Silence brings revelations, not words

Question 1:

There is a great difference between words and pictures.

First, pictures are older. The child dreams, although he cannot speak. He can see, although he cannot say what it is. And the pictures in his mind are more alive, more vibrant, more radiant, more innocent.

It happened in a small school.... The teacher had been explaining to the students the Christian idea of the trinity. Her whole emphasis was on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

After speaking for almost one hour, she asked the students a simple question: "Who is the greatest man on the earth?" It was an international school.

An American boy stood up and said, "Abraham Lincoln."

The teacher was shocked. After hammering for one hour on Jesus Christ, this boy had not heard a single word. But she said to the boy; "It is not absolutely right, although you are very close to the right answer."

An English boy said, "Winston Churchill," and so on and so forth it went. And then a very small boy who never used to raise his hand or stand up or answer on his own initiative, suddenly started waving his hand, almost madly. He was afraid somebody else might say the right answer.

The teacher said, "You look really in a hurry, so you stand up."

When he stood, he said, "There is no question. Jesus Christ is obviously the greatest man in the world."

This was even more shocking because the boy was a Jew. All the Christians had missed - somebody was with Abraham Lincoln, somebody was with Albert Einstein, somebody was with Winston Churchill, somebody was with Karl Marx, somebody was with Sigmund Freud - strange, that a small Jew was the only one who would stand for Jesus Christ. He won the prize - there was a prize for answering this question.

After the class was over, the teacher caught hold of the boy outside in the corridor and asked him, "Are you not a Jew?"

He said, "Certainly, I am a Jew."

She said, "Then, why did you say Jesus is the greatest man?"

The boy laughed. He said, "In my heart of my hearts, I know that Moses is the greatest man the earth has produced or will ever produce, but then business is business!"

Now, Jesus Christ is only business to this boy. And he is innocent and honest and true.

Man as such is covered with many prejudices. He thinks he thinks - that's a fallacy. He only repeats prejudices handed over to him by others.

Unless a mind is completely vacated, unoccupied by all kinds of prejudices, you cannot understand anything of real, authentic value. Mind can understand only that which is mundane. But in a state of having an empty mind - fully alert and aflame but with no thoughts, no desires, no imaginations - you can see the reality as it is, because the word is no longer distorting your vision.

A picture comes from the object to you. If you are clean and clear, mirror-like, reflecting, your reflection can come very close to truth, to beauty, to bliss, to God. But the mind is so full of words, full of so many interpretations, so many explanations, that whatever you see is not seen exactly as it is.

A picture comes to you from the object; a word does not come to you from anywhere. A word is a human creation. It is a soap bubble: while it is there, it may shine in the sun like a rainbow, but it is not there for long.

Primitive people still think in pictures. Hence, they have a certain authority, a certain being, a certain centeredness. The modern man, compared to them, is uprooted.

Children think in pictures. Thinking in pictures you bring with yourself; thinking in words is a social arrangement. Words and language are our manufactured commodities, and we have manufactured them for convenience, not for truth.

There are a few languages - for example, Chinese, Japanese and other far Eastern languages - which are pictorial. Because they are pictorial, they have more authenticity, more vitality, more resonance - but the language is very difficult to learn. Chinese needs at least thirty years to learn because it has no alphabet, it has only pictures - pictures for everything in the world. Now to remember those picture-grams... you need at least a million words, a million pictures to be a scholar.

Just learning a few words will not do.

Other languages, which are no longer pictorial, which have found a new way, are alphabetical.

Learning those languages is simple - twenty-six letters and the whole language is finished. All the words will be combinations of the same twenty-six letters. But in Chinese, there is no limitation.

They have millions of picture-grams, and every day new things are happening, new discoveries are being made. China and Japan have to find new pictures for them.

It is closer to the heart, but certainly anything that is closer to the heart becomes automatically incapable of searching into the objective world. The heart cannot be just a bystander and go on watching the scientific experiment without interfering, without coming in.

For almost seven years, the Senate of America has been denying the fact that they have been supplying millions of dollars worth of weapons to the terrorists. Only just this week, they have been forced, simply by the facts, to admit that they had been supplying millions of dollars worth weapons to the terrorists.

