Bliss Beyond All Duality

The first question

Question 1:

Larry Obenfeld,

I AM SORRY, YOUR QUESTION IS UNANSWERABLE. This is the only question which cannot be answered - hence the beauty of it. Whenever you come across a question which is unanswerable you are very close to God.

Love is a mystery, not a problem. It can be lived but it cannot be solved. In fact it is not a question, that's why it cannot be answered. You can make a question out of it, but your question remains just a linguistic formulation of something which can never be reduced to a question.

Love has no motive, love simply is. Love is absurd, meaning- less, purposeless. And that's why it is so beautiful. It is not a commodity, it is not a thing of the world. It is something from the beyond, it is a visitor from the beyond. So we cannot find any reason for it.

If you can find any reason for your love then it is not love; then it must be something else. If you can answer why, that will simply mean it was something else, not love.

Love is the purpose of all, hence love itself cannot have any purpose. Love is the end of all; everything else is a means towards love, hence love cannot be a means to something else. It is the ultimate value.

But the question arises because the mind knows only how to create questions. It can't accept something which is a mystery. The mysterious creates fear in the mind, because the mind cannot manipulate it. The mind starts raising questions, a thousand and one, and the mind will not feel at ease unless those questions are answered. If those questions are not answered then the mind has the tendency to deny the whole phenomenon itself. Then the mind will say, "If the why cannot be known, then love cannot be."

Mind believes only if it is capable of manipulating some thing. That's why mind goes on denying God - because God is nothing but the very essence of love. And mind goes on denying love, and mind goes on denying beauty, and mind goes on denying everything that comes as a mystery. Either the mind has to reduce it to knowledge... and if the mind feels impotent to reduce it to knowledge it starts denying it: "There is no God, there is no love, there is no mystery."

The mysterious is frightening, because the mysterious is vast. And the mind feels lost in the mysterious. That's why in all the languages the expression exists: "falling in love." It is a condemnation from the mind. The mind is saying, "You are falling. You are going lower than yourself. You are moving into something which is not true, because it cannot be formulated in clearcut concepts. You are falling into something vague, something cloudy; you are becoming a chaos. Avoid it."

Mind always says, "Avoid love." And that's why in the world you find so little love - because the world is full of mind. We teach mind. From the very childhood, from the kindergarten to the university, we go on teaching mind, and we avoid the heart. We have learnt the ways to bypass the heart completely - because the heart is the door of the mysterious where whys cannot be answered.

And if a man has avoided the heart he has avoided all the joys of life. He has avoided his own interiormost core, his interiority. He has avoided his subjectivity. He has avoided the greatest experience that life makes possible: the experience of love.

Obenfeld, please drop the why. If you have fallen in love, go on falling more and more. There is no end to it; it is a bottom- less abyss - the more you fall, the more you become able to fall further.

And the deeper you have gone into the abyss, the greater and greater the mysteries that become available. Then life is a poetry, not a prose. Then life is not a noise but a melody. Then life is not matter but God.

But slowly slowly all whys, all hows will disappear. You will live in the is-ness of the moment. Your life will have a tremendous presence, but no answers. You will know what life is but you will not have any knowledge at all.

Knowing is one thing, knowledge another. Love is a phenomenon which can be experienced - knowing is possible but knowledge is not possible. It cannot be communicated in words. It remains such a deep taste in you, you cannot bring it into any verbal communication.

If somebody asks you why, you will be at a loss. But you can ask - there are so many lovers here.

Each of my sannyasins is a lover. It is not the relationship between a teacher and a student: it is a love affair between a Master, and D stands for the it "the mad game". M stands for Master, and D stands for the disciple: Master And Disciple game. k is a mad game, utterly mad.

You ask my mad people. You can ask Vivek - for two lives she has been falling in love; this is her second life with me. You ask her why, and it will be impossible to answer. She can cry or she can laugh or she can dance, but she cannot answer why - because there is no why in it.

Love simply happens, it is a happening. If you do it, you can answer the why. But you are not the doer. You are just a host to something from the beyond - a guest comes from the beyond and knocks on your doors: how can you answer why? You have never known him before. And even if you know now, it is so overwhelming that all words are inadequate. Tears can say something, maybe, perhaps - or a dance or a song or a hug. But words are very inadequate.

Words are meant to be for the mundane life of the market- place. You cannot use them in love and you cannot use them in prayer, and you cannot use them whenever and wherever the unknown is felt. When you come to the boundary of the known and the unknown, words start disappearing from you like dead leaves falling from the tree. And a totally new experience evolves - a wordless experience.

You are asking the question because you must be feeling a little frightened. It is frightening - because in love you will not be in control any more. k is frightening, because in love the ego will disappear. It is frightening because you will have to die. Love requires that much sacrifice. But it is worth it, be- cause through death is resurrection.

Die in love, and you will be born as love. And you will never again be the same, and the world will be totally different. The same world will be so full of God if you are full of love. I teach love: love is my message. But the way to teach it is not by talking about it. I exist here as love, and that becomes a catalytic agent and something is triggered in you and some- thing starts growing in you: you become pregnant.

