Simply Stoned on Freedom

The first question:

Question 1:

DEVA BHAKTA, TO HATE DEATH IS TO HATE LIFE. They are not separate and they cannot be separated. Death and life exist together, there is no way to separate them. The separation is just an abstraction in the mind; it is utterly false. Life implies death, death implies life. They are polar opposites, but complementary to each other.

Death is the pinnacle of life. If you hate death how can you love life. And that is a great misunderstanding. People who think that they love life always hate death - and by hating death they become incapable of living. The capacity to live, the capacity to live at the maximum, comes only when you are ready to die, and ready to die at the maximum. It is always proportionate. If you live in a lukewarm way you will die in a lukewarm way. If you live intensely, totally, dangerously, you will also die in a deep orgasm.

Death is the crescendo. Life comes to its peak in death. The orgasm that you know through love is nothing compared to the orgasm that death makes available. All the joys of life simply are pale compared to the joy that death brings.

What exactly is death? Death is the disappearance of a false entity in you - the ego. Death also happens in love, on a smaller scale, in a partial way. Hence the beauty of love. For a moment you die, for a moment you disappear, for a moment you are no more, and the whole possesses you. You disappear as a part, you become rhythmic with the whole. You DON'T exist as a ripple in the ocean, you exist as the ocean itself.

That's why all orgasmic experiences are oceanic experiences. The same happens in deep sleep; the ego disappears, the mind functions no more, you relapse into the original the joy. But these are nothing compared to death. these are partial things. Sleep is a very tiny death, each morning you will be awake again. Still, if you have slept deeply, the joy lingers on the whole day - a certain quality of tranquillity continues deep in your heart. You live differently that day when you have slept well. If you have not been able to sleep well, the day is disturbed. You feel annoyed, irritated, for no reason at all. Small things become great disturbances. You are angry - not at somebody in particular, you are simply angry. Your energy is not at home, it is distracted. You feel uprooted.

Death is a great sleep. The whole turmoil of life - seventy. eighty or ninety years' turmoil - and all the miseries of life and all the excitements and the distractions and the anxieties, simply disappear, are no more relevant. You fall back into the original unity of existence. You become part of the earth.

Your body disappears into the earth, your breath disappears into the air, your fire goes back to the sun, your water to the oceans, and your inner sky has a meeting with the outer sky. This is death.

How can one hate death? You must be carrying a misunderstanding. You must have been carrying the idea that death is the enemy. Death is not the enemy, death is the greatest friend. Death has to be welcomed, death has to be waited for with a loving heart. If you think of death as the enemy, you will die - everybody has to die, your thinking will not make any difference. But you will die in agony - because you will be resisting, you will be fighting. In resistance, in fight, you will destroy all the joys that death, and only death, can deliver to you. The death that could have been a great ecstasy will be just an agony.

And when something is too much of an agony one falls unconscious. There is a limit to tolerance, one can bear only so much. Hence ninety-nine out of a hundred die in a state of unconsciousness.

They struggle, they fight, to the very end. And when it becomes impossible to fight any more - they have put all their energies at stake - they fall into a kind of swoon. They die an unconscious death.

And to die an unconscious death is a great calamity, because you will not remember what has happened. You will not remember that death was a door into the divine. You will be carried through the door, but on a stretcher, unconscious. You have missed a great opportunity again.

That's why we go on forgetting about our past lives. If you die consciously you will not forget, because there will be no gap, there will be a continuity. You will remember your past life - and to remember the past life is of great import. If you can remember your past life you will not commit the same mistakes again. Otherwise you will go on moving in a vicious circle - the same cycle, the same wheel will move again and again. You will cherish the same ambitions again and you will commit the same foolishnesses again, because you will think this is the first time you are doing them...

You have done them millions of times - but each time you died a gap appeared, because you were unconscious. You became discontinuous with your past. Then life starts from ABC again.

That's why you cannot evolve into Buddhas. Evolution needs a continuous awareness of the past, so that the same mistakes are no more committed. Slowly slowly, mistakes disappear. Slowly slowly, you become aware of the vicious circle; slowly slowly, you become capable of getting out of it too.

If you die unconsciously you will be born unconsciously - because death is one side of the door, birth is the other side of the same door. From one side the door says "Death", from another side it says "Birth". It is the entrance, it is the exit - it is the same door.

That's why you were born but DON'T remember it. You DON'T remember those nine months in the womb, you DON'T remember your passing through the birth canal, you DON'T remember the agony that you went through, you DON'T remember your birth trauma. And that birth trauma goes on affecting you: your whole life will remain affected by your birth trauma.

