The Prints of Your Inner Being

The first question

Question 1:

Deva Samadhi,

IT IS ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT QUESTIONS TO BE asked. We will have to go deep into it. It is true, absolutely true, that enlightenment is acausal: it cannot be caused by our efforts. But that does not mean that you have to cease making efforts, because then too it will not happen.

This mystery, this paradox, has to be understood deeply. The tendency of the logical mind is either to decide that enlightenment is causal so that one can make efforts to achieve it, or it is acausal, it happens only when it happens of its own accord, then there is no need to make any efforts.

In both ways you will miss. If you think it is causal, and make efforts, you will miss, because it is not causal. If you think it is not causal, that hence there is no need to make any efforts -- why bother? -- you will miss again.

The reality is: you have to make all possible efforts, yet it is not going to happen through your efforts, but you will be prepared through your efforts to receive it when it happens.

It IS acausal. It will happen. It is not a doing on your part. But when it happens, will you be ready to see it? That is the point, the very crux of the matter. When it happens, will you be ready to recognize it? When it happens, will you be ready to welcome it, to open your heart to it, to receive it into your being? Will you be ready to become a host to the guest when it knocks on your doors?

Your efforts are NOT going to create enlightenment: your efforts are simply going to make you more and more available to it, open to it, vulnerable to it. Your efforts are going to make a womb out of your being so you can be pregnant with it. It is going to happen from the beyond. And it is not that it is going to happen somewhere in the future - - it is ALREADY happening. You are just not ready.

When it happened to Buddha, it could have happened to the whole earth, to the whole of humanity. But Buddha was ready to receive it and others were not ready to receive it. The sun rises: it will rise only for those who have eyes, it will not rise for those who are blind.

If you go to the physician, he can help -- he can help you to get rid of your blindness. His medicines are not going to create the sunrise; his medicines are of no use as far as the sunrise is concerned. It happens on its own -- it is already happening, happening every day -- but it never happens to the blind person or to the person who is not blind yet keeps his eyes closed.

Samadhi, your efforts will only open your eyes. And this is part of the opening of your eyes -- to understand that enlightenment is acausal. But this is not yet your understanding, remember.

You say: I HAVE HEARD THAT ENLIGHTENMENT OR THE NATURAL STATE OF MAN IS SOMETHING ACAUSAL...

You have heard it. It is not going to help you -- unless you start feeling that it is acausal.

And how are you going to feel that it is acausal? By making all possible efforts and failing again and again and again, one day suddenly the realization happens that efforts can't make it. In that realization you don't start thinking, "Why bother?" You don't start thinking of stopping efforts. Efforts simply STOP in that understanding. In that understanding efforts evaporate.

That's how it happened to Gautam the Buddha. For six years he made all possible human efforts to achieve it, but because it is not an achievement he could not achieve it. And the more efforts he made, the more frustrated he became -- obviously. If you don't make any efforts for it you will not be frustrated, and when you make efforts with your total heart, it hurts to fail each time. He staked his whole life for it, and yet it was not happening. He was not holding anything back. If he had been holding anything back, then this understanding that happened to him would not have been possible -- that all efforts are futile.

It happens only to those who are not holding anything back, when you have put all that you have at stake, when nothing is left behind, when you are utterly empty, you have emptied yourself totally, and it is not happening, then the understanding arises, "My efforts are futile. My efforts are ego efforts -- the ego is futile. My efforts are my own mind games. The mind itself is the barrier."

But this has to become your own experience, Samadhi. It is not going to help if you have heard it. You can hear great truths, but unless they arise in your own being they are not true. A heard truth is a lie: only an experienced truth is a truth. And only the experienced truth liberates. How will you experience it? You would like to have it without any efforts.

You would like it to happen as it happened to Buddha -- minus those six years that preceded it.

Those six years of tremendous effort are a must. Then one day suddenly, one evening when the sun was setting, the revelation happened to him: "My efforts cannot take me beyond myself." This is so natural! It is like pulling yourself up by your own shoestrings -- it is utterly futile. But how is one going to know it?

Those six long years... and they must have looked like sixty years to him, because they were really painful. All kinds of ascetic practices, long fasts, torturing the body, doing all kinds of yoga exercises, many of which are just stupid: standing on your head, distorting your body, utterly ridiculous postures -- he did all! Whatsoever was said to him, he followed it literally, word for word. He went to all kinds of teachers; they must have all been pseudo. Not even a single one of them was a Buddha, was yet enlightened. They gave him many strategies to work out.

