Chapter 07

[NOTE: This discourse will be in the book "India Coming Back Home", which has not been published, as of August 1992.]

DO YOU BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY? IS IT TRUE THAT AN ASTROLOGER PREDICTED TO YOUR FATHER THAT YOU WOULD NOT SURVIVE MORE THAN SEVEN YEARS, BUT IF YOU SURVIVED YOU WOULD BECOME A BUDDHA?

I have survived -- that's enough proof that astrology has no truth. Astrology is man's weakness, because he cannot see the future and he wants to see it. He is always afraid to go astray. He wants to be certain that he is on the right path, yet the future is absolutely unknown, nothing can be predicted about it. But there are people who are always ready to exploit man's weaknesses.

In life, only one thing is certain and that is death. Everything else is uncertain, accidental. Man would have loved death to be uncertain and everything else to be certain. Astrology is his effort to make life a certainty.

I am reminded of an old story. A great king dreamt that a black shadow was standing before him. Even in the dream he began trembling out of fear. He asked the shadow, "What is the point of making me so afraid in my sleep?"

The shadow said, "It is for your benefit. I am your death, and tomorrow evening when the sun is setting I will come to meet you again. Just out of compassion I have come to tell you. You have been a good man. This is an exception -- I never tell people when they are going to die. So you have twelve hours -- if you want to do something, do it! This is your last day."

He became so afraid that he woke up, and the dream disappeared. He was perspiring all over. It was not a dream, it was a nightmare, and there was confusion in his mind whether there was any truth in it or not. In the middle of the night he called all the astrologers of the capital to find out the meaning of the dream. They came with their scriptures, different schools of astrology, and they began to discuss among themselves, fight among themselves.

By the time the sun was rising the old servant of the king, who was almost like his father, because his father had died when he was a child and this old man had taken every care of the boy, protected him, protected his kingdom, enthroned him.... The king had great respect for the old man. The old man whispered in his ear, "If you can listen to me, my suggestion is that these fools that you have gathered here will never come to any conclusion till the very end of time. They have been discussing for centuries. Their discussion is refined, their expertise is tremendous, but what you need is not their great scholarship but a certain conclusion, and there is not enough time. My suggestion is: you have the best horse in the world. Take the horse; at least escape from this palace and this capital, as far away as possible."

It appealed to the king. He left the astrologers to discuss and he escaped from the palace. When death is facing you, you don't feel thirsty, you don't feel hungry, you don't feel any need for rest. He wanted to go as far away as possible. He crossed the boundaries of his kingdom -- by the time the sun was setting he had reached hundreds of miles away to a beautiful garden. When he was tying the horse to a tree, he thanked the horse, and he said, "I knew that you were the best horse in the whole world, but you have proved it. You have come with the speed of the wind and you have taken me out of all fear. What those astrologers could not do, you have managed to do it."

And at that very moment the sun set and he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked back -- the old black shadow that he had seen in the dream was standing there, and said, "Your horse is really the best. Not only should you thank him, I also thank him, because I was very much worried. This is the place and this is the time where you have to die and I was worried how you would reach here. Your horse is a wonder: he brought you to the right point, at the right time."

Your whole life you are afraid of death. You keep yourself engaged, you don't want to recognize the fact that death is following like a shadow and nobody knows what is going to happen the next moment. People live in the world as if they are here forever and they know perfectly well that nobody is here forever.

But these fearful people, fearful of death, of disease, of failure, become victims of cunning people.

Astrology is an exploitation. And not only does it exploit you, it gives you a great egoistic idea also -- as if millions of light years away stars are interested in you, as if their movements decide and determine your fate. This way, a small man becomes the center of the whole universe. The astrologers satisfy your ego, dispel your fears, but the science is absolutely bogus.

It is better, more courageous and spiritual, to remember that we are very small -- as small as a blade of grass. And to recognize the fact that it is good that the future is not determined, otherwise you would not have any freedom.

