Waiting For a Sweet One

The first question

Question 1:

ANEETA, THIS IS A CRAZY PLACE TO BE. I know it. The day I talked about the natural Sufi and the natural Buddhist, I looked in Aneeta's eyes and the question was there. And I looked in Pradeepa's eyes too, and she was also bewildered.

Meditation has to go beyond all form, Sufi or Buddhist. In the beginning, a form is needed. And it is good to move naturally, into whatsoever fits with your inborn qualities. But finally one has to go beyond form, otherwise the form itself becomes a bondage. At the ultimate point, one is not to be a Buddhist or a Sufi. At that point, one simply IS - with no form, with no identity, a pure nothing.

Knowingly, I have given Aneeta the work that she is doing here. She IS a natural Buddhist, that's true. I am taking her out of her natural form. Doing Sufi work, slowly slowly she will slip out of her past. Her past has been Buddhist, it is easier for her to be a Buddhist. And so is the case with Pradeepa - it would be easier for her to be in Sufi work, her past interest has been there. Her deepest involvement is with Sufi ideas, particularly Gurdjieff. And I have given her the Buddhist work - to lead Vipassana and Zazen.

This is just a device to bring you out of your routine forms - a device to help you to go into pure meditation. Pure meditation is simply meditation. How can it be Sufi? How can it be Buddhist?

On the way, you may be Sufis, Buddhists, yogis, tantrikas - but when you have arrived, all paths disappear. Then you are at the same place, in the same space.

That space is nirvana.

Being with me, many things will look puzzling to you - because there are so many people at different stages of their growth. For one, I will suggest one thing; for another, I will suggest another.

Whatsoever is needed at YOUR stage of growth will be given to you - and when the need is no more there it will be taken away.

The last thing to be taken away is the form of the meditation. Then one is simply meditative - then it is no more an activity, but just a quality, a fragrance. The form of the meditation is still part of the mind. "A natural Buddhist" means the mind is still there, because only the mind can be a natural Buddhist. Only a mind can be a Sufi or a Buddhist; mind needs forms, mind needs occupations.

The mind is always hankering for some occupation - without occupation the mind starts dying. It needs perpetual work.

For just three or four days I was not here - and people had started disappearing. Just to sit here for one hour was difficult. Hearing that I was not coming, Big Prem immediately left, Rakesh left. Even Divya - the day I came, Divya was not in her place; she was sitting far away. She was sitting there with the idea that if I didn't come she could slip out easily.

Just to sit for one hour silently doing nothing becomes so difficult. Mind is constantly hankering for some occupation. Sufism is one kind of occupation, Buddhism another, and there are millions.

When I say "a born Sufi" I mean your mind is in tune with Sufism. But one has to go beyond the mind, Aneeta. And that's the work I have given to you. It is against your mind, it is just the polar opposite - and the polar opposite will help to destroy the pattern. Once the pattern is destroyed then one is easily available, flexible, fluid. That fluidity is meditation.

So whatsoever I say to you, do it. Many times it may look contradictory to my other statements, but DON'T be worried about that. If I have said it, then there must be something in it. I may not have made it clear to you - because sometimes it is absolutely necessary that the thing should not be made clear to you. If it is made clear, your mind starts taking grip of it. Many things have to be left unclear, vague. Many things have to be simply done - out of your trust and surrender, not out of your intellectual comprehension of them.

Naturally, Aneeta must have become puzzled - why has Sufi work been given to her? And she is doing her work beautifully and I am happy with her work. It is difficult for her, and sometimes the Buddhist mind creates trouble for her. But that Buddhist mind has to be dropped - because all minds have to be dropped. A ladder has to be used in the beginning and finally renounced.

Now the moment has come for Aneeta to renounce that ladder of Buddhism.

The second question

Question 2:

BECAUSE THE MODERN MAN is for the first time becoming man. The past of humanity is not of human beings. Man has existed up to now as a crowd, not as individuals; man has existed as collectivities. The individual is being born, hence the modern man is very neurotic. It is a good indication. It is a great revolution human consciousness is going through.

What is neurosis really? Neurosis is an indefinite state of mind, undecided, indecisive. To be this, or to be that? All outer definitions have disappeared, all props have been taken away. Your identity is very fragile - everybody knows it.