If he had not been doing them perfectly well, they would have been safe. They would have told him, "Because you are not doing totally, hence you are missing." But this was impossible: the man was so authentic, so sincere, so innocently total, that even those pseudo teachers had to tell him, "Excuse us, forgive us -- this is all we know. And you have done it all, and we cannot expect more from you. Now you have to go somewhere else. This is all we know, and now you know that this is not going to give you enlightenment -- it has not given enlightenment to us either. But it is very rare to find a person like you. People come and they do it very partially. With them we can always say, 'Because you are not total, hence you are missing,' but we cannot say this to you! Your innocence forbids it. Your totality... we are ashamed. In fact, we ourselves have not done these practices so totally. Forgive us, and find another teacher. And if you ever find enlightenment, don't forget us. If you ever find truth, please remember us -- we are also seeking and searching. We are also blind," those teachers confessed to Buddha.

After six years of wandering, one evening, sitting silently underneath a tree, by the side of the River Niranjana, this revelation welled up within his being: that human effort cannot help you to transcend humanity. It can only happen: it cannot be caused. But now these six years of austerity had purified him; this fire had made him gold. These six years had helped him to see the utter uselessness of the mind. Now he was ready to be silent, effortless, passive.

That night he slept with no search, not even for truth, because search creates desires, desires can be fulfilled only through effort -- the search disappeared! The desires disappeared. The efforts disappeared. For the first time he slept totally relaxed -- neither worldly desires tortured him nor other-worldly desires. He had no dreams that night, that was the first night without dreams, because dreams are a by-product of your desires. The worldly people dream of worldly things, the other-worldly people dream of other-worldly things. And the worldly people are not so much deceived, because if in the night you see a dream that you have come upon a great treasure of diamonds -- in the morning you know that it was only a dream. But the other-worldly people are very much deceived by their dreams.

Somebody sees Krishna playing on his flute; somebody sees Jesus Christ, somebody sees Rama, and so on and so forth. And they cannot say that these are dreams, they are so valuable to them. They start thinking that these are experiences. These are dreams! as much as other dreams.

And the other-worldly person starts hallucinating in the day too, even with open eyes -- because the worldly man is in the world, and in the world you cannot hallucinate because others will think you are mad. In the world you live with objects, and you have to prove to others that what you are seeing is a reality. The treasures of your dreams, nobody is going to believe in them. There are so many non-believers around you; they will ask for proofs and proofs you cannot supply. So you can dream only in the night. But the other- worldly, those who have escaped from the world, a person who lives in isolation in a Himalayan cave, has no need to prove; there is nobody to prove to and nobody asks him.

He has dropped the objective world; now he lives in his subjectivity -- he can dream in the day, he can dream with open eyes.

It is now a well-known, well-established psychological fact that if people go on a long fast in isolation, after the first week they start hallucinating, and after the third week they lose ALL distinction between what is real and what is unreal. After the third week of fasting, the reality and the dream start getting mixed up.

It is like small children: small children don't know what is real and what is unreal. So sometimes a child who was dreaming about a beautiful toy wakes up and starts crying for it. And the mother goes on trying to convince him that it was only a dream, but he says, "It was here -- how can it be a dream? I had it! Where has my toy gone? Bring it back to me!"

The same thing happens in deep isolation. If it is a prolonged thing, a three weeks' fast in an isolated cave in the Himalayas, slowly slowly you will start hallucinating. Then you see Krishna playing on the flute -- not only that: he starts talking to you. Not only that -- he starts playing with you And because it is thought to be spiritual.... It is simple madness! But because it is thought to be spiritual you feel very very gratified, your ego feels very fulfilled. You brag about it, that Krishna has appeared, that you have talked with Krishna, that you have played with him, that he was playing on the flute and you danced around him.

And there are other fools also who will believe it. The whole world is full of superstitious people.

Buddha lived those six long years through all kinds of things like this. It is only by experiencing these things that one day one can conclude that this is all nonsense. And when it is your own realization that it is all nonsense, you need not drop it: it simply disappears.

That night he slept without dreams. And in the early morning when he opened his eyes and the last star was disappearing, something in him disappeared -- the ego. He became enlightened .

