Buddhas With Closed Eyes

The first question

Question 1:

NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL. All waiting is waiting for Godot, because all waiting is in vain. You cannot wait for God, because God has already arrived. God is already the case; God is not in the future.

God is just THIS, all this: how can you wait for it?

If you wait for it you miss it. Waiting for God is a way of escaping from God, a very tricky and cunning way, very clever and subtle - so subtle that one can deceive oneself through it. What do you mean when you say "waiting for God"? God is not there, far away, distant. You are not to travel to God, there is going to be no pilgrimage. God is where you are; you ARE because of God. God is in your breathing, God is your life. There is no other God than life.

To avoid life, people have created images of God - they are not images of God, they are escapes from God. People are avoiding God, hence they have made temples and mosques and gurudwaras and churches. These are not made by religious people, remember, these are made by the irreligious.

Those who DON'T want to get involved with God, those who want to postpone it, they have created the temples and the so-called religions. Those religions give you a feeling that God will be in the future - in some other country, in some other land, in some other space, in some other world, but never here. And he is here.

And he is here in the songs of the birds and the green of the trees and the red of the trees and the gold of the trees. He is in the bird on the wing... he is everywhere. You need not even go outside yourself to find him. He is your innermost core, your substratum, your very being. How can you wait for him? It will be just like a fish in the ocean waiting for the ocean; it will be utterly foolish.

So all waiting is for Godot. All waiting is futile. Wait, and you are wasting. Wait, and you are avoiding the guest who has already come - he is knocking on the door in the wind, in the rain, in the sun; he wants to enter into you. And you are doing your prayer in a shrine, secluded. Or you are sitting in your cave waiting for God. Who are you trying to deceive? You DON'T want to receive the guest right now: be truthful. You are afraid to receive the guest; it may disturb your whole pattern of life. It is CERTAINLY going to disturb your whole pattern of life.

To receive God means a death, a disappearance - because the two cannot exist together, you and God.

Martin Buber, one of the great thinkers of this century, says the relationship between man and God is that of I-thou. It is not - because there is no I and no thou. It is not a relationship at all, because relationship needs at least two.

God is when there are not two. When you are not then something becomes clear which has always been there, but because of you - the turmoil that you are, the anguish that you are, the nightmare that you are - because of you it was impossible to see it. You are the dust in the eyes; you are the darkness around yourself God is available but you are not available to God. You cannot wait for God; God is waiting for you.

But why do people go on thinking in terms of waiting? It gives great illusions: some day it is going to happen. Just see the working of the mind, the functioning of the mind. The mind is always a seeker, always desiring something or other; it exists through desire and seeking. Sometimes it seeks money, sometimes it seeks meditation, but there is no basic difference. It is the same game - played with different words but not a bit has changed, played with beautiful names but the same game.

Somebody is seeking power here, and somebody is seeking power there - power there in the other world - and he calls it "God". Somebody wants to be special here, and somebody else wants to be special there. The disciples of Jesus ask him again and again, "We know that you will be exactly on the right side of God, you will be on his right hand. But amongst your disciples, who will be next to you there in that other world, in that kingdom of God? Who will be next to you?"

What is this desire? The same power politics, the same hierarchy, the same ego trip.

The mind remains a seeker. The mind cannot exist with fulfillment, it can exist only in hunger.

Mind can only exist in a state of starvation. If you are utterly fulfilled and there is no hunger and no starvation and you are contented, mind disappears like dewdrops in the morning sun - you will never find the mind again.

Mind looks in the future, searches in the future. And when you are focussed in the future - some goal, faraway goal... And the farther the goal is, the better for the mind - because if the goal is not very far, then sooner or later you will achieve it.

God, the idea of God, is the best goal for the mind. The worldly man does not have such a great idea, because his ideas are not impossible, they are feasible. He wants to make a little bigger house - it is not such a big deal, it can be done. It WILL be done; one day he will have the bigger house - and then? Then the mind has to create a new desire again.

Just see: why does the mind have to create new desires? Because your old desire has been fulfilled, and mind can exist only in desiring. You have so much money, and mind wants to double it. Then one day you HAVE doubled it: now what to do? Mind has come to a point where suicide is automatically going to happen. If the mind wants to live again, again a new desire has to be released, projected:

again you want to double the money, and so on and so forth.

The worldly man has to change his desires many times, again and again; he has to constantly renew his desiring. And who is this other-worldly man, the so-called religious - the saint, the mahatma? He is more cunning. From the very beginning he has chosen something; he is waiting for the impossible.

It is not going to happen, it has never happened, because it has ALREADY happened. There is no way for it to happen, it is impossible. He can live on and on - this life, another life, and another life - and his goal is so utterly impossible that he will not need to change it. He has a permanent goal.

The worldly man has temporary goals, not very very distant. The worldly man thinks in instalments:

one desire, then another desire, a better car, a better house, a more beautiful woman...

The other-worldly man has chosen the ultimate in desire. God is the ultimate in desire - not the true God, the God of your idea is the ultimate in desire. It is intrinsically impossible. You can go on waiting and you can go on striving, you can go on seeking.