And when a woman for the first time becomes pregnant she is very afraid, and she feels many pains and many agonies and the weight. And something so totally new is happening... she does not know where she is going and what is going to happen. A new life is being born.

In love you become pregnant. A new spirit is being born, and in the beginning it is heavy. And in the beginning it is so new that you would like to escape from it. But never escape love, because love is the temple of God. When it happens, let it happen - help it to happen. Even if you have to die and disappear into it, die and disappear. Accept the challenge, rise to the challenge. And for the first time you will have something valuable in your life, something of the divine fragrance.

But I cannot answer why you have fallen in love. I am in love with existence, I am in the state of love.

It must have created some parallel phenomenon in you. It must be something not like cause and effect, but what Carl Gustav Jung has called "the law of synchronicity".

It is said that if in a small room you play on one sitar and another sitar is just put in the corner of the room, when you start playing on one sitar the other sitar will start responding. It will vibrate, its strings will start dancing. You are playing on one sitar, the other is not even touched, but your playing on the sitar... and something has moved in the other sitar. It is not a cause and effect relationship, it is synchronicity.

I am love: if you come close to me, something will start dancing in your heart. Allow it. Your society is against it, your education is against it, your very life up to now has been against it. It will be difficult to take the first steps - but those steps HAVE to be taken, otherwise you will miss the glory of existence, the splendour of existence.

Splendours are revealed only to lovers. A real disciple is in love.

Rather than asking why, Obenfeld, take a jump. Be coloured in my colour, become part of this growing commune, become part of this tidal wave, and it will be very easy for you to reach God.

Alone, it is difficult. When many are moving, it becomes easy - they support each other.

Sannyas is nothing but an effort to create a mystery school where people can Support each other on the way. The journey is arduous and long, and the goal is far away and there are a thousand and one hazards on the way and pitfalls, and one can go astray any moment. And the higher you move, the more difficult it becomes. Even breathing becomes difficult. And the higher you move, the greater is the danger of falling.

But if many are moving they can hold each other, they can support each other.

You have fallen in love with me: rather than asking why, go deeper into it. Know its depths - they will not answer your question but they will dissolve your question. That experience will not become knowledge, but that experience will make you more innocent.

Real experiences always make you more innocent rather than making you more knowledgeable.

Problems are not solved here but dissolved.

The second question

Question 2:

Anurag,

BECAUSE OF THIS THEOREM, and only because of this theorem, Pythagoras has been misunderstood down the ages. In the West, people have completely forgotten that he was a Buddha. They think of him only as a great mathematician. In the history books he is mentioned as a mathematician. In the schools and the colleges and universities he is remembered only because of this theorem.

This theorem proved very fatal. If he had not discovered it, it would have been far better - he would have been known as a mystic. And as far as the theorem is concerned, somebody else would have found it. These things cannot wait for long. It is said that any scientific discovery is BOUND to happen - it may take a few years more or less.

Even Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, such a complex phenomenon - now it is known perfectly well that if Einstein had not discovered it, then too within two or three years somebody else would have discovered it. Why? Because science is more or less a collective phenomenon.

Religion is individual, science is social. Religion has no tradition, science is a tradition. If Edison has happened then something else which will take Edison's discoveries further is bound to happen.

If Newton has arrived then Einstein is a must. It is the world of cause and effect... one thing leads to another.

But in the world of religion there is no tradition possible. If Buddha had not happened, there was no necessity that somebody else would have discovered what he discovered. If Jesus had not happened, there was no necessity that somebody would come upon the same door as Jesus came upon. It is individual, utterly individual - that is the beauty of religion. It is not a social effort.

Science can go on and on; it depends on the past. Religion does not depend on the past. Without Newton there would have been no Einstein; Newton has to be there as a necessary link. But without Krishna, Buddha would have been there - there is no necessary link. I could have been here without Buddha ever having been there in the past - there is no necessary link.

Religion is going inwards to your own core. Science is going outwards to see the laws of nature; they are available to everybody, so it is only a question of sooner or later. Every scientific discovery is bound to happen.

But Pythagoras got lost because of this theorem - he became too much identified with it, he became known as a mathematician. And his reality was not that of a mathematician; it was just a hobby.

Mathematics was just a hobby for him, just as playing on the flute was a hobby for Krishna. It is good that people have not forgotten that he was a mystic; it is good that people don't remember him only as a flute-player.

But that is what happened to Pythagoras. It happened be cause of the West. The Western mind pays more attention to anything that can be used in the outside world. His theorem was meaningful; without his theorem something very essential would have been missing in the world of geometry.

He fulfilled the need.

In the West it is thought that basically he was a mathematician, and mysticism was just his eccentricity. Just the reverse is the case: mysticism was his soul, mathematics was just his hobby.

And there is no mystic significance in it.

Moreover, I don't understand much about geometry. All that I have understood from the Pythagorean theorem is this:

Once there was a very rich Indian chief who had three wives. By some strange coincidence, they all became pregnant at the same time. So when the time came for them to bear the fruits of his labour, he decided that something a little novel was in order.

He placed the first wife in one tepee on an imported lion skin, the second in another tepee on an imported tiger skin, and the third in another tepee on a hippopotamus skin.

