The Forbidden Path

The first question:

Question 1:

THE FORBIDDEN PATH IS THE PATH. There is no other path. There is a certain rule to evolution, a certain principle to it. And the principle is: before you can become really innocent you have to lose all innocence. Before you can really become pure you have to move in all sorts of impurities. Before you can come home, you have to wander, go astray.

That's the whole meaning of the Christian parable of Adam being expelled from God's paradise. He HAD to be expelled. It is not that Adam is responsible for his expulsions - it is a certain basic rule of life.

God told Adam that "The tree of knowledge is the forbidden tree, you are not supposed to eat from it." Only one commandment was given to him, that he was not to eat from the tree of knowledge. But this functioned as a provocation.

If God really wanted him not to eat from the tree of knowledge, the better course would have been that Adam was never told about it. Paradise is infinite...

millions and millions of trees. Even by now, Adam would not have been able to discover it - one tree of knowledge. But the moment God said: "Don't touch that tree, don't go near it, don't eat it," that tree became the most important tree.

Certainly. Obviously.

Adam must have started dreaming about it. A temptation - going into the forest, into the garden, again and again the tree would call him. He must have gone close to it, looked, waited, brooded; many times he must have been just close to it, at the very brink of committing the sin, of disobeying, of being rebellious.

There is a fundamental law to it. Adam has to be expelled. Unless Adam is expelled, Adam will never become a Christ. He has to go astray to come home.

Very contradictory! But unless you move into sin, you don't know what sainthood is.

Every child is a saint, but that sainthood is very cheap. You have not earned it; it is just a natural gift - and who bothers about a natural gift? You have to lose it.

When you lose it you become aware of what you have lost. When you lose it then you start suffering, then you feel a great hunger for it. When you lose it, then by contrast it becomes clear what it was.

If you want to see the beautiful dawn, you have to wander into the dark night.

Only after the dark night is the morning beautiful. If you really want to be rich, you have to become poor. Only after poverty do you start feeling the beauty of riches.

The contradiction is only apparent - they are complementary.

Christians have a theory; they call it FELIX CULPA - a happy fault. Adam's sin has been known to Christian theology as FELIX CULPA - a happy fault - since it brings about the need of Christ the Redeemer. If there had been no disobedience on the part of Adam then there would have been no Christ.

Adam is human consciousness going away from God. Christ is the same human consciousness returning back home. Adam and Christ are not two persons.

Adam is the going away, Christ is the coming back. It is the same energy.

Disobedience is needed to become obedient. Rebellion is needed to know what surrender is. Ego is needed to become egoless. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. Remember it, and never be afraid of the forbidden.

The forbidden is the path. Go into it! Go courageously. Go totally - so that you can finish the attraction. And you are not going to find anything in it. You will come empty out of it - that will be a great experience, a great maturity. Sin can never be fulfilling, so why be afraid?

If there were any possibility that sin might fulfil somebody, then there would have been danger. But sin has never fulfilled anybody. The more you go in it, the more frustrated you are. The more you go in it, the more you know it is just stupid, it is just unintelligent, it is just an old, routine rut, a vicious circle. You are not moving anywhere. You are not going anywhere, you are not growing.

The more deeply you understand it, the greater the possibility that you will start on the backward journey - you will start coming to the original source. Of course, when I say coming back to the original source I don't mean that you will really regress backwards. You will still go onwards, but the journey will turn towards the source. There is no going back. A second childhood comes. In India, when a person moves through that second childhood we call him twice-born - DWIJ - again born. He has attained to a new birth. He has again become a child, again innocent.

So don't be afraid. The world is a temptation - a temptation you have to go through, a temptation that has to be suffered. And the Devil is a partner with God - he is not the enemy, he is the partner. He tempts you, he takes you into the forbidden, he helps you to disobey. He provokes you, he allures you, he seduces you. If you go wholeheartedly with him, sooner or later you will understand that he is the deceiver. Immediately he disappears.

The moment you realise that the Devil is a deceiver, the Devil disappears. In that realisation is death for him. Suddenly you start laughing. A great laughter arises in you. You start roaring like a lion, a great uproar. Now you have seen the truth, why God had told you not to eat the fruit of a certain tree - He wanted you to eat it.

Of course, God cannot be so foolish. If He did not want then He would have kept quiet. He could have removed the tree! - any ordinary gardener can do that. He did not remove the tree, He simply gave the commandment. And this is very psychological. The parable is really one of the most beautiful psychological parables.

Wherever you are not allowed to go, you want to go. If some film is running in the town and there is an advertisement 'only for adults' all the children will rush - then there must be something for them. If it is only for adults, then it has a provocation.

Say to people: "Don't do this," and they will do it. You can be certain about it.