In the past it was very easy to answer "Who am I?" A Hindu, a Christian, a Mohammedan, Indian, Chinese, Tibetan, brahmin/sudra, white/black, man/woman - things were clear. People knew who they were.

Now it is not so clear; all those labels have disappeared. Man is standing nude, with no labels - a great anxiety. And everybody has to define himself. The work of defining oneself was done by others before - parents, teachers, priests, politicians. They were authorities, infallible authorities.

You could be dependent easily; you did not need to think about, meditate, over things. Everything was chewed for you by others and given to you - you were spoon-fed.

Now man is becoming adult, mature. You have to work out your own identity. It is not so easy - only very intelligent people will be able to avoid neurosis. Utter intelligence will be needed to avoid neurosis. Great silence, a great capacity to go out of the mind and its traps, will be needed in the future. And it will be so, more and more.

In the past, intelligence was not a great value - in fact, to be mediocre was very valuable. The mediocre was always a fit and the talented was always a misfit. No society in the past has ever liked people who are geniuses, because they create trouble.

Remember what Ikkyu was saying just the other day? When a Buddha is alive he is a nuisance.

What is his nuisance? His genuine intelligence disturbs the mediocre mind; his utter intelligence disturbs the stupid people. His individuality, his freedom, his rebellion, hits hard in the mind of the crowd - because the crowd does not want individuality, the crowd does not want uniqueness, the crowd simply wants to belong. It simply wants to be not responsible for anything. It wants to be part of a big crowd, so the responsibility is never on oneself, it is always somewhere else. The Pope decides, the Shankaracharya decides, the president decides, and you need not bother about it. It is not for you to ask why - you are only to do and die.

In the modern mind is the first glimpse of individuality. Hence, neurosis. In the past, all answers were fixed; one was not required to search for answers. God was there, heaven was there, the theory of karma was there, everything was so clear-cut, you could live with all those formulations very easily.

Now you DON'T know; nothing is certain any more. A great paralysis is happening. This paralysis either can kill humanity or can become a great transforming quantum leap.

I have heard:

In a well-known experiment in learning theory, rats jump from a stand toward a pair of cards. There is a white card that is fixed in place - if the rats jump toward it they fall to the ground. But if the rats jump toward the other, a black card, the card falls and the rats can eat food that the experimenter has placed behind the card. The rats easily learn which card is which. If the cards are shifted around, they learn always to jump to the black card, wherever it happens to be.

But in the next stage of the experiment, the unambiguously white and unambiguously black cards are replaced by cards that successively approach a neutral grey. At some point the greys become so similar that the rats cannot distinguish between them. They can no longer tell which card is which.

In this ambiguous situation, they refuse to jump; they become sort of paralyzed, tense and neurotic.

They have been puzzled, confused.

This is the situation of man - a very potent situation, a very pregnant situation. If men are just rats they will go really neurotic and they will commit suicide.

But man is not just a rat - notwithstanding what B.F. Skinner and other so-called psychologists say. Man is not a rat. If there is a possibility that man may take this challenge and become more integrated. Neurosis is only in the interval sooner or later, man will know how to deal with it. Without authorities, without God, without Bibles and Vedas, man will fall upon his own consciousness. Man will start functioning spontaneously, moment to moment, without any ready-made answers. Then the neurosis will disappear - and not only the neurosis, but the mob mind also.

For the first time, there will be beauty, grandeur, dignity. In the past, man was not dignified. Yes, once in a while a Buddha happened, once in a while a Christ walked on the earth - but that was only once in a while. What about the millions of people who lived and died without knowing any taste of freedom, without ever knowing who they were? They believed they were Jews, and died. They believed they were Hindus, and died. They believed they were bodies, and died. They never knew who they really were - they never came across the inner space.

And unless you come across that inner space you live an undignified life. You live like rats and you will die like dogs.

To be a man is risky. And what is the risk? The risk is, you will have to pass through a kind of neurosis. Before you can become centered in your own being, you will have to go through a kind of uncentering.

ZEN PEOPLE SAY: Before you start meditating, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.

When you meditate, when you go deep in meditation, mountains are no more mountains and rivers are no more rivers. But if you go on, if you persist and reach to the highest peak of meditation, then again mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.

