Each moment is the goal

Question 1:

Maneesha, Badarayana's statement, "athato brahma jigyasa" is one of the most potential statements ever made. It means, "Now begins the inquiry into the ultimate." It is the first statement in his BRAHMASUTRA: MAXIMS ABOUT THE ULTIMATE, one of the greatest mystic books in the world.

This is the first sentence of that strange book, but one of the most significant books that has ever been written.

I call it strange because Badarayana is not much known in the world, although in India he is the only mystic on whose maxims thousands of commentaries have been written. Each of his statements is so pregnant with meaning that you can go on commenting on it in a thousand and one ways. Still it seems something inexhaustible has remained behind. This is the only book which has commentaries, then commentaries on commentaries, then again commentaries on those commentaries.

For almost two thousand years all the great geniuses of this great country have been in some way or other connected with Badarayana. And still his name is not known in the world. Perhaps the reason is that nothing is known about him except the book. About his personal life absolutely nothing is known. Whether he was a historical person or not is very difficult to say. But one thing is certain, whoever wrote the book, whatever his name was, was certainly one of the greatest mystics of the world. So what is the problem calling him Badarayana?

The book is historical; it has existed for two thousand years and is one of the books - the only one - which has been spread through so many commentaries, in so many complexities, that almost every philosopher in India became involved in some way or other. There is no other book in the world which has been commented upon so much. It can mean only one thing: that his statements are almost mines of meaning. You can go on digging and you will go on finding more and more, fresher sources of water, fresher sources of meaning and significance.

Maneesha, sachchidanand is not equivalent to athato brahma jigyasa. Athato brahma jigyasa - "Now begins the inquiry into the ultimate" - is the first step and sachchidanand is the last step. What begins as an inquiry ... sachchidanand is not an inquiry, it is the ultimate result of the inquiry. You have come to the conclusion. The statement of Badarayana is the beginning and sachchidanand is the end. They are not synonymous, although they are connected deeply with each other. Without the inquiry there is no possibility of realizing the conclusion. Hence Badarayana comes first.

And this small statement has to be understood, because this is for every beginner. And as far as the ultimate is concerned one is always a beginner. One is always coming close to it, closer and closer and closer, but something always remains inviting you, calling you forth, challenging you, a higher peak. You were thinking you have arrived but still there is something left. And this pilgrimage continues.

I have started saying that there is no goal, only the pilgrimage. In other words, the pilgrimage in itself is so divine, so holy, that to be bothered and to be anxious about the end of it can only mean one thing: that you are not interested in the journey, you are interested in the end of the journey.

You are not enjoying each moment of your pilgrimage. You are looking forward, ahead, for the time when you will have reached and then you will celebrate. And that is a wrong approach from the very beginning.

Each moment is the journey and each moment is the goal.

You have to live as if you have already arrived, although you will never be in a moment when you can say, "I have arrived." You can only say, "I am coming home. I can see the home coming closer and closer." But it is good that you never come. Once you have come, you come to a full stop, and life knows no full stops. Yes, colons, semicolons, commas, everything is allowed - but a full stop absolutely no, a hundred times no, because a full stop will mean that life has come to an end, life has come to the grave.

Life never comes to an end.

It never terminates in death.

It is an ongoing process.

Hence, Badarayana's statement has to be understood very lovingly and very deeply. Each word of it is pure gold.

First, it has been commented upon by different commentators, giving different colors to it. You are not accustomed to it because in the West the very phenomenon of commentaries has not happened.

Nobody comments on Kant, nobody comments on Hegel, nobody comments even on Socrates, nobody comments on the BIBLE. The very phenomenon of commentaries is absolutely Eastern.

And the reason is, that the great philosophers of the West came into existence when writing had arrived, when it was not any more a question of memorizing - you could write a treatise.

