Live Dangerously!

The first question

Question 1:

That's why it is long and arduous - because you are not here-now. You are far away from here now.

You will have to come, you will have to journey.

When I say truth is not far away, I mean TRUTH is here-now - I don't mean you are not far away from truth. You ARE far away from truth. Truth is not far away from you, God cannot be far away from you. God exists in you as you. God exists as eternity, not as past or future. God simply is.

How can God be far away? There is not place for him to be far away. He is all over the place. He is everywhere... in your breathing, in your heartbeat. But you are not here.

God has not gone away: you have gone away from him.

You have to understand this. For example, in the night you sleep and you dream - you dream you have gone to the moon. You are here, but the dream has taken you far away. In the morning when you awake, you will not find yourself on the moon - you will be here in Poona. But in the dream you were far away from your reality. You have to come back from your dreams... and the journey is

arduous because you have invested SO much in those dreams, and you are hoping to gain so much from those dreams, and you have lived in those dreams for so long that they have become reality, your reality.

The East calls this dreaming state of mind MAYA - illusion. And then you can go on searching for God in your illusions and you will not find him. You have to awake. And to be awake is arduous because a thousand and one dreams will be shattered. And in those dreams all your joys, all your so-called successes, ambitions, are involved. Your WHOLE ego is involved. The ego will be shattered.

You are here but the ego has gone to the moon - and the ego can only live through dreams, it can only live through illusions. It is nourished by illusions. The more illusions you have, the more grandiose an ego you have. The greater your illusions, the bigger your ego. It is very difficult to renounce those dreams.

In the East this is called sannyas: to renounce those dreams. When it is said, "Renounce the world,"

it is not meant the actual world - the wife, the husband, the children, the house, the marketplace.

No, not at all. What is really meant is this dreamworld in which you go on constantly moving away from yourself and away from reality. Renounce the dreams! And that is arduous.

Now, let me read your question again:

TODAY YOU SAID THAT THE WAY TO ENLIGHTENMENT IS LONG AND ARDUOUS - it is

- AND ALSO THAT IT IS HERE AND NOW

- it is.

AS IT IS HERENOW, HOW CAN IT BE LONG AND ARDUOUS?

That's why. You are not to go anywhere, you have to come here! You have already gone somewhere.

You have moved away from your innermost core. You never come home. And God exists there, but you keep God at your back. Your eyes are roaming far away in distant stars; they never come back.

From one star to another you go on hopping. Your mind is a vagabond.

So it is arduous and yet it is easy. The contradiction is only apparent. It is arduous because of you: it is easy because of God. If you think of God you can take it very easily, you can relax. If you depend on yourself, it is very arduous.

That's why I say if you depend on yourself, if you depend on your effort, you may never come back - because it is through effort that you have gone away. You have to surrender. In that very surrendering, grace descends.

And what can you surrender? What have you got? Why are you so afraid of surrendering? You have got only dreams and nothing else, just soap-bubbles.

Surrender your dreams and the truth is herenow. That's why I say NOW OR NEVER - - because existence always exists in the now, and the mind exists in the then. Existence is here and the mind is always there, and they never meet. Here and there never meet; now and then never meet. Just look deep down in your mind: it is very rare to come across a contemporary.

Somebody is living five thousand years back; he is still part of the days of Rig Veda. He is still reading Rig Veda. he is still following the Vedic ritual. Five thousand year have passed, but he has not come here, now. He lives there - in the dead, in the gone, in the memory.

Why do you call yourself a Hindu or a Christian, or a Mohammedan or a Jain? To call yourself these things simply means you cling to the past. These are names that come from the past. Herenow you are only a consciousness, neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian. If you get entangled with the past, you are a Hindu, or a Brahmin or a Sudra. Or there are a few other people who think they are very progressive: communists, socialists . They are involved in the future, hence they think they are very progressive. But to be in the past is to be as far away from the present as to be in the future. It makes no difference.

There are two kinds of mind in the world. One: involved with the past, the orthodox mind; and the other: involved in the future, the so-called revolutionary mind - but both are minds. The orthodox thinks the golden age has passed, the RAM-RAJYA has passed. And the revolutionary, the so-called revolutionary, thinks the golden age has to come, the Utopia has yet to happen. His eyes are there on the distant future. But there is no difference between these two; they are the same kind of people.

Both are avoiding the present, both are escaping from the present, both are denying reality. So a communist or a Mohammedan, a socialist or a Hindu, to me are all in the same boat - the boat of time.

Whom do I call religious? The man who is not more in the boat of time, who starts living in eternity, who lives in the now, who has no past and no future. Who does not go to the Rig Veda and who does not go to DAS KAPITAL - who simply goes in himself. Who looks at the sun that is there on the horizon, and who listens to the birds that are singing right NOW, who looks at the trees that are blooming. Just see that quality of being; here, that collectedness, that integrity, that centering I call religiousness.

Religion does not mean affiliation. Religion means being in reality without any dreams. Dreams come either from the past or from the future. A religious man is an empty man, a hollow bamboo.

He allows the reality to live through him, he flows with it. He has no goals, he is not going anywhere.

He is just being here, as God is just being here... hence the meeting.

That's why I say now or never. Now is eternity. By 'never' I am denying time: I am saying you will not find God in time.