That trauma has to be understood. But the only way to understand it is to remember it. And how to remember it? You are so afraid of death, you are so afraid of birth, that the very fear prevents you from going into it.

Devabhakta, you say: THE STRONGEST EMOTION THAT I HAVE IS HATING DEATH.

It is your hating life. Love life, and then a natural love for death arises too. Because it is life that brings death. Death is not against life, death is the flowering of all that life contains in it as a seed.

Death does not come from the blue - it grows in you, it is your flowering, you bloom.

Have you ever seen a real man dying? It is very rare to see a real man dying, but if you have, you will be surprised that death makes the person so beautiful. He has never been so beautiful before - neither in his childhood, because then he was ignorant, nor in his youth, because then passion was too much of a fever. But when death comes, all is relaxed. The foolishness of childhood is no more there, and the madness of youth is also gone, and the miseries of old age, the illnesses and the limitations of old age, are also gone. One is being freed from the body. A great joy arises from the innermost core, spreads all over.

In the eyes of the real man dying you can see a flame which is not of this world. And in his face you can see a grandeur which is of God. And you can feel the silence, the non-struggling silence, the non-resistant silence of the man who is slipping, slowly slowly, into death with a deep gratitude and acceptance, for all that life has given to him and for all that God has been so generous with. A gratitude surrounds him.

You will find a totally different space around him. He will die as one SHOULD die. And he will release such freedom that those who are close by will be simply stoned on that freedom, will be transported.

In the East, it has always been a great point: whenever a master dies, thousands, sometimes millions of people gather to watch that great phenomenon - just to be there in the vicinity, to be close by, to see the ultimate fragrance being released, to see the last song that the man is going to sing, and to see the light that comes when the body and soul separate. It is dazzling; it is a great illumination.

Now scientists know perfectly well that if you divide the atom, great energy is released by the division, by the split. Much greater energy is released when the body and soul are divided. They have been together for millions of lives - now suddenly the moment has come when they will be divided. In that division, great energy is released. That energy release can become a tidal wave for those who want to ride on it. They will have great ecstatic experiences.

DON'T HATE DEATH. And I know, it is not only Devabhakta who hates death, it is almost everybody.

Because we have been taught a very wrong philosophy - we have been told that death is against life. It is not. We have been told that death comes and destroys life. That is utter nonsense. Death comes and fulfills life.

If your life has been beautiful, death beautifies it to its ultimate. If your life has been a life of love then death gives you the MAXIMUM experience of love. If your life has been a life of meditation then death will bring you to samadhi. Death only enhances. Of course if your life has been a wrong life then death enhances that too. Death is a great magnifier.

If you have lived only in anger then in death you will see just hell inside you, just fire. If you have lived in hatred then death will magnify hatred. What can death do? Death magnifies, it mirrors - but you are the culprit. Death is just a mirroring phenomenon.

DON'T hate death. Otherwise you will miss death and you will miss life too.

You say: THE STRONGEST EMOTION THAT I HAVE IS HATING DEATH.

You are wasting your strongest emotion unnecessarily. Love life. Never be negative, negatives lead nowhere. DON'T hate darkness, love light. Put your total energy into loving. And you will be surprised, you will be taken aback: if you love light, one day you will suddenly recognize that darkness is nothing but a phase of light, a resting phase of light.

DON'T hate the world, as you have been told to again and again in the past by your so-called saints.

Love life, love this world, because when your love comes to its total intensity you will discover God herenow. He is hidden.

He is hidden in the trees, in the mountains, in the rivers, in people - in your wife, in your husband, in your children. If you hate life, if you hate the world and you escape from it, you are going away from God.

I teach you affirmation. Affirm. Let your energies be focussed on the positive. The negative is not the way to live; nobody can live in the negative. In the negative, people only commit suicide. All negatives are suicidal. Only affirmation, total affirmation, brings you to reality.

You say: THE STRONGEST EMOTION THAT I HAVE IS HATING DEATH. I WANT TO KILL IT!

ONCE AND FOR ALL!

You cannot do it. Nobody can do it - it is impossible, it is not in the nature of things. The day you were born, death became absolutely certain. Now there is no shirking. Death can be dissolved only when you dissolve birth. You have already died. The day you were born, you died - because in the birth, death is determined.

If you really want not to die again then you will have to do something so that you are not born again.

That is the whole Eastern approach: how not to be born again. There are ways not to be born again.

If desire disappears you will not be coming again. It is desire that brings you into the body; desire is the glue that keeps you glued to the body. One body disappears, and desire creates another body, and so on and so forth.

