Existence is never wrong

Question 1:

Don't try to combine them. Let business be business, and meditation be meditation. One day you will wake up immensely overjoyed that they have mixed. You cannot do it; you can only wait, you have just to be patient.

Go on doing your business, go on doing your meditation, and don't even expect... when is it going to happen? It will happen whenever the time is right. Then they will start overlapping each other. Soon they will get mixed up, and then your business becomes your meditation, your meditation becomes your business.

That is the time when people will start laughing at you - because they cannot conceive of business and meditation becoming one. They are one in me.

I was for nine years teaching in the university, and this was the problem - finally I had to resign because my teaching became more and more meditative; it became deeper and deeper, less and less concerned with the examinations, the syllabus. My vice-chancellor became worried. He said, "I have been to your class. It is beautiful to listen to you. You have put your whole heart into dead words and they have again become alive, but this is a university and these students have to appear in the examinations. They will be at a loss; they will not know what to write. They are enjoying you as they have never enjoyed any other teacher."

I had only ten students, but my class... the vice-chancellor had to give me special permission for a bigger class because two hundred students were attending who were not my students. The other teachers were angry because the students should be in their classes and they were in my class.

They told me, "This is not right."

I said, "You don't be bothered. You can also come" - and in fact a few teachers started coming.

When complaints reached to the vice-chancellor I invited him, "You can come, and if you find any fault you can tell me."

He said, "There is no fault. As far as you are concerned, everything is perfectly good. The trouble is with us - that the syllabus has to be completed. The examination is coming close, the students have to be prepared for it. You have taken the burden off their minds, the tension off their minds; they are so relaxed and so much enjoying the moment... then who is going to do the examinations?"

I said, "These people will do better in the examinations than anybody else. They need not prepare; they have listened so attentively, so meditatively - and I have put myself totally into whatever I have been teaching."

He said, "I agree on every point. But the problem is that the papers will be set by some other universities, the papers will be examined by some other university's professors, and they know nothing about you. And these poor students will be unnecessarily harmed."

I said, "If this is the case then I resign. Then the whole universe becomes my university. Then wherever I am I will do my business."

The moment will come when business and meditation will become one.

Right now you want to write books on me, and you feel worried because the doer is there. Don't be worried. Start with the doer. Perhaps while writing on me the doer will disappear at some point, but it cannot be dropped by you.

Get absorbed totally in writing the books. In the beginning you will feel it is the doer who is beginning; let the doer begin it. People commit suicide... The doer is committing suicide by writing on me; let him commit suicide, but don't think too much of it. Use it while it is alive - use it. Perhaps by the time the introduction is finished he will be gone, and you will be so absorbed in writing, so deeply involved that you will forget that you are there. Neither the doer will be there nor the writer will be there... and then writing happens... and that has a beauty of its own.

Question 2:

Everybody inherits every quality that man is capable of. Each quality is immense in its potential, but if you don't make an effort to actualize it...

In my village there was a beautiful river, and I had found the highest hillock to jump from into the river. I would take other students with me, and just looking down they would start trembling. I would say, "You just watch me: if I can jump, you can also jump. There is no problem in it. You have the potential courage, you have just never used it; you have never given it a chance."

It was really high.... I would jump, then somebody else would gather courage and jump; and then others would see that we are still alive in the river. Then the third person would jump.

Finally, all my friends were able to jump from that cliff. Then I said, "Now this cliff is useless. We should go to the railway bridge that passes over the river; that is the highest point we can find."

But they said, "That is too much. We will not even allow you to jump - and moreover there is always a guard with a gun" - because people used to commit suicide from there. Since a few people had committed suicide, the government had posted a permanent guard twenty-four hours a day.

I said, "Don't you be worried. I have talked to the guard and he is willing. He said, 'If you are not committing suicide but just practicing jumping into the river... In fact I also always wanted to jump from here. It is so challenging, but I don't have the courage.'"

I said, "You are a great soldier, we are small students. Seeing us, perhaps you may get the courage."

He said, "You bring your friends."

So one day I went with a few of my friends. All the way they were telling me, "Don't take that risk. It is too high."

I said, "First I will jump, then the guard will jump. That is the arrangement. And when you see that we both are alive, you can decide whether to use your courage or not."

