Consciousness is contagious

From:
Osho
Date:
Fri, 3 March 1986 00:00:00 GMT
Book Title:
Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries
Chapter #:
25
Location:
pm in
Archive Code:
N.A.
Short Title:
N.A.
Audio Available:
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Video Available:
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Length:
N.A.

Question 1:

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR CONNECTION WITH J. KRISHNAMURTI?

It is a real mystery. I have loved him since I have known him, and he has been very loving towards me. But we have never met; hence the relationship, the connection is something beyond words. We have not seen each other ever, but yet... perhaps we have been the two persons closest to each other in the whole world. We had a tremendous communion that needs no language, that need not be of physical presence.

Once it happened - just a coincidence - he was in Bombay. He used to come to Bombay every year to remain there for a few weeks. He had perhaps more followers in Bombay than anywhere else in the world. I came to Bombay. I was just going to New Delhi and I had to wait a few hours. Some friends who had been deeply connected with J. Krishnamurti and who were also connected with me, came to me and said, "This is a golden opportunity. You are both in the same place. A meeting will be of immense importance, and Krishnamurti wants the meeting."

The man who said this was a very respected revolutionary of India, Ajit Patvardhan. He was one of the closest colleagues of J. Krishnamurti.

I looked into his eyes and said, "Please don't lie. You must have said to J. Krishnamurti, 'Rajneesh wants to meet you.'"

He was taken aback, almost shocked. He said, "But how could you manage to know? That's exactly what we have been conspiring. We knew perfectly well that this would be the only possible way; if we say to you, 'Krishnamurti wants to meet you,' you cannot refuse. If I say to Krishnamurti, 'Rajneesh wants to meet you,' he cannot refuse. And the people who have been connected with Krishnamurti have all become connected with you too. We are all eager to see what transpires when you two both meet."

I simply told Ajit Patvardhan an old story of two great mystics, Kabir and Farid. Kabir had his commune near Varanasi, on the opposite side of the Ganges. Farid was traveling with his disciples; he was a Mohammedan, a Sufi mystic, and he was going to pass the village where Kabir was living.

The disciples of both mystics persuaded them. "It would not be right that Farid passes here and you do not invite him," Kabir's disciples said. "It is simply a matter of love to invite those people to live in our commune for a few days, to rest." Farid's disciples said, "It will not look right to bypass the commune of Kabir. At least we should just go to pay our tribute."

Farid and Kabir both agreed. But the real thing amongst the disciples of both was that they wanted to see what happened when they met, what they would talk about, what would be the things that were important between these two persons.

But they never uttered a word.

The disciples were very much disappointed; this was not what they were waiting for. The moment both the mystics had departed they had to face their disciples, and the disciples were really angry.

The disciples of Kabir said, "You made fools of us. For two days we have been waiting to listen to something - you are always talking - and what happened to you? You became suddenly silent. We do not understand. What is this matter of laughing like madmen, weeping, tears, smiles, hugging - but not saying a single word?"

And the same was the situation with Farid. The disciples were raising the same problem, and the answer that was given was also the same. Farid and Kabir virtually said the same thing to their disciples: "We both know there is nothing to say. He has eyes, I have eyes. We have both experienced, we have both tasted the truth. What is there to say? Whoever would have uttered a single word would have been proved ignorant, that he does not know. We recognized each other; it is impossible not to recognize. Even two blind people recognize each other; do you think two people with eyes will not recognize each other?

"Of course we enjoyed each other. That's why joy, smiles, tears were the only possible language; when it was too much, we hugged each other. We were sitting holding each other's hands for hours and our love was flowing, and there was a communion - two bodies and one soul.

"But forgive us, we completely forgot about you. You cannot understand anything except words, and truth cannot be expressed in words. You have every right to be disappointed, to be angry, but you should consider our position also. We are helpless. When two silences meet, they become one.