To see it, that seeking is the way of the mind, that seeking is mind, that seeking is the source of all tensions and anguish and anxiety, is to become aware of a great phenomenon. Then you DON'T start seeking God, because that is seeking again. Then all seeking simply disappears, withers away. In the knowing of the fact that seeking creates mind and mind is anguish, seeking disappears. And with the seeking disappears the shadow, the mind.

And when there is no seeking how can there be waiting? When there is no desire how can there be waiting? When there is no desire, no seeking, there is no waiting. Suddenly you are here and now.

You cannot move a single inch, you cannot go anywhere, there is nowhere to go now.

In that immediacy, God becomes available. It is better to say that you become available to God - God has always been available from his side.

It is as if the sun has risen in the morning and you are sitting in your room with closed doors and windows, in darkness. Open the doors, you become available to the sun. The sun was already available - just the meeting happens.

You cannot wait for God. All waiting is for Godot. Godot means the one who never comes, who CANNOT come, whose arrival is impossible. And the only impossible thing is that which has already happened - how can it happen again? You are alive, and you are waiting for life, Now, this is ridiculous.

The real man of religion does not think in terms of God. He thinks in terms of life or, even better, of living - because life can again become an abstract idea. Living, moment-to-moment living. In that very living, one knows what God is, because one knows who one is.

Your idea of God is an escape from living. You are afraid of life, of love, you are afraid of death. You are afraid of ten thousand things, and they are there and you DON'T want to see them eye-to-eye.

You DON'T want to know what exactly the case is. How to avoid it? You become engaged somewhere else. You create a great desire in your mind, a distant desire - somewhere in the future it will be fulfilled - and you become obsessed with it. Then you worship God, and you are worshipping a false God.

All worship is false, because real worship consists of living, not of worship. Real worship consists of small things. Not that you do rituals - all rituals are just strategies to create a belief that you are doing something special, something sacred. You are simply being stupid, nothing else. You can decorate your stupidity - you can chant Vedas and you can read Bibles and you can make great rituals in the churches and temples and you can sit around a fire and chant great songs - but you are simply being stupid; this is not being religious at all.

But a religious man lives day-to-day, moment-to-moment. Cleaning the floor, and there is worship.

Preparing food for the husband, and there is worship. Taking a bath, and there is worship. Worship is a quality - it has nothing to do with the act itself, it is the attitude that you bring to the act. If you love the man and you are preparing food for him it is worship, because the man is divine.

Love makes everyone divine, love reveals the divinity. Then it is not just your husband, it is God in the form of your husband. Or it is in your wife in the form of a woman - but it is God, ultimately God and always God. A child, your child: God has come in a certain form to you.

Recognize! See! And there is worship. You may be just playing with your child and it is worship - far more significant than what you do in the temples; the worship in the temples is just plastic.

Real life has to be lived in an authentic sincere way, with totality, with joy, with celebration. And then you can forget all about God - because each moment you will be meeting him, each moment you will be coming across him. Then everything is just a manifestation of God. God is the prior condition of everything - nothing can exist without him. So only he exists, and all else is just a form.

A wave, a tidal wave arises, or a small ripple, but both are the ocean. The small ripple is as much the ocean as the tidal wave. A Buddha walks, he may be a tidal wave. And then an ordinary man, the man who comes to mend your shoes, is also God - maybe a ripple, but no ripple is any less the ocean. There is no question of being less or more - a ripple is as oceanic as the tidal wave, and the smallest particle is as divine as the greatest mountain. There is no question, because God is not a question of quantity, it is a question of quality.

Anything that is alive is divine. This vision is religion.

So, Chinmaya, no waiting is waiting for God. All waiting is for Godot. DON'T wait - you have waited long enough. Can't you see the futility of waiting? Accept my invitation to live God! DON'T wait.

Waiting is not the way, living is the way. Live God! Start THIS moment! What else do you need?

I am here, you are here, the trees are here, the birds are singing and the vast sky is surrounding you. What ELSE do you need? What MORE do you think there will ever be? Nothing is going to be added to it and nothing is going to be taken away from it; this totality will remain as it is.

I am existing in the same totality in which you are existing. But I am existing with open eyes and you are existing with closed eyes - that's the difference, the only difference; not much.

You are Buddhas with closed eyes.

And it is just a question of a decision to open your eyes. You have the capacity to open them - because if you can close them you can open them. The very possibility of closing them is there because you can also open them. It is your decision, it is your choice.

You have chosen to live without God because you are afraid of God. And then you say, "I am waiting for God." Very tricky. You DON'T even want to accept the truth, that you have been escaping from God. So you create false Gods - ikons and idols and temples - and you go there and you do stupid things there and you call them yagnas, prayer, and all that stuff.

SEE that you have been escaping. This hurts - because seeing it, your whole mind topples down to dust. Your whole life is based on this strategy to go on escaping, to go on postponing. "Tomorrow I will live" - that is your way of living. Tomorrow, never this moment. Next life, after death, in some other time, in some other world...

There is no other world. This is the only world there is. And all those paradises and heavens are just your imagination, to escape, to get involved - dreams to avoid reality.

My whole process consists in bringing you to THIS moment. Just THIS - and God showers on you and God arises in you. And the God within meets the God without, and then there is great joy.

In short, stop being a seeker! Now, Chinmaya is a seeker, hence the question. Stop being a seeker!