And God made it absolutely certain. He must have been a little suspicious about Adam, so He created Eve. Man is a coward - unless a woman tempts him. He may hesitate, but when a woman is there to tempt, man becomes very brave.

When the wife is there, the husband becomes very brave. Never fight with a husband when the wife is present - he will kill you. He has to prove himself because the wife is there. When he is alone you can fight; he will not bother - he will say it is okay.

When you have a woman with you, you become a daredevil. You have to prove to the woman that you are a hero, a great, courageous man, brave. Then you can be mad, you can do anything.

But even then God was suspicious: maybe the woman is not enough. He created a snake: the snake seduced the woman, the woman seduced Adam. And of course it was very well planned - mm? - it was a beautiful drama, well planned.

All the characters are there. Adam can always say, "I am not responsible. Eve, she is responsible." She can always say, "I am not responsible - the snake." And of course the snake cannot speak, so the story ends there. If the snake could speak he would have said, "God is responsible." Nobody has asked the snake - who is responsible? The snake is completely silent.

Look: whenever you say somebody else is responsible, what are you doing? You are simply shifting the responsibility. The husband says the wife is responsible; the wife says the children are responsible - and children, of course, are dumb; they cannot say anything. So there it stops. We go on throwing responsibility on each other.

You become religious the day you recognize "I am responsible." Be courageous.

Feel your responsibility - and go into all that tempts you, and go fully aware, go conscious. Go deliberately into it.

I would like to tell you another law of life: if you go deliberately into something, it can never become a bondage to you. Don't go as if you are being pulled. Don't go like a slave: go like a master. Even if you are going into something which is forbidden, which is a declared sin by all the religions, go courageously and go with responsibility. Say: "I want to go and I want to explore this dimension. And I am going." Don't feel guilty! because if you feel guilty you will go halfheartedly - and when you go halfheartedly you are stuck. Then you will never be able to come back. If you go wholeheartedly you will immediately see the falsity of it, the foolishness of it. Go wholeheartedly! And explore it completely, utterly completely. Explore all the corners of it so it is finished. Once you have seen the whole game, you are out of it.

YOU ASK: "I am yearning for the snake to become alive in me..." The snake is there. God never creates a man without the snake already there: it is built in, it is there. Call it sex or call it kundalini - it is the snake. Sex is the snake moving downward. Kundalini is the same snake, the same serpent-power, moving upwards.

Ordinarily, when a child is born, the snake is there coiled near the sex centre - what yogis call MULADHAR - the basic, root centre: it is coiled there, sleeping energy. At the time when the child becomes mature, sexually mature, at the age of fourteen or near about then, the snake uncoils and starts going downward, towards the valley. That's what sexuality is.

One day, when you have explored sexuality and have found nothing - nothing of worth, except trouble, anxiety, anguish, suffering - the snake starts moving upward. It is the same snake! Now it starts moving towards the peak, towards the mountain.

When it starts moving upwards, a great transformation is happening. From Adam you are becoming a Christ. And when the snake has hit the ultimate in you, SAHASRAR, the seventh chakra of your being, the highest peak, the Everest, the Gourishankar, when it has hit that chakra, suddenly you are neither Adam nor Christ - you are God Himself.

To feel oneself as an Adam is a dream, nightmarish. To feel one-self as the Christ is still a dream - better than the first, not nightmarish at all, very sweet and beautiful, tremendously beautiful, but still a dream. To come to know oneself as God is to come to reality, is to come home.

The snake is there, and it is very much alive! You may have become afraid about the snake. The society is working just AGAINST - against you. The society does not want you to be an individual aflame with energy; the society wants you to remain in control. The society is afraid. Even a single individual can become very explosive.

That's what happened when a Christ moved on the earth, or a Buddha - just as a small atom can explode and can destroy a whole big city like Hiroshima. Just a tiny atom, invisible to the eyes, nobody has ever seen it, not even visible to instruments - an invisible particle can explode and can generate so much energy.

What to say about a human consciousness?

If a human consciousness explodes, the society does not know how to control it.

So society keeps you plugged to the lowest rung. It does not allow you to move.

It keeps you just on the earth; it never gives you wings. You HAVE the wings, but it does not even make you aware that you have the wings. It teaches you everything, but the most basic is not taught.

In the university your head is stuffed with rubbish. In schools, colleges, in universities, your head is used as a dustbin: people go on throwing things in it.

They are taking revenge on their own teachers. They have filled their heads with straw, now they are doing the same with others - and religiously, very seriously.

Have you seen professors, chancellors, vice-chancellors? - so serious, as if they are doing a great service to humanity. They are simply destroying.

