And the Twain Are Always Meeting

The first question

Question 1:

NO, IT IS NOT THE SAME. Looking, into one's own being is still doing something. Doing nothing is precisely that - doing nothing, neither looking out nor looking in. Looking is a kind of doing - even if you are trying to observe, you are TRYING; effort is involved. And through effort comes tension, expectation, frustration - all that. Just a small effort can bring the whole world in. If you succeed you will feel great; if YOU succeed, the ego will succeed. What the effort is, is irrelevant: success brings ego.

Yes, even if you succeed in meditation it brings ego. If you fail it brings frustration. Frustration is nothing but the ego feeling bad - it could not make it; the ego is hurt, wounded.

With effort, the whole world enters in. Doing nothing simply means that: no effort, not going anywhere, not desiring anything - not even nirvana, God, samadhi. Desire is desire - what you desire, how can it make any difference to desiring? YOU desire money, somebody desires meditation. You desire pleasures of this world, somebody else desires pleasures in the other world - what is the difference? There is none; it is all the same. The desiring mind is there, and the desiring mind is the world. So even if you desire the other world it remains the world. There is no other world. Desiring creates the world, the whole misery of it.

Not doing anything means not desiring. There is no movement in you, in ANY direction. There is no future in your consciousness, there is nothing beyond this moment - just this. No going back, no going forward, no memory, no imagination, no out, no in. All is silent. There is no movement; no ripple is arising. That is non-doing. That is the greatest that can happen to human consciousness.

Looking into one's own being is nothing compared to doing nothing. It does have something in it compared to outward movements. It is better, relatively, to move inward - a good step, but it is not the goal, it is part of the journey. Somebody is looking out, you are looking in: it is better than looking out, but remember, only relatively. It still has to be dropped. But you are coming closer to home - going out, you are farther away. Looking in, you are still away, but not so far away - you are coming closer and closer and closer.

But remember, closeness is also distance. Even when you are very close, ninety-nine degrees - only one degree more, and the happening and the transcendence - still you are far away. You may not be able to make that one degree; you may wander again. The water is just coming to the point where it can evaporate, but it may not evaporate; it may start cooling before evaporation happens.

It may remain water - it may be HOT water but water is water, hot or cold. But it is relatively better, because the cold water will have to be made hot; this is hot already.

That's the only difference between the worldly man and the spiritual man. The spiritual man is like hot water - is very close to the jump, to the quantum leap. One step more, and all in and out will disappear. There will be no division left - no body/mind, no this world/that world. All divisions in all dimensions will simply disappear.

That is the state of samadhi or nirvana. You cannot desire it, you can only understand it.

Understanding it is going into it. When you understand it totally, suddenly it is there. It needs no effort on your part; it is not something to be cultivated, practised. It is something to be ALLOWED.

In deep understanding, you open up. This very moment, just THIS, and there is samadhi.

But if there is a slight ripple - "I should catch it" - you have missed it. "If it is so close by, I should grab it!" - you have missed it. If you start looking around - "Where is it?" - if you close your eyes and you start groping for it, you have missed it.

Seeking is not the way to find. Non-seeking. That moment of non-seeking is the moment when you are sitting silently doing nothing... and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

The second question

Question 2:

I'M NOT AGAINST LOGIC, LIFE is against it. I am talking about life, not against logic. Talking about life, it comes as a by-product, the talk against logic. Logic is a manmade world; it is not true to the facticity of existence. Logic is man's imposition on reality.

Reality is very illogical, mysterious; it does not follow any rules. And the deeper you go into it, the more and more you will become aware that maybe on the surface there are a few rules, but as you move deep, rules start disappearing. And there comes a point in the depth of reality where all rules are invalid.

Physicists are coming to it, because they have penetrated deep into matter. And they are talking almost like mystics. This is one of the greatest phenomena that has happened to this century - this century's contribution to human consciousness. The mystics have always talked like that, and they have always been thought mad people. Now, it is very difficult to call Albert Einstein mad or a mystic in some derogatory sense; it is impossible. But he is talking in the same way as a Buddha talks or a Meister Eckhardt or Ikkyu.

Modern physics says: The deeper we penetrate into matter, the more we come to know that all our imposed rules are inadequate. Reality is bigger than our rules. And reality is so vast that it contains contradictions. It is not linear, it does not move in one direction, it moves in all the directions simultaneously. There is no way to approach it logically. You have to drop all logic; modern physics has dropped all logic. It HAD to drop it - to be true to reality, logic has to be dropped. Otherwise you will not be true to reality, you will be true to a fictitious reality that you have created.

This has been so for the mystics, down the ages - what physics has just now discovered, mystics have known always. They have been the pioneers in the illogical. Their approach was different - they approached through consciousness - but they also came to the same depth. And suddenly they became aware that your logic is okay in the marketplace - it helps, it is utilitarian; it will be difficult to manage in the world without logic. But when you go deeper, logic becomes a hindrance.