People enjoy these ideas very much: "I am a seeker of truth" or "I am seeking God." And then they look at you with that bullshit of holier-than-thou, a seeker of truth, a seeker of God. But seeking is basically wrong. Seeking is wrong - what you are seeking is irrelevant.

DON'T be a seeker. You have been a seeker for many many lives. It is time! Wake up from your seeking and start living! When are you going to live if you go on seeking and seeking and seeking?

Start living. Eat when hungry, and while eating be utterly there in it, and it becomes worship. Fall asleep when tired, but really fall asleep totally. And if no dreams pass, that is total sleep; it is worship.

If sleep is without dreams it has the quality of meditation. That's why Patanjali says that SAMADHI and SUSHUPTI - the ultimate state of ecstasy, and deep dreamless sleep - are very similar. Why similar? Because in deep sleep dreams disappear, thinking disappears. So is the case in samadhi:

all thinking disappears, all imagination disappears, all dreaming disappears. The only difference is, in deep sleep you are unconscious, in samadhi you are conscious. Otherwise both take you to the same home, to the source.

Sleep totally. When you are walking, walk totally, let everything else disappear. Enjoy the totalness of a morning walk, all that is involved in it - the children playing and the dogs barking and the birds on the wing and the clouds in the sky, and you there. What more can you ask for? What more joy? If you can't be happy with such a beautiful world, with so much continuously being given to you, where do you think you will be happy?

Walking, just walk. Listening, just listen. Talking, just talk. Be totally in it - then each act is transformed, becomes luminous. This is the way to live God.

I DON'T teach you any seeking for God, I teach you living God. Living starts this moment. Seeking of course has to start tomorrow, always tomorrow. And the tomorrow never comes.

The second question

Question 2:

GREAT IDEA! SOME IDEA! But it is very difficult to just sit. You are so restless. If you can just sit, you ARE a master! But think of just sitting, doing nothing - can you allow that much rest to yourself even for a single moment?

That's what I go on telling you: Sit silently, passively, doing nothing, just being. And you look at me with bewildered eyes: "Just sitting, doing nothing?" People ask me, "Can't we chant a mantra?

Please give us a mantra, so we can at least chant a mantra when we are sitting." That mantra is for nothing but your restlessness.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation has appeal in America because America is so restless. People can't sit silently; they have to do something or other. If there is nothing to do then they have to repeat Rama-Rama-Rama or Coca-Cola-Coca-Cola-Coca-Cola - but something. Coca Cola is a great mantra: repeat it and you will have all the benefits of transcendental meditation.

What happens when you repeat a mantra? It just gives your restlessness something to do. It becomes concentrated, then you can sit. But this is not real sitting; you have escaped again. Now you have escaped into the mantra. A mantra is a mind trip. Just sitting means no mantra, no thought, no movement. Just sitting exactly means just sitting.

Yes, then you can become a master; you HAVE become a master. People will start coming to you of their own accord - because whenever somebody just sits, such grace arises in that non-moving energy because he is utterly in the present. He can't move anywhere - he can't move to the past, he can't move to the future. He is just utterly here, he is totally one with this moment. In that, he is bridged with reality, he is one with God.

And a man who is one with God is a master. In that moment, such great gravitation arises in him that people will be attracted, people will start moving towards him. He may be sitting deep in a cave in the Himalayas and people will start reaching there, people will start finding the way to where he is. There is some unconscious pull.

In Buddha's days there was no way, because the world was really very disconnected. Nations existed secluded; there was nothing like newspapers, radio, television - no way to spread the message. But people started moving. From almost every nook and corner of the known world, people came to Buddha. Somehow it functions, it spreads; it has its own momentum.

You will be a master if you can sit silently. But the very idea of being a master will not allow you to sit silently. You will open your eyes to see whether disciples have started to come or not: "And what am I doing here? It is time, and nobody has come - I DON'T see any photographers and any newspaper people and media people coming..." You will not be able to sit silently. You will start waiting for disciples: that's the meaning of the desire to be a master.

A master is one who has no desires. Now, even the desire to be a master is enough; it won't allow you to be a master. A master is not trying to be a master - he is. He is not managing it, it is spontaneous. He is not searching and seeking for disciples; they come. It happens on its own. The very silent energy of a master - that luminous energy of being alert, peaceful, at ease, at rest, at home - starts many people moving towards that source. It is not really in the mind that it happens, this pull. It happens deeper than the mind: it happens in your unconscious.

You say: I WANT TO BE A MASTER.

That will be a barrier. And the reason is the idea of just sitting there and doing nothing. You must be a mighty lazy person. Just sitting there and doing nothing is not a state of laziness, mind you. It is of utter energy, ultimate energy. It is not a kind of sleep, a kind of coma; it is not lethargy. It is a reservoir of energy. The energy is not moving anywhere, the energy is accumulating. And the more it accumulates, the more powerful it becomes.

You must be just a lazy person. The idea appeals to you, because to be a disciple seems to be difficult, arduous - you have to do this and you have to do that, and you have to meditate, and you have to pass through so many things, and here is Yoga and Zen and Tantra and Sufism and you have to find and search and roam and wander and inquire, and it seems to you to be a long journey.

You would like to simply be a master.