Dissolve desire, so you will not need any birth. If birth disappears, death disappears of its own accord. Then there is life eternal - no birth, no death.

Ikkyu says this is the greatest medicine - the medicine of no birth, no death. This is the taste of the whole Eastern approach, Eastern realization, Eastern insight. But remember, you cannot fight death. YOU can dissolve birth, and then death is dissolved.

But what happens is that ordinarily we love birth, we love life and that's why we hate death. Now you are going into an impossibility - you will drive yourself crazy.

I WANT TO KILL IT!

If you really want to kill death, accept it. Accept it totally - and in that very acceptance death disappears. Because you never really die, only the ego dies. And if you accept death totally, you have renounced the ego on your own. Then there is nothing left for death to do; you have done its work on your own.

What can death take from you? It will take your money, it will take your wife, it will take your husband, it will take your relationships, it will take your world. DON'T be attached to these things - then what is left for death to take from you? It will take your ego, your self-identity. The idea that "I exist as a separate being" - death will take it away.

You can dissolve it. That's what meditation is all about. That's what sannyas is: a conscious, voluntary decision that "I will dissolve this ego, I will not cling to it." If you DON'T cling to the ego, what is left? You have died already. And only those who have died already, conquer death and attain to life abundant.

THE SECOND THING IS, you say, I FEEL EXTREME PAIN WHEN I REALIZE THAT I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO THANK YOU.

THAT TOO IS PART OF THE EGO. Why should you be worried about thanking me? Your realization will be enough gratitude, you need not use words. Words are very tiny, trivial, mundane. They can't express anything that is really great, authentic, true, inner. How can you express your gratitude towards me?

And whatsoever words you use will look inadequate, will not suffice, will not make you feel contented.

They will look like lies. Words are always inadequate in expressing that which is great, that which is infinite. And gratitude is great, and gratitude is infinite - because gratitude is the ultimate in love.

Even love cannot be expressed through words. That's why lovers have to invent ways to avoid words and express love. They hold hands: that's a way of avoiding words. The warmth that passes through one hand to another hand, the energy that is communicated from one hand to another hand - the meeting-point of that energy, how can you express it in words?

Lovers have to hug each other - words won't do it. Lovers have to sit silently for hours, looking at the moon or at the stars or at the sunset. Listening to the birds, just being silent together, silence is more expressive than any expression can be.

If this is so with love, what to say about gratitude? It is impossible to express it.

Devabhakta, you are right. You will not be able to express your gratitude. Only those can express their gratitude who have not really felt anything - they can easily say thank you. "Thank you" is good for mundane things: your handkerchief has fallen and somebody takes it up and gives it back to you and you say thank you - it is relevant.

But if you come close to somebody and he gives you all that you have been hankering for, for lives - how can you say thank you? It doesn't feel right; it looks almost profane, obscene. You can just be silent. You can bow down, your eyes may have tears, your face may become aflame - but there will be utter silence. One thing.

The second thing: there is a tragedy of gratitude that has to be understood.

A man once came to me; he is a political leader. He was suffering from insomnia, and he said, "I am not interested in God, I have not come to you for that. And I am not interested in meditation either.

MY whole interest is in one thing: if I can sleep well I will be perfectly satisfied. If you can help me to sleep well, you will have done me a great favour."

He was really in a mess. No tranquillizer was helping him; he had been taking great doses and sleep was as far away as ever. I said to him, "Really, you only want this?" He said, "Absolutely this, and nothing else. I will be grateful to you for my whole life if I can have just four or five hours of sleep every night. The whole night I am turning and tossing - it is agony, it is hell. And the whole day I am tired. I am going mad - the day is not far away, the nervous breakdown is coming closer every day."

I gave him a small meditation, just an auto-hypnotic meditation: he just had to affirm ten times at night that sleep is coming, and ten times in the morning that sleep is coming. The great law of affirmation.

He looked unbelieving, he was skeptical. He said, "Just this repetition will help?" I said, "Just try, and then after three weeks come to me."

After three weeks he came! His face was different, he looked relaxed. I said, "What has happened?"

he said, "Sleep has started happening, but nothing else."

I said to him. "You did not ask for anything else. Do you remember?" He had completely forgotten about it.

Remember, this is the great tragedy of gratitude. When you have a problem, it looks so big. When it disappears, it simply does not matter. He said, "My insomnia has disappeared but nothing else has happened."

And I have come across this again and again. I have been helping people in different ways, but whenever the help has reached a person, whenever a person has been really helped, he forgets to feel grateful. And I understand - I DON'T say that he is ungrateful, I understand. The tragedy of gratitude is this: when you have a problem, that is your whole world. When a person cannot sleep the whole night, that is his whole problem - God is irrelevant, meditation makes no sense, all that he needs is good sleep.

