Existence does not like carbon copies

QUESTIONS FROM "TA NEA", GREECE.

Question 1:

My God! Can't you recognize me? I am the same person you have poisoned twenty-five centuries ago. You have forgotten me, but I have not forgotten you. And just being here for two days, I was thinking that in twenty-five centuries Greece would have evolved towards some better qualities, towards more humanity, towards more truth. But I am feeling sad, because in just two days there have been articles in the Greek newspapers telling absolute lies about me, making allegations which have no foundation in reality, absurdities.

For example, one newspaper was saying that I am hiding here from the American government, and the American government is after me to catch me and bring me back to America for crimes like manslaughter, sex orgies, drug dealing - you name it, and it is there. The reality is that America is afraid of my entering into America. Their court has given me their decision that for five years I cannot enter America.

From where did this newspaper get the idea that I am hiding here...? And is this a way of hiding?

Thousands of people will be coming here. Every day morning and evening news media will be here... is this a way of hiding? But that newspaper and others have convinced one bishop here, who is calling meetings of local people to protest against my stay here - and it is only two days that have passed. Last time they allowed me my whole life; only in the end they poisoned me. I don't think I can last here more than two months at the most.

The bishop is printing a pamphlet against me to distribute. This Sunday morning he is going to speak against me. He knows nothing about me.

There has been a protest march yesterday. Phone calls are coming that stones will be thrown at my meetings. That gives me a feeling that certainly I am in Greece, but things have changed for the worse.

The people of Greece may not have learned in twenty-five centuries, but I have learned much. I will slip out of the poisoning. This is the way I want to be introduced to my own country.

Question 2:

It is my country, and I wanted to see my people. I wanted to see whether they have grown up or still they are retarded. And I am sorry to say they have fallen far more than when I left them. The day I left them Athens was at its peak, the most intelligent, the very cream of the world. Now it is nothing.

It has no importance in any area, in any dimension.

If people had followed Socrates, if they had followed Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Epicurus, they would have been the very crown of the world today. But rather than following Socrates, they followed those idiots who poisoned him, and they are still in the hands of the same idiots who are the cause of their degradation. The religious heads, the politicians are in constant conspiracy against every nation.

I have come just to have a look. I am not going to stay here, so the bishops and the cardinals need not be worried. Even if they want me to stay here I am not going to stay. The way they have behaved with me the first time is enough; I don't want it to be repeated. I will be here only for a few days to be acquainted with you, and to give you the message that you have completely forgotten, that you have the potential of creating Socrates and Pythagoras and Heraclitus - and yet you don't count anywhere in the world.

There is somewhere some basic mistake being committed. You are listening to wrong people, you are being dominated by wrong people. They are leading you towards darkness rather than towards light.

Question 3:

I don't know anything about tourism and its economics. I am not a psychologist... because to me psychology is a hindrance in spiritual growth; it has become a substitute.

In the East there has never been anything like psychology. Psychology is of the mind. I am not a psychologist, and I am against mind. My whole teaching is to go beyond mind, so I can say only one thing: if I am allowed to stay in any of these countries, there will be a spiritual revival. If it was only tourism, they would have loved me. If it was psychology only, there was no danger. The danger is that my basic approach is for the transformation of man, and no politician is courageous enough anywhere to allow that.

This man is perfectly ready to be enslaved and exploited. The transformed man will not be.

No church - Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist - is going to allow me to stay in their country, because if people start growing spiritually on their own, they don't need any church, they don't need any priest, they don't need any religion. A spiritual person needs no religion at all. Religion is a poor substitute, a plastic substitute for spirituality.

So I don't think any of these countries will consider spiritualism to be a blessing to them. It will be a revolution, and it will be a blessing to the people, but not a blessing to the vested interests.

And if they allow me to stay somewhere, it will be out of ignorance. They don't know what spiritual revolution means.

They will allow me to stay for attracting millions of tourists; they may allow me to stay for helping people's mental stability. But it is possible only if they don't understand my work. Anybody who is going to allow me to stay is going to allow me either if he is a rare man in politics - he is not a politician but a man in politics - or out of ignorance, not knowing what danger he is inviting.

As far as I'm concerned, I am making it clear. I don't want to deceive anybody. I would rather go around the world in my airplane, meeting my people whenever it is possible, because I cannot accept any conditions.

The king of Nepal was ready for me to have my residence and commune there, but the condition was that I should not speak against Hinduism. Nepal is a Hindu kingdom, the only Hindu kingdom in the world.