And when philosophers like Kant or Hegel or Feuerbach write, they write with all possible implications, complexities, meanings. They also write keeping in mind that if somebody is going to contradict them, what their points are. They are also keeping in mind what the arguments of the opposite philosophy can be, and they are already replying to them - although nobody has opposed them, nobody has even understood what they are writing about. So their writings are very complete in a way, full and entire. They have not left anything for anybody else to add.

In the East commentaries started for a certain historical reason. It is at least ten thousand years old - that is the very orthodox view about the history of philosophical development in the East. There are people who think it is far more ancient than ten thousand years. And because there was no writing - writing was not yet invented - every Master had to speak in small maxims, not elaborate treatises, but in small sutras. The word sutra means 'the thread'.

They are giving you the very minimum to remember, because to remember a vast amount of a great philosophical treatise will not be possible. And there is a danger of forgetting something, there is a danger of adding something of your own. So the way of the sutras was the only possibility - to write in such a condensed way that every disciple of any master can remember the small, seed-like maxims.

But they are only seeds. They indicate the way, they indicate a certain direction. Unless your heart becomes a soil for those seeds, they will not sprout into leaves, into branches, into flowers, into fruits. Those seeds contain everything that is going to happen, they have the whole inbuilt program.

If you allow that seed to enter into your being, as it sinks deeper and deeper, you will realize all that is contained in it. It will become a reality in you.

But because individuals are different, because individuals are unique, each individual heart is not the same soil, not the same territory, not the same land. The seed will have to grow according to the soil. Somebody's heart may be very fertile, creative. The tree may become very huge, the foliage may be very green, and when the spring comes there will be thousands of flowers and fruits.

But somebody's heart may be very hard. The seed is the same, but the soil is not going to help the seed much. The seed has to grow against all odds, against all hindrances. The heart is not going to help but on the contrary it will hinder. It is just a seed which has fallen into a land full of stones. It may grow but it won't be the same as in a fertile creative heart. It may not attain to the same height; it may even be a bit crippled; it may not have much foliage; it may come to only a few flowers.

But the uniquenesses are such - somebody is a poet and the seed may become poetry. And somebody is a musician and the seed may become music. And somebody is a sculptor and the seed may become a beauty in stone. It will all depend in which kind of heart the seed falls. And there are many more implications.

It is possible that one heart may be very fertile and it may bring thousands of flowers. And one heart may not be so fertile and it may not bring thousands of flowers but just one flower - very huge, very big. Those thousand flowers will not be in any way competitive to this one flower. In numbers they may be many, but the beauty of this one flower has almost accumulated the whole beauty of thousands of flowers.

I had one gardener with me for many years while I was teaching in the university. I had a beautiful garden. And this old man I had chosen for a certain reason - he was somebody else's gardener, some army officer's gardener. He was winning every year the competition for growing the biggest roses. I used to go to see because the whole city was involved in the competition.

All the rich people - officers, bureaucrats, professors, doctors, those who could afford a garden - were participants. But I was not interested in the people who were participating. I was interested in finding out who the gardener was, because the poor gardener was not even mentioned when the trophy was given to the winner. It was given to the owner of the garden. I was looking out for the gardener, because this army officer could not be a gardener himself - the poor gardener was not even there.

I followed his car. I looked around his house, I watched, and I found the gardener was working.

When the army officer went in, he did not even tell the gardener, "I have won the trophy because of you. In fact, it belongs to you." He simply went into his garage and then into his house.

I went into his garden. The old man, a poor man, was working. I asked him, "Have you heard that your roses have been chosen as the best for this year?"

He said, "Nobody has told me yet."

I said, "How much is this army officer giving you as salary?"

He said, "Not very much."

I said, "Whatever he is giving, I will give you double. You can tell me later how much he is giving.

You just bring whatever you have into my car and come with me."

He said, "But he is a dangerous man. He will search for me with his gun!"

I said, "Don't be worried, I am no less dangerous. You don't worry."

So I brought him into my own house and I told him, "You start working, and every year I will not be going to the competition, you will be going. And all the trophies that you win will be in the house that I have given to you."