I have heard:

A poor half-wit was befriended by a millionaire lover of music who happened to have a private orchestra. One day the half-wit came to his benefactor and asked for a position in his orchestra.

Astonished, the rich man said, "I had no idea you could play an instrument."

"I can't," was the answer. "But I see you have a man there who does nothing but wave a stick around while the others play. His job I can handle."

That job is not easy, that is the hardest of all - from the outside it appears to be very easy.

Just sitting is the hardest thing in the world, the most arduous thing in the world. You can do everything - you can go to Everest and you can go to the moon - but just sitting? that is impossible.

You can move into any kind of activity - that fits, that fits with the ego, that enhances the ego: you become a great doer.

But when you are sitting and doing nothing, what happens? What is the difficulty? The greatest difficulty is, when you are not doing anything you start disappearing - because man exists through his acts.

Jean Paul Sartre is right when he says that man defines himself through his activity. You are what you do.

You are a doctor because you do a certain kind of work. You are a painter because you paint, you are a singer because you sing. Your identity is given by your action. YOU are this, you are that - your definition comes from your activities. When you are not doing anything who will you be? A doctor, a painter, an engineer, a singer - who? You will be nobody. You will be simply nobody! Your identity will start disappearing, your definition will slip out of your being. You will be utterly nude and naked and not knowing who you are.

And that is the arduousness of it - it is very arduous. You will be getting into a great chaos, and great fear will arise in you: what is happening? You will immediately rush into some act, you will start doing something. And once you start doing something you are again at ease, because again you know who you are.

Have you not watched it? Just sitting silently in your room, have you not observed it again and again that you start doing something meaningless? People start moving their furniture, arranging the paintings again or cleaning the books or the cupboard - they have to do something. Because when they are doing, they are perfectly settled in their knowledge of who they are.

You are a housewife: doing something, you know. You are a mother: when the child is with you, you know who you are. You are a husband: with the wife you know who you are. When the wife dies, something in the husband dies immediately, because he becomes very much frightened - now who is he? He had become accustomed to living with the idea that he is a husband.

Mulla Nasruddin's wife died and he was crying like anything. One of his closest friends could not believe his eyes - such big tears were coming from Mulla's eyes, and he had never seen the man cry. And he had always thought that this man is a brave man - just crying like a child?

To console him the friend said, "DON'T be worried, Nasruddin, time heals everything. Within three to six months you will have forgotten this woman. And I say to you, you are still young enough - you will fall in love again, you will be married again. So DON'T become so desperate."

Mulla looked with anger at the friend and he said, "What are you talking about? Six months? And what am I going to do tonight?"

If you have become accustomed to a wife, she has become part of your definition. In the night, alone, you will be afraid - afraid of the fact that again your definition has disappeared.

When a very rich man goes bankrupt what happens? Why do people commit suicide when they go bankrupt? Is money so valuable, more valuable than life? The problem is, that was their definition.

Now there is no money in the bank, their soul has disappeared, they DON'T know who they are. And it seems so arduous to define themselves again, to start from ABC, to start begging again. And it will take thirty or forty years to be able to make that much money again and have that definition again.

That seems to be too long and too much; it is better to disappear, it is better to drop the whole effort.

Your activity keeps you defined; it gives you a certainty, a security. Whenever you are not doing anything you become uncertain. An abyss starts yawning in your being and you feel you are falling into the abyss, and immediately you jump to do something.

I have seen people reading the same newspaper again! I used to travel for fifteen years continuously - almost three weeks a month I was travelling and watching people. Sometimes it would happen that only one more passenger was with me in the compartment, and I would watch him. He would read the same newspaper again and again - and would feel a little ashamed also, because I was there. He would open the window and close the window, open the suitcase and arrange it and close it again - and he would become very much ashamed also, because somebody was just sitting there and doing nothing. And he could not sit. And he would try to sleep, and he could not sleep, and he would jump up and go to the bathroom and come back. And he was not an insane person, just a normal person, for twenty-four hours caged in a compartment, not knowing what to do.

Have you not seen people? - their holidays are the most difficult days; they DON'T know what to do.

The whole week they think that Sunday is coming and they are going to rest, and they never rest on Sunday! They start a thousand and one things: they start mowing the lawn or they start fixing things around the house. They get more tired on Sunday than they ever get in their office - because in the office who works? One simply postpones. Files move from one table to another table - they go on moving and moving and moving, and nothing ever happens. People become so skillful at avoiding in the office, that is their work there. To avoid, to say no, not to do anything: that is their activity there.

Psychologists are perfectly aware that once a person becomes retired he dies earlier than he would have died if he had remained in his work. Ten years' difference happens. If a man was naturally going to live eighty years, and when he is sixty he becomes retired... And he had been hoping for that retirement his whole life - he was thinking, "Just a few years more and I will get retired and then I will rest and do all those things that I always wanted to do. I will read great poetry, listen to great music, play the guitar or make a beautiful garden, or go to the mountains and rest in the sun, in the wind..."

And when he becomes retired all that happens is he simply becomes afraid of death - nothing else happens. Once he is retired he starts losing his identity. He was a collector or a commissioner or something, a prime minister, a president...

When politicians are in office they are very healthy. Once they lose their office they become ill; they die soon. Harnessed, they can live long. Unharnessed, they DON'T see what the point of living is.