This is one of the most significant statements ever made. In the middle, everything becomes confused.

This century is a century of great transformation. Man will either fall back... and that is happening.

That's why Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong, and people like these, become so important. Why? Because they are authoritative. They say, "You DON'T know who you are? We will supply you the answers." They are infallible people; they know everything. Adolf Hitler is absolutely certain. People start falling in line with him, they start following him.

The old gods have disappeared. It is very easy for Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong to lead people - because people cannot live without gods, people cannot live without priests. People cannot live on their own, this is the problem.

So, these past fifty or sixty years, man has seen two things happening. A very few people have risen towards individuality, and they have become peaks like Everest. But many more have fallen back, have regressed and become fascists or communists - there are so many brands available.

And whenever a country is very very confused, an Adolf Hitler is bound to arrive. It was not just an accident that Germany became the victim - one of the most intellectual countries in the world, the country of professors and scholars, thinkers and scientists. Why did the country of so many intelligent people become a victim of this madman? The reason was that these intelligent people - professors, philosophers - could not supply the ready-made answers. They were too polite, they were too hesitant, they were too humble, they were too intelligent. They could not shout, they only whispered - and people needed slogans, not whisperings.

Adolf Hitler shouted from the housetops. He was not whispering. He gave slogans - clear-cut, well- defined. All that he gave is nonsense, but that is not the point. People are not worried about sense or nonsense, their whole thing is they want somebody who can shout so confidently that they can follow easily without any turmoil in their being. They followed Adolf Hider.

It happens again and again in the history of man, intelligent people follow very unintelligent leaders.

And this has been a problem for psychoanalysts: why does it happen?

Now, just look at India - a country which has cultivated intelligence for at least ten thousand years, and now following a man like Morarji Desai. This seems just unbelievable. Why should it happen?

There is a reason for it. People who think, the MORE they think, the more they become hesitant.

They start talking in ifs and buts; they become humble. And people DON'T need humble statements.

To the ordinary mind, a humble statement looks as if you are not certain, you DON'T know.

That's why, in India, Mahavir could not get many followers - and he was one of the most intelligent people that has ever walked on the earth. Why did it happen that he could not get followers?

Compared to him, very ordinary people have accumulated great masses as their followers. What happened to Mahavir? The reason was, he was so humble. His statements always started with "perhaps". If you asked him "Is there God?" he would say "Perhaps."

But who would follow such a man? You would think he himself does not know. "Perhaps." "Maybe."

Who is going to follow this man? You ask him "Is there a soul?" and he says "Maybe." The natural inference is that he himself does not know.

The reality is just the opposite. He knows. And he knows it so deeply that it can only be expressed by a "perhaps", a "maybe". It is so vast. It will be stupid to say yes or no - it will be reducing it to a very ordinary statement; it will become political. It will not have that height and plenitude of a philosophic experience.

"Yes, God is, and God is not. And God is both, and God is not both." In this way Mahavir used to talk. If you asked one question he would answer in seven ways. He would use all the categories of logic to answer your single question, but you would be left more puzzled than ever. You had come with one question and you would go with seven thousand questions. Who would follow this man?

Adolf Hitler says in his autobiography MEIN KAMPF that there is only one difference between truth and untruth, and the difference is of repetition. If you go on repeating an untruth loudly, forcibly, it becomes true. And he experimented with the idea, and he proved the idea to millions of people.

Just utter nonsense! but he would go on repeating it. And, slowly slowly, people started believing in him. People needed a leader.

Nietzsche has said God is no more. But people cannot live without God - people feel very shaky.

So these are the two possibilities: either man will fall and become a victim of some kind of fascism, nazism, communism. Or - the second possibility, for which I am working here with you - man may take this vagueness, which looks like neurosis, as a jumping-board, and get free of the whole past and take a quantum leap into the future, and start living without leaders, and start living without clinging, without any kind of belonging.

The whole earth is yours, it need not be divided. And Christ and Buddha and Krishna are all yours, you need not be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. The whole past is yours: use it, but DON'T be used by it. Use it, and go ahead. Use Buddha and Christ and Krishna and Zarathustra and Lao Tzu, but DON'T be confined by them. You have to go ahead. There is more to life - there are still unexplored realities. The mystery is infinite.