Now the first wife gave birth to a little baby boy. "Wonderful! He will grow to be a great warrior." The second gave birth to a little baby girl. "Terrific! Another squaw and earth-mother for the tribe." The third gave birth to twins. This only goes to prove that the squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two hides.

More than that I don't know about Pythagorean geometry, the theorem.

The third question

Question 3:

Madhumati,

IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN there were two trees - special trees. One was known as the tree of knowledge, and God had forbidden Adam and Eve this tree - the tree of knowledge. The fruit of it was not to be eaten.

There was another special tree; it was the tree of life. That too God had told Adam and Eve not to eat from. But they never bothered about the tree of life; they became interested in the tree of knowledge.

This parable is beautiful - remember, this is only a parable, of great significance. It has nothing to do with God, Adam and Eve. It has something to do with YOU.

We ARE in the Garden of Eden and there are two trees: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge.

And everybody is interested in the tree of knowledge; it is very rarely that a person becomes interested in the tree of life. Whenever a person becomes interested in the tree of life he becomes a Buddha, a Jesus a Mahavira, a Mohammed. But very few people ever become interested in the tree of life.

For example, the first question - Larry Obenfeld asked, "I have fallen in love with you. Why? " This is moving towards the tree of knowledge. 'Why' is the way. He cannot stop with love; the 'why' has to be asked. If you stop with love you will eat from the tree of life - because love is life. If you ask why, you have moved away from the tree of life towards the tree of knowledge.

And even if you come to know why, it is all futile - it is not going to nourish you. You can know as much as there is; a single human brain can contain all the libraries of the world - that is the capacity of a single human brain - but still you will not have known anything really. You will not have lived.

The parable is a symbolic expression: it is our story. When you see a roseflower, rather than going close to it and touching it and smelling it and dancing around it and being with it in deep prayer, love, meditation - you ask questions: "From where does it come? What kind of rose is this?" You start comparing it with other roses that you have seen in the past - bigger, smaller, more beautiful, less beautiful. Immediately, the moment you see the rose, you start moving towards the tree of knowledge. You don't live the experience. You don't dance the rose, you don't feel the rose.

In Zen they say that if you want to paint bamboos, then go and first become a bamboo.

Once a Zen Master sent his disciple - he was a great painter, the disciple was also a great painter - and he told him to go to the forest and be with the bamboos and become a bamboo. "And when you have become a bamboo then come and paint, because before becoming a bamboo, whatsoever you paint is going to be basically wrong - because you don't know the bamboo from the inside."

That is the difference between a painting and a photograph. The photograph shows only the circumference, the bamboo from the outside. And if the painter also shows the bamboo from the outside, then what is the need of the painter? The camera can do far better, more efficiently, faster and more quickly.

But the camera will never be able to replace the painter, because one thing the camera can never do: it cannot become the bamboo. The painter can become the bamboo.

The disciple went to the forest. For three years nothing was heard about him. Then the Master became worried: "It is too long." And the Master was getting old, so he sent a few people to search for him: "Where is he?" And he told the people, "Look wherever you find bamboos - look. He will be found somewhere as a bamboo."

And he was found as a bamboo - he was standing amongst many bamboos. It was a beautiful morning, it was windy and the bamboos were swaying and he was swaying with the bamboos. The people who had gone to look for him were mystified. They could see that he was no more a man; he had completely forgotten himself. He was a bamboo - he was drinking the sun as a bamboo drinks.

He was standing in the mud, his feet were almost like roots, and he was swaying.

They had to pull him up, they had to take him out, they had to force him to come to the Master. The Master had a look at him and he said, "Absolutely right. Now you paint - now you will be painting real bamboos. You have not only seen bamboos from the outside, now you have known them from the inside too. And that is real knowing: that is live knowing."

Adam and Eve became interested in the tree of knowledge, just as we all become interested in the tree of knowledge. Look at small children - they immediately ask questions: "Why? Why is it so?"

Adam and Eve again, moving towards the tree of knowledge.

You can go on eating from the tree of knowledge, but it is not going to nourish you and it is not going to fulfill you. You will be full of rubbish - because knowledge is information, it is not experience. And only experience liberates. In fact only experience makes you a knower.

To be knowledgeable is one thing, to be a knower totally another. The modern philosopher is knowledgeable; he eats from the tree of knowledge. The Pythagorean philosopher, Pythagoras' concept of the philosopher, is that of a seer, a knower. He meditates, and slowly slowly drowns himself into existence. He becomes part of the whole, he becomes one with the whole, and then there is a knowing of a totally different kind, qualitatively different.

You ask me, Madhumati: IT IS WRITTEN THAT THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE WAS PART OF CREATION, AND ADAM AND EVE WERE FORBIDDEN TO EAT ITS FRUITS.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ONE MAN BECOMES ENLIGHTENED?

If you eat from the tree of knowledge you will never become enlightened. You will collect much information, maybe even about enlightenment and about enlightened people of the past, but this will not be your own understanding; it will not arise out of you. It will not be your own awakening.