The present is not part of time that has to be remembered. Ordinarily you have been taught that time has three tenses: past, present, future. That is absolutely wrong. It has no understanding about time. Time has only two tenses - past and future. The present is not part of time: the present is part of eternity. The present is that which abides, which is always. To relax into it is meditation, or call it prayer. And to know it is celebration. Infinite joy starts showering on you, great benediction descends - because with the past and the future all worries disappear, all dreams disappear.

That's what Ikkyu means when he says the original mind is clean, clean of all ideas. It is a mirror without dust. It simply mirrors that which is.

The second question

Question 2:

The question is from Swami Anand Parad. He is a well-known author. And the answer is in the question itself.

That's why my people were laughing - they have answered. They have not left anything for me to answer. It is ALL logic, logic-chopping.

And remember, logic is very cunning. Cunningness is intrinsic to logic. It can pretend, it can talk in terms of supra-logical, but that supra-logical is nothing but an extension of the same logical mind.

Go slowly into this question: IT HAS BEEN MY EXPERIENCE THAT IT IS NOT SO MUCH THAT THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IS ILLOGICAL AS IT IS SUPRA-LOGICAL.

Now the logic is trying to defend itself. The logic is afraid of the illogical. If it is called supra-logical then it is okay - just by changing the label? A rose is a rose is a rose... what you call it will not make any difference. It will be a rose called by any other name whatsoever. Just by calling it 'supra-logical', why docs your mind feel better? Calling it supra-logical, the mind has claimed it. It says, "It is within MY limits - supra maybe, but it is within my limits. I can cover it, I can hold it. You need not go beyond me."

You have just to become a little more logical. You have to just make your boundaries a little bigger.

Your imprisonment will remain. The jail becomes a supra-jail. It has bigger boundaries; you push the boundaries farther away. You can push them so far away that you cannot see them. That's what is happening in the world, has been happening always. What you call a nation, what is it?

It is a supra-jail. The boundaries are so far away that you cannot see them. But when you cross

the boundaries of a country to another country, you remember then that you are a prisoner. Then you know that you are surrounded by police and the army, that a visa is needed, that a passport is needed. That you don't belong to the earth, that the whole earth docs not belong to you. That it is a big jail called India, China, Pakistan, America, Canada - there are many jails on the earth. But they are so big! Unless you come closer to the boundary you will not know them.

Have you not felt it? Crossing the boundary of a country you feel great uneasiness; you simply feel yourself a prisoner. You are not a FREE man. And the freedom seems to be just talk.

Freedom cannot exist on the earth unless nations disappear. Nations cannot allow freedom. All the constitutions of the world, even the so-called democratic constitutions. they talk and they only talk about 'freedom' of movement'. What kind of freedom of movement is this? And you must be knowing it by bitter experience, because you are here suffering all kinds of indignities. The police are after you. the government is after you: "You have to leave the country. Your six weeks are over, or eight weeks are over." What kind of freedom is this? Freedom o f movement you call it . And a mam cannot move from one country to another country.

The prison is big. It is a supra-prison.

If you are not a Hindu you cannot go into a Hindu temple. If you are not a Jain you are not allowed into a Jain temple. These are again prisons. And there are prisons and prisons and prisons.... Mind is very cunning in deceiving itself.

That's why I don't call it supra-logical. I simply call it illogical - for a certain reason. The reason is this: that by calling it illogical I want to shatter all the walls. Supra-logical and the wall remains. It recedes farther back, it may almost become invisible, but it remains. Hence I insist that IT IS illogical.

The jump into God is illogical, it is not logical.

I agree with the Christian mystic Tertullian: "CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM." He says: "I believe in God because God is absurd, illogical, irrational." A rational God will not be much of a God; it will be just a concept. A logical God, a logical universe, cannot be a real universe - because logic is an imposition, it is an invention of man. The trees don't know about it. and the stars don't know anything about it. It is only man who imposes a certain pattern.

ALL patterns are imposed out of fear. The fear is that man always want to label things - once he has labelled a thing he feels very at ease. Now he thinks he knows. This naming business has gone very deep.

Somebody asks, "What kind of tree ii this?" and you tell him, 'This is a pine,' and he is satisfied - as if he has known what it is just by calling, it a pine. He thinks he knows. If he had not been answered what kind of tree this is, he would have felt uneasy, because that illogical, that tree beyond human language, human comprehension, is standing there as a challenge. Pin it down! put a label on it!

and you are satisfied. What have you come to know by putting a label on it?

Thousands of talented people simply go on doing this naming business - they call it research. What kind of research is this. This is not research at all. It is not even I search - it is just making mind feel easy. Small children go on asking, "What is this?" you just answer anything - -ABC - you say

anything, and they are satisfied. Then they are asking about something else: "And what is this?"

They go on just asking, "What is this?" From that very curiosity, all naming business arises.

When I say life is illogical, I mean it is not nameable. Try to understand what I mean! I mean it is not nameable. You cannot pinpoint it. Call it supra-logical and you have pinpointed it, you have pinned it down. Now it is no more the butterfly alive; it is a pinned butterfly in an album, dead . You have transformed its quality completely, you have destroyed it.

When I say illogical I mean unnameable, I mean no word will be able to express it.

Lao Tzu says: Truth cannot be said. The moment you say it, it becomes untrue.

This is what I mean by calling reality illogical, irrational. It is beyond the comprehension of mind.