But when you sleep well, do you think you are doing something great? Everybody else is sleeping well - nobody feels grateful to God. Do you feel grateful to God in the morning when you have slept a good night? You DON'T feel grateful. When you have good food to eat and a fridge to always depend upon, you DON'T feel grateful. Just remain hungry for three or four days and you will say, "I am ready to lose everything if I can have a good meal."

If you are lost in a desert and you cannot find water, and somebody gives you just a small cup of water, you will look at him as the saviour. But water was always available to you, and you never even once thanked God: "You have given me so much water." And once you have attained the water you forget all about it; then it doesn't matter.

That's what has been happening in social evolution too. Man has attained many great things but nobody feels grateful. Three thousand years ago there was great slavery in the world; people were being sold like commodities. Even in those days which people think were of golden beauty, of grandeur - even in Ramarajya in India - slaves were sold in the markets.

Mahatma Gandhi used to praise Ramarajya very much; he wanted Ramarajya to come into the world again. And he was blissfully unaware that in Ramarajya there was slavery, people were sold in the marketplaces just like cattle. Now nobody is being sold, but do you feel grateful for that? Do you ever think, "How beautiful the world is, there are no more slaves"? No, you DON'T feel grateful.

That is the tragedy of gratitude. When it is not, when something is not, you feel too much for it.

When it is there you forget all about it.

People have lived in poverty for millions of ages, and they were always asking and always praying.

The Vedas are full of prayers of poor people: "Give more food. Give more milk to my cow. Yield more crops to my field." But do you think America is happy? For the first time, an affluent society has arisen on the earth. But America seems to be the most miserable country in the world. What has happened? No gratitude? People have forgotten all about it.

India was under slavery for almost one thousand years. And people were boiling - they were ready to give all that they had to become free. Now they are free, but nobody seems to be grateful that freedom has come. People say, "So what? Yes, we are free - so what? What has freedom brought to us?"

Man's mind functions in that way. There are many people here who have been transformed from their very roots. But they have forgotten in what agonies they had come to me, and in what ecstasies they are living now. They have completely forgotten; there is no comparison any more. Now they are worried about when they are going to become enlightened.

And I would like to tell you, even if you become enlightened - and you ARE going to become enlightened one day or other - then you will say, "Now what? Now what's next?"

This is the tragedy of gratitude.

You ask me, Devabhakta: THE SECOND THING IS, I FEEL EXTREME PAIN WHEN I REALIZE THAT I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO THANK YOU.

No need to be worried about it. I will KNOW. When you are happy, I am tremendously happy with you. Whether you say it or not doesn't matter, your saying it is not going to be of any help. When I see you happy and blooming, radiant, I am happy. With each disciple coming closer to enlightenment, I become enlightened again and again. With each disciple coming closer to reality, I come closer to reality again and again. You need not say it at all - and DON'T be worried about it. This worry is also part of the ego game: "I would like to thank you, I would like to do something in return." There is nothing that can be done.

And be relaxed - because I am not doing anything to you. Whatsoever is going to happen to you will be your own gratefulness to yourself, your own gift to yourself.

The ego plays many games. First it starts thinking how to give thanks, and becomes worried about it. And if the moment comes to give thanks, then the ego thinks, "But what has the master done?

It is my own experience that has bloomed in me - it was going to bloom anyway, the master was just a trigger point. Even if the master was not there, it was going to happen somehow or other, somewhere else with somebody else - or maybe it would have happened if I had been on my own too."

And then the ego is very cunning, it jumps upon everything. The ways of the ego are very subtle...

Just a few days before, I talked about Sarjano. One evening he came, and he was in such a beautiful state that I gave my feet into his hands and he had a beautiful satori. A door opened - for a moment he was transported. For one day he remained in great ecstasy. But the next day the ego started coming in, playing games with him.

In fact to be grateful to the master is very difficult. If you can simply be in a state of forgiving the master, that is more than can be expected. If you can forgive the master, that is enough! That's all that I expect from you. It is very difficult to forgive the master...

After just twenty-four hours, Sarjano started going mad. He started writing ugly letters to me as a revenge, because "How do you dare? Who are you to give me this experience?" - not exactly in those words. He started pretending to be my friend, no more a disciple, because he is enlightened.

That small window that opened created great ego in him. He started using abusive words towards me. So what to say about gratefulness? He started thinking that he is now no more a disciple, just a friend - he has attained to the same state, so why should he be a disciple any more?

And in a subtle way the ego started being violent. His letters became more and more ugly and nasty.