I refused. I said, "I never plan what to speak and what not to speak. I cannot promise. And if I see anything wrong, then it does not matter whether it is Hinduism or Christianity or Mohammedanism, I am going to speak against it."

The Indian government was ready, but they had conditions that I should not allow my foreign sannyasins to come to India to meet me, and I should not allow news media from outside India to have any connection with me. Then I said, "Forget all about it. I don't want your land and I don't want any commune. I can accept only unconditionally, out of love, out of an understanding of what I am doing and what it can mean to the future of humanity."

I hope that some country may be able to become a host to me. And that country will have a future far brighter than any other country in the world. That country will have far more intelligent people than any other country in the world. That country will have more meditative people, more silent, more loving, more free from all the prisons of the past, and more available to all the new technologies, the new sciences which can change everything on the earth and make it a paradise.

I do not teach a paradise after death.

I teach a paradise before death.

After death is just for hypocrites, deceivers. Those who want to deceive you and cheat you, they are talking about after death. My whole emphasis is here, now.

Question 4:

Zorba represents to me, every man's, every woman's natural state. It represents to me a perfect human animal, rejoicing in each moment in small things, not being worried about any spiritual growth. His whole philosophy is eat, drink and be merry.

I love him, because that is the foundation from where a buddha can arise. For twenty-nine years of his life Buddha was nothing but a Zorba.

You will need a little clarification. When Gautam Buddha was born, the astrologers said that either he would become an emperor of the whole world, or he would renounce the world and become the greatest awakened being ever. He was the only son of the father; the father was a king. He was old, he was worried. He asked the astrologers, "Help me. Advise me how to prevent him from going away from the world. I want to see my son as the greatest emperor in the world."

And they suggested a few things. They suggested, "Make three palaces for him, for different seasons, in three beautiful, scenic places. Have all the beautiful girls in the kingdom to attend him. Don't allow any old men, old women to be seen by him. Don't allow even a dying leaf, a dead leaf, in his garden. In the night everything should be cleaned so he never comes to know that one day he has to become old, and one day he has to die... and he is surrounded with all the luxuries and all the beautiful girls, dancers, musicians. Let him live in total luxury. He will never think of renouncing the world."

But their advice backfired. For twenty-nine years he lived in such a state, but those astrologers had no understanding of human psychology....

If a person is given all the luxuries possible, continuously, without any effort on his part, he becomes bored. Those beautiful women were no longer beautiful for him; he started taking them for granted.

The music, the dance and all that was going on - a merry-go-round, twenty-four hours a day - he soon became fed up with it.

At the age of twenty-nine he was invited to open a youth festival of the whole kingdom, to inaugurate it. The roads were cleaned, old people were told not to come out; but it was one thing to manage in the palace, and it was another thing to manage in the capital. Somebody died. Some old man was deaf, did not hear the announcement, and the old man passed Buddha's chariot - and Buddha was shocked.

He asked his charioteer, "What has happened to this man?"

And the charioteer, who had loved Gautam Buddha from his very childhood as his own child, could not speak an untruth. He said, "I am sorry to say, but your father has been preventing you from knowing the reality. This happens to everybody. Old age is bound to come."

And Buddha asked, "To me too?"

The charioteer said, "Nobody is an exception."

Just then the corpse of an old man passed by, and he asked, "What has happened now? Why are they carrying a man who looks to be asleep on a stretcher?"

The charioteer said, "He is not asleep; he is dead. This happens after old age. This is the next step."

And then Buddha saw a sannyasin in red robes, and he asked, "What kind of man is this, and why is he wearing red robes?"

The charioteer said, "This man has renounced the world and he has become a seeker of truth.

He wants to know who he is and he wants to know whether his life is eternal or just a temporal phenomenon. Will he survive the death of the body or not? If he is not going to survive after death, then all is meaningless. Then he has no soul, then he is just matter."

Buddha told the charioteer, "Return the chariot home. I am not going to inaugurate; somebody else can do it because I am in a great spiritual turmoil. The old man, the dead man, the sannyasin..."

That very night he escaped from the palace. He was bored with all that luxury, he was bored with all that beauty, and for the first time he saw what is going to happen next: old age, sickness, death.

Then before death comes, truth has to be found.

Gautam Buddha was a Zorba up to the age of twenty-nine. Six years of deep meditation transformed the man. He became enlightened.