THIS enlightenment is not something that has come from the outside -- it is your intrinsic nature. It has come from within. But the within and the beyond are synonymous: the within is the beyond. It is through the within that the beyond penetrates.

Then Buddha said, "Enlightenment is not an achievement -- it is a gift from existence."

But those six years had prepared him to receive it.

Samadhi, prepare yourself to receive it. It is acausal, but that does not mean that you have to stop all efforts. If you stop, you will miss. If they stop on their own, because your understanding has penetrated so deeply that it is impossible to make any effort any more, even if you want to you cannot, in that state of effortless passivity you become the host and God becomes the guest.

The second question

Question 2:

Swami Prem Asutosh,

IT IS NOT ONLY YOUR PROBLEM -- it is the problem of almost everybody. All the cultures and all the religions have been conditioning you to feel negative about yourself.

Nobody is loved, appreciated, for just being himself or herself. You are asked to prove whether you are of any worth: "Bring gold medals from the university! Achieve success, money, power, prestige, respectability! Prove!" Your worth is not intrinsic; that's what has been taught to you. Your worth has to be proved.

Hence a deep antagonism towards oneself arises, a deep feeling that I am worthless as I am -- unless proved otherwise." And very few people can succeed in this competitive world. Millions and millions of people are competing. How many people can succeed?

How many people can become presidents and prime ministers? In a country of millions, only one person will become the president; and deep down everybody is hankering for it.

Millions will feel that they are unworthy.

How many people can become great poets? A Shakespeare. a Milton, a Shelley, a Rabindranath -- how many people can become great poets? And everybody has something of the poetic in his being; everybody has some poetry to give to the world. But when it becomes an ambition... ambition in itself is anti-poetic. How many people can become great painters like Picasso or Dali? And everybody has something to create.

The idea of success is torturing you. It is the greatest calamity that has happened to humanity, the idea of success, that you have to succeed. And success means you have to compete, you have to fight, by fair or foul means -- it doesn't matter. Once you succeed everything is okay. The question is of success. even if by foul means you succeed, once you are successful whatsoever you have done is okay. Success changes the quality of all your acts. Success changes evil means into good means. So the only question is: How to succeed? How to reach to the top? And naturally, very few people can reach to the top. If everybody is trying to reach Everest. how many people can stand there? There is not much space there; only one person can stand there at ease. Then the millions who were also striving will feel failure, a great despair will settle in their souls. They will start feeling negative.

This is a wrong kind of education. It is utterly poisonous, this so-called education that has been given to you. Your schools, colleges, your universities, are poisoning you. They are creating misery for you; they are the factories where hells are manufactured -- but in such a beautiful way that you never become aware of what is going on. The whole world has become a hell because of a wrong education. Any education that is based on the idea of ambition is going to create hell on the earth -- it has succeeded.

Everybody is suffering and feeling inferior. This is really a strange situation. NOBODY IS inferior, and nobody is superior, because each individual is unique -- no comparison is possible. You are you, and you are SIMPLY YOU, and you cannot be anybody else, and there is no need either. And you need not become famous, you need not be a success in the eyes of the world. Those are all foolish ideas.

All that you need is to be creative, loving, aware, meditative... if you feel poetry arising in you, write it for yourself, for your woman, for your children, for your friends -- and forget all about it! Sing it, and if nobody listens, sing it alone and enjoy it! Go to the trees and they will applaud and appreciate it. Or talk to the birds and the animals, and they will understand far more than the stupid human beings who have been poisoned for centuries and centuries with wrong concepts of life.

The ambitious person is pathological.

You say: I FEEL NEGATIVE ABOUT MYSELF.

Everybody is feeling negative about himself, because that's how he has been made to feel. Your parents have done it to you -- this is a heritage, a great heritage. Your teachers have done it to you, your priests have done it to you, your political leaders have done it to you -- and so many people are doing it that, naturally, you have become impressed by the very idea that you are worthless, that you don't have any intrinsic meaning or value, that you don't have any significance of your own.

Each parent is saying to the child, to each child, "Prove that you have some worth!"

Being, just being, is not enough -- some doing is needed.

My whole approach is that being is intrinsically valuable. Just that you are is such a gift from God, what more can you ask for? Just to breathe in this beautiful existence is certificate enough that God loves you, that existence needs you; otherwise you would not be here. YOU ARE! Existence has given birth to you. There must have been an immense need -- you have filled a gap. Without you existence would be less. And when I say this, I am saying it not only to you: I am saying it to the trees, to the birds, to the animals, to the pebbles on the shore. A single pebble less on the immense seashore and the seashore would not be the same. A single flower less and the universe would miss it.