People start neglecting you, people start ignoring you, you become a nonentity. And not only for people do you become a nonentity, you become a nonentity for yourself - because you DON'T know now who you are. You had been a prime minister, now you are not a prime minister - then who are you? And no answer arises.

No, sitting silently is very difficult, just next to impossible - unless you are ready to die in silence, unless you are ready to lose all identity, all ego. Yes, if you are ready to lose all identity, the master will arise in you. But you cannot become a master.

When you have disappeared, the master comes. It is always God who is the master. That's why in the East we call the master divine. The West cannot understand it, because the phenomenon has been very rarely happening there. The West knows bishops, priests, rabbis; it does not really know the phenomenon of a master, it is very rarely happening there. It knows prophets, visionaries, it knows preachers, priests - but very rarely, only once in a while, has the West come across a master.

And whenever the West has come across a master it has behaved very badly with the master. with Jesus it behaved in a very uncivilized way, because the phenomenon was very much unknown. If Jesus had been just a rabbi, everything would have been perfect. But he was a master. He had disappeared, God had appeared in him. Now God was speaking, now Jesus was not speaking.

And when God speaks, God speaks with great authority. When God speaks, God speaks in absolute terms. When God speaks, God speaks like a God. Jesus says, "I am the truth." This is God speaking.

Not Jesus, not Joseph's son Jesus. Christ, not Jesus. It is God speaking: "I am the truth." NOW, no rabbi has ever said that - how can the Jews forgive this man? He seems to be very arrogant and egoistic.

Now, see the ridiculousness of it. Always, whenever ego disappears, God appears. And God speaks in such ways that it looks as if the man has become very egoistic: "I am the truth! I am the way! And nobody reaches God unless he comes through me." Just see these words: "I have come to liberate you. I and my Father in heaven are one." Now, these statements cannot be tolerated. This man seems to be neurotic, mad, a megalomaniac, has lost all senses, is insane.

Still psychoanalysts go on calling Jesus insane. And it looks insane, because who in his senses can say, "I am the way, I am truth, and nobody ever reaches God unless he passes through me"? Who in his senses can say such things?

Yes, he was not in his senses. He was not at all - how could he be in his senses? God was speaking, he was just a mouthpiece.

A man becomes a master only when the man disappears. So if you have the desire to be a master, that very desire will prevent you.

Right now, become a disciple. Slowly slowly, the disciple disappears and the master arrives. The first step towards masterhood is disciplehood.

The third question

Question 3:

THE ONLY REAL HELP will be to help you to be utterly drowned. And of that you are afraid. I am here to drown you! not to save you from drowning - because only those who are totally drowned are saved.

You ask: I FEEL AS THOUGH I AM DROWNING...

Something great is going to happen: allow it! be drowned! What is there to save? What have you got to lose? You have known only miseries; you are a bundle of miseries and dreams and hopes and frustrations and expectations - you are a bundle of all these things. Let this bundle be drowned!

Why are you worried? Why do you want to be saved? And if you are saved, this bundle will be saved.

No - because I love you, I cannot save you. Because I love you, I will help in every way so that you can disappear.

I FEEL AS THOUGH I AM DROWNING AND AM TRYING TO HOLD ON TO SOMETHING.

There is nothing that you can hold on to. You can imagine - and people when they are in desperate need do go on imagining.

My work here consists of taking all those imaginations away from you, slowly slowly, one by ONE.

All toys have to be destroyed, so one day you can see the fact that there is nothing to hold on to.

Only then will you relax and allow this drowning. Only then will you relax and die.

And after that death is resurrection.

Vedanta, go down. And DON'T try to hold on to ANYTHING, because there is nothing to hold on to.

NOTHING COMES TO MY HAND...

Because there is nothing. Nothing can come.

I FEEL SUFFOCATED.

I know. I have passed through the suffocation myself - I can understand your misery, I can understand your helplessness. But I can't give you my hand, because if I give you my hand you will remain the same. I have to leave you as you are. I have to just sit on the bank and see you drowning.

Of course you will feel angry at me.

I have heard: A Sufi master was sitting on the bank of a river, and a man was drowning. And the man started shouting, yelling, "What are you doing there? I am drowning and I DON'T know swimming!

Come and save me!"

And the master laughed and he said, "I DON'T know swimming myself, but I am not yelling. So what?

If you DON'T know swimming, you DON'T know swimming! I DON'T know it myself, but I am not yelling.

There is no need to yell."

Looks very hard - the story looks very cruel. But this is not an actual case, it is just metaphorical.

This is the situation! Vedanta is drowning there and he is shouting for help and yelling, and I say to him: DON'T shout and DON'T yell. Simply disappear. Relax and let go. DON'T try to hold on to anything.

This is the last struggle of the ego to be saved. This is the death that brings samadhi.

NOTHING COMES TO MY HAND.

Yes, nothing is going to come. I am not here to supply you new toys, new supports, new props.

I FEEL SUFFOCATED.

I know. DON'T try to save yourself, otherwise you will be simply prolonging your misery. Die. One has to learn the art of dying - and that is the whole art of disciplehood.

GIVE ME SOMETHING, OSHO.

I cannot give you anything. I can only take things away from you. I have to make you absolutely nude, utterly empty.