So when I have called the new man Zorba the Buddha, I have reasons to call it so. Every man is born as a Zorba. Your religions don't allow you to live the Zorba, so you don't get bored with it.

They don't allow you to live it so totally that you get finished with it. Your religions are preventing you from becoming buddhas. The word 'buddha' means the enlightened one, the awakened one. Your religions are keeping you asleep. They are certainly functioning as opium.

My effort is to make you first totally Zorbas, utterly Zorbas, intensely Zorbas, so that you can transcend Zorba and enter into another phase of your consciousness - the awakening.

Zorba is the foundation of the temple.

Buddha is the temple itself.

But there is a great hindrance for every human being to grow: one, you have been told that the Zorba is against the Buddha; it is not true. The Zorba is the experience which leads you towards buddhahood, towards awakening. That's the reason for my love for Zorba. He is really a beautiful man. But don't stop at Zorba... he is only a foundation. If you just make the foundation and don't raise the temple, it is meaningless.

So there are people who are just living with the foundation, thinking this is the shrine - millions of people. And there are millions of people who are thinking they can make the temple without the foundation. They are fools.

Both are wrong. Zorba and Buddha can exist only together. And Zorba has a priority. He comes first; he is the natural foundation. And Buddha is the ultimate development, the ultimate peak of human reach, of human consciousness.

For the new man I have given the name Zorba the Buddha. I want no schizophrenia, no split between matter and spirit, between the mundane and the sacred, between this-worldly and that- worldly. I don't want any split because every split is a split in you. And a personality, a humanity divided against itself, is going to be crazy and insane. And we are living in a crazy and insane world.

It can be sane only if this split can be bridged.

Zorba has to become Buddha, and Buddha has to understand and respect its own foundation.

Roots may be ugly, but without those roots there are not going to be any flowers. The flowers may be beautiful, fragrant, but all their juice and all their fragrance comes from the roots. You cannot cut the tree in two saying that roots are ugly; you will destroy the tree. You have destroyed man by cutting him in two, into lower and higher, into material and spiritual.

My whole effort is to make you understand a simple thing, that the roots may be ugly, but they are the very life of the most beautiful flowers. The juices that are coming to the flowers are coming from the roots. Without a Zorba, a Buddha is a dead saint, just a corpse with no soul. Without a Buddha, a Zorba is just an animal, not yet evolved into humanity.

My vision for the future man is that there will be no split, and we will be able to make this world and that world one, body and soul one, Zorba and Buddha one.

Question 5:

I never talk in any other way!

I would like the politicians to understand that they are carrying the guilt of the murder of Socrates, and the only way to be free of that guilt is to make Greece again a truth-seeking, truth-loving country without any hindrances for intelligence to grow. And this is possible only if the politicians are ready to sacrifice their own vested interests.

If they can sacrifice their vested interests, there can be again many Socrateses, and the country can again become the cream of intelligence in the world.

To the religious leaders I would like to say that they are neither religious nor leaders. On what grounds do they think they are religious? It is not their experience. They may be representing Jesus Christ... Jesus Christ is representing some God who is an unproved hypothesis. There exists no evidence for any God, and no theologian in the whole of history has been able to give a single proof for the existence of God.

For such a hypothetical God, Jesus Christ goes on saying, "I am the only begotten son of God." You cannot be a begotten son of a hypothesis. That is sheer stupidity. Hypotheses don't give birth to children!

And these so-called religious leaders - cardinals, bishops, archbishops - they are representing the only begotten son of a hypothesis. These are the most unintelligent people in the world. They are living in an hallucination.

I would like them, if they are really honest and sincere, to declare it clearly to the world, "This is not our own experience. We have not experienced anything of consciousness, anything of universal life, anything of eternity. We have only read THE BIBLE. We have accepted it; our knowledge is all borrowed." And remember, a borrowed knowledge is not knowledge. Knowledge has to be your own experience. Truth cannot be borrowed.

If your so-called religious leaders are sincere, they should humbly declare that they don't know what they are doing, and they should stop doing it.

They are going on perpetrating something which has no roots in reality. Just think for a moment:

a man who has never known what love is says that twenty-five centuries ago somebody loved and I believe in him. Would he not be a laughingstock? Twenty centuries back somebody loved... You don't know for sure what kind of love it was. This man believes in love, he knows nothing of love. He has not experienced, he has not tasted anything of love. And this is the situation about truth.