And all the time meanwhile he must have been thinking that he was just being Zen-ish. It is not so easy to be Zen-ish.

Many times it happens that I have to resist the temptation of giving you a glimpse. Many times I see that you are just on the verge - just a small push, and you will have a great experience. But if I see that the ego is lingering behind, if I give you the push and you attain to some experience the ego will immediately jump on it, will take possession if it, will drive you berserk.

I have to wait, I have to wait long. Slowly slowly, that door has to be opened - you may not be able to absorb the light, so much light, suddenly. That's what happened to Sarjano.

Forget all about gratitude. If you can forgive me, that is enough, more than I expect from you. When you become enlightened, please forgive me.

And you also ask: IS THERE A CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE TWO THINGS? - MY HATE FOR DEATH AND MY EXTREME PAIN WHEN I REALIZE THAT I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO THANK YOU.

Yes, there is a connection, because both are deaths. And the first is not such a great death as the second. The disciple has to die in the master - and then there remains nobody to be grateful.

That is enlightenment, when there is nobody found inside you. Who is going to be grateful? and to whom?

The disciple, when he disappears, also comes to know that the master has never been there - he has disappeared long before. These are two emptinesses meeting, embracing each other. Who is to be grateful? and to whom?

The second question:

Question 2:

YOU MUST BE INTELLIGENT. Only stupid people never think of suicide. Life is so ugly, life is such a hell. It is very difficult to find an intelligent person who never thinks of committing suicide. The more intelligent you are, the more the idea will be coming again and again: Why go on living? For what? For this same rut? - going to the office every day, doing the same files every day, coming back every day, talking about the same things, reading the same newspaper, listening to the same stupid radio station... going to sleep, just to get up early in the morning and catch the train to the office....

And so on and so forth, every day, year in and year out. Only a very very mediocre person can go on living. Otherwise, one day or other, the idea arises: "What am I doing here? If this is the way life goes, I have lived for forty years repeating the same thing, I may live forty years more, repeating the same things again - then what? Then why not stop this game? Why not return the ticket to God and say, "I am finished. Enough is enough!"

The idea of suicide comes to everybody. That's why it is only man who thinks of suicide - no other animal. It is only man who ponders over the idea of suicide, and sometimes commits suicide. It simply shows intelligence and nothing else.

And particularly in the modern society, man thinks more of suicide - because modern society has become more mature, more intelligent, more educated, more sophisticated. In the old days, people were not thinking of suicide so much, for many reasons. In the old days, people were not individuals.

They belonged to groups, castes, religions, countries. They had no individual existence as such - and only individuals can commit suicide, remember.

When you have the idea that you are an individual, then the possibility opens up: you can destroy yourself. In the past, man has lived as part of a collective mind. And a collective mind is not a very intelligent mind. The collective mind lives according to the lowest denominator - it cannot reach to the highest peaks of understanding, of vision, of seeing. The collective mind lives in a meaningless rut, thinking that this is meaningful - because everybody else is doing the same, so it must be meaningful.

The modern mind is at a loss, the meaning is lost. You have to decide your own meaning. In the old days, when a son was born to a carpenter then he was going to be a carpenter. It was decided, already decided. His parents, his parents' parents... as far back as one could remember, they have always been carpenters. So he is a carpenter - he knows his identity, who he is. He knows what he has to do. The society prescribes every rule, every regulation, he has simply to follow it. It is living below individuality - and nobody can think of suicide when you live below individuality.

When you start becoming an individual, when you start standing on your own, then suddenly you see the point: "What is the purpose of it all? What am I doing here?"

Secondly, in the modern world, everybody has to choose his own identity. That is a great effort. And when you choose your own identity it is always with a suspicion - it may be right, it may not be right.

In the old days, when a man was born to a brahmin family he knew that he was a brahmin. There was no need to think about it, it was predetermined. All was given to him as a blueprint - he had just to live it. The whole script was supplied by the society, he was just an actor in a drama.

Now the problem is more complicated. You have to write the drama, you have to create the stage, you have to find the actors. You are the director and the actor and the story-writer and the song- writer. You are the stage - and not only that, you are the audience too. How can you be absolutely certain who you are? Modern man is living continuously in what psychoanalysts call "the identity crisis".

In the old days, the authority was there to tell you what was right and what was wrong. You were not left on your own to decide. Things were clear-cut: "This is right and that is wrong." People followed the authorities.

Now authorities have disappeared, the world is living in a kind of freedom. The more a society is free, the more people will think of suicide. the more a society is free, the more people will COMMIT suicide.