When the head becomes too heavy, you lose contact with your heart. When the head becomes too much important, you tend to forget about the heart. And the heart is the source of your life-energies. From the heart you are connected to the sex centre, and from the heart you are connected to SAHASRAR. The heart is the bridge between the sex and SAHASRAR - the heart is the bridge between the valley and the peak. And they go on stuffing your head. They train your head so much, you become so clever, you become so efficient with the head, that you simply bypass the route that goes through the heart.

Life moves through the heart. The snake is alive, but your heart is closed. The snake is alive and ready to jump on its journey, you will just have to open the doors of your heart. That's what I mean when I say dance, sing, be ecstatic, celebrate, love, feel.

The real university of the future will be a training centre for the heart, not for the head. These universities that exist today are just out of date; they are just ruins of the past. They can exist in the museums, but they should not be allowed to exist any more in reality.

The real university has to be a great training for the heart, for the feeling.

Your snake is alive. Just open your heart - your snake is groping. When I see into you when you come to me and I personally encounter you, I see the snake groping for the heart. Towards the head it cannot go without moving from the heart. There is no way. It can only go to the head through the heart. When it goes through the heart it does not reach to your reason, it reaches to your intuition.

When it goes through the heart it hits the SAHASRAR. The SAHASRAR is also in the head, but it is not the head that you are aware of.

Even biologists, physiologists say that half of the head simply seems to be useless - what is the function of it? Only half seems to work. The other half which seems useless and non-functioning is the seed of the SAHASRAR. When your energy moves through the heart, it reaches to the other half of the head which is ordinarily not functioning. It functions only when a man becomes a Buddha.

And I will repeat again: the forbidden path is the only path. Be courageous!

Remember: sin is a FELIX CULPA - a happy fault - because that is the only way one comes to become a saint.

The second question:

Question 2:

BUT THE QUESTION IS UNSIGNED... it must be from a coward. My whole feeling is not to answer it. Because if you cannot even declare your name, you are afraid - even to ask a question you are afraid - you don't want to expose yourself, even before me....

My feeling is not to answer it, but the question is good - the person may be a coward. So I am not answering the questioner, I will answer the question.

The mind can look at things always in two ways, remember it. The mind can look in a negative way, the mind can look in a positive way. And the religious person is one who tries to find out the positive door because through the negative you never reach to the real.

The real is always positive. And the positive person uses even the negative to find the positive - but the goal remains the positive.

For example, this happened. I told you: Wait for the towel. It will descend like a God on somebody's head. But it descended on the floor. Now there are two possibilities: one, either nobody is ready to receive it; or, so many are ready that the towel is in a difficulty. But the negative mind always looks from the negative.

That's what I would like to say to you: I have many more Mahakashyaps than Buddha had and the towel was in a difficulty. Worried, it hit the beam - where to descend? on whom? It would have been unjust to choose one and not to choose the other.

In the whole history of humanity there has never been such laughter as there is around me. When Buddha was holding the flower in his hand only one sannyasin, Mahakashyap, smiled. Hence, the flower was transferred to him. All were long-faced people, sad... must be thinking esoterically "What does it mean?"

It means nothing! It is simply a meaningless gesture.

Mahakashyap laughed, looking at the whole ridiculousness of it. He laughed, not at the flower; he laughed, not at Buddha - he laughed at all those fools who had surrounded him there. They were just thinking, "What is it?" And they must have been going round about in their heads and spinning theories and looking into scriptures and into memories in the past: "Has there been any precedent?" And they must have been trying to find out some hidden meaning in it. There is nothing hidden in it.

A Buddha is as open as a flower. There is nothing hidden in it. Buddhists have a saying from Buddha that there is nothing hidden in existence - from the very beginning there is nothing hidden. Everything is just in front of you. Just you need to open your eyes.

Seeing the whole absurdity of the so-called great scholars who surrounded Buddha - great pundits, logicians - Mahakashyap laughed. Buddha called him and gave him his flower. And he said to his disciples: "Whatsoever can be said I have told to you. That which cannot be said I transfer to Mahakashyap."

Now, for two thousand five hundred years those foolish scholars and pundits are again thinking: "What happened?" They are again thinking: "What transpired between Buddha and Mahakashyap? What was delivered?"

In Zen the Masters give this as a koan. They say to their disciples: "Sit silently and find out the answer why Buddha chose Mahakashyap, why Mahakashyap laughed, why the flower was given to him, and what Buddha means when he says, 'That which cannot be said, I am delivering it to Mahakashyap. And that which can be said I have told to you.'" Of course, truth cannot be said, so Buddha is delivering truth to Mahakashyap.

And all that can be said about truth is again a beautiful lie. So Buddha has told lies to others and truth has been given to Mahakashyap. And Mahakashyap was not one of the most prominent disciples, not at all. In fact, nobody hears his name except in this story.