Jesus Christ knew the truth, and for twenty centuries his representatives are believing in him. But if you have an open mind, you can understand. Jesus Christ's own contemporaries did not accept him as a religious man. He was a Jew. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died as a Jew. He had never heard the word 'Christian', because in the Hebrew language there are no such words as Christ or Christian.

These people go on believing in Jesus Christ because he walked on water, he fed thousands of people out of two loaves of bread, he healed thousands of people just by touch, he raised a dead man back to life. Just think, if anybody does all these things, will his contemporaries not be impressed by him? Will his contemporaries completely ignore him? Not a Jewish scripture - and he was a Jew - even mentions his name!

There is no contemporary literature relating about Jesus and his miracles - and these miracles are not ordinary miracles. And somebody who has done all these things, do you think he deserves to be crucified? He would have been raised up as the greatest god!

But look at his disciples: not a single rabbi, learned scholar, cultured man, educated person is amongst his disciples. All the twelve who became apostles were uneducated, uncultured - fishermen, farmers, woodcutters. And those were the days in Judea when scholarship was at the highest peak. It had great rabbis. None of them even bothers to meet him, even bothers to listen to him. And he is doing all these miracles which none of their prophets have ever done before.

Only one thing is possible, that all these miracles are invented, they have not happened. These are just Christian inventions about which Jews were not aware at all; otherwise, contemporary sources would have related them somewhere or other, in some way or other.

Even if they were enemies to Jesus, then too there would have been some report. Buddha is reported in Hindu scriptures. Buddha is reported in Jaina scriptures, Mahavira is reported in Hindu scriptures, in Jaina scriptures. Lao Tzu is reported in Confucian scriptures. Confucius is reported in Lao-Tzuan scriptures. They were contemporaries.

And the man who did such unnatural things would have dominated the whole scene. But the reward that he got was crucifixion.

Jesus himself was uneducated, and whatever he was saying was hearsay; he had heard it. And because he was proclaiming himself to be the son of God, Jews were very offended. He had no evidence for it, no certificate, and he insisted consistently that he was the only begotten son of God.

This was his crime.

I am not supporting the Jews, I am simply saying that this man becomes the source of your so-called religious leaders. Almost half of humanity is Christian, and the man who is in the center has nothing in him. And you have people like Socrates who have everything, every potential, great insights into human beings, into the universe, and no religion exists; no followers exist of Socrates.

It is a strange world, where truth is ignored and lies are worshiped.

I would like to say to your so-called leaders, "Be honest and sincere, and look within yourself. Is it just a profession that you are doing, earning your bread and butter? Are you really helping people to be religious? And if you are not religious, how can you help others to be religious?"

I said that I do not agree with the Jews for crucifying Jesus - that was idiotic, the man was simply crazy. You could have laughed at him, you could have enjoyed him. You could have ignored him, but there was no need to crucify him. If somebody has the idea that he is the only begotten son of God, what harm does it do to anybody?

I am reminded of a story...

It happened in Bhagdad in the times of Khalif Omar. A man was brought to the court chained, beaten, because the soldiers said he was declaring himself to be the latest messenger of God - and Mohammedans believe that Mohammed is the last messenger. Now there will not be any more message coming; God has given the final message. And this man was shouting in the street, "I have come directly from God. Mohammed was certainly a prophet, a messenger, but so much time has passed that the message needs improvement, and I have brought an improved message." And this is against Mohammedanism.

Omar said, "Put him into a jail. Give him a good beating, for seven days no food, and after seven days I will come and ask him whether he still believes that he is the messenger of God." After seven days he went. The man was almost at the dying stage. He was tied to a pillar, naked; the whole body was covered with oozing blood; he was beaten so badly... without food. He was not allowed to sleep for seven days.

And when Omar asked him, "Now what do you think? Have you changed your idea or not?", the man said, "Are you mad? When I was coming, God himself told me, 'You will be tortured, persecuted, beaten, and that will be the proof that you are really my messenger.' You have proved that I am the latest messenger of God."

At that very moment, from another pillar, a man who had been beaten for many more days shouted, "Omar! Don't listen to him. I never sent anybody after Mohammed!" That man had been caught one month before, declaring himself to be God himself.

Now, in a sane world you will laugh at these people. They don't need to be beaten, they don't need to be tortured. They are not doing any harm to anybody; they are just a little cuckoo!

But these cuckoos can create religions. And following these cuckoos are your great religious leaders!

My message to your religious leaders is: if they are authentic human beings, and have any respect for truth, they themselves should declare that they know nothing, all that they have been teaching is borrowed, and they should stop teaching.