In the East, particularly in India, the so-called religious saints feel very very enhanced by the idea that the suicide rate in India is very low compared to America. And they think America is committing suicide because it is materialist. They are utter fools - America is committing suicide more because America has more freedom. America is more tense, in anxiety, because America is creating individuality. India is not yet that free; India still lives in the past. America is trying to live in the present AND in the future - hence the problem: anguish.

America is paralyzed. Because when you have to decide on your own what is right and what is wrong, and there are no more absolute criterions left - no Vedas, no Manu, no Moses, no Mahavir, nobody saying to you "This is right" - you have to decide on your own. Hesitation arises, confusion arises.

Freedom is always confusing. A slave lives in a relaxed way; he need not worry - whatsoever the master says, he follows. He has no anxiety. If it is wrong, the master is responsible. If it is right, the master knows. He is just to follow. His is not to ask why - he has to do and die. He is a mechanical robot.

I have heard:

In the novel MOTHER NIGHT Kurt Vonnegut portrays the desperate woman Resi beseeching her lover thus:

"Then tell me what to live for - anything at all. It does not have to be love. Anything at all!" She gestured at objects around the shabby room, dramatizing exquisitely the sense of the world's being a junk shop. "I will live for that chair, that picture, that furnace pipe, that couch, that crack in the wall!

Tell me to live for it, and I will!" she cried. "Just tell me what it should be!"

There is nobody to tell you. In the old days, everything was told to you, nothing was left to you. Parents were telling you, "Marry this woman." Astrologers were deciding that this was the right woman for you, and you were marrying a certain woman because your parents decided, the astrologer decided, your birth chart decided. You were not deciding yourself. When you were not deciding, there was no anxiety.

Now you have to decide yourself. There are millions of women in the world - whom to choose? How to decide whether this woman is going to be a heaven or a hell? There is no way to predict. One is in a turmoil. The profession has to be decided - to which to belong? Religions have no more grip; a Christian does not really feel like belonging to the church. Now all the ground underneath your feet has disappeared.

Unless you are an absolutely mediocre person, it will be very difficult for you not to think of suicide.

Suicide seems to be a great release - a release from anxiety, a release from choosing, a release from alternatives.

In the novel CAT'S CRADLE one character holds that "We doodely do, what we muddily must, until we bodily bust."

If you are a person like that, then there is no question of suicide. Intelligence thinks about whether life is worth living; intelligence never takes anything for granted.

So the first thing I would like to tell you... you ask: WHY DO I CONTINUOUSLY THINK OF COMMITTING SUICIDE?... is that you are an intelligent person. DON'T feel guilty, every intelligent person thinks that way. This is the beginning of intelligence, although not the end. And by committing suicide, nothing is changed. You will be born again, and the whole nonsense will start, from ABC.

That is pointless. When you are thinking of suicide, that simply says you are thinking that this life that you have lived up to now is not worth living.

But there are possibilities in it which you have not tried yet. I say to you: This life can become a great joy. It became a great joy to Krishna, it became a great ecstasy to Christ, it became a jubilation to Buddha, it is a benediction to me - why can it not be so to you?

And all these people had been thinking of suicide, remember. To think of suicide is to grope for sannyas. To think of suicide simply means THIS life is finished - but there are other alternative lives possible. One need not destroy this beautiful gift of God. The life that you have lived is not the only alternative. It can be lived in a thousand and one ways - there are other ways to live it.

You may have lived a life without love. Why not try love? You may have lived a life obsessed with money. Why not live a life unobsessed with money? You may have lived a life which hankers to possess. Now live a life which is not worried about possessing anything. You may have lived a life of respectability - you may have always been considering what people think about you, what their opinion is. There is a life to live without bothering what others are thinking about you; there is a life to live individually and rebelliously.

There is a life to live which is of adventure and not of social conformity. There is a life of meditation, of God, of search, of going within. You may have lived an outside life, chasing this and chasing that.

I make available to you another life of not chasing anything, but sitting silently, disappearing within your being. A life of interiority.

And you will be surprised - the whole idea of suicide will disappear like dewdrops in the morning sun, and you will stumble upon a life which is eternal.

Albert Camus has said:

"What counts is not the best living, but the MOST living. To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them. Being aware of one's life, one's revolt, one's freedom, and to the maximum, is living, and to the maximum.

Become free of your so-called life that you have lived up to now. DON'T commit suicide! Let your past commit suicide. Start living afresh, moment to moment. DON'T live in desires, but live in a kind of desirelessness.

You have lived a life of strain, effort, struggle. Now start living a life of relaxation, calm and quiet.

