Human mind is a miracle

Question 1:

Devageet again! Just two days ago you had become old, and I had to take so much trouble to bring you back. And you slip again! One time is okay, but twice is too much -- it is becoming really a serious problem.

And don't listen to gossip; you are here to listen to the gospel!

But I have also heard the gossip that is making you worried. So first the gossip:

One day at the Poona drugstore, Milarepa, Sarjano and Devageet come in to buy some condoms. Milarepa goes first and says he would like a week's supply, which is six. "Why only six?" asks the druggist.

"Well," says Milarepa, "these days I like to have Sunday off."

Next, Sarjano walks up and asks for eight condoms. "Eight?" says the druggist, "why eight?"

"Mama mia," says Sarjano, "I-a always like-a to do it twice-a on Sundays."

And last Devageet walks up and asks for twelve. The druggist, looking at his size and age, is astonished. "Twelve?" he says. "That is pretty impressive for a man of your age.

But tell me, why twelve?"

Devageet replies, "January, February, March..."

That is the gossip that is going all around. And I have to suffer from all these gossips; now I have to bring Devageet back to his senses.

First thing: feel happy that you have friends. The old saying is:

..."The person who does not gossip has no friends to speak of."

You have so many friends; everybody is gossiping about you. So it is not unfortunate -- just for the gossip's sake, just for the friends' sake -- if once in a while you become old.

But remember one thing:

... The only sure thing about youth is that it will change, and about old age, that it will never change.

Old age has something more than youth: it ends, but it never changes. People are too much worried about old age. Anybody can become old; only a great man can enquire about it. It needs some intelligence to enquire about it.

... Old age is when you have learnt to yawn with your mouth closed.

So let that be the criterion for the future. Don't be bothered by any gossip.

... People who complain they don't get all they deserve, don't realize how old they are.

Just remember one thing: old age or no old age, one should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. And it keeps one always young, at least for the appearance's sake. There are so many ways to appear young; the simplest is:

... Always fall in love with an older woman, and you will be always young. One just has to find a way -- these are problems intrinsic to life.

... Or become a monk: start preaching brahmacharya, celibacy, and you will forget all about old age; you will start making the young feel guilty. These are well-tried methods, for thousands of years. Only one thing is bad about being old and unmarried:

... Married men don't live longer than the single men, it just seems longer.

... One marriage out of every three ends up in divorce -- the other two fight it out to the bitter end.

In India, a marriage is arranged by the parents and the couple don't know each other until after the marriage. The arrangements in the West are considerably different, but the results are identical. Whether in the East or in the West, you come to know each other only after marriage, but it is too late by that time; nothing can be done about it.

... The one who sleeps does not commit sins. The one who commits sins sleeps better afterwards.

... To find out a girl's faults, talk to her girlfriends and say how wonderful she is!

... Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter.

... Never marry a beautiful girl, because she might leave you. Of course, an ugly girl might leave you too -- but so what?

... All marriages are happy. It is the living together afterwards that is tough.* Devageet, everybody here is sooner or later bound to become old. We have to understand the beauty of old age, and we have to understand the freedom of old age. We have to understand the wisdom of old age; we have to understand its tremendous detachment from all foolish things that go on in the lives of people who are still young.

Old age gives you a height. If this height can be joined with meditation, you will rather feel miserable -- why did you waste your youth? why have your parents destroyed your childhood? why was meditation not given to you as the first gift the day you were born?

But whenever you get it, it is still not too late. Even just a few moments before your death, if you can get the meaning of your being, your life has not been a wastage.

Old age in the East has been immensely respected for the simple reason that in the past it was thought almost a shameless act -- when your children are getting married, when your children are giving birth to children... and you are still infatuated, you are still in the bondage of biology? You should rise; this is time to leave the ground for other fools to play football. At the most you can be a referee, but not a player.

I loved one cartoon in a Dutch magazine. It was strange, because it all consists of world presidents, prime ministers, great leaders, dictators, kings -- I am the only person in that group who is nobody. And I am the first -- unfortunately Ronald Reagan is the last. They have called it a football team, and I am the referee. I was happy, very happy. I would have sued that newspaper if I was part of the football team, but to be a referee is a totally different matter -- let the fools play!

But it is a great insight: I am nobody, I do not count in any way, I have no power...