They should start searching. Don't waste time in teaching. First search, find, experience - and if you have something to share, then share it.

Now the bishop here is calling a meeting of the local people to provoke feelings against me. Is this a religious kind of thing? He should have come to me or he should have invited me. We could have discussed, we could have talked, we could have communicated with each other.

That would have been human, religious. And if he has the courage I am still available. He can come here or I can come to his place, and we can discuss matters which relate to the basic religiousness.

There is only one condition: if he cannot answer my questions, then he has to become a sannyasin; if I cannot answer his questions, I am ready to become a Catholic!

Question 6:

I don't like the word 'influence'. I have not been influenced by anybody, and I don't want to influence anybody, because that is only a subtle name for spiritual slavery. But there are a few great human beings I have loved.

Socrates comes first, because his devotion to truth is absolute and total. He is ready to accept death, but not ready to accept any condition. And the conditions were such that anybody would think they were acceptable.

The judges themselves must have felt... Socrates argued so well, and his opponents had nothing to say, but because it was a city-state and a city democracy, everybody had the power to vote, and the mob was unable to understand what Socrates was saying. It went over their heads. They were all in favor that Socrates should be poisoned.

But the magistrates gave Socrates three alternatives. They said, "You can leave Athens and not come back. That way the people of Athens will not be irritated by you, will not be annoyed by you.

You will be as dead as possible. Just don't come back to Athens. The world is big. You can go anywhere."

The second alternative was, "If you love Athens so much that you cannot leave it, then just stop teaching. Don't talk about the truth, which has made this whole chaos and brought you to this point where people are ready to murder you.

If you don't listen to these two alternatives, then the third: we are helpless; the majority is for poisoning you."

Socrates said, "I cannot stop teaching the truth because that is my very life. What will I do? To go on living if I cannot teach... then death is far better. I am dying for the truth, but I cannot live without truth. I cannot leave Athens because Athens is the most cultured part of the world. And if in Athens I am poisoned, I cannot hope that anywhere else I am going to survive. It is better that I should be killed here, and the blame should remain on the heads of the people of Athens, whom I have been teaching my whole life, and who still could not understand. Rather than moving to a new place and being killed by people who don't understand me..."

He chose to be poisoned in Athens. I love him the most. He has not left any following, he has not left any organization, he has not left any church. These are the beauties of the man. He remains alone, and yet the most influential person in the whole world.

I love a few other people... I love Lao Tzu in China, who has also not left any following, who was not even ready to write a book, because that may become a holy scripture; people may start worshiping it - and also for the simple reason that truth cannot be said. Whatever you say is something far below; something is missing in it.

Truth can be learned only in the close proximity of a master. It is some kind of transference, some kind of synchronicity. In the presence of the master, something blossoms within you. In your silence something is heard. In deep, deep love, your heart starts dancing with a new tune.

I love Gautam Buddha because he was the most revolutionary of all the teachers of the world, against all that was old and past and dead.

I love many other people: Heraclitus, who comes closest to modern science, modern physics... No other man in the whole history is so close to the modern insights of physics as Heraclitus. This was the man who has said, "You cannot step twice in the same river because everything is changing so fast."

You cannot step in the same river even once.

But I am not influenced by anybody. I love them. I love them for their qualities, for their beautiful beings, for their independence, for their freedom, for their rebellion, but I am not influenced, because I am nobody's follower. I am myself.

Whatever I am saying to you, I am saying on my own authority. It is my own experience. If it is not my experience, then I will not say it to you. Even if the whole world says it is so, it does not matter, because truth cannot be decided by majority; it is not a question of voting. Truth has to be my own innermost feeling. My own heart has to give signature to it.

So I am not influenced by anybody, but I have loved, from all the countries and from all the cultures, many people - so many that I cannot name them all.

Question 7:

The older a conditioning is, the more rotten it is. It is just like an old building. You never say that the building is two thousand years old, so how can we destroy it? It is already used; even without your destroying it, it is finished.

There are millions of Christians, but I have never come across a single Christ. A Christian is only a conditioning; you were not born as a Christian. If you were brought up in a Mohammedan home, you would be a Mohammedan. If you were brought up in a Buddhist home, you would be a Buddhist, and you would never remember that you were born as a Christian. No child is born as a Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan. Every child is born clean, fresh, just as a human being, innocent, tabula rasa.