Sariputta was a great scholar; Modgalayan was a great scholar; Ananda was the chief disciple - and there were many. Mahakashyap? Nobody had ever heard about him. Must have lived a very silent life, unobtrusive, unpretending; must have been a nobody. But only a nobody can laugh. And he must have seen through the whole stupidity of the scholars.

Zen Masters say to their disciples: "Think about it, meditate over it, contemplate, and bring the answer." And disciples go and meditate and bring answers - and all answers are wrong. One day, after years it happens, sometimes after twenty years.

There are stories on record that a disciple meditated for twenty years, came again and again, every month, twice a year, then once a year; will find a great answer, will create a philosophy around it, and will bring it to him and the Master will say, from the very beginning, just seeing the disciple, he will say, "Wrong!" And he has not said anything yet. Because it is not a question that you can bring an answer to - your face shows it, that you are serious. And he will say, "Wrong."

The disciple becomes very worried and he says, "But what does this mean? I have not even said anything." And the Master will say "It is not a question of saying or not saying - the way you come, the way you hold your head, the way your face looks: the question is still there. You cannot deceive me."

Then twenty years pass, and one day he comes; giggling, and the Master says, "So you have got it?!"

Now the seriousness has disappeared. Now he has understood the point: it is not a question of philosophy. He has understood the point that for these nineteen years he has been following not Mahakashyap, but Saripuna, Modgalayan, Ananda - those serious faces. Now he has understood that it is nothing... it is just a joke. Buddha played a game. And only a Buddha can play such a beautiful game.

NOW YOU ASK WHY THE TOWEL DID NOT DESCEND ON SOMEBODY'S HEAD. I have so many laughing Mahakashyaps and very few Sariputtas, very few scholars and pundits. My whole effort is to bring laughter to religion. I would like you to laugh your way to God. And unless you reach laughing, you will not be allowed, you will not be welcomed, you will not be accepted.

And I would suggest one thing to you: if you go to God, rather than taking a prayer with you, take a joke. He always waits for people who can tell a good joke to Him. And then He laughs, and in His laughter is grace, and in His laughter is benediction.

But for the next time, I would like the questioner to sign his name. People would have enjoyed your name, they would have laughed. At least don't deceive here - you deceive everywhere.

A man threw a rupee to a blind beggar, who expertly retrieved it. The man was astonished. "I thought you were blind!" And there was a sign in front of the beggar: I am blind.

"No, sir, I am not that blind beggar who usually sits here. Today is his day off and he has gone to see a movie. In fact, I am his friend; I am just tending his shop. Really, I am deaf and dumb."

This is how things are. You go on deceiving. You go on pretending that you are somebody else. You have many faces - and your original face is lost in your so many masks. And unless you recognize your original face, you will not be able to reach anywhere. You will not have any meaning to your life. You will miss this opportunity.

This life is only for those who are real. Your facade, your mask, has to be dropped. My whole effort is to go on hammering so that it becomes a little loose and your real face starts coming up. You will be surprised yourself, because your real face is the face of God Himself.

The mask is yours, the falsity is yours. Ordinarily you don't exist as a real person - you are a mythology, you are a myth, not reality. This word 'mythology' is beautiful; it comes from a Latin root MYTH; and MYTH comes from a Sanskrit root MITHIA. MITHIA means the false, the unreal, the fictitious. From MITHIA comes MYTH; from MYTH comes 'mythology'.

You are a myth, you are a mythology. You are just a fiction, you are not real. And how can the fiction meet God? The fiction can meet only another fiction. Only the real can meet the real, the similar can meet the similar. So drop your masks, come into the open.

When I ask that your question should be signed, that simply means that you accept that the question is yours, that you accept the responsibility of asking it.

And if I ridicule the question, I prove that the question is stupid, you accept it, that it is your question, and you accept the ridicule. And you are not hurt about it. Because this is a surgical operation! If you start crying and weeping and you don't allow me to operate, then take your fee back - because then it is meaningless! Why are you lying down on the operation table?

The day you become a sannyasin you will remain on the operation table - until I have succeeded in cutting off your head completely.

But you are very clever, you are very political. But remember that the politician is the most stupid man.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

Mulla Nasrudin decides he needs a new brain, so he goes to the brain bank. The caretaker shows him the bottled brain of a great mathematician, for 6000 rupees only. "Too expensive," Mulla says. The caretaker leads him to the brain of a nuclear physicist, for 9000 rupees. "Much too expensive," Mulla replies. Finally the caretaker offers him the brain of a politician, for 20,000 rupees. "Why should I pay that kind of money for the brain of a politician?" Mulla protests.

"But, sir," the caretaker explains, "this brain has never been used."

The politician never uses his brain. To deceive, much brain is not needed. To be true, much brain is needed. To cheat, not much brain is needed - very ordinary, very low I.Q. But to be honest, to be true, to be totally nude, in the open, great intelligence is needed.