Whoever made the cartoon must have great insight.

Devageet, unless you can accept everything that life brings you with gratefulness, you are missing the point. Childhood was beautiful; youth has its own flowers, old age has its own peaks of consciousness. But the trouble is that childhood comes on its own, youth comes on its own; for old age you have to be very creative.

Old age is your own creation: it can be a misery, it can be a celebration; it can be simply a despair, and it can also be a dance. It all depends how deeply ready you are to accept existence, whatsoever it brings. One day it will bring death too -- accept it with gratitude.

This gratitude I call religious. This deep acceptance of everything with no complaint, with no desire for it to be otherwise, is the only religion there is.

Question 2:

Sagarpriya, the question you have asked has many implications. First, one has to understand that your mind is very ancient -- twelve years are nothing compared to the mind's history; it is the history of the whole universe from the very beginning.

It has been working so long, so efficiently that scientists say they have not yet been able to create a computer which can compete with human mind. And human mind is placed in a small space, in your skull; their computers are placed in big rooms. One scientist has calculated that it would need almost a one square mile space for a computer comparable to the human mind. Human mind is a miracle.

Sitting with me, you are sitting with a greater miracle. You are sitting with no-mind.

Naturally, silence becomes easier; meditation comes on its own, just like a cool breeze.

When you are left alone, your mind is all that you have. Unless your meditation goes to such depths that you have something more valuable than the mind, this problem will continue to happen.

With me you can have a glimpse, just for a moment. And that glimpse creates the longing to have that moment stretched to eternity. It is so peaceful, so cool, so calm, who would not like it?

But as you go back into the world, there are just computers walking all around; you have to communicate with computers. One physiologist has defined man's body as nothing but a mechanism to facilitate the mind's functioning. You think you are carrying the mind.

The physiologist is saying just the opposite: it is the mind that is carrying you; your whole body is functioning just for the mind's sake.

So the moment you go into the world -- this is not part of the world; we have been trying to create small islands where mind as a computer is no longer required. But in the world you will need the mind. And the problem will continue, Sagarpriya, until you have something more than mind. Just having a glimpse of silence is not enough.

You need a centering, you need a realization, you need exactly enlightenment -- only then can you remain in the world, without your mind functioning unless you want to use it.

Mind is a tremendously valuable mechanism, one of the greatest miracles in biology, in the evolution of man. Mind is simply unbelievable, the way it works... because you don't know anything about it, although it is your mind. You don't know how it accumulates millions of memories.

The scientists have calculated that a single man's mind can contain all the libraries of the world. He can memorize everything that has been ever written, down the ages. That is the capacity; you may use it, you may not use it.

And you don't know about the libraries. Just the British Museum Library has enough books that if you go on putting one book by the side of the other, just as you put them on the book shelf in the library, it will take three rounds of the whole world. And that is only one library! Moscow has perhaps a bigger library, and all the big universities of the world have similar libraries. Just India has one hundred universities with tremendously big libraries.

And the very idea that a single human mind has the capacity to memorize all that is written in all the books that are in existence in the whole world... it simply baffles, it looks unbelievable.

You don't know what your mind is doing for you. Your mind is regulating everything in your body. Otherwise, how do you think that for seventy or eighty years, or even a hundred years -- and there are people who have even passed that; they have reached their one hundred and fiftieth birthday, and there are a few hundred people in the Soviet Union who have passed the age of one hundred and eighty.

Scientists say there is no reason for the body to die for at least three hundred years. It is just an old hypnosis, autohypnosis, which has made the idea prevalent that you have only seventy years to live. It goes so deep in your consciousness that by the seventieth year you start thinking you are sinking, you are gone.

And anyway by the time you are retired at the age of sixty there is nothing to do. Death seems to be a relief, not a danger. We have not been capable enough and human enough to provide a situation where our old people can have some dignity, some self-respect, some pride. We have not been able to find dimensions where they can contribute to the world. And they are experienced and certainly capable of contributing enough -- enough for their self-respect, enough for them to live and not to feel like a burden.

When George Bernard Shaw became seventy years old, he started taking trips to small villages around London. His friends were surprised, "What are you doing? For days you disappear. In this old age you should rest."

He said, "I am searching for the place to rest in this old age."

They said, "What do you mean? You have a beautiful house, you have everything that you need."

