Crime: a crowd psychology

I continuously feel sad and sorry for Kahlil Gibran. He does not really belong to the crowd. He belongs to the highest peaks of human consciousness, but he knows not the way.

It seems basically he is a poet but once in a while, in his dreams, he has seen the sunlit peaks of his consciousness, too. He has tried his best to convey whatever his dreams have revealed to him - but dreams don't reveal the truth.

At the most, the best dream is nothing but a full moon night, shadowed, reflected in a lake. If the lake is silent - no ripples, no wind blowing and disturbing it - it becomes a mirror and one can see the moon in that mirror. But it is not the real moon, it is only the reflection. A small pebble thrown in the lake, and all the silver of the moon will be spread in ripples all over, and the moon disappears.

So is the case, unfortunately, with Kahlil Gibran.

When he describes the moon he is really describing the reflection of the moon. The reflection is almost exactly like the moon - and sometimes even more beautiful. The lake also enhances the beauty; the silence surrounding the lake also makes the dream richer. But howsoever rich a dream may be, it is still a dream.

Again I can make the distinction between the poet and the mystic: the poet at the most sees the reflection; the mystic sees the moon. So they are very close, and sometimes the poet comes to describe the moon so realistically that almost anyone can be deceived. Moreover, the poet has an articulateness which is not necessary for a mystic. So you can be deceived. The mystic may look ordinary in his expressions, and the poet is able to decorate his dreams according to his own articulateness.

I feel sad and sorry for Kahlil Gibran that he remained satisfied with the reflection in the lake. He never thought about what the reflection was of. He was a great dreamer, and his dreams brought magic to his words. Again and again you will see him coming very close to the truth; but he goes on missing the point.

THEN ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE CITY STOOD FORTH AND SAID, SPEAK TO US OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.

AND HE ANSWERED, SAYING:

IT IS WHEN YOUR SPIRIT GOES WANDERING UPON THE WIND THAT YOU, ALONE AND UNGUARDED, COMMIT A WRONG UNTO OTHERS AND THEREFORE UNTO YOURSELF.

This can never be said by a man who is awakened, who has seen the real moon. In fact, he will say just the contrary.

Let me repeat Kahlil Gibran and show you how he goes on being a Gautam Buddha - missing again and again. I don't feel sad and sorry for everybody, but Kahlil Gibran has the potential, and is unaware of it. He says:

IT IS WHEN YOUR SPIRIT GOES WANDERING UPON THE WIND THAT YOU, ALONE AND UNGUARDED, COMMIT A WRONG UNTO OTHERS AND THEREFORE UNTO YOURSELF. The truth is, it is WHEN YOUR SPIRIT GOES WANDERING UPON THE WIND THAT YOU, ALONE - absolutely alone - for the first time know what virtue is.

Man has never committed crimes unto others and unto himself in his absolute aloneness. He commits crimes in the crowd, with the crowd - because in the crowd and with the crowd he does not feel responsible for what he is doing. He is simply a cog in the machine. He can easily say, "I was doing something which was being done by everybody else."

In India, almost every day somewhere or other there are riots amongst Hindus and Mohammedans, Jainas and Mohammedans.... I used to live in a city which is famous only for its riots. A small excuse, and the whole city is on fire... because that city was almost balanced in population between Mohammedans and Hindus. And small and stupid things, which are thought to be religious, spiritual....

For example, if you - with your music, your drums, your songs, your flutes - pass a Mohammedan mosque and don't stop your music, it is enough to kill hundreds of people, to burn dozens of houses.

And the first victim of all these riots is the woman. She is raped, taken away. And Hindus cannot accept a woman who has been raped by a Mohammedan. Even if he has not raped her, but the woman has stayed in the house of a Mohammedan just for one night, that's enough for the primitive Hindu mind to condemn her. She has lost her soul, her spirituality. She cannot be accepted.

I was watching these riots for almost twenty years continuously, and I was wondering - nice, beautiful, very loving people - how do they suddenly change? Just a rumor is enough, and killing and murder and violence start.