When two loving hearts beat, they beat in harmony; a music arises which is not mundane, which cannot be heard by the ears - which can be heard only by those who can experience it in their hearts."

So I told Ajit Patvardhan, "It is absolutely useless, wasting Krishnamurti's time. You are not going to hear anything."

And when they went back to Krishnamurti he asked, "What happened? He has not come?"

They told the story, saying, "He simply told us a story."

And he laughed and said, "He did exactly the right thing. In fact I should have told you the story but I don't know the story. I also wanted to explain to you that it is futile, but you would not have understood."

You are asking me about my connection with him. It was the deepest possible connection - which needs no physical contact, which needs no linguistic communication. Not only that, once in a while I used to criticize him, he used to criticize me, and we enjoyed each other's criticism - knowing perfectly well that the other does not mean it. Now that he is dead, I will miss him because I will not be able to criticize him; it won't be right. It was such a joy to criticize him. He was the most intelligent man of this century, but he was not understood by people.

He has died, and it seems the world goes on its way without even looking back for a single moment that the most intelligent man is no longer there. It will be difficult to find that sharpness and that intelligence again in centuries. But people are such sleep walkers, they have not taken much note.

In newspapers, just in small corners where nobody reads, his death is declared. And it seems that a ninety-year-old man who has been continuously speaking for almost seventy years, moving around the world, trying to help people to get unconditioned, trying to help people to become free - nobody seems even to pay a tribute to the man who has worked the hardest in the whole of history for man's freedom, for man's dignity.

I don't feel sorry for his death. His death is beautiful; he has attained all that life is capable to give. But I certainly feel sorry for the whole world. It goes on missing its greatest flights of consciousnesses, its highest peaks, its brightest stars. It is too much concerned with trivia.

I feel such a deep affinity with Krishnamurti that even to talk of connection is not right; connection is possible only between two things which are separate. I feel almost a oneness with him. In spite of all his criticisms, in spite of all my criticisms - which were just joking with the old man, provoking the old man... and he was very easily provoked. I just had to send my sannyasins to his meetings to sit in the front row, all in red colors, and he would go mad! He could not tolerate the red color. In his past life he must have been a bull; just a red flag and the bull goes crazy. Bulls have their own personality.

But even though he used to become angry - he would forget the subject matter he was going to talk on, and he would start criticizing me and my people - later on he would say about me to the hostess where he was staying, "This guy is something. He disturbs my meetings, sending red-robed people.

And the moment I see them, I forget what is the subject I have decided to speak on. It happens every time, and I know that he is simply playing a joke. He is not serious, he is not against me; neither am I against him."

From many of his intimate people I have been informed, "He is not against you. He wants you to know that howsoever angry he becomes, he is not against you."

I said to them, "I know it. I love the man. But to love a man and once in a while to joke with him, do you think it is contradictory? In fact, I am trying to help him to become a little less serious. A little more sense of humor will not do any harm to him. Only on that point I do not agree with him - he is too serious."

Religion needs a certain quality of humor to make it more human. If there is no sense of humor in any religious teaching, it becomes more and more intellectual, mathematical, logical, but it loses the human touch. It becomes more and more a scientific subject. But man cannot be just an object of scientific study. There is something in him which transcends scientific study.

Just look around the world. Trees don't laugh, buffaloes don't laugh. No animal laughs; it is only man who has the sense of humor. There must be something in it because it happens at the highest evolutionary point - man.

Krishnamurti's teaching is beautiful, but too serious. And my experience and feeling is that his seventy years went to waste because he was serious. So only people who were long-faced and miserable and serious types collected around him; he was a collector of corpses, and as he became older, those corpses also became older.

I know people who have been listening to him for almost their whole lives; they are as old as he himself was. They are still alive. I know one woman who is ninety-five, and I know many other people. One thing I have seen in all of them, which is common, is that they are too serious.

Life needs a little playfulness, a little humor, a little laughter.