He said, "You don't understand. I am going around all these villages looking in their cemeteries, at the gravestones, in search of a place where many people have lived at least a hundred years."

And finally he found a village where on a gravestone was the inscription, "This man died at the untimely age of one hundred and twenty." He said, "This is the village worth living in, where people think that at the age of one hundred and twenty it is an untimely death."

He lived in that village, and he lived beyond a hundred years.

Perhaps it has some significance... not just accidental. He was a man of tremendous wisdom; and if the villagers believe it then the atmosphere is bound to change his own conditioning.

In Pakistan there is a part of Kashmir which belonged to to India; Pakistan has occupied it for forty years. Perhaps that part, because of its secludedness, hidden behind the mountains, has not come in contact with people who die at the age of seventy. They are uneducated people; in fact they cannot count when they are seventy, so how to die at seventy? They don't have a calendar. They don't know when they were born; they don't know how old they are.

They are the most primitive people who have been found living behind the Himalayan peaks, in a valley -- in a beautiful valley, self-sufficient, and they have never gone out.

And there have been people found, according to the doctors, who are two hundred years old. And they are young; they are working in the fields, in the gardens, in the orchards, and when you ask them about their age they say, "We don't know. Nobody here knows; there is no school here."

And now Pakistan is opening schools and hospitals and you can be certain that soon people will start dying exactly at the age of seventy. Those people have just forgotten to die, because they don't remember when they were born, and they cannot count.

Scientists say that man's body has the capacity at least -- that is the minimum -- to live three hundred years. But why does man not live so long? Perhaps man does not know how to live; perhaps man does not know how to use his body, how to use his mind.

Sagarpriya, you have to understand two things very clearly: first, mind is a great miracle.

Existence has not been able to create anything higher than your mind. Its function is so complex that it baffles the greatest scientists. It manages your whole body, and it is such a complex system. Who manages that a certain part of your blood should go to the brain?

Who manages that only a certain amount of oxygen should reach to the brain? Who manages what part of your food should become bones, should become blood, should become skin? Who manages that part of your skin should become nails and part of your skin should become eyes and part of your skin should become ears?

Certainly you are not managing it, and I don't see any other manager around. So first you have to be grateful to the mind. That is a first step to go beyond mind, not as an enemy but as a friend. Listening to me continually saying that you have to go beyond mind, you can fall into a misunderstanding. I have tremendous respect for mind. We are obliged so much by the mind, there is no way to return our gratitude.

So the first thing is: meditation is not against mind, it is beyond mind. And beyond is not equivalent to against.

That misunderstanding spreads the more people talk about meditation, particularly people who don't understand meditation -- those who have read about it, those who have heard about it, those who know the techniques... And techniques are simple; they are available in many scriptures, you can read them. And now there are books on how to do anything -- car mechanics, electric engineering, anything -- you ask, and the bookseller is ready to give you a book about how to do it.

My people in Europe have been thinking to make a book with a cassette. The book will give all the background of the meditation and the cassette will give all the instructions, so you need not go anywhere. Just sitting in your room with your tape recorder and you have a master! Gautam Buddha is no longer needed....

A master will never become irrelevant for a simple reason: who will teach you to love the mind and yet go beyond it? to love your body, to respect your body? to have gratitude towards your mind, its tremendous, miraculous functioning? That will make a great friendship, a bridge between you and the mind.

With this friendship deepening, whenever you are meditating, the mind will not disturb because your meditation is not against it. It is in fact its own fulfillment, it is its own ultimate flowering. Going beyond it is not an antagonistic attitude, but a friendly evolution.

So this should be the background of all meditators: not to be a fighter. If you fight you may be able to make the mind quiet for some time, but it is not your victory. The mind will come back, you will need it. You cannot live without it; you cannot exist in the world without it.

And if you can create a friendly relationship with the mind, a loving bridge, rather than being a hindrance to meditation it starts becoming a help. It protects your silence because that silence is also its own treasure, it is not just yours. It becomes a soil in which the roses of meditation will blossom, and the soil will be as happy as the roses. When the roses will be dancing in the sun, in the rain, in the wind, the soil will also rejoice.

My approach is totally different from the approach that has been taken up to now. For thousands of years, all the religions have been teaching something against body, against mind.