In the university, one of the professors - a very nice, loving human being - when I saw him putting fire to a Hindu temple I could not resist the temptation to ask him. After the riots were over and the curfew was withdrawn, I said, "I could have believed anybody to be so ugly and violent, but not you.

I want to ask a few questions: one is, could you alone burn the Hindu temple, which has not harmed you or anybody?"

He said, "Why are you asking this?"

I said, "I want to understand the psychology of crime."

Tears came to his eyes, and he said, "Alone it is inconceivable, but in the crowd one becomes just a part of the crowd. And when there are so many people putting fire to the temple, some unconscious urge for violence, destruction, animality, surfaces."

One forgets completely his own individuality; he becomes just a cog in the machine. Whatever he does is not his doing, it is the doing of the unconscious crowd. And he is pulled in by the crowd.

Kahlil Gibran seems to be absolutely unaware that wandering upon the wind in your total aloneness, one becomes enlightened, not a criminal. Crime as such is part of the mob psychology. It seems consciousness is something like water. Water always keeps the same level - and when you are part of a crowd, your consciousness also comes to have the same level, same blindness, as the mob.

People in their aloneness have become Everests, the highest peaks of consciousness. But the crowd has never risen to consciousness; you have never heard about a crowd which is enlightened.

It is always the individual who has the capacity to rise on the winds, just like an eagle flying alone across the sun, to greater and greater freedom.

The mob is always of the slaves, of the people who are afraid, people whose beings are full of fear.

Lions don't move in a crowd. In their dignity and pride, in their glory and magnificence, they stand alone. It is only the sheep, cowards - full of fear, always concerned about their death - they remain in a crowd.

You will not see a sheep alone. Alone, she starts feeling lost. She does not know what to do, where to go. It was always the crowd psychology which has dominated her.

Crime is not born out of the aloneness of man. It is born out of the cowards, who are not capable of being alone.

With the crowd there is a certain security, a certain coziness - just watch a crowd of sheep, how they move. They don't even leave spaces. Touching each others' bodies, they move as if they have one consciousness. And they are happy in their non-individuality.

Crime comes not out of individuals, it comes out of those who cannot experience aloneness and the heights of the winds, who cannot open their wings, out of fear that they may be lost. Kahlil Gibran's idea is absolutely misleading - categorically wrong.

But the last part of his statement, taken separately from the whole, has a reflection of the moon - when he says that when you commit a crime against others, you are also committing a crime against yourself. I say it is a reflection because in a reflection, a change happens. When you are standing before a mirror, your right eye in the reflection becomes your left eye; your left eye in the reflection becomes your right eye. The same has happened even with this statement which has some reflection - it is a reflection, and cannot be truly representative of truth.

He says, when you commit a crime against other people you are also committing a crime against yourself. The reality is, before committing a crime against others you have already committed a crime against yourself. Unless you have committed a crime against yourself it is impossible to commit a crime against others.

This proves my hypothesis that he is looking at the reflection. How can you be full of hate towards others if you are not full of hate towards yourself? And how can you be loving to others if you are not loving to yourself? You come first - and you do to other people the same that you are doing to yourself. So the reality is almost vice-versa.

In aloneness is born your freedom, your independence. In aloneness your consciousness has nothing else to be busy with - left alone, it starts turning upon itself; there is nowhere else to go.

And when consciousness becomes a circle, coming back to the source from where it started, your life is no more the old, unconscious life. Because the returning consciousness goes on dispelling all darkness from every nook and corner of your being.

And when you are full of light you have tasted godliness for the first time.

In aloneness, nobody commits a crime - cannot commit a crime.

AND FOR THAT WRONG COMMITTED MUST YOU KNOCK AND WAIT A WHILE UNHEEDED AT THE GATE OF THE BLESSED.

There is no need to wait at the gate of the blessed, because in your aloneness you have become the blessed. That is the meaning of the Sanskrit word Bhagwan - the blessed one.

But even people like Jesus are unaware of what they are saying and what they are doing. His whole life he was telling people, "You are sheep and I am your shepherd." This is humiliation! To call a human being a sheep means you have taken all his dignity, you have destroyed his freedom, you have made him part of a mob.