Call it supra-logical, and you feel at ease; then you are no longer afraid of it. You have the feeling that you know about it.

Absence of knowledge creates deep insecurity. There is still something which we don't know. It has to be known! Maybe there is danger. Have you not felt it when you meet a stranger? The immediate curiosity is who he is - what name, what religion, what country? Immediately you start inquiring.

Just within four, five questions you have pinned the man down - mm? - he is a Hindu, an Indian, works as a clerk in an office. How much salary? In India they even ask that, and they even ask how much you get on the side. Nobody feels any insult; nobody feels "What is being asked?" People say, "Answer!"

Once you have known the financial position, the status, the name, the religion, the caste, you relax.

So you can relax, you know this man. You have known this type of man before. But can any man be pinned down like that? NO two men are alike. Each individual is only like himself. By calling him a hindu you are just misinterpreting the whole thing. You may have known other Hindus, but they were OTHER Hindus. and this Hindu is a totally different phenomenon. You cannot understand him by understanding other Hindus. You may have known other clerks, but his is a totally different man.

There is no way of understanding him through these queries. If you want to understand a man really, you will have to go deep down into this man's mystery - and that is illogical. You will have to go into love. That's what I mean when I say illogical.

IT HAS BEEN MY EXPERIENCE THAT IT IS NOT SO MUCH THAT THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IS ILLOGICAL AS IT IS SUPRA-LOGICAL.

Parad, you have not experienced religion yet. You don't know what you are talking about. You may have felt a few emotions, very elevated, but that is not religion. Any experience as such is not religion - religion is not an experience. Try to see the point. Religion is NOT an experience because there is no experiencer left. It is a dissolution. One disappears into it. One cannot experience it. One is not found. One simply dissolves. Just like a drop of water falls into the ocean and disappears into the ocean.... Is this an experience? It is death, it is disappearance. And yet the drop has become the ocean itself.

When a man disappears into God like a drop disappearing in the ocean, this is religious experience - but can you call it experience? The experiencer is no more there. The subjectivity is no more there -

there is no object to it. Our ordinary experiences are divided into three things: the knower, the known and the knowledge. The religious experience is a unique phenomenon. There is nothing known, there is no knower, there is only knowing. The knower has gone, the known has disappeared, there is only knowing. The lover is no more there, the beloved is no more there, there is only loving. It can't be called an experience ordinarily, If you want to call it 'experience', put it in inverted commas.

You say: IT HAS BEEN MY EXPERIENCE THAT IT IS NOT SO MUCH THAT THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IS ILLOGICAL AS IT IS SUPRA-LOGICAL.

Then whatsoever you have experienced is a mind phenomenon. Your mind can comprehend it.

Then you can make it supra-logical!

For example, if you feel a certain energy arising in your spine, this is supra-logical. In fact, I will not even call it supra-logical - this is just logical. There is no need to bring that 'supra', that big word.

It is all experience, a physical, tangible experience. Or you see light deep down in your third-eye center, great light arises - this is an experience. And this you can call supra-logical because it is not an ordinary experience. But this is not religion.

Religion is still far beyond all this. There is no light, there is no energy, there is no God to be encountered, there is no you left - all has disappeared. There is UTTER emptiness, what Buddha calls SHUNYATA - nothingness. that is not supra-logical: it is simply illogical. Logic cannot exist there because mind as such is no more. Logic is a shadow of the mind. When the mind itself has disappeared, logic cannot exist. and supra-logic can exist only when logic is in existence; they are linked together.

THAT IS, IT SEEMS TO TRANSCEND THE MORE LIMITED AND FEAR-INVENTED LOGIC THAT IS OF THE HEAD ALONE...

What you are calling 'the logic of the head alone' is the ONLY logic. sometimes you can even start calling the logic of the heart a different kind of logic, but it is not logic at all. If it is still logic, ordinary or supra, then it is still of the head. Head is logic, heart is illogic - that is their polarity. And if you call it also logic, then you have made your heart also an appendage to the head; it is no more the polar opposite. Head is logic, heart is illogic - that is their polarity. and if you call it also logic, then you have made your heart also an appendage to the head; it is no more the polar opposite. Head is logic and heart is supra-logic - you have put them into one line; they have become part of one syllogism.

Heart is NOT part of the same syllogism. Heart cannot think - how can it have supra-logic? Heart feels - feeling has no logic. It is illogical.

You fall in love with a woman, what logic is there? And if there is logic, there can't be love. If you think she is rich, if you think that she is the only daughter of her parents, if you think there is going to come power and prestige through her, then there is logic but there is no love. That is the problem!

Your parents think logically about your love affair, and you think illogically. That's why parents and children can't communicate - the gap, the generation gap. The young person is yet brave enough.

Life has not cowed him down. He can still take the risk - he would like TO take the risk. He has energy and vitality to go into the unknown.

But the older generation, the people who have lived their lives, they know that it is dangerous, that it is insecure - better be logical. Marriage was created by logical people. They killed love affairs

completely. It was dangerous. India is one of the most logical countries in the world. The logic was:

let the children get married, even when they don't know anything about love - child-marriage. That was the logical conclusion.

Once they are young, they would like to fool around. It looks foolish to the older generation: they will get into difficulties, they will start falling in love with people who may not be so economically secure.