The question might not have arisen except that President Ronald Reagan asked that two-hundred million dollars immediately be sent to a country, to the terrorists there, because the country has become communist. So now the society has to be destroyed, order has to be turned into chaos.

And it is none of America's business.

If somebody wants to be a communist, if some country chooses to be communist, it does not matter whether you agree with it or not. Your agreement is simply not the question. I may agree, I may not agree but on this point, I am absolutely certain: they should be given the opportunity to be, whatsoever they want to be. I can show my disagreement, I can place all the evidence against them, all the arguments against them - but terrorism is not an argument, it is a defeat.

And when a great country, the greatest power in the world, starts using such third-rate strategies, then it seems there is no hope for humanity.

The day the German parliament passed an order that I could not enter Germany, they allowed on the same day.... And the reason given to the parliament was " because this man is dangerous." A man who has not even a paper knife is dangerous.... And in the same week, they allowed terrorists from around the whole world to have a world conference in Munich. It seems that just out of fear, they could not say no to the terrorists. And they are not dangerous!

One night I was denied a six-hour stay at the airport's first-class lounge in England - which is made for that. There is no opening from the lounge into the city; it is completely closed, you cannot get out of it. It is for passengers who have to change planes, for their rest. They did not allow me, and for the same reason. The officer had a file from the parliament saying that "this man is dangerous and he should not be allowed in England."

I said, "You are not allowing me in England, but six hours' rest outside England - this is an international airport."

He said, "I cannot argue with you. Perhaps you are logically right, but the problem is that the orders come from above - I have to follow them."

And the same English government, the next week allowed Ronald Reagan a base to bomb Libya - the base was in England. America bombing an innocent country, a poor country, and completely out of a misunderstanding. Is this not dangerous - is this something very cultured, civilized, something without which we cannot evolve?

People go on thinking in words, and then they become heartless because the words have no connection with the heart. Then they can do strange things.

In the last week, America has also admitted one great crime - and I simply cannot believe that the whole world simply remains silent. They were not admitting it for two years. And we never say to our politicans and leaders and priests that "You are continuously lying - how long we can trust you?

You are demanding something inhuman and impossible. Your behavior does not allow anybody to trust you."

For two years they were saying that nothing like this has happened. How can it happen in a democracy? The problem was, there were rumors that the American Senate had given permission that on two hundred patients first, and then on five hundred more patients, a certain experiment could be done. It is part of the preparation for the coming atomic war. Seven hundred persons, without their permission - and this is democracy! - had their brains operated on! And all seven hundred patients died.

The government continued to deny that they had anything to do with it, but finally it has come to the light. And now, without any shame, they accept that yes, they have done it, because it is a question of saving the whole of humanity. Men have to be used as guinea pigs. This is the first time that any government has said that, and has already killed seven hundred people - without their permission.

And the whole world goes on!

Nobody raises a hand to say that "This is not democracy, and this is not even human!"

And if the government can do this, the government can do anything - every child's brain can be fixed with an electrode. He will never know, but because of that electrode, the government can know what is going on in his mind. The government can change gears, it can change the thinking that is going on in his mind. Government becomes all-powerful. Man is reduced to below the level of machines.

And the whole thing has happened because we have been living for thousands of years in the head.

The head cannot think in pictures.

The heart cannot understand words.

Both are needed - but the heart should be in power and the head should be in service, because love is the ultimate law. No law can be above it.

Question 2:

It all depends on you.

If you behave mechanically, unconsciously, life has a destiny. Then you are simply following a certain program that your biology, your physiology, your chemistry, your hormones, have given to you. You appear to be free but you are not.

And you know - when you fall in love, you know you are not free. It is not your choice. Suddenly you feel you are in love and there is nothing that you can do either to improve upon it or to get away from it. In either case, you will destroy the delicate phenomenon of love. Almost everybody has done that.

Either people are trying to do too much... and love is not something that you can do. You can be loving but you cannot be a doer. Loving is a relaxed state of non-doing. You simply are. You cannot increase it; you cannot have more love or less love - it simply happens.