He could not believe it. And he said, "But what about the army officer?"

I said, "I will take care of him. You need not be worried about it."

And then I saw how he was winning. His whole art was never to allow any rosebush more than one flower. He would cut all the buds and leave only the biggest bud.

I asked him, "What is the secret of it?"

He said, "The secret is simple. The rosebush has a certain amount of juice. It can be distributed in a hundred flowers, but if you don't allow it to be distributed it is bound to assert itself into one flower."

I remained nine years in that university. For nine years continuously he was the winner. And his secret was just to allow one flower to grow. So it is possible ... These are the uniquenesses I am talking about - that the same seeds in different hearts will bring different manifestations.

And that is how commentaries begin. The master dies. He had thousands of disciples who have listened to him. Now they start thinking, what is the significance of a certain statement or of a certain word? In the East it has been a very delicate affair. Not brutal logic, but a very subtle, very feminine art.

The word athato can mean 'now', it can mean 'here now', it can mean 'from now', it can mean 'from this point onwards'. Because of these different meanings growing in different hearts, the whole meaning of the sentence will change. Just the first word will change the whole meaning.

For example, to a man or a woman whose heart is the heart of a devotee, the heart of a lover, athato will mean, "Enough of love; now begins the inquiry into the ultimate. Enough of this world and its pleasures, now begins the inquiry into the ultimate." To the logician, the same word will mean:

"Enough of logic, enough of rationality, enough of philosophy; now begins the real inquiry into the existential" - not into words, not into philosophical investigations, but into an existential experience.

To a poet it may mean: "Enough of the poetry, enough of all that life I have lived up to now; the time has come to enter on the path in search of light, in search of the truth. I have sung songs of joy, I have sung songs of beauty."

But a time comes when you are tired even of your own creativity - how long? Just as you become tired of the woman you loved so much, of the man you loved so much, you become tired of your creative dimension for which you would have sacrificed your life. A moment comes when it seems that you have been playing like a child, collecting seashells on the sea beach, or making castles of sand. Beautiful utopias, but it is enough!

You have not gained anything of the eternal, of the timeless, of the immortal. How long are you going to wait? Now is the moment to change the direction of all your genius and intelligence. Then athato will mean something different, different from what it can mean to a businessman, to what it can mean to a king. He has been on a power trip, he has conquered as much as he wanted, he is tired.

I am reminded of one of the greatest emperors, perhaps in the whole of world history. He was Ashoka. He could have become a world conqueror far more easily than Alexander the Great. He had far bigger armies, far more developed technology, far more riches. And he was on the way to becoming a world conqueror, but the first victory was enough. He conquered what is now the state of Orissa. In his days it was called the land of Kalinga. He conquered the country of Kalinga.

Millions of people had to be killed, massacred, because the people of that place were ready to die but not to be conquered. The situation was such that the fight would continue until not a single man remained and Ashoka would be victorious only over millions of corpses. Halfway, Ashoka trembled, seeing millions of people massacred, and seeing the point that these are not the people who are going to give way. Either life in freedom, or death - there is no other alternative for them. They will not accept any kind of slavery.

When he became absolutely certain of it, he thought for a moment - just in the middle of millions of corpses - "Is it worthwhile? What will be the point? Killing these brave people and just becoming victorious over a country of the dead ... You will feel repentant your whole life, because you have destroyed so much life. And not the life of ordinary people, but people of tremendous courage, who have given you absolute alternatives: 'Either we will live in freedom or we will die in freedom. Slavery is not acceptable. You may be a great king, you may have great power, but we have at least the power to die - you cannot take it away from us.'"

The country was poor. It was not in any way comparable to the vast empire of Ashoka. Ashoka's empire was the biggest India has ever been - from Afghanistan, which is now a separate country, Pakistan, which is now a separate country, Sri Lanka, which is now a separate country, Burma, which is now a separate country, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh ... India has never had so big a map as it had in the time of Ashoka.