You have to learn that you are valuable as you are. And I am not teaching you any ego -- just the contrary. In the feeling that you are valuable as you are you will also feel others are valuable as they are. Accept people as they are; drop shoulds, oughts -- those are the enemies.

And you are carrying so many shoulds: "Do this and don't do that!" You are carrying so many dos and don'ts that you cannot dance; the burden is too heavy. And you have been given so many ideals and goals -- ideals of perfection -- that you always feel you are falling short. And the ideals are utterly impossible. You cannot fulfill them; there is no possibility of fulfilling them. So you will ALWAYS fall short.

To be a perfectionist is to be ready for the psychiatrist's couch; to be a perfectionist is to be a neurotic. And you have all been told to be perfect.

Life is beautiful in all its imperfections. Nothing is perfect. Let me say to you: even God is not perfect -- because if God is perfect then Friedrich Nietzsche is right that God is dead. Perfection means death! Perfection means now there is no possibility of growth.

Perfection means now everything is finished. Imperfection means there is a possibility to grow. Imperfection means the excitement of new pastures, ecstasy, adventure.

Imperfection means that you are alive, that life is going to be there.

And life is eternal, hence I say life is eternally imperfect. And there is nothing wrong in being imperfect. Accept your imperfection. And then the idea of being negative towards yourself will disappear. Accept your present state and don't compare it with some future perfection, future ideal. Don't think in terms of how you should be! That is the root of all pathology -- drop that. You are as you are today, and tomorrow you may be different, but you cannot predict it today, and there is no need to plan for it either.

Live this day in all its beauty, in all its joy, in all its pain, agony, ecstasy. Live it in its totality -- in its darkness, in its light. Live the hate and live the love. Live the anger and live the compassion. Live whatsoever is available in this moment. My approach is not that of perfection but that of totality. Live the moment that is available to you totally, and the next moment will be born out of it. If this moment has been lived totally, the next is going to reach a higher pitch of totality. a higher peak of totality -- because from where is the next moment going to come? It is going to be born out of this moment. Forget all about the future -- the present is enough.

Jesus says: "Think not of the morrow, and look at the lilies in the field! how beautiful they are. Even Solomon was not so beautiful attired in all his grandeur."

And what is the secret of the beautiful lilies, the poor lilies? The secret is simple: they think not of the morrow, they don't know anything of the future. Tomorrow exists not.

This day is enough unto itself, this moment is enough unto itself.

And, Asutosh, your feeling of negativity about yourself will disappear. Remember, if you feel negative about yourself, you will automatically feel negative about others. That is a necessary corollary. It has to be understood.

THE PERSON WHO IS NEGATIVE ABOUT HIMSELF cannot be positive about anybody else either, because the faults that he finds in himself he will find in others -- in fact he will magnify them in others. He will take revenge. Your parents have made you negative about yourself, you will take revenge on your children you will make them even more negative.

Hence, negativity goes on growing with each generation. Each generation becomes more and more pathological. If the modern man is suffering psychologically so much it has nothing to do with the modern man himself: it simply shows that the whole past has been wrong. It is all accumulation of the whole past. The modern man is suffering from the past; the modern man is not suffering from his own sins as the so-called religious preachers go on saying to you. You are suffering from the sins of centuries... but now things have come to a peak. Man is falling apart. Up to now somehow we have managed to keep ourselves together, but now things have come to such a point that either man has to change totally and has to change his vision of life, or man has to commit suicide.

If you follow the past, then you are on the verge of committing a global suicide. And that's what your political leaders are trying to do: preparing atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, super hydrogen bombs -- piling up bombs upon bombs. They already have too many! In fact, just ten years ago they were already capable of killing each person seven times. Ten years ago they were ready to destroy this earth seven times, although a person dies only once -- you need not kill him twice, that will be unnecessary. But in case somebody survives, politicians have to take care -- they plan perfectly. But that is how things were ten years ago.

Now, you will be surprised: they can destroy this earth seven hundred times -- each single person can be killed seven hundred times! Now this is too much, and absolutely unnecessary. Seven is okay -- there are a few cunning people who may not die. But seven hundred times!? And still the race continues. Even poor countries are joining the race hankering to join it -- starving, but they want atom bombs. Starving! but they want more power to kill and destroy.