Astrology is against freedom. If tomorrow is decided, then I am a machine, not a man. Only machines should consult astrologers, not men.

Man's future is open and an open future gives freedom, freedom to create yourself. Astrology does not give you the freedom -- it is the greatest slavery.

Every minute detail is written and there is no way to change it -- it will happen the way it was determined. It has reduced man to a puppet, a puppet of blind forces.

I absolutely deny the validity of astrology because I am against all slavery. My whole effort is to make you aware of your freedom.

If astrology is right then Gautam Buddha, Kabir, Dadu, do not deserve any respect. It was determined; they had to become what they became. So what is great in it? And murderers do not need to be condemned. Just as Buddha is a puppet, the murderer is a puppet, and both are in the hands of... we know not, we are not aware of those hands.

No, I deny this determination. I want to say to you that the achievement of Buddha or Kabir or Nanak is their own achievement. It is their creation, it is their effort, it is their struggle. And they deserve all respect for it.

And the murderer, the rapist, the criminal -- they are also creating themselves.

They could have created themselves as a buddha, but they decided to create themselves as a murderer. The whole responsibility is theirs. Astrology takes away your responsibility. Anything that takes away responsibility from man is dangerous because responsibility is our very soul, responsibility is our very glory. Without responsibility we are just robots. With responsibility arises human freedom.

There is no science of astrology and there can never be. It is against man's spiritual growth, it is against man's freedom, it is against man's humanity.

WHAT ABOUT PALMISTRY? WHAT ABOUT THOSE LINES?

Those lines have nothing to do with the future. We can cut both your hands off -- still there will be a future. We can do plastic surgery and remove your whole skin -- still there will be a future. Those lines are simply the fold marks of your hand.

But we want to be irresponsible. Deep down we want somebody else to take the responsibility. Some god should take the responsibility and write your fate.

In India you read the hand's lines, but have you ever read the lines of the feet?

Why are you neglecting them? But there are in existence a few aboriginals who don't read the lines of the hand, they read the lines of the feet, and by that they think they are trying to find their future in darkness. These are just stupid consolations. And you can see it happening everywhere -- in different ways you can try it.

We make the birth chart and we decide according to the birth chart which man is suitable to marry a certain woman. But all your birth charts have gone wrong, because nobody seems to suit anybody.

I have never come across a husband who is happy with his wife. He may be happy with another's wife, but with the other's wife his birth chart does not suit.

I have never come across a woman who is happy with her own husband. But great astrologers, scholars, palmists have decided....

I used to live in Raipur. Living just in front of me was an astrologer, the best in Raipur. His fees were very high and every day there was a crowd of people asking him about their sons' and daughters' marriages. One day I told him, "You are deciding the future of other people. What about yourself?" Because his wife used to beat him!

He said, "It is all business. I don't know what these lines mean, they don't mean anything at all. My whole life I have been matching -- but nothing matches."

A deep desire not to take responsibility is behind the whole game, and the man who is not ready to take responsibility has refused to be a man -- he has fallen from human dignity.

Once another astrologer was very much interested in reading my hands, my birth chart. I said, "I don't have any birth chart, but hands you can read. But before you read my hands look carefully at your hands."

He said, "Why?"

I said, "That will be decided later on." He worked hard, consulted his scriptures and then he said many things. I said, "Thank you."

He said, "What about my fees?"

I said, "I told you that before reading my hands you should look at your own hands. You should have seen that this man is not going to give you the fees. If you cannot predict such a small thing, and so urgent, then everything else must be meaningless."

Man is born as a tabula rasa -- plain unwritten freedom. And this is his glory. A dog can only be a dog and nothing else -- that is determined. A dog has a fate, all your astrologers should move towards dogs, cats and all kinds of animals; they have a determined nature. If you study a buffalo you will see that she will not eat any kind of grass, only a particular grass.

Man has risen above the animals, and the basic evolution in man is that he has freed himself from all fetters that blind him. He is totally free to create himself, whatever he wants to be. Every opportunity is available. He can reach to the highest peak of consciousness, he can fall to the lowest depth of darkness. He carries both heaven and hell within him. But except himself, nobody else can decide it and nobody else can predict it.