But if you eat from the tree of life, if you experience life and love and joy and sadness - the bitterness and the sweetness, all - if you experience life in its totality, in its heights and its depths, the valleys and the peaks, the dark nights and the sunlit days, agonies and ecstasies... if you experience life in its totality, you will become enlightened. It is only life lived totally that brings enlightenment.

And when you become enlightened, you become a tree of knowledge yourself. But nobody becomes the tree of knowledge by eating the fruit of the tree. One becomes the tree of knowledge by eating the fruit of the tree of life.

Buddha spoke for forty-two years. The day he became enlightened, he became himself the tree of knowledge. Now if you come to a Buddha, don't go on eating the fruits that are available. Each enlightened person is a tree of knowledge - rather than eating the fruits, which are sweet and delicious, try to live Buddhahood. Rather than collecting information from the Buddha, imbibe his spirit.

Many times people come here, and whatsoever I say, they start taking notes - particularly Indians.

One doctor used to come, and he would be continuously scribbling and scribbling. I called him, I asked him, "What are you doing? " He said, "Whatsoever you say is so beautiful that I have to write it just in case I forget."

Now this man is eating fruits, collecting information. He is completely missing me! He is not even attentive to what I am saying - he is more interested in writing it, memorizing it. He will not even understand what is being said, because to understand it you have to be totally attentive, you have to be in tune with me.

This is not a question of verbal communication: it is a question of non-verbal communion. And then you imbibe the spirit. That's why I say again and again that a real disciple is a cannibal - he eats the Master, drinks the Master, he becomes drunk. He goes on receiving the energy.

The transfer has not to be of knowledge but of energy. The transfer has to be of light. It is beyond scriptures. What I say, if you remain only with that, you have collected many beautiful fruits - but you are doing what Adam and Eve did.

And who is this serpent? It represents your mind. Your mind is curious, your mind is continuously hankering for more information. Your mind is the snake. Your mind persuades you, seduces you and tells you, "Eat as much as you can of the tree of knowledge - because the more you know, the more godlike you will become."

But to become godlike is one thing, to become God is totally another. When you can become gods, why become godlike? That is a very poor substitute. When you can become a seer, a knower, why become knowledgeable? When you can become a Buddha in your own right, why be settled with anything lower than that? Why be satisfied with anything lower than that? Taste it yourself! And then the same tree that is the tree of knowledge can become the tree of life.

Buddha has said: "Buddhas only point the way - you have to walk."

Zen people say: "fingers pointing to the moon." Don't become too much interested in the fingers; forget the fingers and look at the moon. The man of understanding will look at the moon and will forget the finger. And the man who is not alert, aware, conscious, will start chewing the finger and will forget all about the moon.

That's how a pundit is born - a knowledgeable person, a scholar. Scholars are the most stupid people on the earth. Of course their stupidity is very scholarly; it is decorated with great knowledge.

They can quote the Koran and the Bible and the Gita - they know all that has been known, and they know nothing at the same time. Deep down they are just empty, hollow.

If you become too much interested in knowledge you will remain empty and hollow and poor.

Become interested in life! - living is the real thing. Don't go on collecting information about what meditation is: meditate! Don't go on collecting information about what dancing is - there are encyclopaedias on dance, but the whole encyclopaedia is utterly meaningless if you don't dance yourself. And if you carry those encyclopaedias they are a great burden. Even if it is the encyclopaedia on dance, if you carry it the very weight of it will not allow you to dance, will be a hindrance.

Throw all those encyclopaedias! And people have become walking encyclopaedias. Unburden yourself from knowledge and start living. And when you start living, then ordinary things are transformed into extraordinary beauty. Just small things - life consists of small things - but when you bring the quality of intense, passionate love they are transformed, they become luminous.

The man who becomes enlightened becomes himself the tree of knowledge. Beware of the Buddhas. That's why Buddha says: "If you meet me on the way, kill me!" Beware of the Buddhas.

The last thing that Zarathustra said to his disciples was: "Beware of me!" He was leaving for the mountains, to disappear and die in the mountains; in the silence, in the eternal virginity of the mountains he was going to die. He had lived beautifully, a long life. Now he wanted to have a beautiful death in the valleys surrounded by the mountains, with the sound of running water and birds and flowers and the fragrance.

The disciples asked, "Your last message, Master?"

And he said, "Beware of me."

That has been always the last message of all great Masters. When Buddha was leaving his body, Ananda, his chief disciple, asked, "Bhagwan, what is your last message?"

He opened his eyes and said, "Be a light unto yourself. Forget all about me: be a light unto yourself."

Live, dance, love, be. And if you have to learn anything from a Buddha, from anyone who has become awakened, learn this: forget the fingers and look at the moon. The moon is life, the fingers are just knowledge.

The fourth question

Question 4:

Carol Baker,

WE WILL HAVE TO GO DEEP INTO THIS PROBLEM. You have become incapable of willing; you have forgotten how to will on your own. And this happens to almost everybody in this world. From your very childhood, parents start deciding for you - they don't allow you to decide. They don't allow you to will on your own: they will for you, they think for you, they decide for you.