Only on that point am I in absolute disagreement with him; otherwise, he was a genius. He has penetrated as deeply as possible into every dimension of man's spirituality, but it is all like a desert, tiring. I would like you back in the garden of Eden, innocent, not serious, but like small children playing. This whole existence is playful. This whole existence is full of humor; you just need the sense of humor and you will be surprised.

I have heard about a man in India who used to sell Gandhi caps. Particularly at election times, everybody wants to prove that he is a Gandhian, because the followers of Gandhi had been ruling the country for forty years. If you are a Gandhian your victory in the election is certain. The Gandhian cap - a white cap - symbolizes who you are, and this man used to earn so much money just by making caps and selling them.

But this year he was sick. He was getting old, and he told his young son, "You will have to go to the marketplace" - which was a few miles away from the village - "and I have to tell you only one thing. The way is beautiful; on both sides are very shady trees so that even in the hot sun you can sit under them and it is cool. And there is one big bodhi tree so huge that hundreds of bullock carts can rest underneath it. Avoid it. If you feel like resting, don't rest under that tree."

The son said, "But why? - because that must be the coolest place."

The father said, "That is the problem. It is the coolest place, but the tree is full of monkeys. And it happened with me; I was resting there and when I woke up my whole bag of caps was empty. I was surprised - what happened? Then I suddenly heard the monkeys enjoying - all were wearing caps just the way I was wearing a cap. So they knew how to put it, where to put it, and it looked as if the whole of New Delhi from the president to prime minister, the cabinet and all the parliamentarians were sitting there - all over the tree! And they were enjoying it so much.

"But I am a poor man. Suddenly I remembered the saying that monkeys always imitate, so I took off my cap so they could all see; they all took off their caps. Then I threw my cap away; they all threw their caps away. I collected the caps and went to the market. So just remember in case something like this happens, take your cap off and throw it - they will all throw theirs."

The son was in a way excited to rest under the same tree and see what would happen. He found the tree - it was beautiful and it was the most shady, and he saw hundreds of monkeys sitting on it. He rested, went to sleep, and exactly what the father had said, happened. The bag was empty; he looked up and the monkeys were looking very happy, very proud, all Gandhians. But he was not worried because he knew the trick. So he simply took off his cap and threw it, and to his great surprise, one monkey came down and took the thrown cap, went back up the tree and put the cap on his head! They all enjoyed it, because this monkey had missed; one cap had been missing.

This must have been the second generation of the monkeys; perhaps the older generation had taught them that if it happens sometimes, "don't throw your caps but pick up the cap thrown by the merchant. We have been befooled - once to be befooled is okay; twice to be befooled is unforgivable."

The son looked in shock - what to do? He came back home and told his father. His father said, "I knew it: monkeys are more capable of learning than men. This is their second generation and they have remembered. And I told you specifically, you should not have thrown it so quickly. First you should have taken it off and seen whether they took theirs off or not; then at least you could have saved one cap. You lost even that."

Existence is hilarious. Everything is in a dancing mood, you just have to be in the same mood to understand it.

I am not sorry that J. Krishnamurti is dead; there was nothing more for him to attain. I am sorry that his teaching did not reach the human heart because it was too dry, juiceless, with no humor, no laughter.

But you will be surprised to know - whatever he was saying was against religions, was against politics, was against the status quo, was against the whole past, yet nobody was condemning him for the simple reason that he was ineffective. There was no reason to take note of him. In India he used to visit only three places - Delhi, Bombay, Madras. And it was the same way around the world... some big cities, and the same people year after year listening to him saying the same things, and nothing has changed in those people because nothing reached to their hearts. It remained only intellectual.

They can argue, they can argue very well. One man I know, Dada Dharmadhikari - he is a very famous follower of Gandhi, a colleague of Gandhi, and a colleague of J. Krishnamurti. He does not believe in God, he does not believe in any traditions. He used to come to see me, and I told him, "Not believing in God is not enough; believing in God, or not believing in God, both are God-centered. I cannot say that I do not believe in God - how can I not believe in something which does not exist?