The guard was almost trembling. He said, "Have you really come?"

I said, "What do you mean, really come?"

He said, "I was thinking that you were simply talking."

I said, "This is the arrangement. First I will jump. You can see that I am alive; then you have to jump - because these are all small people and you should give them courage."

He said, "My God, number two - I am number two. I was thinking I would be the last."

I said, "No, that would be insulting you. You are a great soldier with a gun. Put the gun aside" - and I jumped.

The guard would try to jump - he would come close and then stop... suddenly some brakes, and he would stop. And I was calling to him from the river, "No need to stop. It takes only a second, just don't stop!"

Finally, after three or four attempts, he managed - because all the boys were laughing and I was calling. And I had made him a great soldier so he was also worried about his prestige. Finally he jumped, and when he fell into the river he said to me, "My God, I managed! I cannot believe that I am alive!"

I said, "Believe it! You are alive, just pinch yourself and see! You are not dead."

He pinched himself! - because he was afraid that perhaps he was dead. And seeing us both alive, slowly, slowly, one by one, the students started jumping.

Everybody has the courage, everybody has all the talents that man is capable of. What talent you bring into the world depends on you; nobody is born with any particular talent. That is an old idea, invented by cowards, invented by people who were nobodies in life so they thought that these are inherited qualities - somebody becomes a poet, somebody becomes a painter, somebody becomes a warrior.

My own experience is totally different. I want it to be understood clearly that everybody has all human talents in him. Now, whichever talent you feed, nourish, support, will become actualized.

And when it becomes actualized and you become a great painter, naturally anybody who wants to become a painter will think, "Perhaps it is not in my inheritance, it is not intrinsic to me - because I cannot make such a beautiful painting."

One of the great musicians was asked once... In India classical music has to be practiced almost eight hours every day. Even those who are world famous continue to practice. This great musician was asked, "If you don't practice one day what will happen?"

He said, "If I don't practice one day, I will feel the difference.

The questioner asked, "If you don't practice two days, then...?"

He said, "The critics will feel the difference."

And the questioner asked, "If you don't practice three days?"

He said, "Then everybody will start feeling the difference."

Every talent needs to be nourished continuously. And remember, nobody is born a poet or a soldier or a painter or a mystic. Everybody is born with all the qualities' potential. You have to choose what you want to become, and bring that potential to its flowering. Certainly you will have to water it with your blood, you will have to put your whole being into it. Only then it becomes alive.

I am against the old concept that somebody is a born poet, a born singer, anything. Everybody has the capacity to become anybody he wants; it just depends on your decisiveness.

Question 3:

There are many things to be said about it.

One, that it shows the generation gap. It shows where the past ends and the future begins - a demarcation line. Your parents are simply the past; their pope, their religion, their philosophy, all have come to a dead end. There is no future for them. As far as you are concerned, there is no past for you. A great discontinuity has happened. You are the future; you have immense possibilities of evolution.

Existence will depend on you.

Existence will hope and dream for all that is possible through you. You are going to be a vehicle for taking human consciousness to its ultimate peak.

And there is no possibility of bridging the gap. It is for the first time in history that such a gap is happening. There have been parents always, there have been children always, there have been generations always - but there has never been a generation gap. This is something totally new - with immense implications, as if evolution is taking a quantum leap, a jump, is no more continuous - not just a modification of the past, not just a renovation of the past; not just here and there a few changes in the past, but a total change.

The whole past has become irrelevant; not only irrelevant, it is a hindrance too.

So rejoice in this generation gap. It is not an enmity with your parents, it is simply a new potential becoming actual.

The parents have lived for thousands of years with their popes and with their strong love, but humanity has not evolved. Out of that love there has been no growth.

Your love towards me is not towards me, your love is towards a total revolution, a rebellion. You are getting ready to drop everything that is old and to search again for a new identity for yourself, for all human beings.

The old man was simply a part of society. The new man will be an individual peak, not a cog in the wheel.

The old man was replaceable.

The new man will be unique and irreplaceable.

The old man lived according to rules, regulations, disciplines, scriptures, commandments, but he never lived spontaneously; it is always according to something, according to somebody else.