And all the religions have done it, whether they say it or not, for a simple reason: because unless people are sheep, how are they going to be shepherds? The priests, the theologians, the politicians, all need you to remain sheep - just a crowd. Every effort is being made to destroy your individuality and to destroy your aloneness, because if you are alone you will be a lion. And lions don't need any shepherds.

Yes, once in a while, for a breakfast....

My effort with you is to bring you out of this constant conditioning that you are part of a crowd - no, you are just yourself. And you are not sheep, you are lions.

And that's where you can see the difference between Jesus and Gautam Buddha. Gautam Buddha used to say that whenever a person becomes initiated into meditation, enters his own soul - where nobody else can enter, where he is going to be absolutely alone - there arises in him the lion's roar.

Buddha is giving dignity to you, he is transforming you from the world of sheep into the glory of being a lion.

I want my people to be lions.

You can be together - not as a crowd, but as a gathering of lions; each one separate and individual, allowing space for everybody else.

It is because of people like Jesus - who are beautiful, in many ways - that the world is suffering all kinds of oppression, exploitation. Because what can a sheep do? No one has ever heard of any revolution happening in a crowd of sheep. They are very obedient to the crowd. They are very obedient to the shepherd.

The shepherd is not going to save them; he has already destroyed them. And to call himself a shepherd and all other human beings just sheep, shows a deep-rooted ego - not enlightenment, where ego disappears, when one is but there is no "I", no ego, no longing to be superior and holier than others.

The misunderstandings in Kahlil Gibran are deeply connected with the misunderstandings of Jesus Christ. He loved Jesus, his language reflects Jesus, his statements reflect Jesus, although he is far more poetic. Far more beautiful is his way of expression - but never be deceived by the expressions, howsoever beautiful they are. Dissect all those beautiful expressions and you will not find anything within them. Or, what you will find will be only darkness, misunderstanding, ignorance.

The people who have been in search of truth have always gone in aloneness. And the people who want to find the meaning of life have always gone into themselves, where nobody else can enter.

Aloneness outside... aloneness inside... and you have come to a point where you can roar like a lion. Of course, millions of sheep are going to be annoyed with you, because they cannot roar like a lion and they cannot soar like an eagle. They have been told just to believe in the crowd in which they have accidentally been born.

A person who remains part of a crowd never attains his true individuality. He remains fake.

You have heard the expression, which exists in almost all languages: A sheep hiding itself in a lion's skin. These kinds of sayings are not out of the wisdom of centuries, they are out of the ignorance of centuries. I would like to put the proverb right: The truth is that you are a lion forced to live in the skin of a sheep.

And there is no need, and there is no place where you have to knock to find the blessed one. Yes, there is a space where the blessed one is already waiting for you - and it is within you. Neither Jesus nor anybody else can lead you there - only you. If you revolt from being a sheep and gather courage to roar like a lion and to move like a lion, you will be the blessed one.

LIKE THE OCEAN IS YOUR GOD-SELF; IT REMAINS FOREVER UNDEFILED.

This is the beauty of Kahlil Gibran, that although he falls again and again, he gets up....

He lived almost his whole life in America, where the motto of every American is: Try and try and try again! And the poor fellow is doing the best he can, but he falls - and you have to remember this, and you have to be very mindful, very alert, when you are reading Kahlil Gibran or anybody else.

A great calamity has happened to humanity. A idea has become settled in the minds of people that if someone is right, he is always right, and if someone is wrong he is always wrong. If somebody is a saint he is always a saint - day out, day in; and if somebody is a sinner he is always a sinner - day out, day in.

This is not the reality. Even sinners have moments when they are saints, and even saints go for a holiday.

This calamity goes back to Aristotle, the father of Western logic, because he accepts only two categories: either you are right or you are wrong. He forgets that there is a possibility of many positions between right and wrong. He has also forgotten the simple fact that you may be right in one thing and wrong in another thing.

But it needs tremendous awareness - and particularly with people like Kahlil Gibran, whose words are hypnotizing. They are almost like a lullaby; they are very soothing, even if they are wrong. You become so impressed by them, you lose all your interest in being alert, aware, watchful.