Just a bird's eye view and you can see the earth is preparing for a global suicide, a total destruction, a total war. And remember again, this has nothing to do with the modern man as such. The modern man is only a victim of the whole past. And the priests go on saying that something is wrong with the modern man, and they go on praising the past.

The modern man is a by-product of the whole past! Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist -- all kinds of cultures have contributed to this situation. They are responsible.

Unless they all disappear, unless we drop this whole pathological past and start anew, living in the present, with no idea of perfection, with no ideals, with no shoulds, with no commandments, man is doomed.

Everybody is feeling negative. One may say it, one may not say it. And when one feels negative about oneself, one feels negative about everything else. One's attitude becomes negative, that of a NO. And if the negative person is taken to the rosebush he will count the thorns, he will not look at the rose flower -- he cannot. He is not capable of that. He will simply ignore the roseflower, he will count the thorns.

A woman was very unhappy. Her husband was seriously ill in hospital, and her son had just been arrested on a drug charge. So she went to the park to sit in the sun and refresh herself. She sat on a bench. As she watched, a little bird flew from a tree on one side of the bench towards a tree on the other side. When it passed over the woman, it let loose a little birdshit which hit her on the forehead. The woman's eyes lifted towards heaven, her hands came up, and she said, "You see how it is, God -- for other people they sing!"

If you are feeling negative, then the whole life becomes a dark night. Then there are no more dawns, then the mornings are never there. Then the sun only sets and never rises.

Then your dark nights are not even full of stars. What to say about stars? You don't even have a small candle.

The negative person lives in darkness, lives a kind of death. He slowly dies. That's what he thinks life is. He goes on poisoning himself in many ways; he is self-destructive. And, naturally, whosoever comes in contact with him, he destroys him too. A negative mother will destroy the child. The negative husband will destroy the wife; the negative wife will destroy the husband. The negative parents will destroy their children; the negative teacher will destroy his students. The negative priest... and all priests are negative. It is very rarely that you come across a man like Buddha or Christ or Mohammed, who is not negative -- but they are not priests: they are prophets. They bring new visions to life.

Priests exploit the prophets' vision; they distort it. They interpret it in such ways that it becomes a strategy to dominate people. Christ is not a Christian, remember; Christ was never a Christian. Christianity is created by the priests; Christianity is the creation of Saint Paul. He is the real founder of Christianity -- not Jesus Christ.

It is not Buddha who is the founder of Buddhism, but the priests who followed.... And it is so with every religion. Whenever a truth has entered into somebody's being, whenever somebody has received God, priests gather together around him. They never miss the opportunity -- they are the most cunning people. They start exploiting the situation. And once the enlightened person is gone, then the priests become the masters, the owners.

The past has been created by the priests. It is a negative past -- life-denying, anti-life, anti-love, anti-joy, anti-celebration. It has created only two kinds of people in the world those who are sincere -- just like you, Asutosh -- those who are sincere, they are suffering from negativity, anguish, despair; and those who are not sincere, they have become hypocrites. They go on talking about the anti-life religious teachings, and from the backdoor they live a totally different life. On the surface they are spiritualists, deep down they are materialists.

And, remember, I am not against materialism: I am against hypocrisy. I would like everybody to be a materialist and a spiritualist, because you are both body and soul, because God is both God and the universe. The universe is his manifestation. Your body is the manifestation of your soul.

In the past, because the religions talked in terms of anti-materialism they created two kinds of people: sincere people who had to declare that they were materialists -- and that is not good; because of that declaration they became closed to the spiritual dimension -- and then there were insincere, cunning people who talked about spiritualism and remained materialists.

You can see it in this country. My own experience is -- and I have known all kinds of people; here with me there are all kinds of people from almost every country of the world -- my own experience is that Indians are the most materialistic. They talk about spiritualism, they brag about spiritualism, but all that bragging and all that talking is just to hide, to cover their reality. They are hypocrites.

The more religious a country pretends to be, the more hypocritical it is. And then man is split. Either the spiritual dimension becomes closed, or you become a split person. And both alternatives are wrong.

A new man is needed who will affirm life, who will love life, who will love love, who will love this existence AS it is, who will not make demands that first it has to be perfect, who will celebrate life with all its limitations. And that new man is my sannyasin.