Believing or not believing are both irrelevant when something is existential." But he was too full of Krishnamurti.

I said, "Some day some opportunity may come and I will be able to point it out to you, that this belief is only a reaction. It does not erase God, it simply puts disbelief in place of belief, but God remains in its place."

His son is attorney general of the high court. One day he came very much disturbed and asked me to come immediately, "My father is dying. He had a serious heart attack, and the doctors are worried that he may have another heart attack and it will be difficult to save him. Perhaps he will be happy to see you. He always talks only of you or J. Krishnamurti."

I went to his house. He was resting in a dark room and I entered slowly. I told his son not to announce that I had come. He was repeating "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama" very silently, almost whispering. But I shook him and I said, "Have you forgotten J. Krishnamurti? Have you forgotten me? What are you doing? Hare Krishna, Hare Rama...!"

He said, "This time don't disturb me. Who knows, God may be a reality. And just to repeat a few times before death... there is no harm. If he is there I can say, 'I remembered you.' If he is not there, there is no harm, just let me repeat it - no argument at this moment. I am dying."

I said, "That's what makes it very urgent to prevent you doing any stupid thing! This is against your whole life." Now he is eighty years old; he followed Krishnamurti for almost fifty years, has been in contact for twenty years with me, and at the last moment all intellectual garbage disappears and the old conditionings appear again. This was what his parents had taught him in his childhood, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama," because Hindus believe that in this dark age of humanity only the name of God can save you. The name of God is like a boat; you simply ride on the boat and it will take you to the other side of existence, the spiritual world.

He became okay; he did not die. And when he had become almost all right, I asked him about that day. He said, "Forget all about it. There is no God. I don't believe in God."

I said, "Again - because now death is no longer so close? That day you were not even willing to discuss it. You were even arguing: 'At this moment, let me repeat the mantra that is going to save me.'" I said to him, "All your intellectual garbage is useless. It has not reached to your heart; it has not given you any transformation."

Krishnamurti failed because he could not touch the human heart; he could only reach the human head. The heart needs some different approaches. This is where I have differed with him all my life: unless the human heart is reached, you can go on repeating parrot-like, beautiful words - they don't mean anything. Whatever Krishnamurti was saying is true, but he could not manage to relate it to your heart. In other words, what I am saying is that J. Krishnamurti was a great philosopher but he could not become a master. He could not help people, prepare people for a new life, a new orientation.

But still I love him, because amongst the philosophers he comes the closest to the mystic way of life.

He himself avoided the mystic way, bypassed it, and that is the reason for his failure. But he is the only one amongst the modern contemporary thinkers who comes very close, almost on the boundary line of mysticism, and stops there. Perhaps he's afraid that if he talks about mysticism people will start falling into old patterns, old traditions, old philosophies of mysticism. That fear prevents him from entering. But that fear also prevents other people from entering into the mysteries of life.

I have met thousands of Krishnamurti people - because anybody who has been interested in Krishnamurti sooner or later is bound to find his way towards me, because where Krishnamurti leaves them, I can take their hand and lead them into the innermost shrine of truth. You can say my connection with Krishnamurti is that Krishnamurti has prepared the ground for me. He has prepared people intellectually for me; now it is my work to take those people deeper than intellect, to the heart; and deeper than the heart, to the being.

Our work is one. Krishnamurti is dead, but his work will not be dead until I am dead. His work will continue.

Question 2:

THE PRINTING PRESS WAS DISCOVERED BY CERTAIN INDIVIDUALS IN DIFFERENT PLACES AT ABOUT THE SAME TIME. WILL THE SAME HAPPEN TO CONSCIOUSNESS? AS MORE PEOPLE BECOME CONSCIOUS, WILL THERE BE AN EXPLOSION IN THE WORLD? IS CONSCIOUSNESS CONTAGIOUS?