Like the ocean is your god-self... This is true. Your being is not confined to your bones. Your being is not confined to the bag of skin in which you are living - you call it your body. Your being is as vast as the ocean.

All the rivers of the world go on bringing every kind of rubbish, crap, dirt, dust, because they have been passing through thousands of miles. And for millions of years they have been falling into the ocean, but the ocean remains undefiled. This is a truth to be remembered. It should be written in letters of gold.

You have done all kinds of actions, good and bad. You have been right and wrong, you have seen all the days and all the nights of your life, you have been to the temples and you have been to the prostitutes - but your being remains undefiled, just as the ocean. You are so vast... these small things don't matter at all in the last reckoning.

Hence I say to you, never judge anybody by any small action that he has done. Somebody has stolen, somebody has murdered, somebody has lied - these are small actions. Don't judge the man and his whole life on the basis of a small action.

And remember the ultimate truth - that whatever you do, your innermost core remains undefiled.

There is no way to pollute your being, to corrupt your soul. Within a second... if you become aware of your inner being, you will be surprised: "I was condemned by everybody, I was condemning myself, but my real being has remained untouched. It is always virgin, always pure."

I would like to tell you a beautiful story.

There was a man, thousands of years before. His name was Valmik; his profession was robbery.

And if needed, he had no hesitation in killing people. If they resisted giving him their money, their valuable things, he had no hesitation for a single moment to kill them. He was a strong man.

At that time he was not known as Valmik, he was known as Valya Bhil - the bhils are aboriginal, primitive tribes. And who would call Valya Bhil "Valmik"? - because Valmik means the same, but becomes respectable. He was a robber and a murderer, and everybody knew it.

It was very rare that people would pass through the forest where he lived. The road had almost become unusable, because whoever passed that way was going to be robbed or killed.

A musician, a poet, and a very beautiful man, Narada, who always, even while moving, continued to play on a very simple musical instrument - and remember, the more simple the instrument the more difficult it is to create great music out of it. He used to carry a simple instrument, an ektara - a one-stringed sitar. It is easy when there are many strings to create music, because you can create different notes on different strings. The ektara has only one string - that is the meaning of ektara.

Ek means one; tara means string. It has become almost the symbol of Narada. You will not find a statue or a painting of him without his ektara.

He was a master musician, and a great poet - and perhaps the only man in India who knew the hilariousness of existence, who used to laugh....

When he was leaving, people told him: "Don't go - otherwise you will lose your ektara. That Valya does not care who you are, and if you try to save your ektara you will lose your head. Better is to follow another route, although that route is a little longer."

Narada said, "If I had not known I might have gone by the other route, but now it is a challenge, between Valya and Narada. I would love to see this man, who has made you all cowards, so afraid.

Just a single man, and the whole traffic on the road has disappeared. Must be a lion, living in the forest... and thousands of people used to pass on this road. Now nobody goes there; the road is closed - not for repair!"

Narada went, because he trusted in music more than in the murderousness of a man. What kind of music it is that cannot transform the murderous animal instinct in a man?

Valya heard the music - it was enchanting, it had a magic. And when he saw Narada alone - with no weapons, with no possessions, just one ektara ... the man was even more beautiful than his music.

It has to be so, because the creator of anything is always greater than his creation; the creation cannot be greater than the creator. For the first time Valya felt hesitant, indecisive whether to let this beautiful man pass. But to make an exception would not be right - this was his fame, that nobody could pass on that road without being robbed or killed.

So he warned the great musician and seer: "I pray to you, go back. If you don't go back I will have to take your possessions, whatever they are. If you resist you may lose your life. And I don't want to do anything with you - neither do I want to take your instrument nor do I want to deprive you of life.

And don't say later on that I did not warn you."

But Narada went on playing on his ektara. And rather than going on the road he came and sat by the side of Valya, who was sharpening his sword. Narada said, "You are a beautiful man; but why do you do such a thing?"

He said, "What else can I do? I don't have any education; I am an untouchable, the lowest and most condemned class of the Hindus. I cannot go to a temple, I cannot go in the city - but I have to look after my wife, my old mother, my father, my children."

