been able to encounter your authentic self, the buddha.

And remember to share your fire, to share your gold with all and sundry, friend and enemy, the acquaintance and the stranger. The whole humanity is ours -- they may not know, but we know. They may struggle against us, but we can only feel compassion for them.

Remember, one seed can make the whole earth green.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.