The deeper you start moving, the more you see that the polar opposites are not just opposites but complementaries. And once that is seen, that polar opposites are complementaries, you HAVE to understand that life is not logical.

Logic says A is A and cannot be B. A man is a man and cannot be a woman - obviously. But go deeper into the reality, and A changes into B and B changes into A. In fact they are constantly changing into each other - A is nothing but on the way to be B, B is nothing but on the way to be A.

And watch inside your own being: you are not twenty-four hours a man or a woman - you change.

The man has moments when he is a woman, and the woman has moments when she is a man.

These divisions are just utilitarian; deep inside, all is one. These are expressions of one reality.

Just see a woman in anger: do you think she is a woman? In rage she can be more aggressive than any man, more cruel than any man. And for a certain reason - because her manhood is very very virgin, unspoiled, intact, unused. That power remains unused in her. When she uses it she is really ferocious.

And when a man is in love he is so soft. He is feminine - when he is in love he is more feminine than any woman.

It is not just accidental that Buddha looks so feminine. He is in immense love with existence; he has come to that ultimate orgasm that happens between the individual and the universal. It has happened. He is orgasmic twenty-four hours - each moment is of great joy inside him, and of great love. He calls that love "compassion" - just to demark it, differentiate it, from your so-called love, he has to call it compassion.

It is passion transformed - that is the meaning of the word "compassion": passion transformed, passion which has become luminous, passion which is no more directed to any individual in particular, passion which is simply overflowing. He is feminine.

Just to indicate this feminineness in Buddha, in Krishna, in Mahavira, the Indian painters, the Indian sculptors, have not put any moustache or beard on them - just to indicate this feminineness.

Not that Buddha was without moustache and without beard. It is possible, once in a while a man may not have a moustache or a beard, but it cannot be always so. Of the twenty-four Jain TEERTHANKARAS, nobody has a moustache or a beard - Buddha, Krishna, Rama, all the Hindu avataras, nobody. This is not possible.

Why have they not been depicted, painted, with moustache and beard? Just to show, just to give you a hint of their utter feminineness, softness, the water-like quality, the lotuslike fragrance, the roundness, the wholeness.

But logic says A is A and can never be B. And logic says, "This is this, and the opposite is the opposite, they never meet."

Rudyard Kipling's famous statement is logical. "West is West, East is East, and the twain shall never meet" - this is a logical statement, but utterly false. West is not West, and East is not East, and the twain have been meeting all along.

All polarities are joined together, bridged. That's why you feel I am always talking against logic.

Logic makes you feel as if things are divided, absolutely divided, unbridgeably divided. They are not. Birth changes into death - how can they be divided? And the logical mind celebrates when a child is born and weeps when an old man dies. Now, this is logical. But birth and death are two aspects of the same reality - when one aspect arrives you celebrate, when another aspect arrives you cry and weep!

How ridiculous! Either weep on both the occasions or celebrate on both the occasions. Or if you cannot do that then forget all about celebration and weeping, just keep quiet. But DON'T make a division - because the day the child is born he starts dying; when you are celebrating he has already started towards death. What are you doing? If he is one day old, he has died one day; there is one day less in his life now.

With the first breath of the child something has started dying. He has died one breath, he is one breath closer to death - if you count life in breaths, there is one breath less. One is not going to die suddenly one day when one is seventy. One dies every day, goes on dying, then one day the whole process is complete and the pendulum swings to the polar opposite.

So it is with love and hate. Logic divides. Logic says love is love, hate is hate, and the twain shall never meet. And the twain are always meeting. Just listen to your life experience - you hate the same person you love, it can't be otherwise. Everybody hates the same person they love; the hatred is always directed to the same person.

That's why the conflict between lovers, constant quarrelling. The quarrelling stops only when love disappears, remember. Yes, it stops one day; everybody gets tired. Sooner or later, the husband starts thinking "It is enough now" and the wife starts thinking "It is too much - what is the point in doing the same thing again and again?" And they stop quarrelling. But the day they stop quarrelling, love disappears.

Love cannot exist without hate. This is the illogicalness of life: love cannot exist without hate, hate cannot exist without love. But if you go into books and if you look through logic, you divide. You say, "Always love, never hate." This is not true about life; you are creating a fiction of love. And you are creating difficulties for people.

Down the ages, you have been taught: Only love, DON'T hate. And this is an impossibility. This is a sure way to kill love - you will not be able to manage it, and you will feel guilty because you cannot manage it. And there is really nothing wrong with you. Life cannot manage it, life has no obligation to fulfill the demands of logic. Life knows nothing about logic, it is blissfully unaware of it.