Narada said, "If that is the case, I would like to go to your home and ask everybody - you are committing things which are inhuman. Who is going to be punished for them? You are committing all those things for your old mother and father - ask them, 'Will you share my punishment too?' Ask your wife, ask your children: 'Whatever I am doing I am doing for you - are you going to share my punishment?"'

Valya laughed, and he said, "You seem to be very clever and cunning! I will go home and you will disappear. Nobody can cheat Valya."

Narada said, "There is no question of cheating. You can tie me with a rope to a tree - and you know nobody comes here; I will wait. And whatever you want to do after, you can do. But first bring me the answer."

He had never thought about it. He went home. He asked his father, mother, his wife, his children - nobody was ready to share the punishment. They said, "That is not our business. It is your responsibility to take care of your family; we are not concerned with how you are taking care. What you are doing is totally your responsibility."

It was a great shock. He could not believe that the parents he loved so much, the wife he loved so much... his own children, for whom he was committing all kinds of crimes... flatly refused: "It is your duty to take care of us. The question of sharing in your punishment does not arise."

He came back with tears in his eyes, untied Narada, touched his feet, and said, "Just by a single question you have transformed me. I don't have a family. If they cannot share my punishment they don't love me - I was living in an illusion. They loved all the money that I was bringing to them, but when the question of punishment was raised not a single one answered that 'I will share with you.'

Now I don't have any family."

And he threw his sword away in the forest and asked Narada, "Initiate me so that one day I can also feel the same music and the same poetry and the same joy that I see on your face."

Narada said, "Much is not needed - just the name of God. You have to start chanting the name of God, RAM."

Remember - this is very confusing in a way - this is not the same name as I discussed before, the king, Rama, who behaved with his wife in a very primitive, crude, ugly way. Ram is older than the Rama I discussed with you - in fact he was named Rama because the name ram existed before him. It is the Hindu equivalent of God.

Narada said, "This will do: sit silently and repeat, ram, ram, ram, so that all that goes on in your mind slowly slowly is replaced by Ram. And this is the beauty of it - that once it has replaced everything, it also disappears. In the same way you light a candle... the flame is not possible without the candle but slowly slowly, first the flame will burn the candle, and once the candle is finished the flame will disappear automatically."

This is something very significant. So he said, "You do simple things. Don't get involved in any complex thing because you are a simple man, a courageous man. And after a few months I will be coming back to see what is happening. If some other help is needed I will always be available to you."

But he was uneducated, aboriginal, a primitive man - uncivilized, uncultured. He started with trust - because this kind of simple person is always trusting. He started repeating, RAM... RAM... RAM...

RAM... And Narada had told him, "Go on repeating faster and faster - don't leave any gap between two RAM'S."

The poor fellow got into trouble. If you repeat, "ram, ram, ram..." and he was uneducated, he had never heard the name. So he got mixed up; he started repeating "Mara, Mara, Mara..." ram means God, but if you repeat it, two Ram's join - and the change is possible for an uneducated man. Mara means "dying, dying, dying..."

But in a way it is significant, the story. If you really want to achieve the state of godliness, the death of your ego is absolutely necessary. So although it was just a mistake, when after three months Narada came back, Valya was a transformed being. He was radiating light, pulsating the whole atmosphere with a new energy.

Even Narada felt defeated. His whole life he had been repeating, chanting, singing the name of God, playing on his musical instrument, but his gain had not been as much as Valya's. He was almost a light unto himself. Around him an aura of light... Narada could not call him valya again, because that would be disrespectful. He changed valya into Valmik, and told him, "You have done a miracle, because the same name I have been repeating for my whole life and just in three months you have left me far behind. It will take lives for me to catch hold of you."

He said, "I have not done anything except whatever you have told me. I have been repeating, 'mara, mara, mara..."'

Narada said, "My god! I never told you that - I told you ram.

He said, "I am an uneducated man, absolutely unaware of any religion or anything. My whole life has been just of robbery and murder. I forgot - instead of ram the order changed; the M of ram came ahead of R. Forgive me."