That's what Ikkyu's sutras are saying again and again: the Buddha cannot help. All help will be wrong help, because through help your wrong life will be supported.

GIVE ME SOMETHING, OSHO. IT IS HEAVY. I WILL DIE OR GO MAD.

You cannot die, that much is certain - because nobody has ever died. You cannot die, because death is impossible. Death never happens. It is all life - life only goes on changing forms.

When a child is born out of the mother's womb the child thinks "I am going to die" - naturally. For nine months the child has lived in a certain way and now that whole way is being disturbed. How can he think that this is going to be a new life? The child thinks "this is going to be death."

You are in exactly the same situation. Now you are being taken away from a womb - the womb of the society, the womb of religions, the womb of concepts, abstractions, philosophies. I am taking you away from the womb in which you have lived up to now. It is hard, heavy. And the child thinks, passing out through the mother's womb, that he is going to die. Birth seems to be like death.

And again, when you really die one day - old, aged, and you die - do you think it is death? It is again a beginning of a new birth. Each death is a beginning of a new birth, and each birth looks in the beginning as if it is death. But it is all life. Life goes on changing its forms, from one form to another. The form dies and life jumps into another form.

Life is a flame that lives eternally.

You cannot die, DON'T be worried about it - because nobody has ever died. Death is a myth.

You say: I WILL DIE OR GO MAD.

You cannot die, one thing, because death does not happen. And you cannot go mad, because you are already mad. Now there is no more to it. Man as he exists ordinarily is mad. What more madness can happen to you?

Just sit silently in your room for one hour and write down whatsoever comes into your mind; just write down whatsoever comes, with no editing. Just go on writing whatsoever comes - relevant, irrelevant, consistent, inconsistent, absurd, nonsense, rubbish - just go on. And you will be surprised: after one hour, when you look at it you will think "Has some madman written it, or what?"

We keep our mind repressed. We are afraid - if we look into it, it is mad.

I have heard: A woman was playing on the harmonium and singing. And her voice was so ugly, nauseating, that the neighbour could not sleep - and it was getting late, it was two o'clock in the morning. Then he knocked on her door and said, "Please stop now! Otherwise I will go mad."

The woman came out, opened the door and said, "What are you talking about? I stopped one hour ago!"

The man has already gone mad!

As man is, he is already mad. You cannot go mad - DON'T be afraid about madness. If you allow this death you will become sane for the first time. Ego is mad, ego is madness. And the ego is afraid to die - the ego is crying for help.

And you have fallen into very dangerous company, Vedanta. Here, no help is given, all helps have to be taken away. I remove, I go on removing all crutches. I know that if all crutches are removed you will be able to stand on your own, because you are not a cripple but the society has made you crippled. And the society has given you all kinds of crutches, and you have lived with those crutches so long that you cannot imagine yourself without them. Naturally, when you take crutches away from the crippled man he feels suffocated, he feels he is dying.

You are on the right track. Whenever this happens to anybody here I become very happy, because then I know the moment has come: if you can be courageous enough to go through this moment you will be reborn.

And you say: HELP ME, PLEASE.

Just the other day, Ikkyu's sutras were saying no help is possible, for three reasons. First, you DON'T need the help - in fact you have been harmed by all kinds of help that have been given to you.

Nobody has allowed you to be on your own; so much help has been available to you - your mother, your father, your teachers, your priests. Even before the problem has arisen, answers have been fed to you, all kinds of help. This helping society, these advisers all around, they have been helping you - they DON'T bother whether you need it or not. They go on helping, they have a chronic obsession with helping. They are known as social servants: these are the most mischievous people in the world. Their mischief is such that you cannot see it: they help you, they give you good advice, they teach you character, morality and this and that - and they destroy your whole possibility of growth.

They make you false, pseudo, they make you plastic.

When you fall into the hands of a master the process has to be reversed. All help has to be withdrawn. You are to be left in such deep aloneness that you HAVE to grow, that you have to take the challenge of life. And in that very challenge the energy starts moving, starts taking a form, becomes integrated.

Have you not watched it? Whenever there is a difficulty and you face it, something in you becomes strong. Whenever there is a great challenge it gives you steel in your being. And this is the greatest challenge that you can come across - the challenge of a master, of being with a master.

You DON'T need help.

Secondly, the master cannot enforce anything. He will not even enforce what is known as good, because enforcement makes everything wrong. You have to partake; the master is a kind of availability. You can take as much as you need, whatsoever you need, you can drink, you can eat, you can digest the master - but nothing can be done from the master's side in a very active way, no. He is a passive presence.

And whenever somebody is active he becomes violent. He starts crippling you; he starts watching everything, he becomes a kind of policeman. He starts interfering in everything: you should eat this, you should not eat that, you should go to bed at this time and you should get up at this time - he starts interfering with your life. He becomes totalitarian, he becomes dictatorial, he destroys your freedom. In the name of great values he cripples you, he paralyzes you.

The real master is just a presence. You can be benefitted, but it is up to you. He is available: you can take it or leave it, but nothing can be done actively from the master's side.

Thirdly, all that you are thinking is your trouble, your problem, your anxiety, is illusory. You have become very very clever at creating illusions for yourself. The basic illusion is the ego. And once that illusion is created then so many other illusions arise out of it.