The third question:

Question 3:

THIS QUESTION IS VERY IMPORTANT and has to be understood both by Indians and non-indians.

When a Westerner comes to me I have to approach him through his head, because there is no other entry possible. When an Indian comes to me a simpler approach is possible through the heart. When an Indian comes to me he comes for SATSANG - he wants just to be in my presence. He has no questions.

And those Indians who have questions, they never come to me. I have created too many barriers for them to come. Those Indians whose minds are too much stuffed, they don't come to me - and I don't want them here. I have made every possible effort to prevent them from coming to me. I am not interested in them.

The Indians who come to me, come to be with me - silently. They can understand the language of silence. But when a Westerner comes, he cannot understand the language of silence. He can understand only the language of logic. So I have to talk - I have to talk too much to the Westerners. By and by, I persuade them to become silent. By and by, they also become Indians. But it takes time.

For a spectator it may appear as if I am not paying attention to the Indians. And the question is from a Westerner - the question is from Anurag. You may see that when an Indian comes to take sannyas, I simply give him sannyas. Even if I ask him whether he has something to ask, he says no. Sometimes I don't even ask him - I can see that he has not come to ask any question. He has come to be with me. And that is far more significant, far more deep. He has come just to see me, just to be with me. He wants a bridge in silence.

But to a watcher it will seem that I am not paying much attention, because when I talk then you think I am paying attention. When I talk for half an hour to one person, of course, you think I have been too much attentive to him. That simply shows that the person is too much in the head and I have to persuade him.

The Western mind is only mind - it has forgotten the heart. The Eastern mind is not only mind - the heart is still predominant, fortunately; the mind is secondary. So there is no need to talk much. He touches my feet and he is happy, he is tremendously happy - he has touched something real, he has touched something from the unknown. To a Westerner it seems just meaningless: Then why have you come? - just to touch the feet? just to sit silently? Silently you can sit at your home. Then why did you travel so far?

The Westerner knows only one way of communication and that is through language, through logic, reason. I have to convince him. The Indian needs no conviction. He is convinced about the fact of sannyas. If he has not taken sannyas, it is not that he is not convinced - it is only that he is not courageous enough. He wants a little courage.

Convinced he is! Convinced he is for many lives - that sannyas is the only way to be, to be rightly in existence. Sannyas is the only way to reach God, to reach truth, he is convinced. That is in the blood and in the bones. An Indian is born with the desire to be a sannyasin. He may not be able to dare - that's another thing. So when he comes to me, he has not come for any conviction - conviction is already there - he has come to me just to feel my vibe, so that he can gather a little more courage and take the jump.

When a Westerner comes, he is not convinced at all. Sannyas? Seems just outlandish, bizarre, eccentric! For the Westerner, sannyas simply has no appeal.

He has never thought about it.

So many Western sannyasins are here: have you ever had any dream in your life that you would become a sannyasin? Even now that you have become a sannyasin, you are puzzled - what has happened to you? What are you doing here? - such an intelligent person, what is he doing here?

Ask Heeren: he is continuously thinking, such an intelligent person, almost a Jew, what is he doing here? He should be somewhere in the London market earning more and more money, having bigger and bigger houses - what is he doing here? Just jumping and dancing like a fool!?

The Westerner comes to me without any conviction, without any idea of what sannyas is. I have to talk him into it. I have to pull him into it. And I have to be very logical. I use logic only for Westerners. For Indians I use magic. And these are two different approaches.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

WHERE ELSE SHOULD I THROW YOU? That is the only place! That's where you belong.

The whole effort of a Master is to bring you back home, to throw you back to YOURself, to make you that which you are meant to be, to help you to be yourself. If there is some teacher who pretends to make you somebody else, beware! Escape from him. He is like poison. He will destroy you.

I am not trying to make you into something else that you are not. I am simply helping you to be yourself - whosoever you are, whosoever Allah wills you to be. I can only cooperate with the will of Allah; I am not here to interfere.

Whatsoever you are going to be, whatsoever your destiny is, I simply help you towards that destiny. I don't interfere.

One day, suddenly, you will see you have become absolutely independent, absolutely your own authentic being. That will be the day for my happiness, and that will be the day for your gratitude. You will feel grateful. THAT day you will understand why I continue to throw you back to yourself. I don't want to become a crutch to you. I would like your own limbs to be strong enough - I don't want to be a crutch. I don't want to become your eyes, because that will be impossible.

You will be deceived.

I don't want to give you what I know. In the first place, it cannot be given. In the second place, if it is given it is immediately corrupted. The moment it reaches you, it mixes with you, it is corrupt.