Just this small country of Kalinga was independent, and they were poor. They did not have an army, nor the technology, just courage - such a courage that they had only two simple alternatives: "We will live in freedom or we will die in freedom; we don't know any other alternative." In fact, Ashoka had become challenged in a way - he had to see how these people for centuries had been free without an army, with just human courage and dignity and pride. It was a great challenge to the great emperor, who could have crushed them without any effort. He had already killed half of the country.

But then suddenly a turn came to his own consciousness, and he saw that this was simply being stupid: "You are destroying a beautiful, proud people and you are able to destroy because you have bigger armies, you have more weapons, you have better horses, better weapons, but you don't have better human beings than you are destroying. Your people are simply servants who are fighting because they are being paid. These people are fighting without arms, without horses, just because they love freedom. It is ugly to destroy these people - this will be destroying a beautiful variety."

He returned home. His generals asked, "What is the matter? We are winning."

Ashoka said, "This is not victory, this is simply murder. And I am not a murderer. If I cannot conquer them alive, I don't want to conquer. I don't want to be called in history a conqueror of corpses.

Forget about it."

And the whole thing became such a nightmare in the mind of Ashoka that the moment he reached his palace he came to a transformation point: he renounced the empire. He said, "Of what use is this whole empire? Enough of it! I don't want any conquering or anybody to conquer, anybody to invade, and I don't want any empire."

Ashoka became a disciple of Gautam Buddha. Gautam Buddha had died two hundred years before, but his disciples were alive, his enlightened disciples were still there. It may have been the third or fourth generation, but there were people who had the same flavor and the same charisma, the same magic.

Ashoka became a disciple, renounced the world, started living like a beggar in his own capital, begging for his food every day in his own capital. And because he became a sannyasin, this word athato would bring to his mind a totally different meaning than it could bring to the mind of a poet, or to the mind of a creative artist, or to a painter.

And like the meaning of athato will be the meaning of brahma jigyasa. To the theist, brahma will mean 'the God'; to the atheist, brahma will mean 'the ultimate reality' - not a personal God, but an impersonal reality. And jigyasa, 'inquiry', will also take different forms. To someone it may become meditation, to somebody else it may become yoga, to somebody else it may become prayer. It will depend on your potentiality and according to your potential the seed will take form.

This simple sentence has been commented upon by almost one thousand commentators. I have gone through so many commentaries and it has been such a joy to see the same small sentence - just three words - take such different meanings. And on the different meanings of this first sentence will depend the whole commentary on all other sutras, all other maxims.

Maneesha, it is not equivalent to sachchidanand but it is the beginning. And sachchidanand - truth, consciousness, bliss - is the ultimate realization of this small beginning which becomes deeper and deeper and bigger and bigger, and sooner or later becomes your whole life. Badarayana's sutra is only a hint that it is time to change: it is time to become a seeker; it is time to behave like a mature person; it is time not to waste your life anymore on mundane activities.

It is time for the pilgrimage.

Your boat has arrived.

It is time to go into the unexplored seas, to the untraveled path; to be alone and to go within; to be alone and to be absolutely free and independent; to find your roots in existence. And the day you start finding your roots in existence will be the moment when you have touched the edge of your very life springs. That will be the time of a certain conclusion. Your life is no more a question, but becomes an answer. And that answer is Sat-Chit-Anand. Those three words are irrefutable.

God can be argued against. In fact, half of the world is now communist and does not believe in God.

Buddhism, which is the third greatest religion after Christianity and Mohammedanism - they don't believe in God. Jainism, which is a minority religion - but they don't believe in God either. In fact, if you accumulate all the numbers, there are more atheists in the world than theists. It has never been so before. The world was always a theist majority and an atheist minority. The balance has reversed. Today there are more atheists in the world than theists.