Now, you are not dying - just the ego is dying. But you think "I am dying." If you can see it, how can you die? You were never born! Do you remember any moment when you were born? Have you any idea what birth is? If you were born then there must be some memory - you were not, and then suddenly you popped out - but do you remember? Those who have gone deepest into inner work have all said that you were never born. Birth has not happened, so how can you die? You are unborn, undying.

Ikkyu calls it "the great medicine". No help is needed. At the most you need an awakening - not help in particular, in detail, but just an awakening. For that, the master's presence is the alarm.

That's why I go on shouting at you continuously, whether you listen or not. I go on calling you. Some day, in spite of your sleep, in spite of you, you may listen. That very moment, you will open your eyes and all the nightmares that you were suffering from will disappear.

This drowning, this suffocation, is just a nightmare.

And remember that one becomes awake only when the nightmare reaches to its peak, never before.

Have you observed or not? - sometimes in your sleep when you are passing through a great nightmare, a moment comes when the intensity of the nightmare, the very intensity of it, becomes a breakthrough: you are suddenly awake. Your sleep can tolerate only so much nightmare, it can settle and remain adjusted with only so much agony. Once the agony point reaches beyond the capacity of the sleep, sleep has to be broken - it will break on its own.

You are being followed by tigers and you are running and the terrain is rough, mountainous, and you are falling and bleeding and feeling more and more tired. It is an uphill task and the tigers are coming closer and closer and you can hear their roaring sounds and their approach is coming closer and closer and closer... and suddenly you are caught by those tigers. One has just jumped on your chest, is tearing you apart - and in that very moment the sleep disappears and your eyes open. You are perspiring, your heart is beating fast, the whole body is trembling, but there is no tiger; you are just holding your own pillow.

I am sitting by your side, fully awake, seeing the whole misery. Do you think I should feel compassionate? You are suffering very much, this tiger is going to kill you, so should I bring a revolver or do something? I will kill you if I bring a revolver - to kill the tiger you will have to be killed, because it is your dream; the tiger is not real. So I am amused. Sitting by your side I enjoy the whole journey that you are going through. I can see through and through and I know that sooner or later the tiger is going to get you - how long can you escape? You can escape from a real tiger, there is a possibility; but you cannot escape from an unreal tiger, there is no possibility. It is your creation - wherever you go it will follow you. It is your mind! How can you escape? Sooner or later you will get tired, weary. You will fall, you will slip from a rock and you will be caught by the tiger. And then tigers do what they know: the tiger will tear you apart.

And at that moment when the tiger is tearing you apart, sleep cannot continue; it is too much. The sleep is broken.

In fact that is the purpose of so many groups that I tell you to go through. Primal, Encounter, Samarpan - these are just to enhance your nightmares. You are seeing those nightmares, but very mildly; they never come to a peak, so the sleep continues. They have to be brought to a peak, they have to be brought to a climax - because only from the climax comes the change, the change of consciousness.

Vedanta, good. I am happy, I am pleased. Be drowned, with all my blessings, and the dream will disappear. And the disappearance of the dream is the only way to know that which is. The disappearance of the dream is the appearance of God.

The fourth question

Question 4:

An ancient story:

A young woodpecker, who felt exceedingly vigorous one morning, looked around the forest and decided to start the day by pecking a huge oak. He had just gotten off to a good start when a bolt of lightning split the tree from top to bottom. The bird hustled out from under the debris, looked up at what was left of the tree, and murmured with a shudder, "My! I did not even know my own strength."

This is what ego is. It is a misinterpretation - what is already happening, you think you are doing it.

Just a translation from happening to doing is the creation of the ego. Watch, and whenever you feel that you are doing something translate it to "It is happening." Read "It is happening" and the ego will disappear.

All is happening, nothing is being done. There is no doer and no "do-ee", it is all happening.

The fifth question

Question 5:

NORMAL IS OKAY, but what is SIMPLY normal? Again you are making a condition; you are making it complex. Simply normal? Is being normal not enough? What more is added by putting "simply" in front of "normal"?

The mind is such that it cannot be happy with the natural, the normal. It always makes conditions and through those conditions it falsifies everything. Normal is possible, but simply normal is not possible. That "simple" will be something brought in from the outside.

Man has become so accustomed to the artificial that even when sometimes the desire to be natural arises in him, what he thinks about as nature is not nature, it is again his IDEA of nature. What he says is natural is again his idea of the natural - not the natural, because the natural needs no idea.

You need not become natural, you ARE natural; just stop being artificial, that's all. No positive effort is needed to become natural - just DON'T try to be unnatural.

Do you follow me? A positive effort will always lead you into artificiality. Now if you ask "How to be natural?" you have asked a wrong question, you have started on the wrong track. And then somebody is bound to supply the answer - because wherever there is a demand, there is a supply.

If you ask a wrong question you will find somebody to answer it - because people are so anxious to advise, to answer, to prove themselves wise, wiser than you. They are just hankering for somebody to ask the question. Ask, "How to be natural? How to be normal?" and somebody will show you the way. But there is no way to be natural; all ways lead to unnaturalness.

Drop all the ways, DON'T try to be anything. Forget about becoming, and then what is left is natural.

The way to the natural is negative.