In life, everything that is important only happens. Things that you have to do are unimportant things - utilitarian, needed, but not essential to your being.

One of the greatest things to learn on the path is to discriminate between these two different worlds:

the world of doing and the world of happening. They are all mixed up in your minds.

There are things that can only be done - you cannot just wait for existence to do them for you. And there are things that, whatever you do, you are going to fail. Only in your utter failure, when you give up, they happen. They happen from the beyond.

A whole man is available to both, to doing and to happening. But remember: whatever you do is momentary; and whatever you do is lower than you, it cannot be higher than you. Action cannot be higher than the doer. And in happening, whatsoever happens is higher than you; it comes upon you from above. It showers on you as if it is a rain of flowers, blessings, benediction.

So if a man can sort out that which is doing and that which is happening, his life will have a clarity, a great intelligence, and a tremendous possibility of fulfillment. As you move towards happening, words will start disappearing. Pictures, visions, colors that you have never seen, fragrances that are unknown to you....

In doing, pictures are not needed, so pictures slowly, slowly disappear from the conscious mind.

They start living in the underground, in the unconscious mind. That's why there are no words in your dreams. In your dreams, there are pictures. Those pictures are saying something but you have forgotten the language. You cannot interpret your own dream; you have to find a psychoanalyst, and that too is pure guesswork.

If you go to a few psychoanalysts, analytical psychologists... psychosynthesis - and there are hundreds of schools of therapies - you will be amazed that they all interpret your dream in different ways, almost contrary to each other. And your dream cannot have so many meanings - your dream has only one meaning, and that one meaning has not been possible to discover through psychoanalysis, because psychoanalysis is basically a thinker's game, a word game. It is head- oriented.

Now, words cannot interpret pictures. What can you do if you see a beautiful sunset, so glorious in color, so silent and everything becoming more and more silent and still? You are enchanted with the beauty, you are overwhelmed, but what can you say about it in words? Just saying "a beautiful sunset" does not carry much meaning. And this sunset is something outside, so everybody knows - even if you say "a beautiful sunset," something is understood - but about the experiences of the inner world, which will all be pictorial, no word is capable to express them. Hence, beware of words.

In silence you will have revelations, not words.

You may have colors, you may have light, you may have beautiful darkness. You may have flowers, you may have the silence of the midnight sky. You may have all kinds of experiences, but the moment you start speaking about them, you will find yourself falling dumb. This is a good sign. This is a sign that what is happening to you is true.

Question 3:

It is a beautiful question.

First, the right speed to meet me is no speed. Just sitting silently, doing nothing - let the spring come, and I will be there.

It is not that you have to go somewhere. It is not an achievement. There is no goal.

It is within you.

If you want to be acquainted with yourself, you have to learn the simple art of being silent. The moment you are perfectly silent, life goes through a radical change. Beautiful moments come to you even now, but they are only moments - you become aware and they are gone. You always see them going. You always see their backs; they are putting on their shoes.

You have to be a little more alert.

Events that will be happening to you and to everybody else - you have to be alert to see the face, not the back.

Once, Henry Ford was asked: "How did you become so rich?" because he was born a poor man and became the richest man in the world.

He said, "Very simple. I never missed any opportunity."

Those people said, "That kind of wisdom everybody knows, but the problem is how to recognize that this is opportunity? In our lives, by the time we recognize it, it is gone."

In fact, you have to recognize before it has come. You have to be a little prophetic, you have to be a little predictive. You have to see a little ahead, what is going to happen, so that you can be ready.

But the future remains unknown. You become aware of something only when it has become present.

This is a very difficult and tough situation. By the time you can grab hold of it, it is gone, and you cannot bring any moment back.

Henry Ford said, "My method is different. My method is to go on jogging continuously so whenever the opportunity comes, you simply jump on top of it - but keep on jogging because one never knows.

It is a little difficult, but it has worked for me. I hope it can work for you."

The man said, "But it looks crazy - the whole time jogging!"

Ford said, "I don't know any other method."

What he's saying is of some great value. He simply means you have to be very alert, as if your life is in danger.