And the theist is not much of a theist either. Just by name he is theist. Scratch his skin a little and you will find a doubt inside. He believes in God, he goes to the church, he goes to the temple, but his is not a faith which has no doubt within it. It is a faith which has been sitting on a repressed doubt. It is a belief - just underneath is the doubt. I have never come across a single theist who really believes. He may say, "I really believe," but the more he says "I really believe," the more he exposes himself.

When you say to someone, "I really love you," what do you mean? Is not love enough? This emphasis of "really" makes the whole thing bogus. It is like in a movie - it is not true, it is a Hollywood love affair.

Truth cannot be denied either by theists or by atheists or by agnostics. And these are the only three possibilities, the only three alternatives. The agnostic is the most intelligent of all three.

The agnostic says, "I don't know, I am still trying to know. I am on the path, but I have not come to any conclusion yet." He is the most honest of the three - not really getting into either belief or unbelief. Keeping himself neutral so that he is not prejudiced, so that he is not carrying a certain opinion already, just keeping himself without any prejudice, without any opinion, so that when he comes across the truth, he can realize it as it is, not as he wants it to be. An opinion will give color, distortion. Opinion will create its own illusions, hallucinations.

The agnostic is the most significant seeker of truth. But there are very few agnostics in the world.

Perhaps most of them are here, going onto the path with open eyes and with a clean heart, ready to accept truth as it is, with no desire to project anything onto the truth. The agnostic cannot deny the beauty of Sat-Chit-Anand; he can say "I am searching," but he cannot say anything against it.

Neither can the theist deny it. He may say, "This is what I mean by God: my God is truth, my God is consciousness, my God is bliss." There is no problem - it is just a question of words that only idiots fight about. If this is what you mean by God, then it is perfectly okay. But then don't pray, because there is no person who is going to listen and say hello to you.

Sachchidanand is just an experience. If you want it to be synonymous with your idea of God, there is no harm, but remember there is no need to create temples and mosques and synagogues and churches for it. It is an experience that is going to happen within you, not without.

Nor can the atheist deny it. He can deny God as a creator. He can laugh at the very idea of a personal God, because there is no evidence and no proof for it. It is simply pure fiction invented by cunning priests for the gullible, for those who are still childish and have some father fixation - they need somebody to protect them, a great father.

Not even the atheist can deny the reality of truth, nor can he deny the reality of consciousness, because he is already a little bit conscious. If this much consciousness is possible, what is the problem? Why can't more grow? This small consciousness that we have is enough proof that there is a possibility of growth, of expansion.

We may not know bliss, but we have known moments of peace, we have known moments of silence, we have known moments of joy. Bliss is altogether something tremendously vast. But if you have seen a dewdrop you have seen all the oceans, because a small dewdrop is enough proof that water exists. And if there is a dewdrop, what is the problem? There may be oceans. And the formula that makes the dewdrop, H2O, makes all the oceans. It is the same formula. It is the same foundation.

These are the three kinds of people in the world. None of them can deny sachchidanand. That's the beauty of mystical experiences.

Theological belief systems don't have this greatness. They can be denied, refuted, laughed at.

There is no way to defend them. There is no way to prove them. But the mystical experiences belong to a totally different category. It is something that would be absolutely inhuman for anybody to question, because to question it is to question the very meaning of life. To question it is to question your very existence, your very consciousness, your very experience of pleasure, peace, silence, joy.

It is not possible.

Just a few days ago the records of the Nobel Prize committee were made available ... the public is being allowed to see them every fifty years. Fifty years of records: how many people were considered for the Nobel Prize, why certain people were rejected for the Nobel Prize; why it was given to certain people ... All those records were opened just a few days ago. And I came across the strangest thing - I could not believe that they could have done such an ugly and nasty thing: Leo Tolstoy was denied the Nobel Prize on the grounds that he was a kind of mystic.

I have never thought that it can be a crime, that one of the greatest creative artists ... Incomparable are his novels - perhaps no one will ever be able to write such a great novel as WAR AND PEACE.