And I can understand. The child is helpless - it is bound to be so, the parents have to decide for him. Otherwise the child will not survive. It is the obligation of the parents to think, will and decide for the child. But there is another obligation also, which all the parents down the ages have remained oblivious of - and the other is far more important.

When the child has become capable of deciding, willing, thinking, they should relax with him. They should allow him to decide on his own - they should help, in fact they should support, provoke, they should tempt the child, to think on his own.

But no parents do it. They enjoy the idea that the child is still dependent on them, they enjoy the idea that the child is obedient. They enjoy the idea that the child always looks up to them - it is very ego-fulfilling. They fulfill the first duty, which is necessary - but they never fulfill the second necessity, which is far more important.

If the parents really love the child they will be very alert. The moment they see that the child can decide about something on his own, they will leave the child alone. They will not enforce anything upon him.

But this does not happen. This society is very ill - and the reason for its illness is because nobody is ever allowed to will and think on his own. So everybody is looking for somebody to be ordered by.

"For three months," you say, Baker, "I have been thinking and thinking about taking sannyas." For three months? You can go on thinking for three years and three lives - but you have forgotten how to think, and you don't know how to take a step into the unknown. You have not been supported in your childhood to will, to experiment.

Even if sometimes the experiment takes you into errors and mistakes, then too it is worth it - because one learns only through errors. There is no other way of learning, there is no safer way of learning.

Learning comes only through this dangerous path: you have to try and experiment. Remembering always, whatsoever you are doing may be wrong - there is no guarantee.

How can the new' be guaranteed? And your parents are not here, and your teachers are not here, and your priests are not here, and your so-called leaders are not here. You are left alone here, in a very new situation, and you don't know what to do. You have never tackled, it seems, any problem on your own.

This is what Thomas Hanna has called "the state of a humanoid". Very rarely will you find a human being in the world. The people who are known as human beings are humanoids. A humanoid is a person who has never been allowed to will on his own and has become crippled, paralysed, and is always in search of somebody to command him.

The humanoid is a person who is always seeking some tyrant - who needs a tyrant to say what to do and what not to do, who is always seeking a leader, who is always seeking a state of slavery where he can throw his responsibility of thinking. Thinking is a burden to a humanoid; it is not a joy, he is not exhilarated by it. He feels anxious. He cannot take any decision, he is afraid he may go wrong.

A humanoid is a person who has not really become a grownup. And that's what the whole world is full of: humanoids. Nobody is really a grown-up person; everybody is seeking a father figure.

Stand on your own feet. And I am not saying take sannyas or don't take sannyas. Who am I to say?

Stand on your own feet: meditate over it. And there is nobody else to order you. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders. That's what being grown-up means: "I take the responsibility.

I go into this experience, knowing fully that I may be moving in a wrong direction or I may be moving in a right direction - who knows?" It is always a perhaps.

And the humanoid is very much afraid of the perhaps. He needs guarantees; he is always looking for somebody to say it is so. And then he can go to foolish extremes - he can consult tarot cards to decide what to do and what not to do. He can go to Sona, or he can go to an astrologer or a palmist.

But he wants somebody else to decide for him. He wants to throw the responsibility on somebody else - if something goes wrong he can always say, "What can I do? That tarot reader was wrong.

What can I do? That palmist was stupid."

You want somebody else to take responsibility for your life. Then how are you going to grow? And how will you become a freedom? You will remain encaged.

Drop this state of being a humanoid. And the only way to drop it is to start willing on your own, deciding on your own. And whenever you make some mistake, take the responsibility. And there is nothing wrong in making a mistake. It is only by committing mistakes that one knows what is right.

By knowing the false, one knows what the true is. By falling again and again one knows how not to fall. By going astray again and again one comes to recognize how not to go astray again. There is no other way.

But you have been brought up with a wrong conditioning - and everybody has been brought up in that way. Your parents, your teachers, your leaders, your priests, are humanoids - because their parents, their teachers and their priests were humanoids, and so on and so forth... you can go back.

And every humanoid turns other people into humanoids.

When a child is born to you, you will make the same mistake that your parents have made with you.

You will not allow the child to function on his own. Otherwise, you will be surprised - children are so intelligent. Yes, they need your guidance and they need your help - they are helpless, but they are utterly intelligent too. So the parent has to be very very alert how far to help and when to stop helping. It is good to hold your child's hand when he is learning to walk, but don't go on holding his hand for his whole life.

And this is what is happening psychologically. Even if your parents are gone, you are still walking with your hands in their hands; you are still leaning, clinging to them. And if you cannot find your father you immediately go to the priest. It is not accidental that you call the priest 'father'. He is not a father at all, particularly the Catholic priest - it is so stupid and foolish to call him a father. What kind of father is he? He is a celibate monk! How can he be a father? But you call him a father.

You call God also 'father'. And where is the mother? In your whole trinity not a single woman: God the father, Christ the son, and the Holy Ghost... unless the Holy Ghost is a woman. Or maybe the whole trinity is just gay.

Why do you call God 'the father'? A search, a deep psychological search, to have a father who is always there protecting you, safeguarding you, guiding you, sending commandments: do this, don't do that. You can rely on him - and the more you rely on him, the less you are.