And just today I came to know that there are even idiots who are teaching against meditation. The parliament of Israel has passed a law that meditation in private or in public is a criminal act. You cannot believe it!

And these politicians don't know even the ABC of the mind, what to say about meditation. But why are they so much worried? One of their worries is me, because out of my sannyasins fifty percent are Jews. Sooner or later I am going to take over Israel, there is no problem about it -- before the Palestinians take it over, I am going to take over.

Why should the politicians be concerned? And if they are concerned they should consult people who know what meditation is. To make it a criminal act is an unbelievable thing; nowhere ever...

Religions have taught against the body. That was so ridiculous -- you have to live in the body, you have to nourish the body; you have to keep it healthy, it is your home. They have been talking against mind. Now this is the latest thing -- Israel has done a pioneer work! The parliament of Israel seems to be consisting of really first-class idiots.

I don't think they know even anything about meditation, but the fear.... Jews are afraid, Mohammedans are afraid, Hindus are afraid, Jainas are afraid -- they are all afraid of meditation. Even though they talk about meditation they are afraid of it. They talk because without talking about meditation their religion seems to be incomplete, but they are basically against it because a man who becomes a meditator simply slips out of any organized religion. He is no more a Hindu and he is no more a Jew and he is no more a Mohammedan. He cannot go on believing in all kinds of superstitions and stupidities that every religion is full of.

Jews think that they are the chosen people of God. Now, no meditator can do that. To think that "Only we, the Jews, are the chosen people of God, and the whole humanity is in some way inferior to us"... But it was not only the Jews who have committed that sin.

They have suffered much for it; they are still suffering. They will continue to suffer, because the very idea is so stupid that it creates antagonism, particularly in a world where Nordic Germans think that they are the chosen people, where Hindus think that they are the chosen people, because their holy book is the most ancient and first God-written holy scripture. They cannot tolerate any ideas like Moses telling his people that "You are the chosen people of God; you have a basic right to be superior to everybody else." Who can tolerate it? Hindus think they are superior to everybody.

Jews and Hindus are the only two religions in the world which don't believe in conversion, because how to convert inferior people into a higher religion? And because they cannot convert, they are absolutely against Christianity, Mohammedanism, who are after converts continuously.

Now, because of the fear that the number of Mohammedans and Christians goes on growing and Jews and Hindus go on shrinking, there are small trends among Jews... and there is a small group of Hindus called the Arya Samaj, who have introduced conversion.

But it remains a very half-hearted thing. Deep down they know what they are doing: they are bringing inferior people into their fold. It is just out of sheer necessity; otherwise those inferior people will outnumber -- they have already -- the superior people.

Now Christians have the greatest numbers in the world; second are the Mohammedans -- and these two are the converting religions.

The fear of meditation has roots. In the law passed by the Israeli parliament it has become exposed, but it is there in every religious mind: if people start meditating, if people start loving their bodies, loving their minds, and out of love peacefully transcending towards a state of no-mind, they will not belong to any stupid ideology.

And all ideologies are so full of stupid things that it is almost impossible to count how many superstitions, and what a variety of superstitions. Some day when humanity has become one, we will need great museums to collect all the superstitions to remember our forefathers by. Just the way Darwin thought of monkeys as his forefathers, the coming generations of man will remember you and your forefathers in the same category.

I would like you to be reminded of a few superstitions... just samples, because the whole lot is too much.

Jainas think that unless your earlobes touch your shoulders you cannot become enlightened. Now I cannot see what the relationship can be between the earlobes, which are almost dead parts of your body... have you ever noticed? Can you do anything with your earlobes? Can you wave them? They are just hanging there, not doing anything. You cannot do anything with them because there is no nervous system; they are just pieces of flesh without nerves, pure flesh. And without nerves you cannot turn them up or down, here and there.

I have come across only one person -- and I have been around the world -- and strangely enough he was my classmate in first grade when I entered school. Now he is a doctor in the same town. He is the only man... some freak! He can make his earlobes move this way, that way, back, forward. He was a miracle; for some accidental reason his earlobes have grown nerves inside. Just as a few people are born with six fingers, a few people are born with three eyes, a few people are born with two heads -- just freaks -- he has really big earlobes.