In Bombay, a few friends brought a great and famous astrologer. I said to the astrologer, "You can predict only for one year from today, and I will tell you in writing that whatever you predict I will do absolutely the opposite. Even to the point that if you say that I will live a long life, I will die. But I will not support any slavery."

The man looked around at the people who had brought him and said, "Where have you brought me? This man is dangerous. If he commits suicide, I will be caught. Why did you tell him that he would live long, when he has said that he will do exactly the opposite?"

I said, "Just for a small experiment you can say that I will not hit you and I will hit you right now. That will be decisive."

He was very angry. I said, "That does not matter. What matters is that my actions are my actions and I take the whole responsibility of my actions. Good or bad, but I do not want to throw them on the shoulders of God, fate, kismet, all that nonsense. It is time that we should get rid of it. It has kept this country poor because what can you do? -- your poverty is written in the stars. You cannot stop the growing population. What can you do? -- children are sent by God. You don't take any responsibility for anything. Without responsibility there is no freedom, and without responsibility you fall down to the level of animals, not man.

Astrology is for animals, not for man.

YOUR VIEWS ARE ALWAYS CHANGING, NOT CONSTANT. SO AS OF TODAY WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON MAHAVIR AND KRISHNA, ON MOHAMMED AND CHRIST?

Life is not static. In existence there is only one thing that never changes and that is change.

I am not a stone. I move, I change -- these are the symptoms of being alive. But I always change for the better. I love these people -- Buddha, Krishna, Mahavir -- but my love is not blind. I can see that these people reached great heights of consciousness, but they have committed very grave mistakes too. And when a small man commits a mistake, the mistake is bound to be small. When a man of the height of Gautam Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna commits a mistake, the mistake is also as great as the man. And the mistake goes on for thousands of years.

I love them because they made a great effort, a tremendous effort to come out of darkness, of unconsciousness, to reach to the light. But on the way they also committed a few mistakes.

The trouble is that the millions of people that have come after them cannot rise to the heights of their consciousness, but can easily fall victim to their mistakes.

Because to fall is easy, to rise is very difficult -- it is a uphill task.

People have a mind that says a man is either good or bad. People think in terms of either/or; that's not right. A bad man may have something which is beautiful and great, and a good man may have something which is ugly and to be condemned. But that does not make any difference. So first let me make it clear to you that I don't think in the way of either/or. I take the whole person.

Whatever is good I praise -- but that does not mean that I become blind to things which are not good.

Naturally, mind moves like a pendulum from one extreme to another extreme. I am not an extremist. I praise Gautam Buddha, I praise Mahavira, but not their extremism. First Krishna created a destructiveness in the country, then they created a kind of impotence in the name of nonviolence. For two thousand years you have been slaves -- who is responsible?

Such a big country, yet small tribes came and ruled over you because nonviolence became your cherished goal.

The man of wisdom remains in the middle. He does not do violence to anybody - - but he does not allow anybody to do violence to him either. Because in both ways he is supporting violence.

Seeing this happening, Sikhism was born, which is exactly in the middle. There is no question of violence as a goal, or nonviolence as a goal; but giving man an insight that to be destructive is bad, to destroy life is bad, yet to allow anybody to destroy you is the same. So don't be violent with others; but if somebody is going to be violent with you then your sword should be with you.

Sikhism made it a point that five things make a Sikh -- the sword is one of them.

The sword is not to kill anybody but it is just to make everybody aware that, "We are not vegetables -- if you go on cutting us we will respond."

I appreciate Mahavira, a man perhaps never equaled in his struggle to find himself, a man of tremendous power. But he went to the extreme again.

It is good not to have many possessions because all your possessions become your anxieties and there is no end to it. You can go on and on and the mind goes on asking for more and more.