The new man is going to live spontaneously - without any rules, without any regulations, without anybody telling him how to live. He has to find his own way about everything; his life is going to be an adventure.

The old man's life was a drag. It was sheer boredom. People were tired, utterly fed up, but they somehow managed to carry themselves to their graves. Their only hope was death. You have heard many times that people are afraid of death; you are wrong. The old man was waiting for death only

I am reminded of Alexander the Great. While he was coming to India, on the way he got information that in the desert there was an oasis, that if you drink the water from that oasis you become immortal.

That was the ancient man's search - immortality.

Alexander was immensely interested. He stopped his forces and he went alone; he did not want everybody else to become immortal. The old man was very jealous; he was not sharing. Even such a beautiful phenomenon as becoming immortal, and Alexander could not invite his own people - who were ready to die for him - and say to them, "You also come with me and drink from that oasis and become immortal." He did not take even his commander in chief, his prime minister, not even his bodyguard. He said, "You all stop here. I will go alone."

The story is very beautiful and very significant. He reached the oasis, and he was immensely joyful that what great seers have always been searching for he had found without any search. And just as he was going to make a cup out of his hands to fill with water and drink, a crow who was sitting on the nearby tree said, "Wait a minute." A crow speaking...?

He believed that he would become immortal by drinking the water of a certain oasis; he did not disbelieve. Do you see the implication? Whatever you want to believe, you never doubt it. Your beliefs are really your desires; you are afraid to doubt because who knows, your doubt may prove right. You are afraid even to think, you simply accept in faith. Now, such an absurd idea - by drinking the water of a certain oasis you will become immortal - was acceptable to him....

Alexander was not a gullible fellow. He was a disciple of Aristotle, the father of Western logic, and he was a trained logician himself. But not even for a moment did he think that it seemed to be absurd; otherwise, many people would have become immortal by now - he could not be the first to discover it. In fact the people who had informed him would have drunk the water first before informing him.

But no doubt, no suspicion, no skepticism... pure faith.

When you want something you become gullible.

It is your desire that makes you gullible.

Only a desireless man is free from gullibility.

Alexander was very surprised that a crow was speaking. When water can make people immortal, what is wrong in a crow speaking? It is not any more absurd than the first idea. He could not believe...

The crow said, "Believe me. I am speaking because I have also drunk from the same water. I have become immortal and I stay here to warn people not to drink that water; it is dangerous. Now I want to die. It must be millions of years that I have lived, and the boredom is such, the anguish is such...

I don't see any point in why I should go on living. But I cannot commit suicide; I am immortal. I have tried committing suicide; I have drunk poison but to no effect.

"So before you drink, just listen to my story, and then it is up to you. Do you really want to live forever? You will repent, because death is a great hope, a relief; now you are free from the burden of so-called life which is nothing but misery and suffering and anguish. You can think it over and if you feel like drinking you can drink it, but don't say that nobody warned you."

The story says that for a moment Alexander thought about it, dropped the water, rode away on his horse and escaped as quickly as possible from the place. Because who knows... man is a weakling, and in a certain moment of weakness he may want to drink it. The crow is right; you cannot live forever.

There will come a point when you have experienced everything and there is nothing left for tomorrow.

Then every day is just an emptiness which goes on repeating itself. It will be worse than death.

Alexander recognized for the first time that death is a great hope.

For the old man, life was negligible. He was repressed in every way so that he could not live. All his religions, all his so-called moralists had been absolutely certain to make his life poisoned. Everything was wrong: to be joyful was wrong, to love was a sin, to enjoy this world was against spirituality, it was materialism. Everything was so much condemned for so many centuries that every man had become afraid to live.

Yes, he was afraid to die too, but the fear was not of death, remember; the fear was that death is coming and he has not lived yet. Seventy years are gone, unlived, unloved. He has not sung the song that he had come to sing, he has not danced the dance which would have fulfilled his destiny, which would have given him meaning - and death was coming. He was not afraid of death, he was afraid that death will take the tomorrows from him.

That is the only way he has learned in his whole life: that he will live tomorrow. Today is destroyed by every kind of so-called religion, spirituality. Today is completely destroyed and that is the only real thing - tomorrow never comes. But he was hoping that perhaps tomorrow, what has not happened yet may happen. Now death is coming and there will be no tomorrow - that was his fear.