Knowledge is possible only when your eyes open, when it is your own vision, when you have the clarity. I am not giving you answers - I am simply trying to take away the questions. Remember it! I am not giving you any answers; that's why my answers are so elusive, so roundabout. I simply want to take away the thorn of question from your heart.

My answer is just a trick. Once the questions have disappeared, you are the answer. And there are not many answers, remember - there is only one answer because there is only one life and there is only one question. Because you don't know the one answer you go on asking a thousand and one questions.

I am not supplying you any answers. In fact, I am pulling away the very earth beneath you. I will leave you hanging into the abyss, the bottomless abyss. You will be scared.

My whole work is to help you not to get scared, to help you to keep courage - because once you allow yourself to fall into the abyss... the questionless mind, the thoughtless mind is an abyss, because it is a no-mind. When the question is not, where is the mind? Then the mind has disappeared. And with the mind disappears the ego. And with the mind disappear I and you. With the mind disappear the Master and the disciple. With the mind disappear all distinctions.

You start falling.

If you allow me and if you cooperate with me, I would help you to fall like a feather... slowly, into the empty abyss of being.... That is the answer!

The answer is your being. The questions come from your mind. The mind is not your being. Be mindless. Be beyond mind.

You would like to cling to me, because that is very cheap and easy. You can throw all your responsibility on me. You can say, "Now, you take care." And you can go on living your life the way you were living.

That's what people do in the world: they choose a Master, they surrender, and they say, "Now, I am finished - now you take care of me." And they go on living the same way! The same dishonesty, the same distrust, the same falsity, the same myth - they continue; as if they have done all that they were needed to do. This won't help.

Surrender is not throwing away of responsibility. Surrender is simply an indication of trust, that you trust this man. Now whatsoever HE is going to say, you are going to do. Surrender is the beginning of a great effort! Surrender is the beginning of a great journey. Surrender is getting into the stream.

When you surrender to me, you simply surrender to me so that I can make you yourself. You have tried in your own way and you have failed. You have tried and followed many people and you have failed - because those people were not interested really in you; they were interested in their own idea. Somebody was trying to make you become a Christian. Somebody was trying to make you a Hindu. Somebody was trying to change you into a Mohammedan. They were interested in their own ways. They had their own ideas to impose on you. You were victims. With me, I am not trying to make you a Christian or a Hindu or a Jain or a Buddhist - I am simply trying to make you just the one that you are, that you are meant to be, that God wants you to be.

That's why I go on answering different people in different ways. Later on you will not be able to figure out what type of man this was, what manner of man this was. If you look through all of my books, you will not be able to sort it out - what system? There is no system - because my approach is individual. I say one thing to one person, and immediately just the opposite to another person.

Just last night, to one I said, "You become a Buddhist monk - be completely out of your sexuality, forget about it." And immediately after him, to another person I said, "You indulge - you move into relationship." Now, it will be difficult for anybody to sort out what type of system this is.

My approach is individual. I talk to one person, then I forget the whole world.

And when I talk to the person, I am not important - that person is important.

When I talk to a person, I don't talk out of an ideology, I don't have a ready-made system; I don't try to fix that person in that system, because that will be inhuman, that is violence.

And whenever you find a saint trying to fix you into some system, trying to force you into some system, remember, he is a murderer, he is very violent. His violence may have a sugar coating to it - all your so-called mahatmas are like that, very violent, tremendously violent people; trying to fix you into a mould.

The mould is prefabricated. The mould was already there when you were not there; when you come, the mould is there - you have to fit with the mould.

When you come to me, I have no mould. I don't fit you into something. I simply look into you and I try to see where your innermost energy is moving, and I help it to move in that direction. That is your way. That's where you should be. You are not courageous to move into it; I help you, I give you courage. I give you a promise that "I am with you, you go - you don't be worried." But I help you to be yourself.

And to me religion means freedom to each individual, absolute freedom to each individual. Of course, in that freedom a great discipline is implied - but that discipline has to arise out of your own consciousness; it has not to be imposed by anybody else. But right now, when you are in the process, you will not be able to understand it totally. The day you arrive, then you will understand what this man was doing to you. You will feel grateful.

There is a story about a Chinese monk who was celebrating. Somebody asked, "Why are you celebrating? What has happened?"

He said, "This is my Master's birthday."

The Master had died, but the questioner was worried. He said, "But as far as I remember, you approached that Master many times and he always refused to become your Master - so why are you celebrating? Because this ceremony is to be done only by a disciple who has been accepted by the Master. So why are you bothering? In fact, he rejected you so many times!"

The man started laughing. He said, "Because he rejected me, I fell upon myself.

And the day I realised my being, I felt grateful to him. He is my Master. If he had not rejected me I might not have arrived - because in fact I was trying to find some support, somebody to lean on. I was not really interested in becoming absolutely individual and free.