Mahavira was the son of a king, was going to be enthroned, was going to be the successor. He renounced the kingdom. I do not object to it -- but don't take things to extremes. Renouncing the kingdom is perfectly good if you don't want to be worried -- and a kingdom is a constant worry and tension and anguish -- if you want peace and silence and you want to devote your energies towards inner growth.

But I cannot support being naked. Clothes are not such a worry. I have been using clothes, you have been using clothes, and they have never worried me. So I don't think they are stopping your spiritual growth. In fact if it is cold and you are not wearing clothes, that will stop your spiritual growth, that will create tension in you.

But he went to such an extreme point that he would not use any instrument, even a razor to shave his beard or his hair. Now a razor is not an atom bomb. He started pulling out his hair -- that is stupid. And I want to maintain that even a genius can have a part in him which is idiotic. Every year he would pull out his hair with his hands because he could not use any instrument. I don't see any spirituality in it.

Wherever I see something that goes to help the evolution of consciousness, I am for it. It does not matter whether it comes from Mohammed or Moses or Mahavir. Men are unimportant; what is important is the evolution of consciousness. But there should be a balance, otherwise the pendulum naturally moves to the other extreme.

Mohammed gave the name Islam to his religion. Islam means peace, and Islam has created more turmoil in the world than any other religion. Certainly Mohammed must be responsible for it. On his sword he has written "Peace is my message." "Peace is my message" is not to be written on a sword, because the sword is not a message of peace.

My approach towards all great people who have lived on the earth is to sort out what is relevant to us and what is not relevant to us. Mohammedanism was born in a country which was not very sophisticated. It knew only one logic, the logic of the sword. And the sword is not a logic. Mohammedanism has remained exactly where it was left by Mohammed because he said -- and I condemn it -- "I am the last prophet of God. The Koran is the last amendment in God's previous messages. Now there will be no other prophets and no other changes."

Now this is fanatical and whoever said it -- it does not matter who -- is wrong.

Life will go on growing and man will need new messages and new people to work out new problems. And the Koran is not a great religious treatise either -- it has not the flights of Upanishads, it has not the insights of Gautam Buddha. It was natural because Mohammed was teaching uneducated people, but those uneducated people are still carrying the same sword in one hand and the Koran in another. Either accept the Koran or the sword.

All the Mohammedans that exist in India, all the Mohammedans who have created Pakistan, are not convinced intellectually that Mohammedanism is a better religion than the religion they left behind. They have been forced into Mohammedanism. And religion is one thing that cannot be forced, should not be forced. Everybody should be allowed to express his vision and everybody should be allowed either to accept it or not to accept it. Not accepting it is not insulting.

Religion grows only in a climate of freedom. Mohammedanism has not even given that to Mohammedans.

People are puzzled because what I have said yesterday I may not say today, and what I am saying today I may not say tomorrow. I am a living being, I am not dead.

Only when I am dead you can be at ease with me, otherwise you cannot be at ease with me. You want to quickly cling to anything that comes into your hands and then you don't want to change it. Fear... but life is a Ganges, it goes on flowing.

The real man is always a river. Only dead people are ponds, their water evaporates, they become more and more muddy, and they are dead because there is no flow.

Whatever I am saying today is not going to be contradictory tomorrow, it will be something higher and better. But to understand the better and higher you will have to rise to that height, otherwise it will look contradictory.

I am a simple man, I don't have any dogma, any creed. I simply have a clarity. I have eyes to see, and when I see that changes are needed I don't care what the consequences will be for me -- that's why I have been unnecessarily condemned by the whole world. Because if I say anything against Jesus, Christians are angry.

You will be surprised -- when I spoke on Jesus a few years ago, many Christian publishers in Europe and America were eager to publish it. One Christian publisher in England published ten books and just a few days ago I received a letter, "We cannot publish what you are saying now."

I said, "You have never published anything that I have said. You were simply publishing because I appreciated the light part of Jesus Christ. Now I am making the picture complete, the other side has to be shown too. And you don't have the courage to see the other side."