Yes. It is contagious, and it is going to happen exactly in the same way; a few individuals will explore it and then it will become a wildfire. There is no way to prevent it.

It is a well-known fact, not only about printing presses but about other discoveries.... The printing press was discovered in different countries unrelated to each other, almost at the same time. It is a strange phenomenon. How does it happen? Something invisible seems to be passing around.

Albert Einstein was asked, "If you had not discovered the theory of relativity, what do you think - would it ever been discovered or not?"

Albert Einstein laughed. He said, "At the most, just within two years somebody else would have discovered it." And he said, "I am saying two years at the LONGEST." It could have been only two weeks, because human consciousness had come to a point where this discovery was going to happen; who discovers it is not important.

Human consciousness is not a matter of individual islands; it is a vast continent, so the whole continent vibrates with the same rhythm. It has been found with other discoveries also. Whatever is discovered in the Soviet Union is kept secret, but all over the world other scientists start discovering it, with no information from Soviet scientists. And whatever is discovered by America is kept secret, but in some mysterious way the Soviet scientists discover it just within a few weeks - not more than that.

Human consciousness is one whole; anything that happens at one place creates a subtle vibration that moves all over. Wherever there is somebody capable of catching it, he immediately catches it.

So there are things which cannot be kept secret. For example, enlightenment cannot be kept secret; there is no way to keep it secret. Meditation cannot be kept secret. It is not within your hands; it is happening deep down in your consciousness - and every other consciousness around you is going to be affected by it.

You will see it in different spheres. For example, when Gautam Buddha appeared in India, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius appeared in China; Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras appeared in Greece - at the same time, the same flame, the same truth. And there was no communication - even the Himalayas, the highest mountains between China and India, were not able to prevent it. What is happening to Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu passes on, moves on.

If you look at the time before the communist revolution in Soviet Russia, it produced the greatest number of the highest quality novelists, the most creative. And not only one - Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Turgenev, all are Himalayan peaks, one better than the other. Even after seventy or eighty years we have not been able to produce anything comparable to Dostoyevsky. But just within a small period, in a small place, these people appeared: consciousness is contagious.

And after the Soviet revolution, not a single man in seventy years has been able to produce even a faraway echo of Maxim Gorky or Turgenev. Something in consciousness died, because communism denied that man has a soul. It prevented the very idea of consciousness. No poet, no great novelist, no great painter, no great artist, no great sculptor... They all disappeared - and before the revolution Russia was producing the world's highest caliber people.

Yes, this is going to happen: once a few people explode into light there will be flames, and the fire will spread like wildfire. And that is the only hope for humanity: that the whole of humanity comes up into consciousness, that people become so alert that nobody can deceive them into any stupid act.

And war is the most stupid act of all.

Question 3:

SCIENCE HAS DEVELOPED TREMENDOUSLY IN THIS LAST CENTURY, BUT SCIENCE OFTEN SEEMS SO HEARTLESS. YOU TALKED ABOUT MEDITATION AS THE INNER SCIENCE. CAN YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT SCIENCE AND MEDITATION. SHOULDN'T THEY GO HAND IN HAND?

They should go hand in hand, but you have to understand that neither science can become meditative nor meditation can become just science. They are two dimensions of human existence.

A man can be both: he can be a scientist in his lab, and he can be a meditator in his home. While he is meditating, he has to forget all about science; while he is doing scientific research, he has to forget all about meditation. Only then can they go hand in hand.

There are very complex and subtle problems in it. The problem is that science has to be objective and meditation has to be subjective.

Science can experiment; in meditation you cannot experiment, you can only experience.

In science the method is observation; in meditation the method is witnessing. And there is a great difference.