I have been watching to see when he becomes enlightened. He is just a poor doctor -- he knows nothing about meditation, nothing about enlightenment. And because he is an ayurvedic doctor, patients don't come to him. Only his children go on growing, and he goes on growing poorer and poorer. Each time I have seen him I have seen him reduced, thinner, more worried. I said, "What is the matter? You are supposed to be enlightened!"

But stupid ideas... and it is not one religion but every religion. And they cannot tolerate each other.

Mohammed went to heaven sitting on his horse; the horse also went -- without wings.

Neither Mohammed had wings nor the horse, but they flew to heaven. This was happening for the first time. Jesus left his donkey here, Francis left his donkey here; only Mohammed was able to take his horse. Mohammedans think it was because he was the real prophet....

Now everybody is claiming -- Mohammedans claim that the KORAN, their holy book, is the only authentic, God-written book; all other books are man-written. And the KORAN is not even worth being considered as literature; it is just third-class. Because Mohammed was uneducated, he did not write it; whatever he was saying has been collected by people, but every sentence shows his uneducatedness, his unculturedness.

But Mohammed claims to be the last prophet of God: after him there will be no prophet because God has sent his final message through him, and that is the KORAN. All old messages are canceled -- THE BIBLE, the VEDAS, are all canceled, because when the new message has arrived it cancels all the old. It is the most developed, the most evolved message; it is so perfect that there is no need of anybody else to bring a message to the world.

Now, all these religions are claiming such things. Mohammedans say that when Mohammed used to move in Arabia -- which is a desert and really becomes burning hot when the sun comes to the middle of the sky -- God used to send a beautiful white cloud which used to move just over Mohammed's head, keeping him under shadow... a divine umbrella!

If meditation becomes more prevalent, then you will get free from all these prejudices; hence no religion wants meditation, although they may talk about it.

To me, neither God is important nor heaven nor hell nor angels -- all those are just hypothetical. To me, meditation is the very soul of religion. But it can be attained only if you move rightly. Just a single step in a wrong direction... And you are always moving on a razor's edge!

Begin with love of the body, which is your outermost part. Start loving your mind -- and if you love your mind you will decorate it, just the way you decorate your body. You keep it clean, you keep it fresh; you don't want your body to smell horrible to people, you want your body to be loved and respected by others. Your presence should not be simply tolerated but welcomed.

You have to decorate your mind with poetry, with music, with art, with great literature.

Your trouble is, your mind is filled only with trivia. Such third-rate things go on through your mind that you cannot love it. You think of nothing which is great. Make it more in tune with the greatest poets; make it in tune with people like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Turgenev, Rabindranath, Kahlil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy; make it filled with the greatest heights that mind has reached.

Then you will not be unfriendly to the mind. Then you will rejoice in the mind; even if mind is there in your silence, it will have a poetry and a music of its own, and to transcend such a refined mind is very easy. It is a friendly step towards higher peaks:

poetry turning into mysticism, great literature turning into great insights into existence, music turning into silence.

And as these things start turning into higher peaks, beyond mind, you will be discovering new worlds, new universes which we don't even have a name for. We can say blissfulness, ecstasy, enlightenment, but no word really describes it. It is simply outside the power of language to reduce it into explanations, into theories, into philosophies. It is simply beyond... but mind rejoices in its transcendence.

That's what my unique contribution is to you. With absolute humbleness I want to tell you that I am far ahead of even Gautam Buddha, for the simple reason that he is still fighting with the mind. I have loved my mind, and through love I have transcended it.

It is a totally new beginning. Naturally I have to be condemned; my people will be condemned. Many will come to me but will not be able to walk along with me even for a few steps, because soon they will find that their prejudices are preventing them from going with me.

Their prejudices are ancient, and naturally -- I can understand -- they cannot think that anybody can go beyond Gautam Buddha, just as the contemporaries of Gautam Buddha could not believe that he has gone beyond the VEDAS and beyond the seers of the UPANISHADS, just as contemporaries of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu could not believe that they have gone far beyond Confucius.

And if just out of humbleness I don't say the truth, I will be committing a crime against truth. I don't care about such humbleness; I want exactly what is the case to be explained to you.

My approach towards meditation is absolutely new, absolutely fresh, because it depends on love -- not on fight, not on war. Mahavira I have left twenty-five centuries behind. His name was not Mahavira -- mahavira means 'the great warrior'. His name was Vardhamana, but people changed his name because he was a great warrior. A warrior against whom? -- against his body, against his mind. And I don't think that anybody who is against his body and against his mind is capable of reaching the beyond.