Or there will be a thousand and one other problems. A Brahmin boy can fall in love with a Sudra girl, and that will create difficulties. A rich man's girl can fall in love with a poor man's boy, and there will be difficulty. It is better to avoid all difficulties: child-marriage was invented. That was a logical conclusion. Before they know anything of love let them get married, so they will grow like brother and sister, as brothers do. You never choose your sister, you never choose your brother - and still you love. That love is not real love; that is only liking, familiarity. Living together, playing together, one starts liking.

India reduced... there is only one relationship with all freedom to choose. Father you cannot choose, it is given; mother you cannot choose, sister you cannot choose, brother you cannot choose, uncles you cannot choose - they are all given. There was only one freedom left which was dangerous:

you could have chosen your wife or your husband. India destroyed that freedom too. You were not allowed even to choose that. Small children, four years old, five years old....

When my mother got married she was only seven years old. I was asking her again and again, "Tell me how you felt?"

She said, "I didn't know what was happening. I was simply joyous that something was happening.

I used to run out to see what was happening, and they would pull me back inside the house. And they locked me in on the day when the real ceremony was going to happen, because I was so much interested in the bands and the music and the horses. And the people were coming...."

And I asked my father, "What did you feel?"

He said, "I don't know - I just enjoyed the horse ride!"

Just a small child - must have enjoyed. And so many people walking around - he must have felt like a king. Something was happening, but what was happening...?

Then they grew together. Then. naturally, when you grow together you start liking each other - but love has been denied, love has been killed. It is very rare, there is not much possibility of love growing, because all romance has been destroyed.

Heart is illogical. Mind is logical. Don't call heart supra-logical. That is again, Parad, your fear. You are afraid of the heart; you want to bring it under the rule of the head. Logic is head's rule.

There are people who don't love. They THINK they love - their feeling also comes via thinking.

When they come to me and they say, "I think I am in love," I ask them, "You just be true - either you are in love or you are not in love. How can you THINK you are in love?" Thinking is bogus and false, but thinking has become so predominant. We have been taught to think and to avoid feelings.

Feelings are dangerous. They have no utility. Thinking is utilitarian; it makes you capable of living in the world, of fighting in the world - for survival, for your ambitions. It makes you calculating, cunning, clever. It gives you power. Feeling? Feeling does not give you any power. Feeling has no politics in it - that is the problem. Thinking is political: feeling is religious. and I have never come across a political person who is religious or can be religious, unless he renounces politics. I have never come across a religious person who can be political. It is impossible. If he is political, then his religion is false. then his being religious is also part of his politics.

You say:

My feeling is that you were still thinking - you were thinking that you were feeling.

WHO ARE YOU GOING INTO THE DEPTHS OF FEELING? - the head, the mind, the thinking, the logic. Yes, if you go into feelings with logic.... Logic is a chronic systematizer; it is obsessed with systematization. Wherever it goes, it systematizes, it immediately starts categorizing. It cannot allow chaos - chaos seems to be like a death. It immediately starts putting things in order.

Who is this one, Parad, who goes deep into the feelings? About whom are you talking? You are identified with the head - feelings are something accidental into which you are going. You are not the feeling. You are the head, you remain the head. Then, naturally, sooner or later, you will systematize. And, if you cannot systematize something which goes on rebelling against the systems, you will deny it, you will say it doesn't exist. You will ignore it, you will forget about it. Nobody wants to allow something which becomes a constant strain on you.

That's why millions of people have denied God - because the very presence of God, the very idea that God is, is frightening. That means sooner or later you will have to encounter him; sooner or later you will have to FACE him. That makes people very much afraid. They start trembling - the very idea: facing God! Then what are you doing? Is it worth it? Will you be able to say to God that this is what you have been doing? This is what you have wasted your life in? That you were a prime minister? That you were so stupid as to waste your whole life for power-politics? That you were a rich man; that you wasted your whole life in collecting rubbish? Will you be able to face God?

And all that you attained in life will be left here. You will not be able to carry your money or your power. You will be standing naked, utterly ashamed.

There is a beautiful story:

When Alexander the Great was coming to India, he met one strange man, Diogenes, on the way.

Diogenes is one of the rare flowerings of human consciousness. Alexander was interested in the man; he had heard many stories about him. He was afraid to go to him. It was below him, it was

against his ego. But when he was coming to India, on the way he heard that he was living just by the side of the river. Then he could not resist the temptation and he said, "Nobody will know back home that I had gone to see Diogenes. And I can always say that I was just passing and I met him by accident."

He went to see Diogenes. It was a winter morning, a cool breeze was blowing, and Diogenes was lying on the river-bank, on the sand, taking a sunbath naked. He was a beautiful man. When there is a beautiful soul, a beauty arises which is not of this world - which is illogical. If Alexander looks beautiful, it is logical, remember, because he has all that you think one should have. He has power, money; he has all that one can think or imagine to have. His beauty that of possessions.

Now, here was a man lying naked, with nothing - he had nothing, not even a begging-bowl. Buddha at least had a begging-bowl. Diogenes didn't have a begging-bowl, because one day when he was walking, and going towards the river with his begging-bowl to get some water to drink, he saw a dog rushing to the river. Of course, the dog reached first, and the dog jumped in the river and drank. Diogenes laughed and he said, "This dog has taught me a lesson. If he can live without a begging-bowl, then why can't I?" He threw the begging-bowl, he also jumped like the dog in the river and drank. Since then he had had nothing. And this dog must have felt something for Diogenes, because they became friends; they lived together .