The fear was not about death, the fear was about unlived life; otherwise, every person after a certain age, seventy, seventy-five, eighty, starts feeling that death seems to be the only relief, the only possible freedom - freedom from life, freedom from all the beauty, all the joy, all the glory that surrounds existence.

For the old man, death has been a great hope.

For the new man life will be a reality, not to be lived tomorrow, but to be lived herenow.

For the new man there is going to be no tomorrow.

For the new man there is going to be no death, because death is always tomorrow. Today is always life... right now it is always life... this moment it is always life. For the new man each moment of life is an eternity of joy, an immeasurable ecstasy.

And this gap that has happened between the generations is to be welcomed. It is not against anybody, it is simply the course of existence. Existence has tried with the old man and failed. Now existence wants new men with new ways of living, new ways of thinking, new modes of existence.

Existence is never wrong.

It gave enough rope for the old man, for the old society, for the old religions; but somehow they all failed. They were going to fail because they were not for this world, they were condemning this world. They were talking about a world beyond the clouds which does not exist at all; they were sacrificing the real for the unreal. Naturally, no growth was possible.

The new man will sacrifice the unreal for the real. He will sacrifice all tomorrows for today. He will make his today so intense and so total that even if he dies there will be no regret: he lived it so fully, he experienced it so fully, and deep down he has touched the principle of immortality. He knows that life never ends, it only changes forms.

So for the new man death does not exist; for the new man death is only a transformation period, just a deep sleep. The old goes to sleep, and in the morning a totally new being wakes up.

Try to help your parents to understand it. Don't be angry, because it is not their fault. They have simply followed their parents. They have simply followed the prophets and the messiahs and the saviors; they have been very naive. Don't be angry at them.

Be compassionate, and make yourself understandable to them so your gap is not a gap of antagonism, but a gap of an existential change, a revolution. If you can make your parents understand what is happening, perhaps they will also bless you, bless you to go on the new way, bless you to find that which they have missed.

It will be good that the new generation goes with the blessings of the old generation, so there are no hurt feelings on either side, and the old generation also feels proud that existence has chosen you to carry on the work that the old man has failed in. The old man has been waiting for the messiah to come.... No messiah is going to come.

The new man is the messiah.

The new man is the savior.

The new man brings the good news that evolution can continue to higher levels of being.

You are fortunate and blessed.

Question 4:

It has been so in the past. People like me have always come with a great vision and died without realizing their visions. It is not going to happen to me for the simple reason that I have chosen the right time and the right place. This generation gap is the right time.

Buddha was working with the old people, with the old tradition, with all the orthodox minds and wanting them to be rebellious. So was Lao Tzu and so was Zarathustra. They could not see that the people they were talking to were so deeply rooted in the past that they could not move away from it.

They could listen, they could worship them - they will worship them forever and they will remember them as great prophets, great saviors, as awakened people - they will keep them in their hearts as cherished memories, but more than that they cannot do, for the simple reason that they are not the right people.

I am talking to the right people who are already dropping the past, who are already finished with temples, mosques, churches, synagogues.

I am reminded of a small anecdote...

Three rabbis were talking, discussing whose synagogue was the most ultramodern. Now synagogues are not supposed to be ultramodern....

The first rabbi said, "In my synagogue you can smoke, you can drink - even while I am giving the sermon - and you can play cards. There is absolute freedom."

The second one said, "That is nothing. While I am giving a sermon my people can even make love.

All these thing they do, but they are free - really free, no inhibition."

The third man said, "This is nothing."

Both said, "What more can we dare...?"

The third rabbi said, "In my synagogue, on the door there is written in golden letters that on every Jewish holiday the synagogue will remain closed."

In all the churches of different religions, their priests are trying to learn psychoanalysis, to become therapists. Strange. They should be reading the TORAH, they should be reading THE BIBLE, they should be studying the VEDAS. They are studying Sigmund Freud, Adler and Jung. For what? What has happened? The new people are slipping out of their hands.

The archbishop here on this beautiful island has been threatening for almost all the time I have been here - from the very beginning - that he is going to have a protest march against me. But I know he cannot have a protest march against me, because in his church only a few old ladies go to listen to him. And he will look like a buffoon with old ladies protesting against me in the streets. He is waiting for somebody... but nobody turns up.