That's why Buddha's emphasis is on VIA NEGATIVA. He never talks about positivity. He always says, "No, no. Neither this nor that: NETI NETI." Just go on dropping.

But man has become really so unnatural that his idea of nature is also unnatural. Not only has man become unnatural, even animals who live with man become unnatural. Your dog starts learning from you and becomes unnatural, becomes diplomatic, political. He is feeling angry at you: you are not allowing him to sit in the drawing room where he wants to sit, because guests are coming. He is feeling angry. If he is natural he will jump at you. But he is just waving his tail, showing great love for you. Now you have created a split in the poor dog's mind. He is trying to be very polite to you, and really he wants to hurt you.

I have heard:

The story is told of an old lady who rented a furnished villa for the summer, and along with the villa went a large dog. In the sitting room of the villa there was a very comfortable armchair. The old lady liked this chair better than any others in the house. She always headed right for it.

However, much to her regret, she nearly always found the chair occupied by the large dog. Being afraid of the dog, she never dared bid it harshly to get out of the chair. Instead, she would go to the window and call, "Cats!" Then the dog would rush to the window and bark, and the old lady would slip into the vacant chair.

One day, the dog entered the room and found the old lady in possession of the chair. He strolled over to the window and, looking out, appeared very much excited and set up a tremendous barking.

The old lady rose and hastened to the window to see what was the matter, and the dog quietly climbed into the chair.

Even animals become cunning, clever, calculating. In zoos, where animals have to live with other animals and in a human space, they start going neurotic, become mad, even sometimes commit murder or suicide too. This never happens in the natural state; no animal species kills its own kind, never. But in a zoo it happens. No animal goes mad in the natural state, but in a zoo it happens.

Man has become very unnatural. DON'T ask me how to be natural, just watch how you have become unnatural. Watch each act, each gesture, and see the unnaturalness of it. And whenever you see that it is unnatural, that this is not true, authentic - that this is not coming from your being, that you are only pretending, that you are being a hypocrite - drop it!

Go on dropping. Slowly slowly you will see, all that was artificial has been dropped. Then suddenly one day nature is blooming in all its grandeur. You need not do anything for it - nature is that which cannot be brought. The unnatural is that which HAS to be brought. The unnatural needs a positive way, the natural needs no positive way. Just not being unnatural is enough for nature to take possession of you.

And the last question

Question 6:

USHA, JUST FAR OUT! But please don t start doing it. I have fifty thousand sannyasins: just think of me too, otherwise I will be killed in a stampede. But the idea is great, just as an idea - DON'T practise it.

The idea is symbolic: a great love is arising in you. It is good, it has to be so. Unless you are in deep love with me nothing is going to happen. Only through love, the transformation happens. And it is good that you have not projected it on me - otherwise, that too happens...

Just the other day, I read in the latest issue of YOUTH TIMES a statement of an Indian film actress, Pratima Bedi. She says,"Rajneesh is sexy." Now, I really enjoyed it! She came to see me once; she must have been there for four or five minutes in front of me. She says I was trying to hypnotize her and I was very sexy and the vibe was sexual.

If the monkey looks into the mirror the monkey cannot see the angel looking out of the mirror. This Pratima Bedi is a wonder-woman! But let me explain to you what a wonder-woman is. I came to know about the wonder-woman through Mulla Nasruddin. One day he was saying, "My wife, Osho, is a wonder-woman." I know his wife, I said, "What do you mean?" because I have never seen such an ugly woman before. "Wonder-woman?"

He said, "Yes, wonder-woman - because sometimes I wonder whether she is a woman or not."

And he also said, "There is only one word that can explain her: "temperamental"." I said, "You puzzle me again - what do you mean?"

He said, "She is fifty percent temper and fifty percent mental.

Now, this Pratima Bedi - I cannot think of a more ugly duck. And she thinks I was being sexual with her. But something must have happened in her mind.

A mentally retarded man was accused of raping a young girl, so the police made him take part in an identity parade.

The poor victim was to be led into the room where she was supposed to pick out one of the ten men as her attacker, but as soon as she entered the room, the man pointed to her and said, "That's the one!"

It is good, Anand Usha, that you DON'T project it on me!

People go on projecting their minds. I am a mirror: you can see in me whatsoever you want to see.

And when you see it, naturally you think it must belong to me. Nothing belongs to me. This man here, talking to you, sitting in front of you, is just empty. Nothing belongs to me - or, only nothing belongs to me.

You can see your faces, you can see your innermost instincts, you can see your unconscious, reflected in me. Remember always not to project it, otherwise that will be a misunderstanding. Your love is good: let this love go higher and higher - because always, almost always, it starts with the body. Nothing is wrong with the body, but that is the very very gross kind of love.

Be on your wings, move a little higher than the body, spread your wings in the sky. Leave the boundaries behind. DON'T think that you would like to sit in my lap, think to meet me on higher altitudes - because I am there! If I am here in the body I am here just for your sake, a little while more. This body is just an excuse to be with you. I am almost cut off from it, just hanging around it a little bit, because I know many are in great need. And I am waiting for them, and they are coming.

But search for me on higher altitudes, move with me as high as possible. Then more and more clear vision will be available to you. At the highest peak, meet with me and that will be the meeting with God himself.