Alexander came. He could not believe the grace of the man. He had never seen such a graceful man, such utter beauty, something from the unknown, something illogical... because there is no reason! You cannot pin it down, where it is coming from. He was in awe and he said, "Sir..." He had not said "Sir" to anybody in his life. He said, "Sir, I am immensely impressed by your being, and I would like to do something for you. Is there something that I can do for you?

Diogenes said, "Just stand to the side because you are preventing the sun - that's all. Nothing else do I need."

Alexander said, "If I have another chance to come to the earth, I will ask God, instead of making me Alexander again, to make me Diogenes."

Diogenes laughed and he said, "That you won't ask for, because who is preventing you right now?

You can become Diogenes. Where are you going? For months I have seen armies moving and moving - where are you going? and for what?"

And Alexander said, I am going to India to conquer the whole world."

And then what are you going to do?" Diogenes asked.

And Alexander said, "Then I will rest."

And Diogenes laughed again and he said, "You are mad - because I am resting NOW; and I have not conquered the world. I don't see the necessity of it. If just in the end you want to rest and relax, why not now? How are they related? Who has told you that before resting, you have to conquer the world? And I tell you: if you don't rest now, then never. You will never be able to conquer the world, because something or other will always remain to be conquered... and life is short and time is fleeting. You will die in the middle of your journey - everybody dies in the middle of the journey."

Alexander said, "I will keep it always in mind, but right now I cannot do it. But many many thanks for your advice."

And Alexander died in the middle. He never reached back home, he died on the way. When he was moving back from India, he died on the way. And that day he remembered Diogenes. Only Diogenes was in his mind - he could never rest in his life, and that man rested.

And then a strange story has been known down the ages, that Diogenes also died on the same day.

And they met on the way towards God, just crossing the border river. Alexander Was ahead, a few feet ahead, when he heard somebody behind. He looked back, and he was surprised - surprised and ashamed. It was Diogenes, the same beautiful man.

Alexander tried to hide his shame. He said "So again, again we are meeting, the emperor and the beggar."

And Diogenes said, "That is true. But you misunderstand one thing: you don't know who is the beggar and who is the emperor. You are the beggar, I am the emperor, because I lived my life totally, I enjoyed it. And I can go to God, I can face him. You will not be able to face him, because I can see: you cannot even face me! You are trembling, you are ashamed. You cannot look into my eyes - what will happen to you when you have to face God? your whole life has been a wastage."

People deny God - they have to deny because the presence of god makes them very very uneasy.

My own experience is that people who are very much in fear, deeply in fear, deny God. They deny all that is incomprehensible to them. They always want everything to be systematized, because one you systematize something, it is within your control, it is in your fist, you are the master. When something goes on slipping out of your systematization, you start freaking out.

And life IS illogical. And if you don't understand the mystics, ask the physicists - they have also stumbled upon the same fact. Ask albert Einstein or Eddington - ask these people, because they are now seeing very strange phenomena, strange and illogical.

Looking into matter deeply, physicists have stumbled upon the same illogicalness. Electrons behave in such a way that it is not logical; there is no way to predict the behaviour of an electron. and its behaviour is contradictory - that's why it is called 'quanta'. 'Quanta' means - and from 'quanta' the word 'quantum leap' that you have used in your question - 'quanta' means a particle is behaving in such a strange way that you can think of it as a particle or as a wave. Both together, simultaneously!

That is impossible. That is very much against Euclidean geometry. Either something is a dot, a point, or something is a line; either something is a particle or something is a wave. One thing cannot be both together, simultaneously. But that's how it is.

When Heisenberg was asked, "How can you say it? It is illogical!" he said, "It is illogical, but what can we do? We cannot order those quanta to behave rightly and logically. We have no power over them. That's how they are behaving. So if it is illogical, change your logic - but we cannot change quanta. We cannot put policemen there to say, "Behave! Behave logically, behave morally!"

Hence the theory of indeterminacy. Uncertainty has arisen. Physics has become almost mysticism, because they have also come across the phenomenon. It is illogical, it is incomprehensible. That

is the meaning of a mystery. If the mystery becomes comprehensible, then it is no more a mystery; you have solved it.

And man, out of fear, has been trying to solve all the mysteries. If he cannot solve, then he denies.

That's why scientists go on denying the soul - because they cannot solve it. It creates so many problems, the very idea - it becomes insoluble. There is no soul.

There are things which are not comprehensible and yet experiencible. Just think of two persons going to listen to great music. One is a musician, the other is a non-musician. Both listen to the same music. The musician will listen to the harmony, the melody, and the non-musician will listen only to the single notes, individual notes. He will hear the noise - one note, another note, another note... notes following notes - but he will not see the thread running between them, he will not be able to see the melody that arises out of them. That melody remains invisible to his ears; it is not heard. But the musician will be able to hear the melody, although he cannot prove it - it is incomprehensible.

What is melody? That is God. What IS melody? Melody is that music is something more than the parts, something MORE than the parts. something more than the sum total of the parts is the melody. That is the meaning of soul: something more than the sum total of the body-mind is soul. And what is God? Something more than the universe, more than the sum total of all the parts. But that is incomprehensible, and that is not supra-logical, because supra-logical is again comprehension of the same mind - the same mind trying to become more and more clever.