Man is in a kind of neurosis. This is a very pregnant situation: either you fall back, or you jump ahead. DON'T fall back. And falling back is not going to satisfy you, either. Only growth satisfies - regression, never. Even if your childhood looks very very beautiful, it is not going to satisfy you if you become a child again. You will be miserable, because you have known youth and the freedom of youth and the adventure of youth. To be a child again, in the old sense that you were once a child, will not make you happy. You will feel reduced, not enhanced.

Man is in a kind of neurosis, because denied access to reality always produces insanity. By placing normal people in an abnormal situation we get abnormal behaviour. Modern man is a reviving engine without clutches, wheels or destination. Old destinations are no more relevant.

And man now has to learn something absolutely new, which has never been known before. Man now has to learn to live in the herenow. Yes, a sense of direction is needed, but not a fixed goal. A significance is needed, but not a definite meaning. A destiny is not needed - a dignity is needed, freedom is needed. And man has to explore his freedom and decide on his own.

Remember it: there is no given meaning. That's the problem. In the past there was a given meaning, you were told the meaning of life. Now nobody is telling you what your meaning of life is - you have to create it.

For the first time, man is on the verge of becoming a creator. Up to now you have been creatures.

Now you will be creators. Let this be declared: History is taking a turning! You are on the threshold of a new consciousness. Up to now man has lived like a creature - God was the creator and man was the creature, and God was the one who decided and man was the one who followed. Now this is going to be no more the case. Now man is the creator, no more the creature. Now man has to decide the meaning of his own life - he has to give significance to his own life with his own creativity.

You cannot borrow it, you cannot beg it, you cannot bargain for it. You will have to create it. And this is really a problem. To create meaning needs great intelligence, to create meaning needs great awareness, to create meaning needs great endeavour. And people have learnt a simple trick of begging. Somebody will give you meaning - your father, your mother. Or the Great Father in the skies, he will give you meaning - you just have to pray.

That's why I say again and again that Buddha is going to become more and more relevant every day.

As time passes, Buddha will become more and more relevant to humanity. Buddha came twenty-five centuries before his time. Now is the time for him - because he believes in freedom, he believes in individuality. He does not believe that you are creatures, he believes that you are creators.

Create yourself: give shape and form to your being. Paint your life, sculpt yourself. Whatsoever you will be, will be your work. It is not fate - you are responsible.

And people DON'T want to be responsible; they are afraid of responsibility. They want somebody else to take care of them, they always need guardians. These are the people who are getting neurotic - because guardians are no more there. In fact they were never there; you were only believing in them - because you believed in them, they were there. Now the belief has disappeared, they have disappeared. They were created by your belief.

Man has to learn to live alone on his own. This is a great opportunity - DON'T take it negatively, otherwise you will be in madhouses. Take it positively, accept the challenge, and you will be the first real human beings on the face of the earth.

The third question

Question 3:

SATYA, IT DEPENDS HOW YOU INTERPRET IT. The criterion is this: if it gives you great contentment, if it takes your anxieties away from you, if it helps your mind to disappear - even for a few moments - then it is real. You will get back into your old mind again - because when you are with me you are not alone, you start flying with me. When you are with me you are riding on a tidal wave. When the wave is gone, of course you have only that which YOU have: the old mind starts functioning again.

And naturally, one hour you are with me and twenty-three hours you are with yourself. So those twenty-three hours may look like the reality, just because they are long. And this one hour may look like illusion. It is not so.

Truth does not depend on durability, truth has nothing to do with time. If something is true, it is true - whether you know it for a single moment or for your whole life. And if something is untrue, it is untrue - you can go on dreaming for eternity, it remains untrue. It is not a question of how long it stays with you.

Then what is the criterion? The only criterion is whether it gives you bliss. If it takes you to a point where time disappears, mind disappears, where the world stops suddenly, can stop the mind. Only the impact of the truth can create the interval in you, and for a moment thoughts cease.

I know, once you are away from me, again the old mind will come in. Then be watchful! Then know that this old mind is just a habit: watch it! DON'T become identified with it. Let it be there - you remain aloof, unattached, far away. And then you will be surprised - even without me, those moments will be coming. Once in a while, then more, then still more. The more you get unattached from your mind, the more these moments will penetrate you.