My sannyasin heralds the new man, a new beginning, a disconnection from the past, a discontinuity from the past. I don't want you to be hypocrites: I want you to be real, authentic human beings. Love your body, live your body to its totality. Love your instincts, your desires, and live them in their totality.

And you will be surprised: if you love your life, life starts opening its doors to you. If you love, mysteries are revealed to you, secrets are handed over to you. If you love your body, sooner or later you will become aware of the soul that resides in it. If you love the trees and the mountains and the rivers, sooner or later you will see the invisible hands of God behind everything. His signature is on every leaf. You just need eyes to see -- and only positive eyes can see; negative eyes cannot see. Negative eyes are blind! Negative eyes only see the wrong.

You ask me, Asutosh: I FEEL NEGATIVE ABOUT MYSELF: HOW DO YOU SEE ME?

I SEE YOU AS A BEING A BEAUTIFUL PERSON. I see you as of great worth, significance. If God has given birth to you, that is proof enough! -- no other proof is needed -- that you are fulfilling some immense need of the universe. Start loving yourself, because that is the only way to love others, that is the only way to love God. If you cannot love yourself, how can you love your creator? If you hate yourself, you will hate your creator too -- because finally HE is responsible. He has created an unworthy person like you. He has made you ugly. He has given you wrong, evil desires. He is the culprit! Condemning your own instincts, your own desires, yom own life, you are condemning, vicariously, God himself Accept yourself, otherwise you will become a hypocrite. Don't repress -- nothing is negative in you. Existence is utterly positive. Express... manifest your hiddenmost core.

Sing your song, and don't be worried what it is. Don't expect anybody to applaud it -- there is no need. Singing in itself should be the reward.

I would not like you to become a hypocrite. And who is a hypocrite? The person who says something, believes something, and lives just the contrary.

Father Flanagan is walking through the village when he is hailed by Mrs. O'Rourke.

"Would ye be joining us, father?" she calls out. "It is a bit of a party we are having."

"I wish I could," replies the good father, "but I have to go and say mass."

"What a pity," says the woman, "a fine party it is, and we are playing some lovely games.

We blindfolded the women, the men took off their trousers, and the women have been guessing who is who. And would you believe it, father, your name has been called out five times already!"

Beware! One cannot live in the negative. One can think negatively but one has to live positively. You cannot live in the no, because the no has no nourishment in it, and the no has no space in it. No is a death! One can die in a no, but one cannot live in a no.

If you want to really live, you will need a deep yes in your heart. It is only yes that allows you to live. It gives you nourishment, it gives you space to move. Just watch the word!

Even repeating the word 'yes'... and something starts opening up in you. Say no and something shrinks. Say no, repeat no, and you are killing yourself Say yes and you will feel overflowing. Say yes and you are ready to love, to live, to be.

Asutosh, to me, each individual is superb, is unique. I don't compare any individual; comparison is not my way, because comparison is always ugly and violent. I will not say you are superior to others, I will not say you are inferior to anybody -- you are just yourself And you are needed as you are. And you are incomparable -- as everybody else is.

The third question

Question 3:

Anand,

TO IMITATE IS TO GO AGAINST YOURSELF. To imitate simply means you are denying yourself and you are imposing somebody else upon you. Love Christ if you can find him, but don't imitate him. Understand the Buddha if by chance you meet him, but don't follow him. You are here with me: BE with me in deep love, in deep trust; allow me to have a communion with your heart -- let our hearts meet, merge, mingle with each other. But please don't imitate me, don't follow me.

You have to go on your own. You have to be a light unto yourself. You have to BE YOURSELF! If you imitate Christ you will be a Christian but never a Christ -- and to be a Christian is ugly, and to be a Christ is one of the most beautiful happenings. The most precious happening in the world is to be a Christ.

To be a Buddha means to be awakened to your inner light. How can you be awakened by following somebody? My sannyasins are not my followers, they are my friends, they are my lovers. They are not my followers! I am not giving you any instructions about how to live; I am not giving you any commandments about how to behave. I am not giving you any character to cultivate. I am simply sharing my insight -- I am simply sharing with you what has happened to me. I am simply telling my story to you. And I am grateful that you are listening to it.

Just listen to it as totally as possible, and then something will start happening in you. It will not be a following, it will not be an imitation. It will not be caused by me: it will be a synchronicity. It will be acausal.