FROM SUCH AN ANALYSIS, you ask, IT WOULD SEEM LOGICAL TO CONCLUDE, AS MYSTICS HAVE ALWAYS DONE, THAT THE HEAD'S FEAR OF TAKING THE QUANTUM LEAP INTO THE MUCH VASTER LOGIC IS WHERE THE PROBLEM SITS RATHER THAN IT BEING A PROBLEM OF LOGIC PER SE.

LOGIC IS FEAR. They are the same thing. Logic is out of fear! Out of the fear of the uncomprehended, out of the fear of the chaos, logic creates a small world, clear-cut. Logic is like a garden that you have planted, and not even like a Zen garden but like an English garden - clean-cut, symmetrical, rational. That's why English gardens are so ugly, because they are so artificial and so unnatural. In nature there is no symmetry. If you go into a jungle there is no symmetry; trees are growing in their own ways and every tree is doing its own thing. But that is the beauty of a jungle.

You can feel something of God there, but you cannot feel anything of God in an English garden. You can feel something of Victoria, but not of God.

That's the beauty of a Zen garden.

It happened once:

A great emperor was learning from a Zen master about Zen gardening. Three years he learnt, and he made a beautiful garden; he had thousands of gardeners working. He was learning from the master and he was implementing everything that he learnt. After three years the master came - that was the examination. The emperor was trembling, because these three years he had known the man, he was ferocious. And you could not deceive him. He had tried every way, whatsoever he had said had been implemented, but still he was afraid - because he had not yet learnt the secret. He

was still logical, he was systematizing things, although he had made a very asymmetrical garden - but in the asymmetry itself there was a logic, there was symmetry hidden behind.

The master came. He looked around, and he never smiled. For hours he went around and around.

He looked at the whole garden and the emperor was perspiring, he had failed. The master had not said a single word. And then finally he said, "I don't see a single dead leaf in the garden. Where are all the dead leaves? How can such a big garden be without dead leaves?!"

And the emperor said, "I told my servants to remove all the dead leaves because you were coming."

He said, "Tell them to bring all the dead leaves back!"

They went outside the garden, they brought all the dead leaves back, and the master threw the dead leaves in the garden. And the wind started playing with the dead leaves and it took them all over the place. And he laughed and he said, "Now it is okay - now it is natural. But you have failed. Three years more, then I will come again."

What is a quantum leap? A quantum leap is going from system to no system, going from cosmos to chaos, going from the finite to the infinite, going from the knowledgeable to the unknowable. A quantum leap cannot be from logic to supra-logic - what leap is there? There is no leap. There is a connection, it is a continuity. Logic and supra-logic are in one continuum where is the quantum leap? The quantum leap is when you break away from the continuity, when the old disappears and the new suddenly exists - and there is a gap between the two, there is no connection. That needs courage. That's why I insist again and again: religion is only for the courageous people. Religion is only for those who dare enough, who love to live dangerously.

The third question

Question 3:

IN FACT, YOU deny things which you are afraid of. Your denial simply shows your fear. You say, I DON'T BELIEVE IN GHOSTS. If you really don't believe in ghosts, then from where can the fear come? then why should you be afraid? for what? But your disbelief is nothing but a way of hiding your fear.

Remember: your belief is out of fear, your disbelief is out of fear. If you live in fear, whatsoever happens to you is going to happen out of fear. I see religious people going to the temples and the mosques and the churches out of fear, and I see atheists denying God out of fear. If I look deeply I don't see any difference between the theist and the atheist. They are both the same - reacting differently;, but the situation is the same, and the fear is the same. Their differences are only superficial.

In each atheist the theist is hidden. And in each theist the atheist is hidden - that's why it is so easy to convert them. Have you heard the famous story of Khalil Gibran?

In a city it happened:

There were two great philosophers - one was a theist, the other was an atheist. And the whole town was getting bored with them, because they were both trying to convince the town continuously. And they had puzzled everybody because they would roam around and talk to people, and one day a person would talk to one philosopher and would become a theist, and another day he would come across the atheist and he would convince him of atheism, and so on and so forth.... And the whole town was in great confusion. Their life became impossible.

People want to live. They are not much concerned about atheism or theism. These are just their ways to deceive themselves. But the confusion was too much, and deceiving was impossible because the other was always there. And both were very convincing.

The people of the town decided, "Let these two discuss and debate and decide. Whosoever wins, we will be with him. We are always with the winner."

People are always with the winner.

In Soviet Russia they are communists and atheists; they are with the power. In India they are all theists. Do you know? Before I9I7 in Soviet Russia everybody was as religious as they are in India. It was one of the most religious countries - and what happened? What kind of religion was that? What happened? The same country turned absolutely anti-religious! This country can turn absolutely anti- religious. Once communists are in power, this country will turn absolutely anti-religious. This religion is all bogus. This is just fear. So whosoever is in power, people follow him. If atheists are in power, then they must be right. Power is right; power convinces people.

So in that town, people gathered and they said, "Tonight is a full-moon night and we will stay awake the whole night, and you both discuss and debate and decide. And whosoever wins, we will follow him. We always follow the victorious."