And the man was not only a novelist, but a man who lived whatever he was preaching. His preaching may be under dispute, you may not agree with him - that's another thing.

I myself don't agree with him because he was preaching poverty. He was a very rich man, he was a faraway cousin of the Czar. He belonged to the royal family of Russia and he had immense land, thousands of slaves. Everything that was possible in those days was available to him, but he did not use anything, he lived like a poor man. His whole family lived like a royal family, but he used to live in the servants' quarters, not in the palace. At least he was a sincere man: whatever he thought was right, he did it.

And the Nobel Prize committee mentions it, that he was a Christian and he has written the most beautiful books on Christianity. I don't think there has ever been another theologian who has written so beautifully about Christianity. But the Nobel Prize committee declared that the Nobel Prize will not be given to him because his ideas about Christianity are not orthodox, they are very much his own.

Tolstoy believed in a mystical Christianity. He did not believe in the orthodox, traditional Christianity.

He had his own ideas about Christianity, as if to have one's own ideas about religion is a crime.

And he was not accepted because his Christianity was a kind of mystic Christianity. This mysticism became the barrier. His name was proposed and rejected.

There have been many other names which have been rejected on strange grounds - and even politicians have been given the Nobel Prize.

It is very strange. Leo Tolstoy is as important a person as Jesus Christ himself, but I think Jesus Christ would also have been denied the Nobel Prize because he was not an orthodox Jew. He was proposing his own ideas about religion - mystical Judaism.

Naturally, you cannot give a Nobel Prize to a man who finally was crucified. He cannot be accepted as a respectable, prestigious person. He was hanged on the cross just like any other criminal. On each side of him there was a criminal. He was treated exactly like any other criminal, or even worse.

No other criminal was forced to carry his own cross.

And it was certainly difficult. I know it by my own experience. Against all their own constitution and all their own laws, they handcuffed me, they chained my legs ... Not only that - they were not satisfied - they put another chain on my waist. Even that was not enough: they put both my hands in handcuffs and chained them to the chain on my waist, so I could not even move my hands. To the crowds who were greeting me, I could not even wave my hands. That was the strategy - that I could not even wave my hands to the crowds who had come to greet me. And they chained my feet so close together that walking was impossible.

So I know how difficult it must have been for Jesus to carry a cross in such a situation, a heavy cross.

Perhaps because he was only thirty-three, young, healthy, and a son of a carpenter, accustomed to carrying big logs from the forest to his father's workshop, continuously working with wood, that he was able to somehow carry the cross. But three times, on the way, he fell. And whenever he fell with the cross, they hit him hard with their sticks, lashed him and forced him to get up and take the cross on his back. Certainly a Nobel Prize cannot be given to such a man. It will be very insulting to the Nobel Prize committee.

We are living in an insane asylum. Mysticism is the highest flowering of human consciousness. And to deny Leo Tolstoy the Nobel Prize on the grounds that he is a mystical person is so absurd, but so indicative of the insanity of humanity and of the people who are powerful, because they are the members of the Nobel Prize committee. The King of Sweden is the chairman. And all the others are highly respectable, prestigious people.

I don't think any one of them is even worth the dust under the feet of Leo Tolstoy. But they are denying that man who has created novels which are sheer poetry. And the beauty of his novels is so alive that if you want to choose just ten great novels of all the languages of the world, you will have to include at least two novels of Leo Tolstoy in those ten.

And it was a strange phenomenon that Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Maxim Gorky, Turgenev - five great novelists - were contemporaries. If you are going to choose ten novels, five will be from these five people. Perhaps all ten will be from these five people, because they have all written such great novels: THE MOTHER by Maxim Gorky has no comparison in the whole world; or FATHERS AND SONS by Turgenev; or THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Dostoevsky; or ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy.

Perhaps these five people will cover almost all ten places - they will not leave room for anybody else. But none of them received the Nobel Prize - not only Leo Tolstoy, none of them, and each was better than the winner. It is very difficult out of these five to vote who is the best.