The law of synchronicity has to be understood. This is one of the greatest contributions of Carl Gustav Jung to modern humanity: the law of synchronicity.

Science is based on the law of causality. The law of causality is mechanical. You heat water to a hundred degrees -- it evaporates. Where you heat it is irrelevant -- in the temple, in the church, in the mosque, it doesn't matter; in India, in Tibet, it doesn't matter.

If you heat water to a hundred degrees, it evaporates; the water has no say in it. The water cannot say, "Today I am not feeling like it." Or, "Today is Sunday and I am on a holiday, and I am not interested in becoming vapour." Or, "Today I am not in the mood, and you can go on heating and heating and I will not evaporate." Or, "Today I am suddenly feeling very generous towards you so I will evaporate at fifty degrees. I will favour you."

No, the water has no choice. The law is mechanical, it is causal. If you create the cause, the effect HAS to follow. And it is without any exception.

Because of this law of causality, science cannot believe in the existence of soul, in the existence of consciousness, in the existence of God -- because they are non-mechanical phenomena. The very methodology of science prevents it from accepting them; they cannot be absorbed in the scientific world. They will disturb it, they will destroy its whole edifice. They have to be kept out -- God, soul, consciousness, love -- they have all to be kept outside the temple of science. They cannot be allowed in. They are dangerous:

they will sabotage its whole structure. They are acausal. But they must be following some other law.

The credit goes to Carl Gustav Jung. The law has been known down the ages, but nobody had named it exactly. He called it 'the law of synchronicity'. It suddenly happened to a scientist. A scientist a hundred years ago was staying in an old house. In that old house there were two old clocks on the same wall. He was surprised to see that they always kept exactly the same time, second to second: "Old clocks, and so perfect? Not even a single second's difference?"

Being a scientist he became curious. He put one clock five minutes back, and after twenty-four hours in the morning when he looked again, they were again keeping the same time. Now it was a great puzzle. He enquired... nobody had changed, nobody had touched anything. He tried again and again, and again and again they would come to the same rhythm. Then he tried to find out: "What is happening? -- something strange. They are disconnected!"

Then he observed more minutely and he came to conclude: "The vibration of the one clock, which is more powerful, the bigger clock, goes through the wall -- just the vibration -- and keeps the other clock in tune. It is a subtle rhythm. Nothing is visible."

That was the beginning of a new phenomenon... then many many more things happened.

And by the time Carl Gustav Jung started working on how things happen in consciousness, he came to conclude that the vibe of one heart, if it is powerful enough, can change the rhythm of another heart -- just like the bigger clock was changing the smaller clock.

The vibe is invisible. There is not yet any way to measure it, but it is there. It is not tangible, but it functions. It is not causal.

That's what happens in SATSANG -- in communion with a Master. If you are with a Christ, he is a tremendous power -- he is God! He is a window to God. God is flowing through him. If you come close to him -- and that's what disciplehood is all about: to come close to a Master, to come close to a window from whom God is flowing -- his power, his vibe, will set the rhythm of your heart. It is acausal, one of those mysterious intangibles, but it has been happening down the ages.

Have you watched it? Two lovers, if they are really lovers, and deep in intimacy, slowly slowly start looking alike -- that is synchronicity. You can see it: real lovers, slowly slowly start looking like brother and sister. Something in them starts becoming synchronized, they start having the same rhythm.

The mother and the child have the same rhythm; hence, now it is a known fact, and even scientifically proved, that if a child is killed thousands of miles away from the mother, something in the heart of the mother feels the pain. She may not be able to understand it, what is happening; she may not be able to explain it. She may not know anything about what is happening to her child, but if something is happening to the child and the child is thousands of miles away -- that doesn't make any difference -- the mother's heart immediately starts feeling it. Something is broken in her heart too.

Just the other day a sannyasin wrote to me that his mother died a few days ago -- just now he has received the telegram. And he is puzzled, because the day she died he was in such agony, with no physical problem, with no psychological problem, with no visible came, but in such agony, such terrible agony, as he has never been before.

This is synchronicity. The mother and the child have lived together for nine months, the child lives in the mother's womb; his heart beats in rhythm with the mother's heart, his blood pulsates in rhythm with the mother's blood -- he is not separate at all! He is one with the mother. And that oneness persists.