And the tendency has become so deep-rooted, you have become so habituated to it that you are not even aware of what you are doing. This bondage has to be dropped. And that's what sannyas is all about! It is not a new prison. I am not here to function as your father.

Do you remember one very strange statement of Jesus? Christians don't pay much attention to it - in fact they feel embarrassed. Jesus said to his disciples, "Unless you hate your father and your mother, you cannot follow me." Does not look like a Jesus statement - a man of love, of tremendous love, who says, "God is love," who teaches love, is saying, "Hate your father and your mother - only then can you follow me."

If you show it to a Christian priest, he feels embarrassed. I have done it many times, and they feel very embarrassed and they want to get out of it somehow. But you cannot get out of it: it is there.

But it is a tremendously significant statement.

Jesus does not mean your actual father or your actual mother, but the psychological search for the father and the mother. The psychological search to depend on something or somebody - that has to be dropped. You have to start hating this dependence, you have to start hating this slavery.

But if somebody helps you to drop this slavery you will fight with him - because you think this slavery is something very valuable.

You fought with Jesus, you fought with Socrates, you are fighting with me. And the only thing that is disturbing you is that I am trying to take all the chains off you. But you don't think those chains are chains - you think they are great ornaments, golden, very valuable, that if they are taken you will be naked, you will be poorer. This is the state of a humanoid. And each humanoid has to become a human being.

Each child is born as a human being but the society cripples him and creates a very artificial being:

the humanoid. And all the societies do it - Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Jainas - all the societies do it. The whole history of humanity up to now has been a history of great slavery.

Only once in a while has a man escaped out of the wheel of slavery - a Buddha, a Krishna, a Bahauddin, a Pythagoras, a Zarathustra - but only once in a while. It is really surprising how these people managed to escape - and became real, authentic human beings, because the wheel is big and the structure is immense and very complicated. And the society takes the grip of you so greatly, and from every nook and corner of your being, and from such an early age, that its slavery penetrates, permeates your very unconscious.

You are not aware of what the society has done to you. Your society has made you very ill at ease, it has made you very miserable. That's why you like these things - when somebody says life is suffering, you immediately agree. Not because life is suffering, not because this statement that life is suffering has any logical support to it - no logical support is there. But why do people immediately agree? Because their experience supports it. They know only misery, they know suffering - they immediately agree. "Yes," they say, "life is a misery. How to get rid of it?"

I declare to you: Life is bliss! You need not get rid of life - you have to get rid of the way that you have learnt to be. You have to get rid of your humanoidness, you have to get rid of all that has been imposed upon your nature and is foreign to you. You have to become an authentic human being.

Becoming a sannyasin is a simple gesture that you are ready to become free. Free from nationality:

the sannyasin will not think of himself as an Indian or a German or an Italian. Even if he has to carry a passport, he will not think deep down in his consciousness that he is an Italian. He is simply universal.

A sannyasin will not think of himself as a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan - although there is no need to go on telling people about it, because I don't want you to create unnecessary troubles for yourselves. As it is, you have enough troubles. But deep down you will know, "I am now just a human being." You will transcend all barriers of nation, race, colour, religion.

And basically, fundamentally, you will drop your upbringing, and you will become innocent again and you will start exploring life.

Now what is the fear? For three months you have been thinking - three months wasted unnecessarily. If you had become a sannyasin, in three months you would have experienced what it is! You are eating from the tree of knowledge - you could have eaten from the tree of life.

Let experience be the decisive factor, always and always. Carol Baker, you have done enough thinking. And I don't think anything else is left to think about. Three months is a long time, and you must have gone round and round, about and about. What else is there to think now? Experience! I invite you to experience. Participate! Don't see things from the outside.

If to paint a bamboo one has to become a bamboo, then to know about sannyas one has to become a sannyasin.

The fifth question

Question 5:

Deva Madir,

YOU HAVE NOT LISTENED TO ME ATTENTIVELY To be oneself, to be totally yourself, needs no know-how. You are it already! It is not a question of knowing the means and the ways and the methods. It is not a question of becoming - being is already the case!

But your mind has become so habituated to desiring, becoming, goals, future, that when I say, "Be yourself," you immediately transform it in your mind into something else. You start asking, "How to be oneself?"

I am not saying that you have to BECOME yourself: you are ALREADY it! It is not a question of 'how'. Don't ask how to become because that will lead you astray from yourself. Drop all becoming, let becoming cease. Live the moment as you are: live it as you are. Don't judge, don't evaluate. Just live the moment AS YOU ARE. If you are sad, then live the moment as sadness. And don't say that sadness is bad. The moment you say sadness is bad, you have created a contradiction. Now you are again trying NOT to be sad.

Don't condemn any state that happens to you. Live it - in such total acceptance that there is no desire to be somebody else, something else. And out of that acceptance, GREAT understanding arises - it is a by-product. In that understanding, many things simply disappear - not that you have to make them disappear.

Sadness WILL disappear, anger WILL disappear, greed WILL disappear - but it is not that you have to make them disappear. It is just by accepting yourself as you are that understanding arises - a by-product of acceptance. And in understanding. in the light of understanding, many things simply disappear. And many things that you had never known before start appearing.