In India we have an ancient saying that truth always wins. In fact, the case is just vice versa:

whatsoever wins becomes the truth. People are always with the winner.

So it happened: that full-moon night, both philosophers debated and discussed. They were both very great logicians. But by the morning the town was in even more confusion: they had convinced each other, so the atheist became the theist and the theist became the atheist. But the trouble continued.

These are not really two different things.

You say: I DON'T BELIEVE IN GHOSTS...

You believe. You are simply trying to deceive yourself - hence the fear. You know that when you are alone in the night they are there. But you are unnecessarily afraid of poor ghosts. Compared to human beings, they are very innocent people. Have you ever heard of any ghost turning into an Adolf Hitler? or Genghis Khan or Tamerlaine? Have you ever heard of ghosts creating Hiroshima, Nagasaki, preparing for the Third World War? Have you ever heard of ghosts doing any harm? Their harm, if sometimes you hear some stories, is more or less trivial - small things.

I have heard about one young ghost: The young ghost got very scared when his friends told him too many human stories.

And I have also heard: Then there was the ghost who did not believe in people.

They are also afraid of you. And you say you are afraid that when you are alone in the night I FEEL THAT THEY ARE THERE AND THEY WANT TO SPEAK TO ME...

I have also heard: The father ghost told his son, "Spook only when you are spoken to."

You don't be worried. They are already worried very much; they are afraid of you. Ghosts are simple people, very simple. In fact, they are the same people like you, they just don't have bodies so they can't do much harm.

But the fear does not come from ghosts - the fear is there, out of fear come the ghosts. You are afraid and you would like to project your fear somewhere or other - because to be afraid without any reason to be afraid makes people more frightened. Just to be afraid will be too much, you will not be able to bear it. You need something to be afraid of. So people create their ghosts.

In America they are afraid of the communists. In Russia they are afraid of the capitalists, and so on and so forth. People create their ghosts. Hindus are afraid of Mohammedans; Mohammedans are afraid of Hindus. Everybody is afraid of everybody else. Man is afraid of woman; the woman is afraid of man. Children are afraid of their parents, and parents are very deeply afraid of their children. Students are afraid of their teachers, and teachers are very much afraid and trembling inside because of their students.

It is fear. Fear is there. And to know fear in its purity is to get beyond it. So don't bother about ghosts. If somebody convinces you there are no ghosts, or somebody convinces you that they are very beautiful people, that won't solve the problem. You will simply shift your fear onto something else. Fear will remain; you will find another cause.

It makes no difference. Down the ages man has been changing his philosophy, the causes, but basically human reality remains the same.

For example, in the past people were afraid of ghosts; they used to become possessed by ghosts.Jesus relieved many people of ghosts. Then philosophies changed. Sigmund Freud created new ghosts, schizophrenia... new explana-tions of the same fear; paranoia... new explanations, new dressings, but the same old problems. First people used to become possessed by ghosts, and it was easier - those ghosts were not so difficult. Even a simple man like Jesus relieved many people just by a single touch. Those ghosts were simple.

The ghosts that Sigmund Freud has created are very difficult: you have to lie down on a couch for five years, and then you get up and with you all the ghosts get up. And again you are lying on another couch with some other psychoanalyst, and the same story will be repeated again and again. Slowly slowly, if you don't have much money, understanding will arise that one has to live with these ghosts. There is no point... why not enjoy them? But if you have money then there is a great problem; then the understanding will never arise. In rich people understanding never arises

because they can afford it. Understanding arises only in poor people because they can't afford it, they have to understand. They are forced to understand.

That's why psychoanalysis is not a business in poor countries. Who can afford lying down on a couch for five years talking nonsense to a stupid person looking at you? Nothing happens. But in the West people have money and time - and what to do with it?

And communication has become so impossible. Nobody wants to talk to you, so you have professional listeners - those are the psychoanalysts. Those are professional listeners: you pay for them. You talk and they listen. You feel good. At least you have one audience, and a very expert one. And he listens very attentively; at least he shows that he is listening attentively. It feels good - at least there is one person who understands you, listens to you, pays attention to all the rubbish that you are talking. You feel good, enhanced, your ego feels good. But the problem remains where it was. It doesn't change.

The problem can only be changed if you understand it directly, immediately. Fear is there. Don't bring any cause as to why the fear is there - of ghosts, of illness, of disease, of old age, of being fat, of falling in love, of being killed, or of being a murderer. Listening to thousands of people, I have Come to see all kinds of fears. Somebody is afraid that if he does not control himself enough he will commit suicide. Now that fear is there. Somebody is afraid that if he doesn't control himself he will kill somebody. Somebody is afraid that he is becoming old, somebody is afraid that he is getting fat, or she is getting fat - people are afraid of a thousand and one things. If you are not getting fat, you are afraid maybe you are getting thin. One HAS to be afraid. It is very difficult to find a person who is not afraid of something or other.

So, to me, those things are irrelevant. Fear is the basic thing. Why is man afraid? Don't go into reasons and causes and explanations - go directly into the fear. So next time when you are alone in the room, just close the eyes and go into your fear. Don't bother about ghosts - just go into the fear. Tremble if trembling comes, but don't find any explanation that you are trembling because of the ghosts. That is just an explanation to explain away the fear.Just go into trembling, tremble for no reason at all. If you feel like screaming, scream for no reason at all - but go into the fear itself; don't bring anything else in between you and the fear. That is a trick of the mind. And if you can go deep down into the fear, you will be surprised: the deeper you go, the more and more fear dissipates, disappears. And when you touch the very core, the very bottom core of it, it has disappeared. You are simply there, utterly silent. There is no ghost there, even you are not there. All is silent, utterly silent, absolutely silent. That silence is joy, that silence is fearlessness.