If you love, the more intense the love, in the same quantity will your hate be intense. If you feel happy, you will have to feel unhappy - this is simple. And the logical mind says, "I will only be happy, I DON'T want to be unhappy." Now, this is being foolish. Logic is foolishness. The mind says, "I want to be just high, always high, never low." How can you be always high? If you DON'T come low, sooner or later you will forget that you are high. How will you know that this is high? You have to come down - you have to fall into the valley of sadness, into misery. And then one day again you rise to the peaks and the beauty of the peaks and the flight in the sky. But for how long? The valley is there, you have to go back into it - it will prepare you again to fly, to go high.

When you are high you are on the way towards being low, when you are low you are on the way towards being high. This is the illogicalness of life.

My respect is towards life, I am utterly with life. Hence, you think, you feel, that I am against logic.

In fact I am not against logic, I am only for life. That naturally makes me against logic, but that is just a by-product.

And look at the absurdities the logical mind always falls into.

I have heard:

"What are my chances of recovering, Doctor?" asked the patient.

"One hundred percent," said the doctor. "Medical records prove that nine out of ten people die of the disease you have. Yours is the tenth case I've treated and all the others died. So you see, you're bound to get well."

Now, this is logical stupidity. Life does not follow such rules, life has no obligation to follow them. But on the surface, logic always seems to be true.

The diplomat was on his first official visit to the small country of Bubonga. At the official diplomatic party, the president of the nation handed him a glass of the national beverage. The diplomat took one sip and looked around in awe as the furniture started to move about and the walls trembled.

"This is certainly a powerful drink," he said to the president.

"Not really," replied his host. "This happens to be an earthquake."

On the surface, logic always gives you clues. Mm? It must be the drink - mighty powerful drink! We are all hooked on logic. And the man who is hooked on logic remains unhooked from life.

That's why you see so many dead people walking on the streets - doing shopping, working in the factories, dead, all dead. What has happened to these people? Logic has happened to these people; they suffer from the disease called philosophy. They have become logical in their life - by becoming logical they have lost track of life. Now they have a certain fixed approach, they move according to their logic. Their eyes can only see through a narrow hole, the hole of logic; they cannot see anything else. And once your logic is fixed, your perception is fixed. You lose freedom - freedom to see. You go on only seeing things which are allowed by your logic; you go on interpreting in your logical ways, you go on reacting in your logical ways. And you go on always missing the reality - because the reality is illogical.

And the logical person sooner or later starts feeling that life is absurd, meaningless. Life is not absurd and life is not meaningless. In fact your very effort to impose a certain logic on it makes it look absurd. Your mind wants to impose a certain meaning on life, and it CANNOT be imposed.

Then life seems to be very meaningless.

There is nothing wrong with life. The birds DON'T feel life is meaningless, the treas DON'T feel that life is meaningless, the rivers DON'T feel that life is meaningless. Why? Because they have no logic. All is good as it is - they are in a relaxed relationship with life. They are in tune with life; they have no ideas to prevent it, to become barriers between them and life.

A river comes from the mountains, starts moving towards the north, and then a turning comes and it starts moving to the south. The river does not think, "What is this? Life seems to be very absurd.

First I was going north, now I am going south. What is all this? What consistency is there? How am I going to reach to the ocean if I go on this way?" And then again another turning comes, and it is moving towards the east. If the river had a mind, a logical mind, it would go mad. It would simply go berserk. It would never reach to the ocean - it would become so muddled, so puzzled, so confused, that it would be paralyzed. It is so illogical - if you are going to the north, go to the north!

But rivers DON'T think, they DON'T have any mind. A mind means having a certain idea how things should be. They DON'T mind - they allow life whatsoever it wants to be, they always relax with it. If it goes south, okay; if it goes north, okay. They DON'T create any problem. They reach, certainly; all rivers reach to the ocean.

Only man is lost. Man has lost track of God, because God is hidden in life and man has become too much obsessed with logic. Logic allows you a few things but does not allow all. It is very choosy, it tries to be consistent.

That's the beauty of Zen - it is paradoxical, it contains contradictions. And always remember, many times people ask me, "How to decide that this man is enlightened, or that this man is really a master? How to decide?" If you can find a man who is utterly inconsistent, contains contradictions, is paradoxical, looks illogical to you - does not satisfy your logical mind but in a certain subtle way satisfies your heart - then he is the enlightened person, then he is the master. He fulfills something deep in your heart; you start feeling love for him.

Your mind goes on saying, "What are you going to do? This man seems to be so absurd, not reliable at all; one day he will say one thing, another day he will say just the opposite. Then what are you going to do?" But your heart says, "So it is okay. I will go with this man, whether he goes north or south or wherever, or he stops going at all. I have fallen in love."

When love arises, only then can you slip out of logic. Otherwise you cannot slip out of logic. Love will give you the courage to move out of the patterns of logic. The person who lives in logic is a coward - logic protects against inconsistencies, contradictions, paradoxes, dangers. Logic is a security, a safety measure; it is a China Wall around you. It protects you, not only from dangers - finally it starts protecting you from life itself. Because life contains dangers. It starts protecting you from God, it starts protecting you from love. And then you are dead, then you are a corpse. YOU can go on breathing - that is not impossible, corpses breathe...