On the contrary, the youth of the island - who have no connection with me - just seeing the ugliness of the archbishop and his statements, and the falsity of his statements... He is continually wiring to the prime minister and to the politicians: "This man should be immediately, instantly deported; otherwise, he will corrupt our youth. He will destroy our morality, he will destroy our religion."

You have been here for two thousand years. A great morality you have created, and a great religion you have created that can be destroyed by a man who is just a tourist for four weeks....

The youth of the island, who have no connection with me - I don't know who they are - have gathered, because it is an insult to the island. They are collecting signatures for me against the bishop - who is saying that sex orgies are happening and thousands of people join in every morning and every evening; that you are not listening to a discourse, it is an intercourse - saying that these are all lies.

The new generation is already out of their hands.

Only formally are they Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans - but just formally. They have no fanaticism against all these ideologies or for these ideologies; they are simply not concerned. They are indifferent. This is the right time when people can be unconditioned - when on their own accord they are ready to throw out all rubbish.

I can help them to throw it out in a more scientific way so that it does not come back through the back door, so that nothing of it remains in some corner of your unconscious mind. Because even a small part of it in your unconscious mind will be enough - it will again start growing, it will again spread into your being. It has to be completely cleaned out.

You have to be absolutely fresh, a tabula rasa, a clean slate on which nothing is written so you are free to write whatever you want - your own poetry, your own song, your own experience.

I am not going to fail for the simple reason that the time is right.

Existence is with me, the old and the past is already dead - it simply needs a little push and it will go into the grave. My work is not hard as it was for Buddha, for Confucius. My work is not hard as it was for Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus. It is very simple because it was already going to happen, even without me. Without me it may take a little longer, may not be done so scientifically, and some traces of the old may remain and haunt you and disturb your future.

What I call meditation is simply a method of cleaning your heart totally of all past, and giving you a new birth. Unless you are reborn just like a child, innocent, there is danger. The past is long and heavy; it can catch you again. It is making every effort.

Bishops and priests and cardinals going to study psychology, psychoanalysis, therapies, is a strange phenomenon. Why? - just to understand what is happening to the new youth and what they can do to prevent it from happening. To understand the new mind, they are trying to study all the new sciences that have developed around the mind.

I used to live in a place in India for a few years where Asia's biggest Christian missionary training college was, Leonard Theological College. There were three thousand students from all over Asia.

To become a missionary was a six-year course. Just the way somebody becomes an engineer, somebody becomes a doctor, somebody becomes a professor, they were becoming missionaries.

In a six-year syllabus, step by step everything was programmed.

The principal was my friend and he invited me to see how beautiful a campus they had created. I stopped at a class where they were teaching how to give sermons. I was amazed that this too was part of the training. The teacher was showing them at what point you should raise your hand, at what point you should look upwards at God, at what point you should speak strongly and authoritatively and at what point you should simply whisper, at what point you have to beat the table.

I asked the principal, "Do you think Jesus had been to any theological college?"

He said, "No, he had not been to any theological college."

I said, "That's why it is safe! - otherwise these three thousand people would be crucified. It is all acting - everybody knows they have to practice at one point to raise their hand..." I said, "This is so stupid. Religion is not something that you can teach like other subjects. It is something that you experience, and when you have something to say you find the right gesture automatically; you don't have to search for it. You find the right emphasis when there is something worth saying; it is not a question of training. You are befooling these three thousand people. Their whole lives they will think they are religious."

And this was not only true about the students.

One of the greatest contemporary Christian missionaries was Stanley Jones. He used to come to India once in a while on his world tours. We became very friendly. He used to have each speech typed on small cards - ten or twelve or fifteen cards, different points on each card - and he would keep those cards on the table. He would finish the first card, then remove the first card, then came number two....

He was staying with a friend. He was an old man, a friend of Mahatma Gandhi and respected all over the world as a great spiritual leader. I just mixed up his cards.

He started... and then he looked at the card and said, "My God. Where is my first card?" - I had rubbed the numbers out!

He started looking at his cards, and the people were laughing and saying, "What kind of speech is this?"