Howsoever old the conditioning is, it does not matter. Once you understand that it is not your truth, that it is not your experience, that it is not your realization, it starts slipping. It is not your own face, it is a mask. You will pull it off; nobody can prevent you. Everybody has the right to have his original face, and your original face is just of a human being.

Once you drop your conditioning, which I am saying is one of the simplest things in the world, because I have millions of sannyasins around the world who have come from all kinds of traditions...

Christianity is two thousand years old, Judaism is four thousand years old, Hinduism is ten thousand years old, Jainism is twelve thousand years old. All these people have come to me and they don't find any difficulty in dropping it, because it is not their own. It is a burden; you are being crushed under it. You cannot move, you cannot grow, you are chained.

Once you understand that the house you are living in is not a house but a prison, you will jump out from the window, from the door, from anywhere. You will find the way.

If your house is on fire, will you ask anybody for guidelines on how to get out of the house? Even if the house is not yours, you will find the way to get out. The house is on fire, there is no time to find someone and ask, and nobody is ready to give you an answer. Everybody is running out. Everybody is on his own - he has to save his own life. And you will not bother about etiquette and manners. If you are taking a bath under the shower and the house is on fire, you may jump out naked. You will not even think twice that you are naked.

Conditioning - Christian, Hindu or Buddhist, communist or fascist - is an imprisonment. It is destroying you. It is destroying your very life. It is sucking your blood, and it is not allowing you to live totally. It is not allowing you to become Zorba, and it is not allowing you, naturally, to become a buddha. Now it is up to you. If you want to become your whole potential, so that you can blossom and dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, then you have to drop all this burden.

A simple demarcation line is: if it is not your experience, then it does not matter who says it. Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Confucius - whoever says it, it does not matter. You are not saying that they are wrong, you are simply saying it is not your truth. It may have been Confucius' truth, it may have been Moses' truth, but if Moses eats, that does not mean your hunger will be gone. You will have to eat yourself. If Krishna drinks, his thirst will be gone, but it is not going to help your thirst.

Once it is understood that anything that is not my own experience, my own search, my own finding, is not going to nourish me, is not going to help me become myself...

Remember one thing, existence does not like carbon copies. That's why you don't find a single person repeated. Gautam Buddha may have been very beautiful, but existence will not repeat him. All Buddhists are trying to become Gautam Buddha; at the most they become carbon copies, actors. You can act like a Gautam Buddha, but acting is superficial, it is not going to give you the same ecstasy that Buddha had.

So it does not matter how old your conditioning is; the single understanding that "it is not mine," and you are finished with it. That is the way I finished it.

I was also born into the oldest religion of the world, but I did not find any difficulty. The moment I understood, "These are not my experiences, and I have to find my own experiences," I was immediately free; all the burdens simply disappeared.

In fact, the burden was not clinging to me, I was clinging to the burden. Once I dropped clinging to it, it fell, shattered on the ground, and gave me a tremendous freedom to move; otherwise people are stuck.

It is not difficult. Just give it a try - anything. Look deep into it - is it your own experience?

I will tell you one incident. P.D. Ouspensky, one of the greatest mathematicians of this age, went to see one of the greatest mystics, George Gurdjieff. Ouspensky was world famous and Gurdjieff was absolutely unknown. He became known only after Ouspensky became his disciple. As the master of P.D. Ouspensky he became world famous; otherwise nobody had even heard his name.

When Ouspensky arrived to meet him, he had to his credit a few great books. One, TERTIUM ORGANUM, seems to be one of the greatest books in the world. If I had to name ten great books, I would have to include TERTIUM ORGANUM as one of them; I could not leave it out.

And what did Gurdjieff ask Ouspensky? He said, "So you are the man who wrote TERTIUM ORGANUM. Take this paper and this pen, and go into the other room. Write on the paper, on one side, what you know yourself, your own experience, and on the other side what you do not know, what is all borrowed. Once I know what you know, I will never talk about it. That is finished; you know it. I will work only on those points which you do not know."

It was completely clear. Ouspensky went into the other room. It was a cold Russian night and the snow was falling, and Ouspensky was perspiring because he could not write a single word as his own experience. And he had written great books, immensely great.

After half an hour he came back, perspiring, gave the empty paper to Gurdjieff, and said, "I do not know anything."

Gurdjieff said, "Then something is possible. You are a man who can be trusted. You are sincere, you are authentic. Now remember, whatever you do not know is finished. We start from an ignorant person. So remember from this moment that you are an ignorant person, not a world famous mathematician."