I have seen millions of corpses breathing, walking, doing a thousand and one things - and still utterly dead.

Logic protects you. Fear always wants to remain in logic. Whenever something like love starts stirring in your heart then there is a possibility to get out of logic. Then courage arises.

To be with a master is to be in love - in a very absurd kind of love, for no reason at all. That's why no disciple can convince an outsider as to why he has fallen in love with this man or that man, why he has chosen this man as a master. No disciple can ever convince anybody who is not already convinced. It is impossible, because the person from the outside will be logical and you will be illogical. You will know you are right but you will not be able to say why, how. And he will be perfectly able to say that you are not right; he will be more articulate. Logic is articulate, love is silent.

Love can laugh, live. Logic argues.

I am not against logic. You can see from my statements that I USE logic to help you towards love - how can I be against it? When I attack logic I attack very logically, because that is the only way you will understand. But the whole effort is to bring you out of it, out of its grip. I am for life, but not against logic.

The third question

Question 3:

ANEESHA, No, you are not missing something. You are getting something. And you are not alone, there are a few other people also - Vidya has written, Savita has written, and a few others, that they are feeling immense joy with these sutras. But there are a few others who are feeling depressed.

It does not say anything about the sutras, it simply says something about you. There are people who are natural Buddhists - Aneesha, Vidya, Savita, must be natural Buddhists. The approach of Buddha simply fits with their being, they immediately fall in tune with it. It is their climate, it is their soil: their seed immediately bursts, they start growing in freedom, in joy. Great insight will happen to these people who are natural Buddhists.

And remember, I am saying "natural Buddhists" - not Buddhists who are born in a Buddhist family. A natural Buddhist is a totally different phenomenon, it has nothing to do with a born Buddhist. So are there natural Sufis - for them this series will be depressing. That is not their climate. Vivek, Arup, Pradeepa and others - that is not their climate, it does not fit with them. The Sufi climate simply goes to their very heart.

And I am using all climates, I am bringing all the possibilities to you. It has never happened before.

Buddha created only one climate, one energy-field, Buddha-field. Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi created another, the Sufi-field. With Jalaluddin only those gathered who were natural Sufis, with Buddha only those who were natural Buddhists.

With me it is going to be totally different. This place is going to be the first place in the world, in the whole human history, where all climates will be available, all kinds of soils, all possibilities. So it is going to happen again and again, and you have to remember that you have to learn tolerance, sympathy. When something is not suiting you, just DON'T start condemning it - because if I am talking about it, it must be suiting somebody else. And I have to look to the needs of all.

And those old kinds of special fields - the Buddha-field, the Sufi-field - cannot exist in this world now, because the earth has become so small. Countries are no more secluded; the world has become just a global village. We are so close to each other, and all the old barriers and boundaries are breaking on their own. Man has become more grown-up.

So around me all kinds of people will be here. Jews are here, Mohammedans, Christians, Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Taoists - all kinds of people are here. People who believe in Yoga, people who believe in Tantra, people who believe in Zen, people who believe in Hassidism - they are here. And I have to nourish them all.

So when I am speaking on Sufism the Buddhists, natural Buddhists, won't feel very good. They have to learn to respect others' needs. And if they are sympathetic, understanding, even THEY will be helped - because this will bring clarity to them. When you understand something which is polar opposite to you, it brings a clarity to you. It makes your self very defined. You are no more in a kind of vagueness, cloudy - you start taking a shape. That's the function of the polar opposite.

If a Buddhist has never heard about Sufis he will remain vague. He will never know what his boundaries are, what his actual form is. He will remain formless.

So when I am talking about Sufis, and you are a natural Buddhist and you DON'T feel very good with it, listen attentively - it will give you a form, a shape, an identity, a clear vision. And when I am speaking on Buddhists, if you are a natural Sufi DON'T be depressed. DON'T stop coming: "These sutras are not for us, they create depression." Know perfectly well that they are not for you, but they are for somebody - and you can use at least this much, that you can see where you are different, what your natural qualities are which are different. And you can attain to a better identity.

To know "Who am I?" it will be helpful if you exactly know your boundaries, your limitations, your tendencies, your nature, your instincts.

I am going to go on speaking on all kinds of schools. And here, if you are a born Mohammedan, you have to disappear as a born Mohammedan. If you are a born Hindu, you have to disappear as a born Hindu. You have to find your natural qualities - because only nature grows. Birth is accidental, birth determines nothing. It was coincidence that you were born in a home where people were Hindus - it is as much a coincidence as if they belonged to a particular political party. If your parents were communists, you need not be a communist. If your parents were Catholics, you need not be a Catholic either.