Only love is the path.

Sagarpriya, make your mind as beautiful as possible. Decorate it with flowers. I am really very sad when I see that people don't know THE BOOK OF MIRDAD, that they have never looked into the absurd stories of Chuang Tzu, that they have never bothered to understand the absolutely irrational stories of Zen.

I cannot conceive of how you can live beautifully if you don't know Dostoevsky's books... BROTHERS KARAMAZOV to me is more important than any BIBLE. It has such great insights, that THE BIBLE should not be counted at all, even for comparison.

But THE BIBLE will be read -- and who is going to bother about BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, in which Dostoevsky has poured his whole soul? or ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy, or FATHERS AND SONS by Turgenev, or OFFERING OF SONGS by Rabindranath?And these are only a few names; there are thousands who have reached the finest flowering of mind.

First let your mind be decorated. Only beyond this perfumed garden of the mind will you be able to go silently, without any fight; mind will be a help, not a hindrance. I have not found it to be a hindrance; hence I can say with absolute authority: it is not a hindrance.

You just don't know how to use it.

It is beautiful, Sagarpriya, that when you come here you feel meditative. At least these few gaps, these few days, will slowly start becoming stronger, deeper. One day you will be gone and these moments will be with you even in the marketplace, and that will be a day of great rejoicing.

But it takes time. I have to say to people that it can happen instantly. Not that it is untrue - - it can happen instantly, but where to find the genius who can understand it instantly?

When I say it can happen instantly, people simply think, "This is impossible for us." If I say to them it can happen in a few lives' time, they feel, "That seems to be perfect," because that gives them the time to do all their stupid things meanwhile. It is a question of a few lives, so what is the hurry? First take care of your boyfriend, your girlfriend; first go to see all kinds of ruins in Rome, in Greece, in India; first do every foolish thing that is expected of you by the whole crowd. And as far as enlightenment is concerned it is not going to happen now, it will take many lives, so what is the hurry? You can go on postponing.

That's why people love all these religions which talk about many lives -- not because they understand the significance of it, but because they want to use that as an excuse.

It can happen this very moment, but it will not happen. The reason is not in its nature; the reason is you. It will not happen because you don't want it to happen right now.

Just think for a moment: if I were going to make you enlightened this very moment, you would start thinking, "But I have not asked my husband. What about my children? I have to get my daughter married. And I have just met my girlfriend, my god! and this is going to happen just now? he cannot wait? -- just let me finish my honeymoon." Thousands of thoughts will arise in your mind: "My god, I have started a new business, invested everything in it. If he had told me before, I would not have got involved in all this mess."

Everybody, without exception....

I have told you the story of a great Ceylonese master who had millions of disciples, and who had been telling them for nearabout fifty years only one thing: Meditate. The day of his death came and he announced, "After seven days I am going to leave my body, so let all my disciples gather so that I can see them one time more, because I will not be coming back again."

So all the disciples gathered; it was a great gathering. And before dying, the old man said, "I have always told you to meditate, but you have not listened. I give you another chance.

This time you have not to do anything. I am going to die, I can take you with me. Is anybody ready to come with me?"

Everybody looked at each other: "You have been long enough with him, you can go."

People looked at each other, whispered, "What are you doing? All your children are married, everything is finished, nobody needs you...." But nobody was standing up.

He said, "Just stand up, and I will take you with me."

There was great silence and people were looking downwards -- how to face this old man?

It is so embarrassing. But they were all unmoving, because he may misunderstand even the movement -- he may see that somebody is moving and say, "Get up!"

Finally one man raised his hand. He said, "First please understand this: I am not standing, I am just raising my hand to ask you a question."

The old man said, "Fifty years I have been answering your questions and still you are asking questions? And this time I am giving you the opportunity to come with me."

He said, "I'm sorry. Some day I will come. Just tell me the secret of how to come and find you."

He said, "What have I been telling you for fifty years?"

The man said, "Just one time more..."

It is possible in this very moment to drop all your prejudices, cleanse your mind. It simply needs absolute decisiveness, ultimate trust, and a love that knows no bounds.