When two lovers become really intimate, when they don't have any secrets from each other, when they are really open to each other, when they are not afraid of each other and not hiding anything from each other... that is intimacy. When they can say each and everything without any fear that the other will be offended or hurt.... If the lover thinks the other will be offended, then the intimacy is not yet enough. Then it is a kind of arrangement which can be broken by anything. But when two lovers start feeling that there is nothing to hide and everything can be said, and the trust has come to such a depth, where even if you don't say it the other is going to know, then they start becoming one. Then they start becoming more like brother and sister.

Many people become puzzled... just a few nights ago, a couple came to me and the husband was very much puzzled. He said, "What is happening to us? We are no more husband and wife -- all sex has disappeared, but still we feel a deep intimacy." And I told them, "Something immensely valuable is happening. You are becoming brother and sister. Your love is taking on a new dimension, a higher one -- that of non-sexuality. It is becoming purer."

Hearing it, immediately everything became clear to them. They hugged each other, tears started flowing from their eyes. It was a beautiful scene to see -- they understood it. Yes, it clicked. Yes, that's what is happening. They were worried because they came from the West -- the East has always known it: that if love deepens it transforms the relationship; husbands and wives become brothers and sisters. And ultimately a moment comes when not even brothers and sisters... a kind of oneness arises, they become one.

THIS IS SYNCHRONICITY! And this is what happens between the Master and the disciple -- on a far deeper level than any other love, on a far higher plane than any other intimacy. You need not imitate Buddha, you need not imitate me, you need not follow Christ or Krishna or Mohammed. If you are fortunate enough to be with an alive Master, just become vulnerable to him. Let intimacy happen, come closer and closer. Drop your defences and armours. And the powerful dynamo of the Master, his magnetic field, his Buddhafield, will transform you. And he will not even give you any commandment. And his transformation will not be something imposed on you but something stirred within you that will bring your own being alive.

Real life is not acting. Imitation is acting. Imitation is superficial. Real life is not a game, and if you are playing games you will never be real and you will not know what real life is.

An actor who had not worked for some time was offered a one line replacement in a show. He practised the line all the way to the theater: "Hark, I hear the cannon's roar.

Hark, I hear the cannon's roar."

Having gone through all the possibilities, he decided on the best one. When he arrived at the theater they told him his line was just about to come up and asked him if he was ready. He said he was. They pushed him out on to the stage to an enormous sound of cannons roaring. The actor jumped with fright and said, "Christ, what the hell was that?"

Life is a constant surprise. If you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan you are going to miss it. You cannot depend on rehearsals, and you cannot depend on playing superficial games. And that's what is happening: people in the churches are just playing the game of being Christians. In their real life they have nothing to do with Christ. Has any Christian anything to do with Christ?

Just watch. Christ says: "Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the kingdom of God." But look at Christians: they have become the most powerful religion in the world. The Pope is not meek; he has the greatest empire in the world -- all the Rockefellers and all the Morgans and all the Fords have nothing.... In fact, I am always puzzled how the Jews missed such a big opportunity, and the poor Italians befooled them! Such a business!

And you will become ugly if you imitate, you will become distorted -- because trying to become like Christ you will have to cut many things here and there.

Do you know that in the ancient scriptures Christ is described as a hunchback? And do you know his height? -- four feet five inches. And the ancient scriptures say he was one of the most ugly of men. Now, try to be Jesus Christ -- become a hunchback, cut your legs or your head, and distort your face and become the ugliest of men.

A man went into a tailor's shop. He tried on a sports jacket; the tailor took a tuck. The man's shoulder went up three inches. The tailor said, "That's fine -- I will fix it." He made another adjustment; the man's arm twisted into an awkward position. And an hour later he walked out in his newly fitted jacket.

Two elderly women noticed him. The first one watching him from across the street said, "Isn't that a shame -- such a handsome young man and so hopelessly crippled!"

Her friend nodded, "Yes, but doesn't that jacket fit him beautifully?"

Avoid such jackets and avoid all rehearsals.

Giant Polish dockworker, Kraczewski, was considered by most of the longshoremen to be a great lover. They claimed he could make love to twenty girls in an hour. When some disbelieving seamen showed up, bets were made and the next night twenty girls were lined up in one of the warehouses.

The big Polack went to work. He had made love to the first dozen when suddenly he fell to the floor in a state of exhaustion. His pals rushed up to him screaming, "What happened?"

"I dunno," answered Kraczewaski. "I did okay this afternoon at the rehearsal!"