You have to search for your own path; each one has to search for his own path. I will make all the paths available to you, so you can see and feel. And when the right path happens you will immediately see great joy arising in you. That is indicative that shows that your climate has arrived, that this was the time you were waiting for, that this is your spring.

So Aneesha, DON'T be worried that you are missing something. You are not missing something - for the first time you are coming closer to your natural climate. Now DON'T forget it, it will be of immense help. Once you know who you are naturally, then things change. Then you DON'T go on groping in the dark, then you start following a certain direction. Then your life has a sense of direction. Then you DON'T waste your energies all over the place. Then you know what is for you and what is not for you.

And always remember, what is not for you is not WRONG. It may be for somebody else. Just because it is not for you, it need not be untrue. Truth has multi-facets, multi-dimensional is truth.

YOU have found your door - DON'T say other doors are wrong.

Jesus says, "The house of my God, of my Father, has many doors, many rooms in it, many chambers." In fact, there are millions of doors to God's temple. And each one has to find his door, because nobody can enter from anybody else's door.

The identity that you have attained through birth is a false identity - it has to be dropped, it has to be lost. Become loose. DON'T be a Hindu, DON'T be a Christian, DON'T be a Mohammedan. And then suddenly you will start feeling what is really for you. You may be a Hindu, and you may become interested in Sufis. You may be a Mohammedan, and you may become interested in Buddha.

You may be a Buddhist, and you may become interested in Krishna. There is no way of knowing beforehand; one has just to put oneself in all kinds of climates.

And when the right climate comes, you suddenly sprout, leaves start coming. IMMEDIATE transformations happen. This must be happening to you Aneesha, to you Savita, to you Vidya.

You say: I HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED ANY OF THE SADNESS OR DEPRESSION THAT YOU HAVE SAID MANY ARE FEELING IN RESPONSE TO THIS LECTURE SERIES.

Those were born Sufis - they reacted according to their experience. I was waiting for you people to write - you reacted out of your own experience. And this I call understanding, that you allow space for others also. Others will grow through other sutras. To somebody Patanjali simply is a great splendour, to somebody else Patanjali may look dry. To somebody Mahavira is the greatest pinnacle, to somebody else he seems to have no aesthetic sense, no juice, he is just like a dry desert.

To some, Krishna may be the one who strikes deepest in the heart - touches the very core of your being, starts playing on your flute. To some others, Krishna may look shallow, indulgent, worldly.

Always remember that whatsoever fits with you, go with it wholeheartedly, the whole way. And DON'T condemn that which doesn't fit with you, because it may fit somebody else. And other people also have to reach God.

The fourth question

Question 4:

THAT IS GOD'S PROBLEM. Why should you be worried about it? If he does not feel good he can live in misery - but why should YOU live in misery? Seven years is really too long to have lived in it.

Never live in any state of misery for too long, because then it becomes habitual. Then you start, deep down, liking it; then deep down you start clinging to it. Then you become afraid - if it is lost what will you do? You will not have anything to do. Your misery was giving you such great occupation, you were continuously busy with it. If suddenly misery disappears what are you going to do? You will feel very empty.

Always remember, the moment you become aware that something simply creates misery, get out of it - the sooner the better. If your love relationship, your marriage, gives you both joy and misery then it is okay, you can be in it. I am not saying that any marriage can give you just joy and joy and joy - no marriage can. Otherwise Buddhas will not find any followers. No marriage can give you just pure joy.

From where do Buddhas find their customers? Who are their clients? People who have lived in the world and seen its misery.

A marriage is not only a marriage between man and woman, it is also a marriage between joy and misery. It is a mixed phenomenon - it is a marriage. There will be moments of joy and there will be moments of misery. If it is fifty-fifty it is perfectly okay, you can continue. But if it is a hundred percent misery then to be in it is neurotic. And that's what happens. People expect and desire that a marriage should be a hundred percent joy - which it cannot be, which is not naturally possible.

No marriage has ever been, no marriage will ever be. A hundred percent joy is not possible through marriage, it is not in the nature of things.

People expect a hundred percent joy. That is foolish, that is not practical, that is living in dreams.

And if you expect that much joy you will create more misery than was natural - because there will be more frustration. The higher your desire, the deeper you will feel frustrated. The greater the goal, the farther away you will feel from it. The more perfect an ideal, the more you will feel that you cannot make it, that you fall short.

Then there is another kind of foolishness: people go on living in a hundred percent misery too. DON'T ask for a hundred percent joy, that is not possible - but there is no need to live in a hundred percent misery either. This is your life! Why be pathological?

You must be a kind of masochist. NOW you are trying to hide your masochism behind the beautiful name "Catholic". And why will God be unhappy? Do you think God is a sadist, he wants you to suffer, to remain miserable? Your mahatmas, maybe they are sadists, and your priests and popes.

But I can be absolutely certain about God that he is not a sadist. He will be utterly happy when you are out of your misery.