But if it cannot happen this moment, I don't want anybody to become sad and fall into a state of despair. It can happen tomorrow. You can relax, there is no hurry. But please understand the process clearly: Love your body -- against all the religions. Love your mind, refine your mind -- against all the religions.

And I say to you that fight is not the way; love is the way. Love your body, love your mind, and that very love will create the energy, the atmosphere to transcend the mind, to create what I call meditation or the state of no-mind. It will come. It has to come. Nobody has to go from this temple empty-handed.

But you will have to understand one thing: that I don't represent any old tradition, I don't represent any old religion; I don't represent any Gautam Buddha or Mahavira or Mohammed or Jesus or Moses -- I simply represent myself.

And if you can love and trust a stranger who does not belong to any orthodox organization, then with me, meditation will be happening... and soon, without me also it will be happening. It will take a little time. It will take a little time because it needs to grow roots.

So, Sagarpriya, whenever you can find time, come. And don't be concerned with what happens outside; that is just rubbish. What happens here, count only that as your real life.

The moments that you are with me will be with you even after your death, and the moments you are wasting in the world are simply gone down the drain.

But there is no need to be worried. If even a few moments of meditation start becoming seeds in you, start growing roots in you, the day is not very far away when you will have the first flowers of your consciousness growing within you.

And I understand you, Sagarpriya; I understand you and your trust and your love. Very few people have that much love and that much trust.

But drop all antagonism towards the mind. There is some streak of fighting with the mind, maybe unconscious -- mind is just a poor and beautiful thing....

Modern police departments are beginning to use computers to help fight crime. One night a man telephoned the police and said, "Police, come quick! There is a burglar downstairs and he is putting all our valuables in a sack."

The voice on the other end said, "Keep calm. Keep calm, sir, hang up the phone, stay where you are and a police car will be right over... right over... right over...."

A computer can go wrong any moment. And mind is nothing but a computer, but created with such perfection by nature. But you have not valued it at all.

The enormous computer took up all of the huge room, completely dwarfing the two tiny mathematicians standing before it. A sliver of paper had emerged from the computer and one mathematician, after studying it gravely, turned to the other and said, "Do you realize that it would take four hundred ordinary mathematicians two hundred and fifty years to make a mistake this big?"

There are many people in the world who are becoming interested in meditation, but ninety-nine percent are in the wrong hands, and if you say this it hurts them.

Just today I have received a letter. The letter says, "The other night you spoke of Goenka's Vipassana. You blamed Goenka for being a businessman and professionalist of Vipassana. Osho, I have experienced Vipassana here at the Poona ashram, and also Goenka's Dhammpeeth at Igatpuri. I think your comment is wrong."

And this is from a man, Anand Piyoosh, who has just become a sannyasin two days ago.

In another letter before this, he says, "Due to uncertainty and indecisiveness of mind I have taken sannyas after twelve years. Due to this inability of mine I have suffered much.

How can I get freed from it permanently? -- Anand Piyoosh."

It took him twelve years to decide to take sannyas, and it took him only twelve hours to find that I am wrong in what I have said about Goenka -- no indecisiveness about this.

And if Goenka was right, then what is the need of coming here? If Goenka can teach you meditation, then why are you wasting your time here, and my time and my people's time?

And if you have such an understanding that you can simply call me wrong, then this is not the place for you.

What do you understand about meditation?

The difference between Goenka's meditation and the meditation that is happening here is immense, and for you it will take at least twelve lives to understand the difference!

Goenka is only a technician. I am not a technician. I have never followed anybody, I have simply searched on my own. It was difficult, it was dangerous, but I went on searching my path alone, finding my own ways to reach to my being.

Goenka is just a poor follower of a twenty-five hundred year old tradition of Gautam Buddha. In twenty-five hundred years -- carbon copies of carbon copies of carbon copies of carbon copies of carbon copies! Do you want to compare me with these carbon copies?

And if Goenka had understood meditation, he would have come here. His meditation would have shown him that something far higher than Gautam Buddha is in existence.

Igatpuri is not far away from here... but the coward has no guts.

And if you are so clear about my statement being wrong, then you don't understand anything of what is happening here.

Here, all the meditations are just preparing the ground, just taking out the weeds, the grass roots, the wild growth, the stones -- just cleaning the garden for me to sow the seeds. The people who are teaching meditation here, different kinds of meditation, are just preparing the ground. I am the gardener.