"I was talking about liberation, but I was not really trying to be liberated. I was trying to find a beautiful cage, a beautiful prison - some holy prison, some religious pattern. But this man was simply incredible! How many times I approached him! - and he would just throw me out, and he would say, 'Go home! I am not your Master.' And now I know he was my Master and this was his teaching. His rejection was his acceptance, because he could see through me that this was the only way I could grow. That's why he rejected me. But by rejecting me he accepted me."

Can you see the point of it? I will go on throwing you upon yourself. Sometimes you will feel hurt. Sometimes a great pain will arise in you. But one day, finally when you come home, you will be thankful that I never became a crutch to you.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

IT IS FROM RAJ BHARTI. He is an army man, and of course he used to believe that he is a brave man. But he may have entered the army only to have this feeling of being a brave man. He is a colonel so he has credentials; he can prove that he is brave. But I looked into him and I saw that he was a coward - and he was brave enough to accept it. He accepted it without any complaint, without any grudge. He accepted it totally. That was beautiful.

When he accepted it, that very moment I knew that now he would become brave - because this is the beginning of bravery. Only a brave man can accept that he is a coward. Cowards can never accept it. Cowards try to prove that they are brave.

I had one teacher who continuously tried to prove that he was a very brave man.

I approached him and I said, "You stop this nonsense. You talk so much about bravery that I have a suspicion that you are a coward - and if you don't stop it, I will create trouble."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "That you leave to me - but you STOP immediately, because I know you are a coward. I have seen you trembling in the class. When you enter the class you perspire - and you talk about bravery?! You immediately stop it! Otherwise, you will have to prove that you are a brave man, and it is going to be difficult."

Not only did he stop, he simply disappeared. He resigned from his post. After a few years, when I was in the university, I came across him at a railway station. I said, "Where have you been?"

He said, "You are dangerous. I am really a coward - but when you said that I would have to prove my bravery and I started thinking about it, I said I better get out from here."

Colonel Raj accepted it so simply, so innocently - that very moment he started becoming brave. This is the logic of life. It is a very absurd logic. A coward goes on trying to prove that he is brave; a brave man accepts even his cowardice. A violent man tries to become non-violent; a really non-violent man accepts all violence that is inside him.

A very sexual man goes on trying to become celibate; a real celibate accepts all the sexuality that is in him. A sinner goes on pretending to be a saint. A real saint is one who knows how many possibilities of getting into sin are still alive in him.

Now he says: "Now I am getting a feeling that I am becoming brave, and I am scared."

Again you are getting into the old rut. When you were a coward you accepted that you were a coward and you started becoming brave. Now you have started feeling that you are brave and you are becoming cowardly - you are scared. See the logic of it.

Never claim that you are brave and you will remain brave. Never claim that you are beautiful and you will remain beautiful. Never claim that you are wise and you will remain wise. The moment you claim, you have fallen into the trap again.

The Upanishads say: The one who knows never says that he knows. The one who says he knows does not know.

So see the game of the mind. Just watch. Don't start believing that you are brave, otherwise you will become a coward again. But if you can watch this whole game, and you can remain just a witness, then cowardice, bravery, all disappear - - and that which is left is the real you. It is neither. It is transcendental.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF YOUR DOING or of your not doing - because not- doing is also your doing. It is not a question of doing at all! - positively or negatively. When you are neither doing nor not doing, then it happens.

You move from one polarity to the other. First you try to do; when it doesn't happen you say, "Okay, so I will not do now - let us see whether it happens or not." But the expectation is the same. It was behind doing, now it is behind non- doing. You are expecting it to happen. You are desiring it to happen. You are hoping for it to happen.

Unless the DESIRE disappears, unless the hope is abandoned, it will not happen.

Surrender happens only when the desire, the hope, disappears. In total abandon it happens.

So neither your doing nor your non-doing is needed, because both are not different basically. Behind both is the same desire.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

Mulla Nasrudin had to drive his wife and mother-in-law from Bombay to Poona, and all along the way the two women in his life were giving advice on how to drive.

Finally Nasrudin couldn't take it any more and pulled the car to the side of the road, furiously turned to his wife in the back seat and whined, "Alright. Now let's get this straight once and for all. Who's driving this car? You.... or your mother?"

But whether the mother decides or the wife decides it is all the same: somebody else is deciding. Whether you try to let it happen by doing, or you allow it to happen by not doing, you don't allow God any chance.

Surrender is a gift from God. When you are completely absent, neither doing nor not doing, it happens. But it has nothing to do with you, so you can completely forget about it. You simply do your ordinary things: eat, sleep, walk, dance, sing, love - you do your ordinary things and you just forget all about surrender. One day, suddenly, it is there.