Joy appears. And it is the same energy that used to become sadness. But because now, through understanding, sadness cannot happen, the energy is available to become joy; it can move to a higher realm. The same energy that was anger becomes compassion. And the same energy that was greed and lust and possessiveness and jealousy now becomes love and sharing.

But these things HAPPEN. You are not to DO them - if you do them you have not understood me at all.

I have to use words, the same words that you use. But I have to use them with new meanings. And listen to the meaning very carefully, and listen to the new association. Otherwise I will say one thing, you will understand another thing.

A girl rushed into a police station, her clothes torn and dishevelled. "Help me, help me! " she said.

"I have been graped!"

"Graped?" said the police officer. "Surely you mean raped?"

"No, graped - there was a whole bunch of them."

Either I have to use words like 'graped'... but then you will not understand. I have to use words that you have been using but you have been using with a particular meaning. I have to change the meaning. I have to give new colour to old words. I have to go on giving them new shape, new significance.

Please, when I use words remember with what significance I am using them. The significance is more important; the word is only a carrier - the carrier of a new significance. That's why you have to listen VERY attentively. Otherwise it is not very difficult: you can listen to my words, attention is not needed - but that is not listening, that is only hearing. You can hear me very easily, but to listen you will have to be very alert, aware, attentive. You will have to be TOTALLY with me.

I am not saying, "Become yourself." I am saying, "Drop becoming, and you ARE yourself." What else can you be?

Madir, you say: CAN YOU PLEASE SPEAK UPON WHAT IT MEANS AND HOW TO BE TOTALLY YOURSELF?

You ARE totally yourself, you just don't accept it. You go on rejecting. Drop rejections - because whenever you reject anything that rejected part in you becomes sour, bitter, becomes a wound. And those wounds are the problem - those are rejected parts of your being. You have denied them expression; they are boiling to express themselves. And they go on accumulating inside you and they are driving you mad.

You go on keeping a face on the surface - deep down you are mad. Allow them, they are also part of you, an essential part of you. That allowing is of tremendous importance.

That's why, in this commune, I have arranged for many psychotherapies. They will be misunderstood by the masses, BOUND to be misunderstood - because in a psychotherapeutic situation you have to bring all the denied parts to the surface.

If somebody has been denying his anger, it has to be allowed in a psychotherapeutic situation. Only then can psychotherapy be of any help - can it be therapeutic, can it heal you. It has to open all your wounds: much pus starts flowing.

If you watch the encounter group you will feel sick. You will feel sick because you will see such animality coming out; you could never have imagined that human beings can be such animals. But that animality is within you too, just repressed. By repression you cannot dissolve it.

In the encounter group - that is the meaning of the word 'encounter' - you have to encounter yourself in your totality. You have to bring out all that is repressed; you have to bring out all - without any evaluation about what is good, what is bad. And suddenly you see great animals roaring inside you.

They are violent, and you have been taught to be non-violent. Your non-violence has repressed your violence.

Great rage, for NO reason at all, will arise. You will start beating the wall; you may start beating yourself. And you will say, "What am I doing? I have never done it before. From where is it coming?"

But it is coming in great surges, in great waves. And the whole process is to let it be.

And when all the parts have been expressed - your sex, your anger, your greed, your jealousy, your rage - when all parts have been expressed, a great calmness arises, the silence that follows the storm.

This cannot be understood by the masses. In fact they are very much on their guard. They don't want to understand either - because to understand means they will have to look within, and they will find the same things inside themselves.

But if you go on keeping these things inside yourself, you will remain always in a kind of disease.

This is what your society has given to you - your society has made you a very ill person. This whole society is pathological. And whenever a pathology is social you never become aware of it, because everybody else is suffering from the same thing.

To be total means: think of yourself as if you are the first man - you are Adam or you are Eve - and you have not yet met any priest and you have not yet met any puritan. You have not yet met any Morarji Desai. Nobody has told you how to be, what to be. Think of yourself as the first man or the first woman, and accept - because there is no other way of transcendence than acceptance.

Buddha called it 'suchness' - TATHATA. Accept it: if God has given you these things, there must be a meaning in them. They must be seeds of some unknown flowers - they have to be used. In the soil of acceptance those seeds fall, disappear, and great trees of understanding arise, and millions of flowers of ecstasy, of joy, of celebration.

You say, Madir: MY MIND IS fiGURING OUT EXAMPLES AND SITUATIONS, BUT I DON'T KNOW.

What examples? What situations? If your mind is figuring out from the very beginning, that means you are planning how to be. And any planning is against acceptance.

You are not to plan, you are not to figure it out. You have just to uncover yourself. You have to face yourself in your nudity.

We have become so much afraid of nudity. Spiritual nudity, physical nudity, psychological nudity - we have become so much afraid of nudity that we are hiding. Physical nudity through clothes, psychological nudity through words, theories, scriptures, and spiritual nudity through ideals, great ideals - God, nirvana, enlightenment. And we go on hiding and hiding and hiding....