With this innocence and humbleness everything is possible, and great things became possible in Ouspensky's life. Just that half hour, and all conditioning disappeared - he had just to take a sharp look.

Question 8:

I have not been angry for thirty-five years, but I can understand the question. Whenever I say something which hurts you, you think I am angry. I am simply stating the truth.

I am not a politician.

I do not consider you when I speak.

I do not consider how you are going to react to it. A politician thinks before he speaks, what would be liked by you. He says only things that you would like; it does not matter whether they are true or untrue. I am not a politician. I never consider you.

My only consideration is truth.

Whether it hurts or heals does not matter to me. Even to be hurt by truth is better than to feel nice by a lie.

So when you feel hurt, you think I am angry. I am angry against nobody. No politician, no religious leader can make me angry - because why should I suffer for other people? Anger is suffering, burning yourself for some other people's faults. I simply say whatsoever is right.

My heart is full of compassion for those people who may feel hurt. I can heal them, but they should understand that I am not angry. I don't consider anybody as my enemy in the whole world, although there are millions of people who think they are enemies of mine. That is their problem.

As far as I am concerned, everybody is my friend.

I am going to do everything that can help the person to realize his reality, to discover his original face, to start living in his innocence and beauty. But sometimes my work is almost like a surgeon's - it hurts. But there is no intention to hurt anybody. It hurts because a cancer has to be removed from you. The wound will heal. The cancer was not going to heal, it was going to kill you.

Sometimes my emphasis on certain things is misunderstood. I am not an orator. I don't even know the ABC of the art of speaking. I am simply talking to people heart to heart. I have something to say, and my way of saying is not that of a trained orator. It is human, raw, alive. So sometimes I may emphasize something and you may think I am angry - but I have not been angry for thirty-five years. I have really forgotten how to be angry.

If you can make me angry, I will really enjoy it because I have forgotten even the taste. Thirty-five years is a long time. In these thirty-five years I have only loved. So if you can manage to make me angry I will be really grateful to you.

Question 9:

I don't give any picture.

The pictures that you get are taken by you, and they change according to the photographers.

Certainly I go on changing - I am still alive. To be alive means to be changing, so the picture will be changing. But I don't give any picture to you.

I give myself to you.

Pictures are your responsibility. There are amateur photographers, there are great artistic photographers - it depends on the photographers. Now I will see when you write your article, what picture comes out of it. It will depend on you, not on me.

I am available.

Question 10:

The moment you are anti-sex, the question of being male or female does not arise. Anti-sex simply means beyond sex. The body of course will remain. If it is a man's body, it will remain a man's body.

If it is a woman's body, it will remain a woman's body. But the sex centers are not of the body, they are in the mind.

Your genitals are not your sex centers; they are only extensions. They are controlled by centers in your mind.

One of the great scientists, Delgado, has been making experiments on the centers of the mind.

There are almost seven hundred centers, which control everything in your body. And when he found the sex center in the open brain of a white mouse, he pushed it by an electronic wire and the whole body of the mouse went into a sexual orgasm.

Then he made an arrangement. He put an electrode on the center, and a remote controller in front of the mouse, and taught the mouse to push the button. The moment he would push the button, he would go into an orgasm, his whole body trembling with joy as he never had before. He forgot drinking, food. Everything was placed around him, but he did not even look. In one hour he pushed the button six hundred times - and died!

In the future there is a possibility you may have a small remote controller in your pocket, and whenever you want to have an orgasm, you simply push the button. It will not be male, it will not be female, it will simply be orgasm. It will be a bio-electronic orgasm.

When I say anti-sex, I mean that I want my people to go through sexual experience to such an extent that they are completely satisfied with it, and there is no more hankering for it. And there comes a silence... That beyond-ness is neither male nor female. That transcendental state will be the state of the buddha. And before you reach to that transcendental state, you will have to be a Zorba.

So don't be a miser in being a Zorba. Go wholeheartedly into it, so that you can be finished with it soon. And once you are finished with it, then your body will remain male or female, but your being will be transcendental. It cannot be masculine, it cannot be feminine.

Question 11:

Everybody is born in a family. I was born in a family. And in India there are joint families, big families.

In my family there must have been fifty to sixty people - all the cousins, uncles, aunts, living together.

I have seen the whole mess of it. In fact, those sixty people helped me not to create my own family.

That experience was enough.