Doing the ordinary things of life, not waiting for any extraordinary happening, not waiting for some miracle, one day it is there. It is simply there. One morning you rise and it is there - your whole room is full of a benediction. And after that, you cannot lose it; there is no way to lose it. Because, really, in surrender what actually happens is that your own nature comes to a flowering. But it is a gift from God. Even pray not for it, because in your prayer also there will be desire.

The seventh question:

Question 7:

HE IS TRYING HARD BUT HE IS NOT YET. It is a very difficult thing to be Mulla Nasrudin.

To be Mulla Nasrudin means two things: Be foolish in your wisdom and be wise in your foolishness. It is a very great contradiction. Be wise in your foolishness and be foolish in your wisdom. Yoga Chinmaya is trying - hard; but he has only been able to do the second part up to now. The first part is more difficult. If he goes on working hard at it, he may succeed.

You should be aware of the fact that Mulla Nasrudin is a Sufi device. It is to make you clear that life is wise in its foolishness. And when you try to be wise you become a fool. The greatest wise people are like fools. And the greatest foolish people are those who pretend that they are wise.

Socrates has said, "When I was not aware, when I was ignorant, I used to think that I knew. When I was ignorant I used to think that I knew! Now that I know, I know only one thing - that I know not."

In the tremendous flowering of wisdom, one becomes a fool. Jesus is a fool! Saint Francis is a fool! Buddha is a fool! Their ignorance is profound, their ignorance is ultimate. In their ignorance they declare that the life is a mystery - immeasurable, infinite. There is nobody to solve it. It is not a problem to be solved: it is a mystery to be lived. In their ignorance they have become absolutely innocent. That is their wisdom.

Then you go to the great philosophers - Hegel, Kant, Aristotle, Plato - they prove that they are very wise. That is their foolishness.

If you have to choose, choose the fool and you will become wise. Don't choose to pretend wisdom, otherwise you will become a fool.

One day I was walking with Mulla Nasrudin on the road. It suddenly started raining. I told Mulla Nasrudin, "Mulla, it is raining. Open your umbrella!"

He said, "Wouldn't do any good - it is full of holes."

So I was surprised. I said, "So why, why are you carrying it? Why did you bring it in the first place?"

He said, "I didn't think it would rain."

There's this busy hospital clinic where patients can come for free medical treatment. Lots of elderly people who have nothing to do just come to tell the doctor their troubles. Mulla Nasrudin went every day. There was nothing wrong with him. But the doctors humoured him, listened patiently, and actually looked forward to his visits. One day he didn't show up. Next day, his doctor asked, "Where were you yesterday? - we missed you."

"I'll tell you the truth," he replied. "I was sick."

Mulla Nasrudin is so content and so happy, I asked one day, "What is your philosophy, Nasrudin? How do you avoid worries?"

He said, "This is my philosophy in short. Life is very simple. The first thing to remember about life is - don't worry about it. Really, there are only two things to worry about: either you're successful or you're not successful. If you're successful, there's nothing to worry about. If you're not successful, there are only two things to worry about: either you're healthy or you're unhealthy. If your health is good, there's nothing to worry about. If your health is bad, there are only two things to worry about: either you're going to live or you're not going to live. If you live, there's nothing to worry about; and if you don't live, you have only two things to worry about. Either you are going to heaven or you're not going to heaven. If you go to heaven, there's nothing to worry about - and if you go to the other place, you'll be so dog-gone busy shaking hands with all your old friends, YOU WON'T HAVE TIME TO WORRY."

I bless Swami Yoga Chinmaya and hope that one day he will become Mulla Nasrudin. The day one becomes Mulla Nasrudin, one has arrived home.

The drunk Mulla Nasrudin was stopped by a policeman as he staggered about the street at three o'clock in the morning.

"Can you explain why you are out at this time?" asked the policeman.

"If I could," said the Mulla, "I would be home by now."

If you knew what life is, you would be home by now. All esoteric explanations, all explanations as such, are foolish.

Chinmaya is doing well as far as fifty percent of Mulla Nasrudin is concerned.

All explanations are foolish, because all so-called wisdom is foolish. But this is how one grows. The other fifty per cent will also be coming - when foolishness becomes wisdom.

The last question:

Question 8:

CERTAINLY, MYSTERIOUS THINGS ARE HAPPENING. That's what Swami Yoga Chinmaya said to his chief disciple, Priya, just two days ago - that many mysterious things are happening. And he said the day before yesterday, "The day after tomorrow many more mysterious things are going to happen." Today is that day after tomorrow, and now this has happened.

Now it is absolutely difficult to use logic - I will have to use magic. Let me give myself a little moment, a little time, to use my magic....

The towel is from a woman - Indian not Western; married not unmarried; a sannyasin. Her name starts with 'u'. And if you want more information about her, you can inquire care of Colonel Raj Bharti.