In my criticism there is no condemnation of anybody. It is a question of whether it comes close to truth or not, and no man has the monopoly on truth. Truth is so vast and we are so small. Truth has so many facets; at one time we can see only one side. When you see the other side, if you are a coward you will remain quiet because people will say that you are now changing your attitude. I am not addicted to any attitude, any creed. Whatsoever comes to my vision I would like to share with you.

I don't want you to agree with me, I don't want you to disagree with me, I simply want you to be open, available, ready to listen. If there is some truth in it, it will reach to your heart. If there is not any truth in it, it will drop on its own accord, it will not reach to your heart.

YOU WERE A PROFESSOR IN A COLLEGE, AND EVEN TODAY YOU ARE A TEACHER, A MASTER. WHAT SORT OF EDUCATION SHOULD BE IN OUR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES?

I have been a teacher, and I left being a teacher in the university because I cannot do anything against my conscience. And your whole education is not to help man but to cripple him. Your educational system is to support the vested interests. I was unable to do it. I refused to do it.

A real education will be rebellious because its eyes will be on the future, not on the past. Nature has not given you eyes behind your head. If nature wanted you to go on looking at the back it was useless to give you eyes to look ahead.

The Indian educational system is still the same as the British government had imposed on India's mind. Their purpose was to create clerks, slaves, and the same educational system continues; because now those who are in power also want clerks, slaves. Nobody wants the truth to be spoken, nobody wants the future to be created, but only the past to be exploited.

I would like to see an educational system that is not devoted to the government, not devoted to this rotten society, but devoted to the man, the growing child.

Man has a body but your education does nothing for the man's body. We know that man's body can be trained to remain healthy, strong, young; but nobody bothers about the body. In education there is no programme.

Man has a mind, but education is only concerned to condition the mind according to those who are in power so it becomes servile. This is against humanity. Mind should be made clean, sharp, intelligent; but nobody wants an intelligent mind, nobody wants a sharp consciousness. They are dangerous because these people will not say yes to any nonsense. Education has to be rebellious in the sense that a man becomes capable of saying yes or no, on his own accord.

If too much intelligence is dangerous then every government, every country wants people to be retarded. Retarded people are obedient.

I have heard that after the first world war psychologists for the first time tried to measure man's intelligence. The army was a good place and they were shocked to see that thirteen years was the average mental age in the army. The man may have been seventy years old but his mind had stopped growing after thirteen years. But in the army they don't want intelligent people.

In the second world war, a professor was recruited to the army because there was a shortage of soldiers. The professor said again and again, "I am absolutely incapable of being a soldier." But nobody listened to him.

The first day he was put on the ground and the orders came from the captain, "Left turn, right turn, turn to the back"... but the man simply stood where he was standing. The captain was amazed; he knew this man was a famous professor.

After the exercise of right turn, left turn, turn back, go forward a few yards, come back again... when the line was again back in the original position, he came to the professor who was standing all the time in his place. He said, "What is the matter with you. Can't you hear my orders?"

He said, "I can hear your orders but what is the point? These idiots went right, went left, went this way, went that way... and finally ended up in the same position in which I have been standing all the time. And when you say, `right turn' I cannot simply turn right. I have to convince myself -- why? Why turn right, why not left? Without a rational support I cannot turn right or left -- you cannot make me act like a fool. What is the point of turning right?"

Nobody had ever asked this of the captain. He said, "This is strange. I will have to ask the higher authorities what to do with this man. If he cannot turn right and has to have everything rationally explained... and what reason can I give? This is just an exercise."

The professor said, "Exercise I can do at my home. There is no need to come here in this cold and to do stupid things."

The higher authorities said, "He is a famous professor. He cannot do anything without an intelligent, rational support. You send him to me, I will give him some other work."

He took him to the army's mess, gave him a big pile of green peas and told him, "You sit down. Put the big peas on one side, on the other side the small peas, and after one hour I will come and see what you have done." After one hour when he came the professor was sitting and the pile of peas was sitting exactly as he had left it, not even a single pea was removed. He said, "You have not done anything."