Science has an object before it. It can dissect it, it can find out what it is constituted from, it can go to the very roots - to molecules, to atoms, to electrons, to protons. It can go on dissecting to find the ultimate stratum. But in meditation there is no object; there is a subjectivity.

Let me say it differently: in science, the scientist is working with something; in meditation he is working with his own being - he cannot cut it, he cannot dissect it. Who will cut it? Who will dissect it? He is it. Who will observe? He is it.

So if this is understood - that science and meditation have opposite directions to move; one moves outwards, one moves inwards - they need not be enemies. They can go hand in hand because it is the scientist in which they both meet. The scientist has to be alert not to mix them; he has to be alert that in scientific research he remains objective and in meditation he forgets all objectiveness and just becomes a pure subject, a silent witness.

In the scientist is the meeting point. And it has to happen if we are going to save humanity.

Question 4:

TWENTY-FIVE CENTURIES AGO IN GREECE THERE WERE MANY MYSTERY SCHOOLS. ARE YOU A MYSTIC? PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOUR MYSTERY SCHOOL.

You do not understand the word 'mystery' or the word 'mystic' or the phenomenon of a mystic or a mystery school. If anything can be said about them, they are no longer mystic.

A mystic is one who knows but cannot say it. He can live it; you can look into his eyes, you can look into his gestures, you can feel it in his presence, but there is no way to say it. It does not mean that the mystic remains silent. Many mystics have remained silent for the simple reason that everything you say falls short; the essential thing that you wanted to say is not contained in the words. When you hear your own words you know that which you wanted to convey is not conveyed. So many mystics have remained silent.

A few mystics have chosen to speak because it is possible not to say it directly, but to create a situation through words in which it is indicated indirectly.

For example, if I just remain silent for a second - just in the middle of a sentence - you will feel my silence more than if I was silent for two hours here. If I was silent for two hours here, your mind would go on chattering inside; it would not be silent. But when I am speaking to you, if I suddenly remain silent for a second, your mind cannot start chattering because it is so involved with listening.

When I suddenly stop it becomes more curious what I am going to say - a full stop comes to your thinking. A little gap of silence may give you a little taste which can lead to great revolutions of your being. There are devices which can be created which may not help you directly, but which can help indirectly. For that a mystic has not only to be a mystic, he has also to be a master - which is a totally different art.

That's why it becomes possible that there are masters who are not mystics. They are false, they know nothing; they just know the art of mastery. They can create the device but they have nothing to convey. They can make the house but the house is empty.

And there are mystics who have too much to give but they don't know how to give it; they are dumb.

Rarely it happens that a master and mystic happen together in a man - a coincidence. Then the master can manage. Without saying it, still he can manage to indicate it, to give you a certain taste of it. His devices will not be at all false.

For example, there is an old story...

A man comes back home in the evening. His wife is dead, he has small children, and the house is on fire. The small children are inside playing and the whole neighborhood is around the house shouting to the children, "Get out! The house is on fire."

But the children are too small; they don't understand why they should get out. In fact, they are enjoying the flames all around, everything burning, it is such a wild fireworks! They have never seen such a beautiful scene, and they are dancing and they are playing and they don't care what the neighbors are shouting.

At that moment the father reaches home. The house is completely in flames and the neighbors say, "We have done everything, but your children are strange - they don't listen. And they are enjoying as if it is a game."

The father went close and shouted, "I have brought all the toys you asked for. I have brought all the toys!"

And they all came running out from the last door that was left, and started asking, "Where are the toys?"

The father said, "Forgive me; toys I will bring tomorrow. Today that was the only way to bring you out."

Now, those toys were only a device. Those children will understand toys, and they are waiting for toys; they don't understand that the house is on fire and their life is at risk. The father is lying, but can you say that he is lying? He is simply creating a device, out of love and compassion - and he succeeds and the children are out. When he explains to them, they understand, and he promises, "Tomorrow your toys will be brought to you."