A Hindu priest was tired of a man - not because he was creating any trouble for him, but because he was so obedient and was such a perfectionist that he was doing everything the Hindu monk was saying to do and nothing was happening. With others, it was easy - the monk could tell them, "You are not doing it rightly. You are not doing it totally; you are half-half, wishy-washy." But he could not say that to this man - he was so total, and he had never said no to anything.

Finally, the monk said to him, that "I am getting old and I'm sorry that I have not been helpful to you.

You have to move to another master. Just one thing you should remember; this is my present to you: you have been such a rare disciple, that nothing else matters. What matters is your depth of awareness. If you are fully aware, you can change everything. Once something has happened, it has happened; you cannot do anything. If it has not happened, you are still the master. You can move it in any direction; give it any mold, any meaning - but only before it has happened. You have to be ready."

Painters are continuously ready for the moment when something will strike their intelligence, will open a door, a vision. Poets are continuously aware of when something clicks in them and they become silent and the beyond starts raining on them. All creative people are aware that only during moments of awareness, creativity happens. When you are not aware, you cannot create - you are just a driftwood.

The question about destiny, I said, depends on you. If you are living a somnambulistic life, almost asleep, then your life is predictable, because you are not using consciousness. You are being dominated by unconscious forces within you, and those forces don't have eyes - those forces are blind.

It is because of this that there are things like astrology, palmistry, the I Ching, and a thousand other methods and scriptures. They depend on your mechanicalness.

Only a machine is reliable. A man, because he is conscious, can choose any moment a different direction, can choose to be something else than what the astrologers have predicted.

I was in Jaipur, and one famous astrologer there... he was the astrologer of the Maharaja of Jaipur, and I was staying in the Maharaja's palace. The Maharaja was very curious and wanted his astrologer to look at my hand.

His astrologer came, of course with great expectations of receiving a good reward. Before putting my hand into his hand, I asked him: "Are you aware, what kind of man you are going to encounter?"

He said, "Of course, I am aware."

He looked into my hand. He worked out some charts, some arithmetic for half an hour, and then he was going to say what he had found.

I said, "Before you say anything, I want to say one thing to you: I will not give you any money because I think this is all nonsense. You are predicting my future and you don't know your future: that this man is not going to give you a single rupee. You should have let go of my hand, knowing that 'this man is not going to give me a single rupee.' That would have proved to me that there must be some validity in astrology, in palmistry. But you missed the chance. Next time, when I come again...."

Any action done unconsciously is a mechanical act, done under mechanical laws. Then you have destiny.

Any action done with consciousness is beyond the powers of mechanical, robot-like functioning.

Any act done with alertness is beyond the powers of destiny. And that's why we call the man who is enlightened, liberated - liberated from the chains of destiny.

Question 4:

No. You are not missing anything, because I am not in my words.

I am just around my words. Go on throwing my words away and collecting the nothingness that surrounds my words.

Collect that music. Collect that hum.

You will become more and more like a child. The day you have become completely, entirely a child - that means you don't even remember that you are a child - you simply are. When innocence has reached its peak, the purpose of existence in you is fulfilled.

You were born a child; that's the way God has sent you into the world. You should go back more innocent than you came, more beautiful than you came, more silent, more ecstatic, more divine.

Your life is a preparation for meeting the ultimate, and only a child is capable of meeting the ultimate.

His truthfulness....

Remember one thing: even qualities are different. An old man may use truth in such a way that it harms somebody; he has been following his religion to be truthful, but a cunning man is a cunning man. He will speak the truth when it harms somebody; he will remain silent if that harms somebody.

But the real criterion of a value is the ultimate flowering. A cunning man cannot flower. His cunningness is almost like a poison that he's taking slowly slowly, and committing suicide.

One woman had been out for two days with a friend who was sick. When she came back home her little boy ran towards the door and said, "Mom!" He was very much excited. "I have a surprise for you."

She pulled him aside and asked, "What is the surprise?"

He said, "The other day I was playing in your bedroom, inside the closet, when suddenly Daddy came in with the woman next door. Afraid of being caught, I stayed, breathing as slowly as possible but also looking from the keyhole at what was happening. Something was certainly happening. They undressed!