He said, "There have been so many problems and so many implications."

He said, "Such a simple job! What problems?"

He said, "The first problem is there are big peas, there are small peas, but there are also peas which are in between -- where to put them? And what is the point of all this nonsense. All these peas are going to be in one pot, big and small, so why bother?" He was released, he was of no use.

Every army, in the morning, in the evening, goes on training people. You think it is training, it is not training! It is simply destroying their intelligence. It is a preparation so that when the order comes to shoot they don't think why, they simply shoot. They don't think, "This man has not done anything to me, why should I shoot him?" The why has disappeared in the discipline. There is a reason for the discipline, but it is not only in the army, it is all over the society.

If you ask your parents about God they have no answer because their parents never gave any answer to them. They say, "Wait, when you are bigger you will know."

One of the friends of my father was thought to be the wisest man in the town and when I used to ask him he would say, "On each point, just wait. When you are mature, bigger, you will understand."

This went on and on. I came from the university, I had been top in the whole university. I said to him, "Now it is time. I have been top in the whole university, so what about my questions?"

He said, "You wait."

I said, "Now this is going to be too much. I have waited too long. Be honest, do you know the answers or not?"

He was an honest man. He said, "To tell the truth, I don't know. This was just a strategy that has been used for centuries. With you the difficulty is that you go on asking. Most people as they grow up become involved in other things and no longer care about these questions, they forget. And mostly they get married, their children start asking them, so they start saying, `Wait. When you become bigger you will get the answer.' The difficulty with you is that you are unmarried."

I said, "This is strange. Do you think marriage will solve the problems? I cannot see that by getting married I will know what God is, otherwise all those who are married would know. You have been thrice married, you must have known all the mysteries."

He said, "I don't know anything. But this is how to get rid of children, otherwise they will torture you."

But this does not help their intelligence. It would have been better if they had said, "We don't know. We ourselves are searching ." That would have been honest, that would have been religious. This is cunning, this is not religious.

The whole society is living in hypocrisy. You don't know God, still you worship.

You don't know anything, still you are ready to answer because those answers have been given to you. So you are simply repeating them like parrots.

I would like an educational system which does not give you answers but makes your questions sharper, makes your intelligence keener, and gives you an integrity.

Your body should be taken care of, your mind should have a clarity, and your soul -- which is completely neglected, nobody mentions it.... You should be allowed to meditate, you should be taught how to be silent. And silence is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian, silence is just silence. You should be helped to become a deep silence inside so that you can understand your own self.

That will make you a religious individual, without teaching you about God, without teaching you about things which even idiots will doubt. You will not be made into a Mohammedan, you will not be made into a Christian or a Jaina or a Sikh, but you will be made into an integrated, healthy, conscious, intelligent, centered, well-rooted individual. But that goes against all the powers because they cannot then enslave you.

All other things that are being taught can be taught, but these things should be added. An education that does not create individuality is not education at all, it is miseducation.

IS THERE ANY RELIGION OR SPIRITUALITY IN HAVING NINETY-THREE ROLLS-ROYCES, DIAMONDS, AND ALL SUCH THINGS? AND IS THERE ANY SPIRITUALITY OR RELIGION IN WOMEN UNDRESSING IN THE COMPANY OF MEN? IS IT REALLY NECESSARY?

There is only spirituality, there is no religion. Religion is only another name for it. It is better to call it spirituality because it is less contaminated. The word `religion' has become contaminated. The moment you say religion the idea arises of Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity -- that is the contamination. The word is beautiful but it has been polluted.

Spirituality is still unpolluted. When you hear the word `spirituality' it has no adjective to it, although the basic experience is the same. Spirituality means that you know that you are not only the body, that you are not only the mind; that body and mind will die because they were born. You were before your birth and you will be after your death -- and this experience comes while you are alive if you can enter into yourself in silence, in meditation.