First he was very angry, and he said, "Who has done it?"

I said, "I have done it."

"But," he said, "I thought you were my friend."

I said, "I am your friend and that's why I have done it. I wanted it to be clear to you that all your missionary work is simply bogus. You don't have anything to say, you have only twenty prepared speeches. And you go on with those cards... It is not your experience; otherwise, you should not have bothered about the card. You should have spoken out of your heart, out of your experience."

And I told him, "Remember, whenever you visit my town I am not going to allow you to use cards."

That was the last time he ever visited the town. He never came back. Without cards he was absolutely at a loss what to do, what to say - everything was written on the card.

Religious experience is written in your heart.

The pope has never spoken a single word spontaneously; everything is prepared by the secretaries.

You think the pope is speaking, you think the pope is infallible... you should rather think the secretaries of the pope are infallible. The poor pope has nothing to do with it. All those speeches are prepared by the secretaries; he simply repeats them.

The new generation is alert enough, and it is getting out of the hands of the old on its own. I can just help a little bit.

Socrates has said that the function of the master is that of a midwife. He is right. The child is ready and wants to come out of the womb; the midwife simply helps the child to be born as comfortably as possible, so that neither the mother is harmed nor the child is harmed. The whole art of midwifery, on a spiritual level, is the work of a master.

Don't be worried...

The world is ready to welcome the new man.

Existence is ready to support the new man in every possible way. Neither can the politicians prevent it nor can your so-called intellectuals prevent it. There is no force that can prevent the new man from appearing.

The time for the new man has come.

The old man has failed so utterly that there is no possibility for him to compete with the new.

I have been challenging different heads of different religions, "You go on spreading lies about me.

Why don't you gather a little courage and come directly into a public debate with me?"

But not a single one, neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan nor Jaina nor Buddhist - none of them has courage enough to be in a public discussion, openly, so people can feel where the truth is.

They themselves know the truth is not with them - hence the fear; otherwise what can the problem be?

I am talking to my people.

I am not talking even to the people of the island.

I have not invited them. If they come on their own I cannot prevent them, that would be simply inhuman. If they come I welcome them - but I have not invited anybody.

Why is the bishop worried? The worry is that he has only a congregation of twelve old women, and I have thousands and thousands of young people. He knows that whatever he has been teaching is against nature. The young people can listen to it but cannot follow it.

What I am teaching is in tune with nature; the young people can follow it. It is absolutely their need that somebody should say to them, "You are right to follow your nature; there is no sin in it. The people who have been telling lies to you are afraid that before the truth their lies will be exposed" - otherwise, is this a religious type of mind?

The pope is preventing my entry into Italy, using his whole power that I should not enter Italy. What fear can he have? He is the representative of God, I am nobody's representative.

I simply represent myself.

I should be afraid of him - he has everybody on his side, God, Jesus, the holy ghost. I have nobody on my side. I am fighting the whole battle alone, still with absolute certainty that victory is going to be ours, because truth is intrinsically victorious...

You can lie and deceive people for a time, but not forever. You have deceived for long enough. If you have real sincerity it is time that you yourself should say, "We have been lying. We have been deceiving."

It happened once that I was speaking in a conference with a Jaina monk who was very much respected among the Jainas, Chandan Muni. He spoke first, and he talked about the self, the realization of self, and the blissfulness of self. I was sitting by his side, watching the man. All those words were empty; there was no support from his experience. I could see in his eyes, there was no depth.

I spoke after him and the first thing I said was, "Whatever Chandan Muni has said is simply a repetition of scriptures, parrotlike. He has done a good job. His memory is good, but his experience is nil."

There was great trouble because it was the conference of the Jainas. A few people started standing up and going. I said, "Wait! You will have to listen for at least five minutes to me and then you can go. I am new to you; you don't know me. At least five minutes just to have a little introduction as to what kind of a man you have left behind, and then you are free; everybody can go."

Speaking for five minutes was enough, and after five minutes I asked, "Now, anybody who wants to go should immediately leave."

Not a single man left. I spoke for almost two hours. I was not supposed to speak for that long; I was asked to speak only for ten minutes. But seeing that now people were listening and nobody had left the president was afraid. Even Chandan Muni was listening very intensely and alertly. The president was afraid to disturb me because he knew that I am not a man who can be stopped. And I was not going to stop, I was going to throw out that president.