The mother said, "What? Say it just in my ear - undressed?"

He said, "Yes, they undressed - both. Not only that, they jumped into your bed and Pop was on top of the woman."

The woman said, "You wait. Just you wait, not a single word more. Just wait. Let that son-of-a-bitch, your father, come home. And when he comes, the first thing is that you have to relate the whole thing you have told me, word by word."

Finally the father came, and they were waiting at the door. The mother said to the boy, "I have packed everything," and to the husband, "I am leaving you. But before leaving you, I want you to hear what the boy has to say."

The boy said, "I was playing in your bedroom, in the closet. Daddy came in with a neighborhood woman. They undressed. They both went into your bed. Daddy was on top - and Mom, they were doing exactly the same thing you did last year with Uncle John when father went for a holiday! I don't know exactly the name," he said, "of what they were doing, but you must know, because I've seen you doing the same thing from the same closet where I used to play. Playing is just an excuse; that's the place from where I see great dramas."

The moment you become innocent, you have found a direct line to the divine. Your heartbeat synchronizes with the heartbeat of the universe.

The world may condemn you as mad - don't be worried about the world. What you have to be always concerned about is what is happening within you. Blissfulness, peace, silence, tranquility...

ecstasy, an invisible dance in your energy. A song without words all over your body... every fiber of your body participating in it, as if in an orchestra. If you feel this, you are right - against the whole world.

You have to learn one simple thing: blissfulness is the criterion of your sanity. Miserableness shows your madness.

Question 5:

Searching for the truth, seeking the eternal life, you will find many moments which are unbelievable.

Even though you are in those moments, completely soaked - still the moment and its beauty is such, its golden glory is such that it seems too good to be true, and it is too good because it is too true.

Many people have lost their path, stuck in a kind of fear. Anything overwhelming, like a great cloud surrounding you - if you don't know that it is a friend, you are going to be so much afraid that you won't allow the same experience to happen again.

Remember that every experience on the path, in the beginning is a great shock. Your very roots are shaken. Whatever you have believed to be true is no longer true. Whatever you have been thinking of as real, is dream stuff, and whatever you have never thought about seems to be the ultimate reality. The change is so much and so quick, that it is natural for human beings to be afraid. But the fear is only because you are ignorant of the experience.

These are the moments when the master is needed to say to you that the overwhelming cloud of unknowing, of innocence, is a good sign, is indicative that greater things are going to happen. It shows that you are on the right path.

And you have to learn not to feel a stranger in a situation which is unknown to you, because now every day more and more unknown will open itself to you. That too, is a training for a further and final step: the unknowable.

Everything is very systematic. There is no chaos inside you. If you can pass one step, you will necessarily reach the second step.

The second step is going to be even bigger, because you will be melting into the unknowable. In the unknowable you cannot remain separate. You can have a separate flame of light, but in the roots you will be joined with the whole. Only the flame will be free, but in the roots you will be universal.

And the question of freedom is meaningless, because there is no one except you in the world. It is only you - in different faces, in different eyes, in different people, in birds, in animals, in trees. It is your consciousness.

And unless one knows that he is the whole, he is not religious. He has not touched the nectar which makes him an immortal, which makes him a god, part of the innermost reality of existence.

We have only forgotten.

Nothing is lost - nothing can be lost; it is your very nature.

That overwhelming experience was not coming from outside, it was your own fragrance. Because you cannot see it, you felt it as outside yourself. It was your own joy, your own peace, your own silence that was radiating.

It takes a little time to be acquainted with the inner territory of your being. But once you are acquainted with it, you have found the center of the world.

One great scientist, Archimedes, used to say: "If I can find the center of the world, I can revolutionize the whole existence." Unfortunately, it is very difficult now to find out where Archimedes is. Otherwise, his only fault was that he was looking outside for the center of the world, and the center is within him.

Your religion, your temple, your God, your holy book - all are within you. Go without fear.

Go with fearlessness. You have nothing to lose, and you have the whole universe to gain.