Goenka can prepare the ground, but from where is he going to find the rosebushes? He does not have the experience: he is not enlightened or awakened even in the ancient sense of Gautam Buddha. Just go to him and ask -- has he the courage to say that he has the same consciousness as Gautam Buddha? And I say to you that I have left Gautam Buddha twenty-five centuries back.

My therapists, my people who are preparing meditations for you, are just doing the primary groundwork. They are just preparing the ground. The ultimate and final touch I have to give.

I have my own ways to sow the seeds in you: through my words, through my silences, through my eyes, through my gestures -- just through my silence, just through my presence; it has a living field of energy.

And unless you have a living awakened being amongst you, all your therapies and all your meditations are just futile exercises; they won't help much.

For Piyoosh I would like to say, Go back to Goenka. This is not the place for you. And you have to leave right now. I am tired of idiots of all kinds. For thirty years I have suffered from idiots and I have tolerated them, but now I have decided no idiot will be allowed here.

You took twelve years to decide to take sannyas; I don't need even twelve seconds to take it away. You are no more a sannyasin. Return your sannyas papers, and you perfectly know the door. Just get out this very night, and never come here again. Go to hell -- with anybody, Goenka, or find some other idiot. There are many in India.

I exist only for those who can understand me and who can be totally with me. A man who knows nothing about me, who just within twelve hours of his sannyas starts finding that what I am saying is wrong, certainly cannot be allowed to be here. A single rotten fish can destroy the whole lake. So you will be very compassionate to all these people by leaving this place forever.

And I am always surprised... if you have found Goenka to be right, then why are you here? When somebody finds something that is helping his growth, he remains there. And if you have found Goenka to be right and still you have not remained with him, how are you going to remain with me, whom you find wrong just within twelve hours?

No, don't waste time. I am not interested in collecting crowds and retarded people. Just go to Goenka and tell him everything that I have said. And if he has guts, bring him here, so I can show you that he knows nothing about meditation as far as experience is concerned, that he knows nothing at all of what enlightenment is. All that he knows is a poor technique. But a technician is a totally different thing.

A technician can work with electricity, but that does not mean that he is Edison, that he has discovered electricity. Don't ask the poor technician about electricity -- don't ask any question about its intrinsic character; don't ask of what it consists -- he is not an Edison.

But he can do perfectly well: you don't need Edison when one of your bulbs goes out; just any idiot can do that.

The same is the situation about meditation. There are technicians and there are realized people. Unless you find a realized being, all your efforts are in vain.

Three French youngsters, respectively six, seven and eight years old, were skipping along the street.

The six year old who was in front, looked in through an open window he was passing, stopped, and waved excitedly to the others: "Come, come quickly," he said. "A man and a woman are fighting in there."

The seven year old, coming up, looked in and said, "No, you fool, they are making love."

The eight year old came up, looked in and said, "Yes, and what a terrible technique."

... Feel this peace, absorb that silence. And as you absorb it, it becomes deeper... it starts touching your heart.

There is no movement, but you will feel a dance.

There is no word, but you will feel a song.

It is as if there is nobody, but a tremendous oneness... all personalities gone and only one consciousness, throbbing in synchronicity with each other.

Just to end up this beautiful moment.... I always like to leave you laughing, singing, dancing. This is just an indication that the day when I ultimately leave you, I would like you to sing, dance and celebrate.

In fact, no man in the whole of history would have received such a celebration when he dies as I am going to receive. A few have received celebration only from enemies, because when one dies, enemies celebrate. The friends mourn.

I am the only person... in my death my friends will celebrate, my enemies will celebrate.

In my death they will come together in celebration. There has never been such a man before.

A black lady in New York received a phone call from the school that her little boy Leroy attended. The head teacher wanted to see her as soon as possible about her son's behavior.

"Your boy, Leroy," began the teacher, "is a disruptive influence."

"Just like his father," said the black lady.

"He steals from other children," continued the teacher.

"Just like his father," said the mother.

"He is always getting into fights," continued the teacher.

"Just like his father," replied the mother.

"He chases the little girls and makes them cry," said the teacher.

"Just like his father," said the black lady, "and, Lordy, am I glad I never married the man!"

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here