Spirituality is not a renunciation. It is not renouncing the world, it is transforming the world. Spirituality does not mean poverty, spirituality means you are inwardly rich and every effort should be made so that you are outwardly also rich, because there is no contradiction.

There is no need to go to the Himalayas and sit in a cave to meditate when in your house you can make a small air-conditioned cabin, soundproof, which will be far better than any cave in the Himalayas. In the old days there was no other way to find a place where there was no noise, but now you can make it in your home. Every home should have a small meditation cell -- it should be soundproof, it should be air-conditioned, so you can sit at ease.

Spirituality does not mean torturing yourself -- standing on your head, distorting your body. Leave all that to the magicians.

Spirituality simply means tranquility -- so deep that you come in contact with the universal silence that is running within you. And there is no reason why you should not be rich. In fact, a spiritual person has more intelligence, more creativity, more understanding -- he can be the richest person in the world. And his richness will have two dimensions, the inner and the outer.

My contribution is that I want it to be clearly understood that outer richness does not destroy your inner spirituality, neither does outer poverty help it. A hungry man cannot sit silently. A naked man shivering in the cold cannot sit silently.

And even if you are not hungry, you are not cold, but you are surrounded by beggars , then too you cannot sit silently. You have a heart....

I would like this world to be rich in both ways. And when we can have the world rich in both ways why choose one? Up to now, this has been the case -- the West has chosen outer riches, and the East has chosen inner riches. In other words, the East has chosen outer poverty and the West has chosen inner poverty. Both are in difficulty, they have everything and nothing.

You have the whole art and science of becoming inwardly rich. But you are so poor that it is difficult in your poverty even to think of the inner.

Rudyard Kipling, one of the English poets, has written, "East is East, West is West, and never the twain shall meet." And I want to say to you that he is absolutely wrong. Neither West is West, nor East is East -- it is one earth and the meeting is going to happen, not geographically but spiritually. If we can accept that inner richness and outer richness are supportive to each other -- and they are -- then there is no reason for any conflict between East and West.

I have heard about an American billionaire who got tired of having all his billions and billions of dollars but no peace. In search of peace he traveled all over the world, but he could not find a master. Somebody said, "High on the Himalayas there is a man, perhaps only he can help you."

Tired, tattered, somehow he reached to the highest peak and it was true, an old man was sitting there. Before he could say anything the old man said, "Have you got a cigarette on you? It has been too long... nobody comes here. And being a spiritual man, I cannot go down to get a cigarette. First things first -- have you got a cigarette? Then you can ask your spiritual questions. Let me enjoy the cigarette, then you can enjoy the philosophy."

The man was shocked. He has gone around the world in search of peace and finally he is ending up with this old idiot who is in search of a cigarette.

He took his packet of cigarettes, gave the whole packet. The old man said, "Great.

Now what is your problem?"

He said, "My problem is I want peace of soul."

He said, "That's easy. Go home, there is no need to come here. You can see me, how I have been caught here. You have everything. Let that everything be there, enjoy it. But don't take the weight of it on your head. I was also rich but stupid saints preached to me, `Renounce everything.' I renounced, and now I am begging for a cigarette.

"Don't renounce! Go back! You have everything outside, this is the time that you can relax; now there is nothing else to achieve in the outside world. All ambitions fulfilled, now relax, sit silently. And you have the time, you can afford it. Just remember, when you come next time bring a few more packets because here cigarettes are absolutely not available. And don't ask about peace of mind because I don't think about anything else except cigarettes! That old habit... I have left everything but how to leave an old habit?"

Just be intelligent in life. Whatever you have got, use it to create an atmosphere for yourself so that you can relax. Have a good house, have all that is beautiful -- paintings, music, art. They don't prevent you from being spiritual. And surrounded with all this beauty, art, paintings, find time just to sit silently.

You are capable of finding it now. In other words, outer richness should not be taught as a blocking stone but as a stepping stone. So whatever you have got, if it is enough for your needs then don't bother for more. You have come to the point from where a new journey starts.