Come out of your hiding-places, come out of these caves. Come into the open sun, in the wind, in the rain. You are beautiful as you are. You are perfect as you are. God never makes imperfect beings - he cannot. Out of perfection, only perfection is born.

This is what I teach to you: total acceptance.

The last question

Question 6:

Prem Aniruddha,

OBSESSION SIMPLY MEANS you are paying too much attention and energy to something which is not that important. Out of all proportion you have become focussed, hypnotized by something.

Obsession is a kind of hypnosis that you have created within yourself. Then everything else disappears in your life and only one thing remains that becomes your focal point. Your life becomes one-dimensional: that is obsession.

Life has to be multi-dimensional. There are people who are thinking only of sex, only of sex - twenty- four hours a day. Deep down in their minds it is always lurking. They may be doing something else, but they are thinking of sex. Then it is an obsession. Sex itself is not an obsession, remember - I am not against sex. I am not against anything. Obsession means now sex has taken the place of everything.

There are people who are obsessed with food; they are continuously thinking of food. And there can be a positive obsession or a negative obsession.

You must have heard about the great emperor, Nero. He was positively obsessed with food. He used to have four physicians always by his side - just to help him vomit. He would eat, and he would eat too much, and he would feel great discomfort and stomachache. The physicians were there to help him vomit - and once they had helped him vomit he would eat again, IMMEDIATELY. He would eat sometimes twenty times a day; and obviously, twenty times he would have to vomit.

Now, this is obsession. Food is not an obsession - twice or thrice it is okay, as is your need. It is a physical need, you need nourishment, but to become a Nero is pathological.

Then there are people negatively obsessed with food. You can find them in India - they fast. They are continuously thinking of food, as if food is the only barrier to God and fasting is enough to take them to the ultimate. They are masochists torturing themselves. That is a negative obsession.

And when you are fasting you are thinking of food, as much as Nero was thinking of food - Nero may not have been thinking so much. There was no time to think: if you eat twenty times, when will you think? But the person who is on a fast has twenty-four hours available. And when you fast you cannot sleep, because the body is hungry.

Sleep is a need when the body is fully nourished. You cannot sleep when you are on a fast - one or two hours at the most. So twenty-two hours you are thinking, and those two hours you will be dreaming about food. This is a negative obsession.

There are people positively obsessed with sex, who only think of sex and nothing else. In everything they think of sex. And there are negatively obsessed people: these people you call celibates, monks, brahmacharins, they are continuously thinking of sex too - in a negative way.

Obsession means anything becoming your whole life. Nothing is to become your whole life - everything has its own place, life should be an orchestra. It should not be only food, should not be only sex, should not be only money, should not be only power. It should not be any ONE thing, it should be many things, the whole variety. All the dimensions should remain available, then you will be rich.

A passionate millionaire has fallen in love and broken women's hearts countless times. He begins each letter to his new sweethearts: "My darling, and gentlemen of the jury..." because marriage means divorce.

This is obsession.

There was once a lady from Spain who liked a bit now and again.

Not now and again, but now and again, and again and again and again.

Obsession means your life is hypnotized by one thing, you have lost all sense of proportion. Then your life will be ugly, stupid.

Herman loved food, food was his beloved. Food was his religion, food was his God. He would have agreed absolutely with the Indian seers who declared, "ANAM BRAHM - food is God." Of course. in a totally different sense.

Fearing a future world famine - and he was always afraid of a world famine - Herman hoarded a ten-year supply of canned food.

"Herman," complained his wife, "what are we going to do? The garage and the house are stacked to the ceiling with canned goods."

"Don't worry," answered Herman. "I know what I am doing."

"Herman," wailed his wife, "don't you get tired of moving these cases of cans each time we go to bed? Our bedroom is like a warehouse!"

"Don't worry," Herman assured her. "We will never go hungry."

But one night Herman had such terrible stomach cramps a doctor had to be summoned. Carrying his kit through a maze of cases, the doctor somehow found the moaning patient.

"Doctor," cried Herman, "is it possible that eating so much canned food has affected my stomach?"

The doctor examined Herman. "No, it is not the food you ate," diagnosed the doctor. "It is the food you lifted. You have a hernia."

And you will find these people everywhere. There are people who think only of money - as if their whole life has only one goal: to leave in the world as big a bank balance as possible. There are people who only want some political power. Their whole life is devoted to only one thing: how to become the president of a country, or the prime minister of a country. These are obsessed people.

They have missed their whole lives, they cannot enjoy anything. They are not herenow, they are always focussed on their single idea.

And anything can become an obsession. Cleanliness can become an obsession. I used to live in a house, a friend's house - his wife was just neurotic about cleanliness, a perfectionist. Now, cleanliness is not bad - this is the trouble, that these neurotic people can rationalize. Cleanliness is not bad but one is not here only to be clean.

She was so mad that the whole day she was scrubbing floors and cleaning walls and the furniture.

Her house was worth seeing - but only worth seeing, not to be used at all. She would not invite any guest, because if their children came then there would be trouble. Even her husband would not use the furniture, because if something was scratched then there would be trouble.

Now cleanliness is one thing, good, but cleanliness is not all.