I have heard:

An unhappy henpecked husband come to his preacher asking for a divorce.

"What! How can you, a religious man, think of such a thing! DON'T you realize that our good book tells us that when a man divorces his wife, not only do the angels cry but the very stones weep?"

"Listen," replied the husband, "if the angels and stones want to cry, let them. I want to rejoice!"

Why should you be worried about God? That is not your problem. God's name is simply used to prolong misery - priests have been using that name to torture you, you have been using that name to torture yourself and others.

God is not a torturer; this world is not God's concentration camp. Get out of your misery! And it is not marriage - if it is just misery how can it be marriage? What marriage are you talking about? It has not happened! In fact the divorce will only be legal, because the marriage has not happened in the first place.

Seven years are too much. If a man lives to seventy then seven years are too much - a tenth of your life wasted. If you cannot create joy in seven years, I DON'T think you will be able to create it now. Get out of it. Try somewhere else. And let the other party also be free - because you cannot be the only miserable one, the other will also be in the same boat.

I WANT TO DIVORCE MY HUSBAND. WE HAVE LIVED IN MARRIED MISERY FOR SEVEN YEARS NOW, BUT I AM A CATHOLIC AND I AM AFRAID THAT GOD IS NOT GOING TO BE HAPPY ABOUT IT.

I can promise you - leave it to me. I will see to it that God is happy about it. God is always happy with your happiness. God is not a neurotic person. He is unhappy - you have kept him unhappy for seven years.

But that's what happens in the name of marriage. People DON'T get married for healthy reasons, people get married for unhealthy reasons. Hence so much misery happens in marriage. Have you ever looked into your motives, why you wanted to get married in the first place?

Somebody wants to get married because he is alone and loneliness hurts and he wants somebody to be with, to be together with. Now, this is not going to be a real marriage. It is a need - he just wants to be with somebody. He is not moving towards somebody with any love, he just wants to exploit the other's presence so that he is not lonely. He wants to use the other as a means. And whenever anybody uses the other person as a means there is bound to be misery - because nobody wants to be used like a means. It is insulting, it is unholy, it is against the dignity of man.

And that's what happens. The woman wants to be together with the man because alone she feels frustrated, the man wants to be together with the woman because alone he feels frustrated. Not that they feel happy together - that is not there. The only thing that is motivating them to be together is that alone they feel frustrated. Now, see the point of it: if two persons are miserable separately, how can they create happiness together? "they will create only double misery, or even a multiplication of it.

If two persons are ill separately, together how are they going to become healthy and whole? They will create infections for each other; they will make life even MORE miserable. Alone, at least they were simply responsible for their own misery. Now the other's misery also falls on them and their misery falls on the other. And it goes on being multiplied, as if two mirrors are reflecting each other and throwing garbage on each other.

People get married for a thousand and one reasons - but one basic thing that should be the ONLY reason is missing: they are not in love. Sometimes the reason is finance - it is cheaper to have a wife than to have a maidservant, it is cheaper to have a husband than to struggle on your own in this competitive world, it is cheaper to have a husband than to have a servant. But love is missing. And when the most basic ingredient is missing, you will be miserable, you will not be happy.

I have heard:

Darling, Just imagine - we've now been married for twenty-four hours."

"Yes, dear, it's incredible. And it seems only as if it was yesterday."

Just twenty-four hours being together is enough to give you a taste of hell.

I have heard about another Catholic...

A well-known humourist tells of a young man who attended a golden wedding celebration and could not help but wonder how two people could stay happily married for fifty years. He finally mustered enough courage to ask the elderly "bridegroom" if he had ever thought of divorce during the fifty marital years. The old man thought for a moment and answered, "Divorce - never! You know I am a practising Catholic. But murder, many times."

Do you think God will be more happy when you think of murder? That's what people go on thinking.

What can you do if you are just hooked to each other and in great misery, and you cannot divorce?

Naturally, one thinks of murder or one thinks of suicide.

Men think of murder, women think of suicide. Men are more aggressive, so they start imagining - even in fantasy it relieves them. Just to think for one hour that they can kill their wife and be free for ever, gives them such great relief. There is no need to really murder, but that night they sleep better.

And the wife thinks of committing suicide; sometimes she swallows sleeping-pills. Never too many - because who really wants to die? But even the idea that one is trying to commit suicide helps; for a few days, life flows more rhythmically. At least one has the feeling that one can die and that will give freedom.

What kind of a world have we created in which people think of murder and suicide continuously?

What kind of nonsense have we done? Divorce seems to be simple. If you are happy with somebody, be with them. If you are not happy with somebody, TRY to create happiness, but if it seems impossible then drop out. At least that will be a friendly act; it will be compassionate.

And DON'T bring God into it. Marriage is man's creation - God has not created marriage, remember.