But, in the beginning, it is natural to feel as if what happens with me is illusory, because it lasts only for a few moments.

Two hippies, feeling high, are ambling slowly down the street. Another hippy, walking toward them, gently lifts his hand in greeting and says, "Hi!" as he passes. Two blocks later, one hippy turns to the other and says, "Man, I thought he'd never stop talking."

It depends on how you interpret...

In the course of his medical examination, a man was asked to stretch his arms in front of him with the fingers of each hand extended. What the doctor saw was a terrific quivering and shaking in all directions. "Good lord!" he said. "How much do you drink?"

"Hardly any at all, doctor," was the reply. "I spill most of it."

Your old mind has lived with you long, for a millennium. Its grip is great. And it will supply you with all kinds of explanations: beware. Those few moments that happen here while you are with me, those moments of SATSANG, those moments of communion - listen to them, nourish them, remember them again and again. Chew them, digest them. They will bring you closer and closer to reality.

This is the whole function of a master - to give you first tastes of the beyond. So, slowly slowly, a great appetite arises in you.

The fourth question

Question 4:

AMITABH, IT DEPENDS. It depends upon your desires. If you are riding on a horse in the same direction the horse is going on its own, but deep down you have a desire to go somewhere else, then it will be hard. Because each moment you will see the horse is taking you away from your direction, from your goal. There will be great turmoil. You are on the horse, but not with the horse. You are AGAINST it - you want to go somewhere else. Deep down you are saying no; only on the surface have you said yes.

Yes is never difficult. It is difficult only when it is just on the surface and deep down is the no. Then it is difficult, very difficult - more difficult than the no. If you say no, it will not be so difficult, because it will be your natural inclination. Difficulties arise only when you go against your natural inclination.

Otherwise, yes is so simple. How can it be difficult? How can it be a fight?

But dig a little deeper, and hidden behind the facade of yes you will find a great no. In fact, to hide that no, you have created a facade of yes. Then there is a struggle because you are divided. And the no is coming from the deeper core, and the yes is only imposed from the outside. You will find a split.

Then it is better to say yes to no, rather than creating a conflict. It is better to relax with the no. DON'T create conflicts, because conflicts are always harmful - they dissipate your energy. Yes is good if it can come out of your totality, root and all. Otherwise, no is good - at least it is total.

Remember always, the goodness that happens through yes is because of its totality, not only because it is yes. If you can be total with your no, then it is a kind of yes, only the formulation is in the form of the negative. But always remember that your circumference should not go against the center. If it goes against the center, sooner or later you will be tired - and the center is going to win finally, so the whole struggle is futile.

Be with the center. And the center may be wrong; there is no necessity that the center is always right - I am not saying that. The circumference may be right, the center may be wrong - but if you are totally with the center, that very totality will make you capable of seeing the wrongness of it. Seeing the wrongness of it, there will be a change - not brought by you but of its own accord. The insight will bring the change.

So this is my suggestion, Amitabh: if you feel that saying yes is difficult, then look - somewhere there is a great no, which is resisting, fighting with the yes. It is better to go with the no. If the no is right, then there is no problem. If the no is not right, then by going into it you will see that it is not right.

Seeing it, that it is not right, it drops. And then a totally new quality of yes arises in you which will not be imposed, cultivated, enforced in any way. It will come from the center to the circumference.

Always live from the inside out, never vice versa. People are doing just the reverse - they are living from the outside towards the inside. They pay more attention to their circumference, to their conscious mind, to their intellect, to the head. Hence the difficulty. Hence people look in such anguish - continuously tired, dissipated, fighting. And there seems to be no end to this fight.

The center can never be defeated by the circumference: this is an absolute law. There has never been any exception, and there never will be. So never move into a futile fight. The circumference is impotent against the center, the center has all the energy. The circumference has only words - the circumference has logic, explanations, philosophies. But the center has all the vitality.

God is in the center. Man is on the circumference. Never put your man against God, otherwise you will be defeated. There is no way to defeat God. Be with God if you want to be victorious.

And if sometimes it is no, then let it be no. Trust it. This is what I call trust and this is what I call yes.

Say yes to the center, even if the center is saying no - then you have to say yes to that no. And go with it, and TOTALLY. If the center is right, fine. If it is not right, the very going into it will help it to disappear from your being.