If you are intelligent enough, you learn even from other people's mistakes. If you are not intelligent, then you don't learn even from your own mistakes. So I learned from my father's mistake, my mother's mistake, my uncles', my aunts'. It was a big family, and I saw the whole circus, the misery, the continuous conflict, fights about small things, meaningless. From my very childhood one thing became decisive in me, that I was not going to create a family of my own.

I was surprised that everybody is born in a family.... And why does he still go on creating a family?

Seeing the whole scene, he again repeats it.

When I came back from my university, finishing all my studies, my father was worried - because he knew me, that if I say no once, then there is no way to change it. So he would not ask me directly.

He told my mother, "You should ask, is he willing to get married? Whomsoever he wants... we will not put any conditions of caste, religion, anything, but he should get married."

When I was going to sleep, my mother told me, "You can get married to any girl you want. We have no objections."

I said, "I have no objections either. I just want you to think over it for two weeks: are you really happy? Have you not thought many times that it would have been better if you had not got into this mess of getting married, producing eleven children, living in this circus of sixty people, where everything goes wrong, everybody is on everybody else's necks? You think for two weeks, and then you tell me. If you think that this has been a great experience, I will get married, but the responsibility will be yours. It is a question of my whole life. I am risking my whole life on your decision."

Just after three days my mother came back and she said, "Two weeks are too much. I cannot sleep, I cannot do anything. You just free me from this responsibility."

I said, "What happened?"

She said, "I don't want to decide about your marriage."

I said, "But this is a decision."

She said, "I understand. I will not say to you to get married."

And I said to her, "Tell my father that there is no need to go roundabout. He should directly encounter me." But he was afraid because he knew that I would bring everything to his notice that his whole life he had suffered - and still he wanted me to get into the same kind of situation.

He did not ask me. He brought a supreme court advocate. He was his friend, and he was one of the best advocates in India. And he said, "My boy is too argumentative. Perhaps you can manage it."

He said, "Don't be worried. I have never lost any case in my life. I am coming with you, and I will see what kind of arguments he has got. This is my profession; the whole of my life I have been arguing."

The moment he came, I said to him, "First things first."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "I mean that if I win, then I don't get married. If I don't win then I get married. But if you get defeated, you will have to divorce."

He said, "It is strange. Then I will have to think about it."

I said, "But you have never lost any case in your life, and this is a small case, and there is no judge.

I choose you as the judge too, because I trust you. From my very childhood I have loved you, and I know you cannot be unfair. So let us have the argument. I know you and I know your wife, and I know that twice you have tried to commit suicide."

He said, "My God! That means I will have to divorce my wife? Call your father. I don't want to get into this trouble."

They tried. Before my father died, he told me with tears in his eyes, "I am happy that we could not succeed in forcing you to get married and lead a normal kind of life. We were worried about you...

who would take care of you? But you have proved that if you trust existence, existence takes care, it is very compassionate."

So I don't have any family of my own. But I have a very big family of my sannyasins, all around the world. So wherever I go, I'm at home. It makes no difference. Just two days ago I was in Nepal and as much at home as I am at home here.

I have created a family of a totally different kind. A million people belong to my family. Their love is unconditional. I have nothing to give them, except myself. But they have given me their hearts, and without any reason. I am not a religious leader, I am not a politician; I am not giving any promises, I am not giving you any hopes.

I am simply talking to you, to be yourself - a simple teaching, the simplest, without any jargon - and yet I have established the greatest family in the whole world, in the whole history of man.

Question 12:

Obedience is not my teaching. Disobedience is not a sin. I explain to my people my understanding, and then it is their freedom to do whatsoever they want to do. It is not a question of obeying me, it is a question of obeying their own intelligence.

My appeal is to their intelligence. I explain as clearly as possible, and then leave it to them. I don't take their freedom of decision, and whatsoever they decide, I am happy with it - because I love their individuality and I want to enhance their individuality as much as I can.

Their yes is good, their no is good. It makes no difference, because it is coming out of their love, out of their understanding.

I don't want followers, obedient people.

I want intelligent friends, fellow travelers.

And once I have said anything, I never enquire whether anybody is following it or not. I go on towards other things. I have so many things...

But I am happy with my people, immensely happy, and grateful. It is difficult to find in history any instance of so many beautiful, intelligent people following a human being who is not pretending to be a savior or a prophet or a god, who is just saying, "I am as ordinary as you are - with just a little difference: I am awake and you are asleep. But it is not much of a difference... you can open your eyes any moment."