And you will be surprised - you have been missing life, not because life is worthless. You have been missing life because you have been taught to live a worthless kind of life.

The third question

Question 3:

THE OLD HABITS DIE HARD. Just becoming a sannyasin on the outside is not going to change your inner patterns of living, thinking, being. The outer sannyas is only a gesture - a beginning, not the end. You will have to do much.

The outer sannyas is only a gesture that you are ready to change. Now much work is ahead of you. Old habits are not just on the surface. It is not only a question of changing your clothes - they help, certainly they help, but that is not enough. You will have to change your very gestalt of consciousness.

Otherwise, people go on living in the old ways. Behind new labels, behind new names, they continue to be the old persons.

So DON'T feel satisfied with just becoming a sannyasin. You have entered - now much has to be done. Inch by inch, your past has to be taken away from you. And inch by inch, you have to destroy old wrong patterns of being.

I have heard:

There were three partners altogether in the firm. They were in the business of garment manufacture, and it seemed that nothing they did could come out right. It was a disaster. If they would cut plaid, it would be solids that season. They would cut wools, and it would be cottons. They would make midi dresses, it would be separates. They could steal a Paris original, and if they cut it, it would be the disaster of the year.

You can imagine then how much more discouraging it was that just one floor above them was "The Company That Couldn't Go Wrong". Right upstairs was a company that, if they cut something, no matter how crazy the thing was, it would be automatically a hit! They couldn't do anything wrong!

No matter what they cut, it was a success.

No wonder then, that one of the partners of the failing firm, Harry - may God rest his soul - went out of his mind and decided to commit suicide from the roof. Of course, it was ironic that he had to fall past his competitors one floor above, and as he went by their window he happened to look inside.

That was how come, as he plunged down to the ground, the other two partners could hear his haunting voice, crying: "Nathan! Sam! Cut velvets!"

Now, he is dying... But the old mind, even at the moment of death, persists. The mind does not leave you so easily. How can it leave you so easily? - you have been cultivating it for so long; your whole life has been a cultivation of it.

Slowly slowly, you have to become aware of your old patterns and you have to stop cooperating with them. It lives on your cooperation, this much is certain. And this is the only hope: if you DON'T cooperate with the mind it dies of its own accord. You nourish it. DON'T nourish it any more - that is one thing.

And the second thing: if you DON'T nourish it any more and you DON'T create a NEW gestalt of being, you will be in difficulty. You will be left with so much energy that it will become restless in you, it will drive you crazy. So two things have to be remembered: DON'T cooperate with the old pattern, and start creating a new gestalt in your being so that your energy goes on being absorbed in that new gestalt.

Many people try to change the old, without understanding the mechanism of energy. Somebody wants to change a certain habit, and he fights with it - but he does not know that that habit contains a lot of energy in it. If that energy is released he will feel restless.

Have you not tried it? You have been smoking for long, and you want to stop it, because the Surgeon General says that cigarettes are harmful for your health. And I know the Surgeon General himself smokes, but that is another matter. They are harmful to your health, so you stop smoking. But there was a great energy involved in smoking, a great restlessness was being released through smoking.

Have you not observed it? Whenever you feel restless you start smoking - your restlessness has an outlet through smoking. Whenever you are tense, nervous, you start smoking - your nervousness, your tension, is released through smoking. If you stop smoking, where will you put your nervousness? Where will your restlessness go? It will boil within you.

That's what is felt as an urge. You start feeling a great urge to smoke. You will have to put this energy to some more creative work: start painting, sculpt, play guitar, sing a song, or dance, or meditate - do something! Whenever you want to change a habit, create a more beautiful gestalt - more creative, more enhancing to life, more divine. And you will never be in trouble.

If you simply want to stop smoking you are bound for trouble. You will have to do something else - you may start chewing gum, which is as foolish as smoking. Or you may start chewing PAN, which is even more foolish. But you will have to do something or other, you will have to substitute it with something, unless you find a creative outlet for the energy.

So watch what you want to change. I DON'T know exactly what you want to change...

You say: I AM NOW A SANNYASIN, BUT WHY DO I GO ON THINKING IN THE SAME OLD WAYS?

Because you have not yet created new and better ways to think. Create new and better ways to think. Life gives immense opportunities.

It is said that Adolf Hitler in the beginning wanted to become an artist, he wanted to become a painter. But he was refused admission into the art academy and so the great calamity happened in the world. If he had been accepted by the art academy he would have become a painter. But he could not create - and he had the energy, and the energy was boiling; it was like a volcano in him.

It burst forth into destructiveness.