I said, "If people want to hear me... You are no longer president of this conference. You simply get out."

He understood it so he was sitting silently.

But having heard me for two hours, Chandan Muni sent me a message that afternoon saying, "I want to meet you alone, in privacy. I cannot come to the place where you are staying because a Jaina monk cannot go anywhere except the Jaina temple. So please forgive me, you will have to come here."

I said, "There is no problem. I will come."

I went there, and at least two hundred people had gathered. But he wanted absolute privacy, so he took me in, closed the doors of the room, sat down with me on the floor and said, "You were right. I don't have courage enough to say it in public, but I wanted to say to you that you were right: I don't have any experience of self; I don't have any experience of self-realization. I don't know whether such a thing exists or not, and you were absolutely right that I was just like a parrot repeating the scriptures.

"But help me. I am imprisoned, I cannot go anywhere. I am the head of a community; I cannot even ask questions to you before others. They think I am already self-realized, so why should I be asking questions? - I should know the answer myself."

And there were tears in his eyes.

I said, "I will do my best to help you, because I have seen many religious leaders but not with such a sincere heart. And I know perfectly well you cannot remain in this bondage long. You have met a dangerous man, and you have invited me yourself!"

And it happened within two years. He was in contact with me - letters, learning meditation, doing meditation - and after two years he dropped out of the Jaina community. He was so well respected, and the Jaina community is very rich... and he dropped out.

He came to meet me. I could not believe it. When he came to my house and said, "I am Chandan Muni," I said, "You have changed so much."

He said, "To be free of a prison, to be free of borrowed knowledge has been such a great relief that I have again become young" - and he was seventy years old. He said, "Now I am ready to do whatever you want. I have risked everything; I was rich, I renounced that to become a Jaina monk.

Now I have renounced Jainism, the monkhood, just to be nobody so that I can have total freedom to experiment."

The politicians will not be of much help, but there may be a few politicians who will have a sincerity.

And seeing the change in times, seeing that the old and the new have fallen apart... If they want anything to do with the new, they have to understand the new, the functioning of the new.

There may be a few politicians who will come out to help me in my work. There may be a few intellectuals who are not only intellectuals but intelligent also; they may come to help. We just have to be ready, to wait, and we have to be preparing the new people on as vast a scale as possible.

A few from religious groups will come out - because there are always a few people who are sincere but by accident have fallen into a wrong group. Once they hear that something of the truth is available, their thirst may be awakened. But whether any religious head, or any politician, or any intellectual helps or not, it does not matter.

The new generation has all the power.

Youth has all the potential of the future.

And there may be many old people who are old only still young in their intelligence.. they will be with you.

Of one thing I am absolutely certain: whatever troubles we have to pass through, the ultimate victory is going to be ours. It is not only a question of any ideology, it is a question of evolution versus death.

Question 5:

It is difficult, but not impossible; if the urge is strong, then it may not even be difficult.

A sergeant in the army has been trained in a certain way, disciplined in a certain way; he is trained and disciplined to kill, or to be killed.

And enlightenment also needs you to be ready to be killed. There is no need to kill anybody, but it needs you to be killed. The sergeant's whole discipline and training can be used; he can kill his own ego. If he is ready even to die, then there is not much problem in killing the ego.

The moment the ego dies you are enlightened.

So don't be worried. From every direction, from every kind of discipline, from every profession we can find something that can be helpful to bring you to enlightenment. If you cling to the discipline, if you wait for orders from above, then it is going to be difficult. There is nobody above you to order you. Enlightenment cannot be ordered. The same way you have been trained - turn right, turn left - somebody cannot say, "Now become enlightened!"

But your disciplined personality can be used in a certain way. You have been prepared to die if the time comes, without any hesitation - and that is the most significant part as far as enlightenment is concerned. If you are ready to die as an ego instantly, you can explode into a world of light, into a world of delight.

This question is significant for everybody, because everybody is trained for some discipline, some skill, some profession. Everybody has to see how he can make his profession not a hindrance but a support, how to use a stumbling stone as a stepping-stone.

Just a little intelligence is needed.

Okay, Maneesha.