And they were all friends. They lived in the same city - Moscow. It is a strange combination, it has never happened: five such unique geniuses in the same city, creating novels such that you cannot choose which is better. And defeating the whole world - past, present and perhaps future - because there seems to be no possibility to improve on THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV or Maxim Gorky's THE MOTHER. But none of them got the Nobel Prize.

I have come to know only about Leo Tolstoy. I don't know why the others were refused. Perhaps Maxim Gorky was refused because he was pro-communist. Turgenev may have been refused because he was an atheist. These are just my assumptions. I don't know their records. But these names must have come before the committee. It was impossible that they were not proposed and rejected. But the same grounds will do for all.

They were all mystics in their own ways. They were all seekers of the ultimate in different directions, but they were all moving towards sachchidanand. They had all come to the point, of athato brahma jigyasa - "Now is the time to begin the inquiry."

And their novels reflect their inquiry. They are not ordinary novels the way that novels are written today. Today novels are written to be read just once and thrown away. You cannot read a modern novel twice unless you are utterly stupid. I have not come across a single modern novel which can be read twice by any intelligent man. But these five people - their novels you will have to read many times to grasp the meaning.

One time you will be simply acquainted with the superficial story, but you will become aware that there is much more that you are missing. You will have to read twice, and suddenly you will become aware how much you had missed the first time. Perhaps the third time you may be able to touch their depth. And it is a constant joy, once in a while after two, three, four years, to read them again.

Because in these three or four years your consciousness has developed, your experience has developed. You are no more the same. The novel is the same, but you are no more the same.

Now you can see better, now you can understand more, now you can dig deeper. These are novels which have to be read all your life, again and again. And every time you will find something new that you had missed, something great. And you will be shocked that you missed it.

And that was the beauty of all the ancient sutras. They are so condensed in meaning that you can go on reading again and again and you will find new meanings. And as your consciousness grows, those meanings will become deeper and deeper. As your experience on the path becomes richer, those sutras will have a new music, a new dance for you.

I have been thinking of speaking on Badarayana's BRAHMASUTRA, but I am keeping that for the last. Once I speak on Badarayana's Brahmasutra, then I will not speak again. Because there is nothing that can be better than Badarayana's BRAHMASUTRA - that is the end. So I am keeping it aside. If you want me to continue to speak, don't let me speak on Badarayana! If you allow me to speak on Badarayana, then remember ... Just once in a while, here and there, you can ask questions, but the whole sutras I have kept for my last communion with you, my last transmission of the lamp.

Question 2:

Anand Premartha, there is certainly a deep magic - almost a miracle - when you are in silence, in trust, in love, just waiting.

The moments of waiting are moments of meditation. Because you are waiting, expectant, your mind stops functioning. You are so concentrated in your waiting that there is no energy left for the mind - that is the secret, the magic.

And waiting for me is only just a taste of the ultimate waiting for truth. If just waiting for me you feel so much that it is inexpressible, so much that you can only call it magic, learn something from it. The same waiting is needed for the ultimate to happen to you. It also comes like a guest.

People have a wrong idea, and the wrong idea is created by people just like me, without any intention of creating it. In fact, nobody wants to create it, but somehow language interferes, distorts, and creates something which was never intended. For example, everybody thinks he is going in search of the truth. The difficulty is: how to say the right thing? The language seems to be perfectly good for saying the wrong thing. The moment you start saying the right thing, it doesn't fit with the language, with the grammar, with ....

The reality is that you are not going anywhere, you are just going to remain here-and-now. Truth and consciousness and bliss are going to come to you. They are going to be your guests.

You are the host. All that you need is an open door, waiting, just like one waits for one's friend, or for one's beloved, looking far away, as far as the eyes can see, looking towards the faraway horizon, waiting.

I am reminded of a Sufi story ... It is not just a story, it is a historical fact. Another great emperor of India was Akbar. Mohammedans pray five times a day and Akbar was very particular. One day he had gone hunting in the forest with all his friends, and they all got lost.