If you are following some wrong, unhealthy, neurotic, destructive habits, the only reason is, you have not been able to find some creative outlets for your energy. And then the familiar persists - then the familiar becomes automatic, autonomous. When a person starts smoking, it becomes autonomous.

He simply takes the cigarette out, starts smoking it, not at all aware what he is doing. It simply happens robot-like; it is robopathology. If he becomes aware of what he is doing, he may not smoke.

If he becomes aware of why he is smoking, what is the root cause behind it, he may be able to change it.

Psychoanalysts say that people smoke, more or less, because they could not drink from their mother's breast long enough. Smoking is a substitute - the mothers did not allow the children to be fed at the breast, and the child wanted to be fed on the breast. It was taken away from the child; now a substitute has to be found. A cigarette is really a very very similar phenomenon - it looks like the nipple when you take it, and the hot smoke going in looks almost like hot milk. It relaxes you.

Have you not watched? A child is crying, is restless: the mother gives the breast to the child and he falls asleep. It is soothing. Cigarettes are soothing.

Watch, go deep into your patterns. Something can be done then - something can be of immense help and the pattern can be changed. My own experience here is that whenever somebody asks me "How to drop smoking?" I tell him, every night before going to sleep, to suck at a false tit, a pacifier.

And in the daytime also, when the urge arises, drink milk out of a bottle - just as if you are sucking at your mother's breast. And it works miraculously. Within a few days, the desire to smoke disappears.

You will have to look into your patterns. Why do you think in a certain way? Why has a certain habit taken possession of you? You cannot simply drop it, because it has roots in you - and roots go deep and they persist.

I have heard:

A man was starting out in the business of prostitution. He found three women to work for him. The first was a beautician, the second was a telephone operator, and these two were very pretty. The third was a public school teacher who was rather plain. He had his doubts about her.

After some time, he noticed that most of the business came from the teacher, and it really puzzled him. So he eavesdropped.

First he heard the beautician tell her customer to please be careful because he was messing up her hair and make-up. Certainly that could put a man off.

Then he heard the telephone operator tell her customer, "Sorry sir, your three minutes are up." Her attitude was even worse.

Then he listened in on the school teacher, and heard, "No, no, no! You'll have to do it over and over until you get it right!"

Habits die hard. You may have become a sannyasin - DON'T think this is the end. This is the beginning of the work; much has to be done now. DON'T rest contented with it.

Sannyas is just the beginning - it gets you into the trouble of transformation. Now you will have to go deep into your mind grooves. You will have to look deep, you will have to see why something is there - why? You will have to find out the cause of it.

And sometimes it happens, just knowing the cause, ninety percent of problems disappear. And with the ten percent that remain, your energy will need alternative outlets.

And the last question

Question 4:

I AM A MIRACLE, you are a miracle, everything is a miracle. Only miracles exist, nothing else exists.

Look again, afresh, and you will see the whole life consists only of miracles.

Have you seen anything in life which is not a miracle? A seed sprouting - what more of a miracle do you want? A bird on the wing and the stars in the night and the smile on a child's face, and the possibility of love and the possibility of ecstasy and the possibility of knowing God - miracles and miracles. Miracles abound.

But you must be thinking of some other foolish kind of things that you call miracles.

I have heard:

Once Jesus was going to give a sermon from a boat on Lake Galilee. The boat was stopped a little farther into the lake.

Jesus entered the lake, walking on the water, and asked some of his disciples to follow him towards the boat. As they moved into the lake, one disciple started to get in trouble - all the others were following Jesus walking on the water, but he was getting drowned.

He was very faithful, and kept moving... and the water was getting deeper and deeper. When the water came close to his mouth and he was almost lost, he shouted: "Master, Master, please save me!"

Jesus looked back and said, "Peter! Show this stupid the way on the rocks, otherwise he will get drowned!"

This is a true story, not related in the Bible. But I say to you on reliable sources, this is true.

Miracles are all around. You need not walk on water, you need not walk in fire.

There is a story by Mark Twain about a man going to heaven. When he arrived, he was given a pair of wings and a harp, and for a few days he used the wings as a way of moving about, and plucked on the strings of the harp trying to get some celestial music out of it. Both were pretty much of a bother, and finally he realized that in heaven you DON'T actually need wings to go any place; and simply by desiring heavenly music, the celestial musicians appear and commence to play. So he put down the wings and the harp, and began to enjoy himself.

And this is the true story of life. You need not have wings to fly, and you need not play on any harp, any foolish harp, to create celestial music. All is available! Just open your eyes. You ARE on the wings, and the music is already there. Just open your eyes, open your ears, be available.

And you will be surprised - miracles are happening every single moment. Nothing else ever happens.