And then, and only then, yes will arise. Then yes is a song, a celebration, in which the center and circumference embrace each other, dance together. When the center and the circumference dance together, there is joy.

The fifth question

Question 5:

WHEN ONE IS RICH, one does not have to be smart. And that's a big relief. That's why people want to be rich.

Nobody wants to be intelligent; richness can afford to be stupid. You can see the faces of rich people - you will always find a kind of subtle stupidity. The more rich a person is, the more you will find that he does not live, he vegetates. You will not find the sign of life in his eyes.

People want to be rich so they can afford to be stupid - it is a great relief. If you really want to be intelligent, who cares about being rich? If richness comes as a consequence of being intelligent, that's another matter - but who bothers about it? It is not a direct goal.

And the difference is great. Intelligent people also become rich. Intelligence is REAL richness - whatsoever they do, they succeed. So they become rich, but their richness has a different quality to it: they enjoy their richness, they use their richness. A person who just wants to be rich will become rich but will not be able to use it - he will not have enough intelligence to use it. In fact he was trying to become rich so that he need not be intelligent.

If an intelligent person becomes rich then richness opens great doors - of music, of literature, of science, of art, of sculpture, of poetry. All these things become available. But the goal should not be richness. The goal should always be more life, intelligent life, abundant life.

The sixth question

Question 6:

THEY DON T KNOW that there is any possibility of being blissful. They have lived so long in misery that misery is equivalent to life - they have become accustomed to it.

Do you know? - poor people never rebel, because they become accustomed to poverty. Of course, rich people CANNOT rebel, because all rebellion will go against them. Then who rebels? It is always the middle-class people who rebel.

Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, V.I. Lenin, Mao Zedong: all these people belong to the middle classes.

All revolutionaries are born in the middle classes - why? They talk about the revolution of the proletariat, but no proletarian seems to be interested in the revolution.

The proletarian has become accustomed, the poor man thinks this is all there is to life - he has relaxed into it. He has lived in it, he has no other taste. How can he imagine any other kind of life?

The middle-class person has some taste of richness, and some taste of misery, poverty. He is in between. He becomes rebellious.

You ask: WHY DO MEN GO ON LIVING IN THE SAME OLD RUT OF MISERY?

First, they DON'T know that anything more is possible. They have given up. They say, "This is life - this is all there is to it." And then naturally it is better to go on living in the same old type of misery than to change it. Change brings even more misery.

You become accustomed to a certain pain. If you have a headache, and you have lived with the headache for years, you have become accustomed to it. Would you like to change it for a stomach ache? If you think it over, you will decide it is better to have the old: "At least now I can cope with it.

And who knows what the new will bring? And then I will have to learn again."

So people remain glued to a certain vicious circle of misery; they go on moving in the same rut. It seems easier. And the more you become acquainted with it, the less it hurts.

Thirdly, they are afraid to drop it. Even if a chance arises to drop it, they will become very much frightened. Because it is like an old love affair - a great friendship has arisen. Now they won't know how to live without a headache, now they won't know how to live without jealousy. All that they have known up to now has been part of their jealousy, possessiveness, anger. Now if God suddenly appears and says, "I can take all your miseries away... "

Just think: one fine morning you open your eyes and God is standing in your room and he says, "I can take away all your misery." Will you be ready to give up all your miseries? You will suggest, "Give me a little time to think it over. This is so abrupt - give me a little chance." You will not be able to give it up immediately, because then how will you live? This is your whole script, this is your story; without this story you will feel very empty. And people would like to remain miserable rather than be empty.

And bliss is emptiness. Bliss happens only when you are empty.

Hence, Ikkyu's insistence again and again: "Be empty. Be a nothing, a nobody." There is no self, just pure emptiness. In that pure emptiness, bliss grows. Bliss blooms only in the soil of emptiness. And who is ready to live in emptiness? People like to live surrounded by junk. It feels good, you feel rich - this junk is yours, that junk is also yours, everything is yours. Sitting in the middle of it, you are a king.

Empty? Nothing to claim as mine? All empty... and great panic will arise in you.

That's why people DON'T call their misery "misery". To call it misery creates problems - they give it different names. Somebody says, "It is my karma." Somebody says, "There must be something hidden in it, a great message from the unconscious." Somebody says, "Fate, kismet." Somebody says, "It is God's will. And God is wise, so if he is doing this to me there must be a reason in it."