Evening was descending, the sun was setting and it was the time to pray. So Akbar stopped under a huge tree, tied his horse to the tree and sat on the ground to do his last prayer of the day. And as he was praying, a woman, a young woman, ran just by his side, giving him such a shock - it seemed as if she was mad or blind - that Akbar fell down. Still, she did not look back.

Akbar naturally was very angry. Mohammedans in prayer are very particular nobody should disturb them. It can become a very dangerous thing and for the emperor ... An ordinary village girl, not caring at all, running like mad and hitting the emperor ... The emperor fell down - because Mohammedans pray sitting on their knees, so it is very easy just to push them a little and they will fall down.

It is very difficult to push a Buddhist or a Hindu when he is praying, because he is sitting in a lotus posture. It is a very locked posture - you cannot just push him. He is very strong in his posture. But to push the Mohammedan is very easy, howsoever strong he may be - his posture is such, sitting on his knees.

Akbar finished his prayer quickly because he wanted to catch hold of the girl. She could not be allowed to do such things. If she could behave with the emperor in such a way, what to say about other people? But he could not figure out - it was getting dark - where she had gone. But he waited, thinking she must come back to the village. He was just outside the village.

And finally she came. Akbar stopped her and said, "Do you remember what you have done?"

She said, "I don't remember anything. Do you?"

Akbar said, "You seem to be very strange. You don't understand. You are talking with the emperor of the country."

She said, "I understand, but I don't remember anything of what you are talking about."

He said, "What am I talking about? I have been praying here and you ran in such a way that you pushed me, and I fell down. You disturbed my prayer!"

She said, "Perhaps if you say so, it must have been so, but you have to forgive me. I was going to wait for my lover just on the road which runs through the forest. I wanted to greet him - he is coming after many years - just outside the village. I could not remain sitting in the house and waiting. It is just one mile distant, but he will be waiting, thinking that I must be standing just by the side of a tree where we used to meet when we were young. That's why I was so much concentrated that I did not know I had committed any mistake. Please forgive me, it must have been committed without my knowing at all."

She was so innocent and tears came to her eyes because she had hurt her own emperor. "You can give me any punishment, otherwise it will remain heavy on my heart. But just one question before you punish me: you were in prayer - still you were not so much in concentration as I was, because I don't remember at all. It cannot be that I hit you ... it cannot be one-sided. Your body also must have touched my body, but I don't remember having seen anybody on the way - praying or falling or anything. I don't remember that anybody touched my body. So I am puzzled, and I would like to be clear about it. Is your prayer not as strong as as my love?"

Akbar remembers it in his autobiography, AKBAR NAMA. He says, "I had to ask forgiveness from that village girl. I have never forgotten her face, and I have never forgotten that my prayer is just formal. If I am lost in my prayer and my love, in my gratitude towards the ultimate, then how can I be aware that somebody has touched me, pushed me, or that my body has fallen? I would not have been aware of anything. But I was aware and that makes it certain that my prayer is just superficial.

"That girl's love was far deeper. She was closer to God than I was, although she was not concerned with God at all." A tremendous statement of understanding ...

Premartha, you are saying, "The musicians are playing. We are waiting for you to be with us. There is a moment when the auditorium is full with silence. Then you come ... Osho, what is the magic of waiting?"

It is prayer.

It is love.

It is trust.

It is gratitude.

It is the whole of religion.

If you can learn waiting, and if waiting can become your moment-to-moment experience, whenever you are not involved in ordinary things, and you can find time ... Anytime, day or night, just in your bed, sit silently and wait. Wait for the guest.

And I promise you, the guest has always come. The waiting has never failed. It has always been an absolute success, but not the success of your ego - it is the success of your humbleness.

It is the victory of your being, not the victory of your mind. It is the victory of your silence, of your love. Learn waiting and you have learned all about meditation.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.