The last question

Question 4:

THE QUESTION HAS NOT BEEN SIGNED. I don't like questions which are not signed, because the person who is not signing his question is being very cowardly. You don't want to say that you have a question. You want to hide that fact.

It always happens to knowledgeable people - they don't want to ask a question because that shows that they are ignorant. But if you are ignorant, you are ignorant! Accept the fact. Through that acceptance, some transcendence is possible.

And what is the fear? If you cannot even ask a question, how will you be able to receive the ansWer?

A question deeply, rightly asked prepares the ground for the answer to be received. When you are committed to a question, when you are involved in it, when it is a life-and-death problem to you, then only will you understand the answer. Otherwise the answer will be cheap, and it won't go deep in you.

So never ask a question if you cannot sign your question.

And secondly, you have not mentioned who this old sannyasin is. You should mention it - because here I am working with individuals, not with a mass. And I want to relate to you individually. Who is this old fool? You should mention it! because all these three words mean the same thing. And there are not three steps to enlightenment. There are no steps to enlightenment. Enlightenment is an explosion, it is a sudden awakening. It is a quantum leap!

Steps mean continuity - you remain the same. You become a little more polished. You remain the same; you become a little more decorated. You remain the same; you become a little more modified.

There are no steps in enlightenment. Those steps are also created out of fear - you don't want to jump, so you need steps. But only the jump is needed.

You will have to gather courage and take the jump into the abyss, into the chaos of existence, into the chaos of love, into that illogic that I have been talking about.

You say: THERE ARE THREE STEPS WITNESSING, CHOICELESS AWARENESS, SUCHNESS.

These are the same. What is the difference between witnessing and choiceless awareness?

Witnessing is choiceless awareness. If you choose, you are not witnessing. You have liked, disliked.

You have chosen, you have become identified.

For example, in your mind there are a few thoughts moving. Witnessing means you simply stand there seeing that they are moving, like clouds moving in the sky or the traffic moving on the road.

You don't have any choice. You don't say, "This is good - let me keep it. And that is bad - let it go."

If you talk this Way you are not witnessing. You are getting involved, you are getting identified. You are creating love-hate relationships. And when you relate, you cannot be a witness.

Witnessing means choiceless awareness!

And what is suchness? When you don't choose, things are as they are. Then the anger passes by... so there is anger. There is a witnessing and there is anger. You are not angry. If you choose, you are angry. If you choose against it, you become repressive of it. You simply watch. The anger comes, the greed comes, and they pass by. They come and they go, and you watch. You don't choose. So things are as they are! You don't give value. You don't say this is higher, this is lower; this is spiritual, this is material; this is sin and this is a very holy act. You don't bring any valuation.

You drop all valuation. You simply see like a mirror, an empty mirror. Whosoever passes by, the mirror reflects. This is witnessing.

And the mirror never chooses, because the mirror is not a photographic plate. The photographic plate immediately chooses. It gets caught, trapped. The mirror remains clean: you have passed - the mirror is again clean, empty. In fact, when you were passing, then too there was only reflection, but the mirror was not having any content in it. It was only a shadow, a shadow passing by.

When you don't choose, things are as they are. That is suchness - that is TATHATA. 'Witnessing' comes from the Upanishads - SAKSHI. That is the word used by the seers of the Upanishads.

'Choiceless awareness' comes from J. Krishnamurti - a new word for the same old thing. 'Suchness' is a Buddhist word - TATHATA. It comes from Buddha. But they all mean the same thing! Don't be caught in words. And don't start becoming knowledgeable through words.

But these problems arise because you never go into any practise, you never go into any experience.

Everything remains theoretical.

I have heard:

The slightly worried parents inquired of their son how the lesson on sex went that day. They were hoping that the teacher had not been too 'progressive'.

The boy gave a somewhat bored reply, "Oh," he said, "it was useless - we only had the theory today!"

Remember, only the theory won't help. Something has to be experienced, something was to be practised. Something has to become living in you. Only then will you understand.

If you had witnessed a little bit, you would have known; there would have been no need to ask the question. You would have known that it is choiceless awareness, you would have known that this is suchness, and all distinctions between words would have disappeared. Because you have not experienced any meditativeness, hence the question.

And you talk about some old sannyasin. He may be old, but he cannot be a sannyasin. He may have lived here, but he has not lived with me. Otherwise this is impossible.

People go on reading books, go on cramming scriptures, then they become very very efficient with words. And then they start using words without knowing what they are doing.

I have heard:

As the doctor said to his girlfriend: "I love you with all my heart - and my kidneys, liver, epiglottis, spinal cord, etc., etc."

This is what happens to people who go on cramming words.

Wake up a little. Wake up from your linguistic patterns. Drop your drunkenness with language...

and things will become very easy. Things ARE easy. Things are very simple. Truth is simple, only you are complicated. Truth is here-now, only you are far away, lost in words, scriptures, theories, systems, philosophies. Come back home.