These are explanations to decorate your misery - to make it a little softer, a little more polished, sophisticated.

Two hippies are standing on a corner, grooving the scene. Just then, a huge safe falls from twenty stories high, crashing right behind them. "Hey man, did you hear that! What was it?" says the first hippy.

The second hippy closes his eyes, smiles serenely and says, "E flat."

And that is happening every day. But you go on finding beautiful explanations: "E flat." Those explanations are consolations. Your whole life is collapsing, but you go on inventing new ideas. Your whole life is nothing but wounds, but you go on covering them with beautiful flowers.

Stop it! Look into the wounds as they are - DON'T decorate them. If you really want to get rid of the wounds, never decorate them. Look directly, immediately, into the wounds. They stink, there is pus, it is horrible, it is ugly. But it has to be looked into.

And leave the wounds open! Because to leave the wounds open is one of the sure ways to cure them. And DON'T hide your miseries. And before you can ever be able to drop your miseries you will have to learn a few other things...

First, you will have to learn to live with the new. That's what sannyas is all about - a gesture to live a new style of life. You will have to learn to live with the new, only then can you drop the old.

Secondly, you will have to learn to live in emptiness. That's what meditation is all about. Only then can you drop your junk.

And thirdly, you will have to live with people who are blissful, so that you can have a little whiff, a taste. You will have to live in SATSANG. You will have to look into the eyes of someone who has arrived, so that you can have a little taste - a little sweetness enters into your being, and you can see. And you can be thrilled and stirred again, and a great longing arises in you, seeing that life is not all misery, that God too happens, that nirvana is also possible.

That is the meaning of being with a master, that something of the beyond is available. If you miss, it is because of you, not because it is not there.

Live in close affinity to some window from where you can see the distant stars. Yes, they will be distant - but once you have seen them you will never be the same again.

And you will have to start learning from your past experience. People never learn. People learn from books but they never learn from their experiences. And in books there is nothing to learn. All that there is to learn is in your experiences.

Listen to this Sufi story:

Mulla Nasruddin went to the market and saw a big bushel of hot chilli peppers on sale. He bought them, returned home, and began to eat. A little while later, his disciples came and saw the Mulla with tears streaming down his face, his mouth and tongue burning. "Mulla, Mulla, why do you go on eating them?" As he reached for another, Nasruddin replied, "I keep waiting for a sweet one."

You have lived in miseries, but you are waiting for something sweet to happen. And this world is nothing but hot chillis. But you go on waiting for some sweet chilli. "Maybe this one, or the next, or the next" - you go on hoping against hope.

Drop all hope.

Yes, there ARE blissful experiences, but they are not from this so-called life that you have lived up to now. They come from the beyond, they come from a separate reality.

The seventh question

Question 7:

SUGEETA, you are a natural Rajneesh freak.

The last question

Question 8:

I HAVE NO PHILOSOPHY AT ALL. So how can my disciples agree on anything? I have no dogma, no creed. My assertions are not philosophic, but poetic. My assertions are not about the truth, they are only devices to help you awake. For one disciple I create one device, for another another. How can they agree?

They will agree only when both have become awakened; their awakening will be the agreement. But when two persons are awakened they have nothing to say. They may laugh - their laughters may agree. Or they may cry out of joy - their tears may agree. But statements can't agree.

You must be new here. DON'T be bothered by it. Because I have no philosophy, there can't be any agreement.

Secondly, each disciple is personally related to me. My relationship is personal. It is not that you are following a certain philosophy - you are being with a master, not with a philosophy. While I am alive why bother about the philosophy? Leave it for people who will come later on when I am gone.

Then there will be much philosophical work - research and Ph.D."s and D. Lit."s. Leave this for other stupid people; you need not bother about it.

You are here with me: quench your thirst. Why should you be asking my disciples about my philosophy? Even if you ask me, you will not find any consistency. One day I say one thing - and another day is another day! And I have no commitment to the past. When I say something today, I am not thinking at all of all the yesterdays that have passed. I am not obliged in any way to be consistent with the past.

And a man who is always consistent with the past is a dead man. In fact he should not live any more - what is the point? If he is just going to be consistent with his past, then it is better to close his life.