They say that marriages are made in heaven: this is just false, absolutely untrue. Maybe they are made in hell, but not in heaven. God is not a party to your marriage. When you go to the church and the temple to get married, you are simply creating a pseudo-atmosphere to impress yourself that something great is happening. Nothing is happening, you are simply creating a great impression upon yourself - it is a kind of auto-hypnosis. Going to the church, so many people and candles and celebration and the priest and all that, gives you an impression that something immensely valuable is happening and God is watching.

When you get married, God weeps. He beats his head and says, "Again?"

Real love is a totally different kind of phenomenon. It need not have the support of the church or the society. A real love is enough unto itself. If a marriage arises out of love it is just a social formality, you are not getting any sanction from it. The sanction is needed because you are not getting sanction from your heart - you are substituting for it. You want to have sanction from the state, from the church, from God himself - or at least from the representative of God, the pope, the priest - so that you can feel that something great has been done.

You are afraid. You cannot trust your own heart, so you need all these props and crutches. Marriage is a manmade institution - in nature there exists no marriage. And when once again man is courageous enough to be natural, marriage will disappear.

And I am not saying couples will disappear, but marriage WILL disappear. Marriage is an ugly institution. People will live together out of love, out of sheer joy. They will live together because they WANT to live together - for no other reason. Then only can there be happiness.

DON'T be afraid of divorce. You have never been married really - hence seven years of misery. If you were really married there would have been great joy too - great misery, great joy, go together.

The fifth question

Question 5:

THEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? Are you mad? If you are not interested, you are not interested. Wait - when the interest arises, come.

But my feeling is, you must be interested in some way. Maybe the interest is unconscious. Maybe your conscious mind says "I am not interested" and your unconscious mind is interested. Perhaps there is no bridge between your unconscious and conscious; perhaps you can't listen to your unconscious or the messages that it gives to you.

You have forgotten the language of the unconscious, you are closed in your conscious.

And this question arises out of fear - fear that you may really be interested in God, in truth, in nirvana, in meditation, in sannyas. Who knows? And the conscious is afraid. The conscious mind lives in fear, always in fear. It is afraid of all great things - of love, of God, of sannyas - it is always afraid of great things. It is a very tiny energy: it is ego. It is always afraid of anything that can drown it. It wants only small things - a house, a car, a good bank balance - it is happy only with things that it can control. It wants to remain the master.

That's why the conscious mind creates barriers between itself and its own depth, the unconscious - so that no messages reach. The unconscious is NATURALLY interested in God. God is not a creation of thinkers; it is a deep urge, a great longing, in the very core of human beings. No man is really a man unless he starts searching for God. No man has really taken account of his humanity unless he becomes interested in meditation. No man is yet courageous enough until he starts risking his life for the unknown.

The desire is arising from your unconscious. Like a tidal wave it comes - but you are closing yourself against it. So you cannot leave this place, and you cannot get into meditation or into sannyas, either.

Watch. Relax a little more. Why are you here in the first place? Nobody has forced you to come here and nobody is preventing you from going. In fact there are many hindrances when you come in, there is no hindrance when you go out. The guards prevent you from coming in - they are there to screen those who are not yet ready. What excuses they use to prevent you are just excuses. The real thing is, those people who are not yet ready should not be allowed in - because they simply waste their time, my time. They occupy space, and they are not ready to change, to mutate. They are accidentally here.

There are many hindrances to prevent you from coming in, from coming closer to me. But there is nobody hindering you from going out; everybody is totally free to go away.

Why are you hanging around here? There must be a deep urge somewhere, of which you are not aware, and you are trying to falsify it.

I have heard:

Pretty young girl: "What are we going to do today?"

Young man: "How about a drive in the country?"

Pretty young girl: "Will there be any kissing and cuddling and parking in lonely lanes and all that sort of thing?"

Young man: "Certainly not!"

Pretty young girl: "Then what are we going for?"

The questioner must have a very feminine mind - wants to say no, and means yes.

Meditate over this story:

David and Debbie both worked in the same office in Hong Kong, and both of them were Chinese.

For more than six months David had admired Debbie from a distance, never managing to pluck up sufficient courage to ask her for a date, but all the time, his passion for her grew stronger and stronger. And he was afraid too, because Debbie was well-known around the office as "not that kind of woman" - she was known to be a virgin.

At last the great day came when he somehow managed to scrawl a note to her asking if she'd like to have dinner at a restaurant with him.

"I'd love dinner with you," she replied, coming over to his desk in their open-plan office to tell him so in person, and making him blush with pleasure.

That evening in the restaurant he asked her what she would like to eat, and she studied the menu carefully, then said: "I'll have shark's fin soup, please. And Peking duck with dumplings, some suckling pig, steamed fish, and then some fresh lychees."

David was horrified, as he'd been mentally calculating the enormous cost of all this food - the most expensive items on the menu and more suitable for a wedding feast than for a dinner for two.

"D... d... do you eat like this at home?" he stammered, his face blushing red again.