But the children say, "Don't be worried about toys, just forgive us because we forced you to lie. We had no idea what was happening; it never happened before. We had no experience."

The master can create, through words, toys that can bring you out of the house which is on fire. Of course you will not find those toys, but you will ask forgiveness from the master: "We forced you to lie. It was your compassion, your love; it was your care and concern."

I am a mystic and my whole work is my mystery school. My sannyasins are part of the mystery school. In ancient Greece those mystery schools were very small schools; this is a mystery university, it is all around the world. But don't ask more. For anybody who is really interested, the only way to understand is to become part of this mystic teaching.

Experience it; that's the only explanation.

Question 5:

PLEASE TALK TO US MORE ABOUT THE HOLY TRINITY - TRUTH, BEAUTY AND LOVE.

The first thing: you have inserted "love" on your own; it is not part of the holy trinity. I have said, satyam - satyam means truth; shivam - shivam means goodness; sundram - sundram means beauty. Don't try to cheat me; it is impossible!

Love simply happens. The man of truth cannot but be loving. The man who understands beauty cannot but be loving. The man who lives all that is good cannot but be loving. Hence, love has not been included in the trinity; it is a by-product. These three things have been included in the trinity because they are independent of each other; they are not by-products.

It is possible that the man of truth may not have any sense for beauty; it is possible that the man of sensitivity for beauty may not have any regard for truth. It is possible that a man may respect beauty but may not live the life of goodness. They are independent.

You can see it easily: there are poets who have an immense sense of beauty, but if you look into their lives you will not find goodness or truth - you will find very ordinary people, perhaps worse than ordinary.

I used to live by the side of a very great poet who translated Omar Khayyam into Hindustani - just like Fitzgerald translated Omar Khayyam into English. This poet has far more understanding of Omar Khayyam than Fitzgerald, and his poetry is far more poetic and more beautiful than any other translation - and thousands of translations have been made. If you had read his book ... because he has never done anything else; he has only translated Omar Khayyam. Again and again he went on polishing it, went on making it more and more beautiful; he devoted his whole life to it. It is the work of a whole life.

But if you had seen the man you would have been shocked - such beautiful poetry, such great flights, and the man was very ugly, ugly in everything. He was a drunkard, using four-letter words the whole day, and his family was in continuous trouble because he never worked. He had a line of children who were just about orphans, although the father was alive, the mother was alive. His old father was alive, his own mother was alive and they were dying of starvation. He had no consideration for anybody, no compassion for anybody; all that he needed was more money to go to the pub. And every day people were bringing him home absolutely drunk. He would be lying down in a gutter, or on the street, and somebody would recognize him and bring him home.

But whenever he was conscious he was continuously working on Omar Khayyam. He had a tremendous quality as far as poetry is concerned, but in every other respect he was below ordinary humanity.

He was ready to lie - he was lying to me every day just to get some money, because he needed money for drinks. And I had told him, "You need not lie to me. You simply ask for the money. I am not loaning it to you, I am simply giving it to you out of friendship. You need not remember that you have to return it."

But lying was such a habit to him that he would lie: "My father is very sick today and I have to call the doctor."

I said, "I know. The doctor must be in the pub. You take the money, go to the pub and call the doctor."

And the next day I would say, "What happened to the doctor?"

And he said, "Who? What doctor? Who needs a doctor?"

No sense of truth, no sense of sincerity. No love... but a great understanding of beauty.

So those three qualities are the trinity; other qualities are by-products. And love is such that all three contribute to love, as if three rivers are meeting in one river that becomes love. Love is not a trinity, love is one river: the sense of beauty, the sense of truth, the sense of goodness all contribute to it.

Love is higher than the trinity.

Trinity means three, and all those three disappear into love. Love is one. That is why I go on saying love is God. There is no God: Love itself is God.

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while the Jewish public in various countries view Israeli
ambassadors as their own representatives."

-- Israel Government Yearbook, 195354, p. 35