I am still alive. What I will say tomorrow nobody knows, not even me. It is not decided yet; it will happen. You will be surprised by it and I will be surprised by it - I am always surprised by my own statements.

And then there are more than sixty thousand sannyasins now. And only very intelligent people become interested in me. Mm? - this is not a place for mediocres. Only very intelligent people gather courage enough to come close to me. Sixty thousand sannyasins means sixty thousand philosophies - and each person has his own way of understanding what I am saying. And it is perfectly fine; it has to be so. How can you understand that which I am saying? You can understand only that which YOU are hearing. And there is bound to be a great distance. I say something from my state of consciousness, you hear from your state of consciousness.

Slowly slowly, the distance will become smaller and smaller. And one can hope that one day the distance disappears. But then you will be SILENT.

It happened: Mahakashyap was given the flower by Buddha, as a token "Whatsoever can be said has been given to others. And whatsoever cannot be said, I am giving it to you, Mahakashyap."

People gathered. They asked Mahakashyap, "Now tell us, what happened?" And he laughed.

In the Buddhist scriptures there is not a single statement made by Mahakashyap after this. Before, also, he has not been mentioned. He suddenly comes to such prominence that all Buddha's other disciples just disappear, and Mahakashyap becomes the most prominent one. One fine morning, Buddha gives him the lotus flower and says, "This is the transmission of the lamp, or transfer of the message beyond scriptures. I have given to you, Mahakashyap, what I cannot give through words."

Naturally, people were intrigued, interested. But no statement was made by Mahakashyap, except for a simple saying which has been reported. And that simple saying is this: "My master is saying it so beautifully - what is the point of my saying it in any other way? He is doing it perfectly well; I cannot improve upon it. Whatsoever I say will be degrading it, so I will keep quiet."

In old Taoist monasteries, it was an ancient rule: "Say something only if you can improve upon silence." It was written in all Taoist monasteries, on the main entrance gate: "Say something only if you can improve upon silence. Otherwise keep quiet."

What is the point of saying something if you cannot improve upon silence?

So when a disciple comes very close to me he will not have anything to say. Meanwhile, he can say many things but they will only represent HIS state of consciousness.

Remember always - have you read Buddhist scriptures? They always start with this statement:

"I have heard such..." All Buddhist scriptures start with "I have heard." Why? It is a significant statement. This statement is made by Ananda, Buddha's great disciple who, when Buddha died, recounted all the stories that Buddha had told - the parables, the answers, the sermons. But he always starts with "I have heard..." The meaning is: "I DON'T know what Buddha said, I know only what I have heard. This is MY statement of what I have heard."

Remember, when somebody asks you, "What does Osho say?" say it the way Ananda said it. Say:

"I have heard..." DON'T claim, "This is what HE says." The only claim, rightful claim, can be this: "This is what I have been hearing - this may be so, this may not be so."

A hillbilly boy from Nashville, Tennessee, announces to his folks: "I's a goin' to Knoxville, to fetch me a wife."

A few days later, he returns with a nubile young sweetheart called Mary Lou. She is introduced to all the family, cramped around the kitchen table of their tiny shack.

Come six o'clock, his father says, "Well, my boy, I guess you two deserve the family bedroom now.

Your Maw and Paw can sleep down here." So the happy couple go off upstairs. Half an hour later, a shotgun blast rattles the timbers. And then the son clambers slowly down the steps from above.

"Whatever happened?" inquired his mother.

"I shot her," said the son.

"Why?"

"She was a virgin."

The boy's grandpa, who had sat quietly through all these proceedings, was first to break the thunderstruck silence. "Son, I guess you did the right thing - if she was no good to nobody in HER family, then she ain't no use to any of us!"

Or this second story:

Thor came down from Mount Olympus to find, and make love to, a mortal woman. He was handsome and irresistible, so in a short time he found the woman and they jumped right into bed. Now, he was no ordinary lover - he was the god, Thor - and the love-making went on for a night and most of the next day.

Mission accomplished, he left - but then thought perhaps he wasn't being fair since he hadn't told the woman that she had been making love with a god. So he went back to her house and knocked on her door and said, "I just thought I should tell you that I am Thor."

"You're thor!" she moaned. "I can't even walk!"