"No," replied Debbie. "But then, no one at home desperately wants to go to bed with me."

Deep down in the unconscious, things are different than they are on the surface. And it almost always happens that whatsoever is on the surface, just the opposite, the polar opposite, is in the depth.

You say: I AM NOT INTERESTED IN TRUTH, NOT INTERESTED IN GOD, NOT INTERESTED IN MEDITATION, IN SANNYAS, AT ALL. WHY?

Then why does this question arise? Why this "why"? This is the search for truth! You want to know why: this is the desire for truth. But you want to avoid it, you want to pretend that you are not interested. It gives you safety, it keeps you aloof, it keeps you from going into any commitment. And here, it is a commitment, an involvement.

Sannyas is a commitment, an involvement, staking one's life for the search. Going into the unknown, leaving the known and the familiar. It is insecure, it is utterly unsafe, there can be no guarantee. One has to go in trust, and knowing perfectly well that one may not be able to return back to the old space again. And who knows? The new space may be better, may not be better - then what? If you cannot come back to your old secure space, and the new space is not the one that you had thought it to be, then what? That fear cripples. Then one starts managing to get the idea into the conscious mind that "I am not interested in truth."

But you ARE interested. Then one starts managing the idea that "I am not interested in meditations."

But you ARE interested. Because you are interested, you create these ideas that you are not interested. You are becoming afraid of your interest. The interest is arising in a subtle way, like a small ripple it is growing. You are afraid, you are shaken. You may have come here accidentally - a friend simply mentioned me, or you came across an orange sannyasin at the airport or in some place, and just by the way you became curious.

But remember, at the airport there were thousands of other people - they didn't become curious, you became curious. There must be something in your unconscious that was waiting to be triggered by this orange person. You heard my name and you became curious. Millions of people have heard it, and they have not become curious. You heard it and you became curious - something went deep into you, the name awoke some deep-hidden desire and longing in you.

You have come here without being perfectly aware why. But I know why you have come here: you are interested in truth, in God, in meditation, in samadhi, in sannyas! Beware!

The sixth question

Question 6:

YOU CAN ALSO COME WITH ME. And that is the only way to know where I go. I cannot say anything about it - anything said about it will not be true. But I can invite you: I am an open invitation, a beckoning door. Come through me.

These moments that I am with you, I am at the very source of things. If you can fall in tune with me, if you can become harmonious with me, you will also be at the very source of things. You will have a taste of Tao or Dhamma or God, or whatsoever you want to call it.

I am available to you. In that gesture, a great door is available to you. You can move from the false to the true, you can move from the sound to the silence, you can move from the momentary to the eternal. You can move from life/death into that which knows neither life nor death - which is immortal.

These moments that I am with you are not to impart any teaching to you - I have none. I am not a teacher, I am a master. A teacher teaches, a master makes it available. A teacher talks about truth, a master IS truth. A teacher gives you ideas about that, a master IS that.

This is satsang, this is communion.

Yes, if you come with me, if you DON'T argue with me - that's where you miss - if you DON'T decide whether what this man is saying is right or wrong... Because what I am saying is neither right nor wrong. What I am saying is just a device, a hypothetical device, just to bring you closer and closer towards me. What I am saying is just a toy so that you can remain engaged playing with me.

And in that playing, sometimes, when you are lost in the play, when you are absorbed in the play, you come through me. Those moments cannot be created directly, they can be created only indirectly. I am creating a Buddhafield, a situation, an occasion - an occasion where sometimes without even becoming aware, you will be transported.

And many of you have been transported, many of you KNOW it, it is happening every day. DON'T ask me where I go. First I have to come to you, because I have to take you there. So I come to you through words - there is no other way to come to you. And if I have to take you into another kind of world, then I have to come to you. I will have to hold your hand in my hand. And language is the only way that you know how to commune - hence I speak.

But once I have spoken - I have given my hand into your hand, I have used YOUR language to be with you - now you have to use MY language to be with me. Now give your hand to me. My language is silence - as your language is sound, my language is silence. If I talk to you and you are silent, then your hand is in my hand. If I am talking here and you are also talking there inside yourself, then my hand remains close to you but your hand never comes into my hand.

When I am talking you need not talk. I am doing it already, for you and for me, both. You can be silent. Silence is my language - I speak your language sometimes, you have to speak my language too.

I am talking and you are listening, with no thoughts in your mind - and you will be transported!

Poona will disappear, all these people around you will disappear. Yes, that's what must have been happening...

You ask:

AN EMPTY WHITE CHAIR

FLOATING

DIVINE WORDS

MELTING WITH

DIVINE SILENCES.

OSHO, WHERE DO YOU GO EVERY DAY BETWEEN

I go to the eternal home. First I come to you, through my words. And those who can hold my hand and can become silent start moving with me to the eternal home. That is my home and that is your home, that is everybody's home. That home is God.