Narada said, "There is no need to forgive you. You are so innocent: without any greed, without any desire to be rewarded in heaven, even repeating mara, mara, you are a new man. Don't be worried.

You continue - whatever you have been doing is right."

"But," he said, "how can it be? What about my acts of murder? Because I cannot count so I cannot say how many people I have murdered. What about my robberies?"

Narada said to him, "Forget it all. You have reached the ocean of your being. It is radiating all over; even a blind man may be able to see it or, at least feel it - the joy, the fragrance. And don't think at all about what you have been doing. Those are small acts. Small rivers, muddy, dirty, have fallen into the ocean, and the ocean is never made dirty by these rivers. It remains undefiled."

AND LIKE THE ETHER IT LIFTS BUT THE WINGED.

EVEN LIKE THE SUN IS YOUR GOD-SELF.

AND LIKE THE ETHER IT LIFTS BUT THE WINGED...

All that you need is wings, courage to be alone in the vast sky, with no guide, with no map, with no roads, with no signposts, with no milestones. It needs only courage and wings, and the whole sky is yours.

EVEN LIKE THE SUN IS YOUR GOD-SELF. Your innermost being, from a different angle is like the sun. IT KNOWS NOT THE WAYS OF THE MOLE NOR SEEKS IT THE HOLES OF THE SERPENT.

It rises for everyone to share, for everyone to receive fresh life every day. But it does not know the ways of the mole, nor seeks it the holes of the serpent. It is available - the serpent can come out of his hole, the mole can come out of his hole.

Your self is also like the sun - it is available, but you are living in a hole, different kinds of holes.

The sun will not knock on your doors. It is really inside you. You have to open all the doors and all the windows so life's fragrance starts showering on you, so the light that you have always contained starts radiating.

All these lines that have preceded, I support with my total being. But again he says:

BUT YOUR GOD-SELF DWELLS NOT ALONE IN YOUR BEING.

That too is true - whatever dwells in your being dwells in every being. And the totality of all the beings is the ocean of consciousness. You can call it God - I prefer the word godliness, because it is more a quality than a thing. It is more a presence than a person.

MUCH IN YOU IS STILL MAN, AND MUCH IN YOU IS NOT YET MAN... Much in you is asleep - your manhood, your humanity. AND MUCH IN YOU IS NOT YET EVEN MAN... your origins from the animals are also there.

In India, the Hindus have a very beautiful conception of one of their incarnations of God, which is half man and half animal. The whole world has laughed about it - "what kind of stupidity is this?"

But it is simply a symbol of your inner psychology.

Half in you is man and half is still animal. And the trouble is, the animal is fully awake and the man is fully asleep.

... BUT A SHAPELESS PYGMY THAT WALKS ASLEEP IN THE MIST, SEARCHING FOR ITS OWN AWAKENING.

The man in you tries to wake up. You know sometimes in a nightmare, you want to wake up but you cannot. You cannot open your eyes, you cannot move your hands - as if everything has become paralyzed. The impact of the nightmare is so much that for a few moments you are almost dead.

You will laugh about it when you wake up, but while you are asleep you are trembling with fear - and even when you wake up you will find the after-effects, the hangover. Your perspiration will be there - the night may be cool but the nightmare was so dangerous that your body accepted it as a reality.

The body is blind. It started perspiring out of fear. You will find your heart is beating louder; although you are awake, still the nightmare's effects can be seen. Although the elephant has passed through the door, his tail is still inside the room.

AND OF THE MAN IN YOU WOULD I NOW SPEAK:

FOR IT IS HE AND NOT YOUR GOD-SELF NOR THE PYGMY IN THE MIST THAT KNOWS CRIME AND THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME.

Here he becomes hypothetical. He does not know; he himself is groping. What he says... something is right in it and something is wrong in it.

FOR IT IS HE AND NOT YOUR GOD-SELF NOR THE PYGMY IN THE MIST THAT KNOWS CRIME AND THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME...

He's dividing you in three parts: first the pygmy, the animal; second, the man who is asleep and groping, and trying to wake up; and third, the god-self. This division is wrong.

There is no god-self, only the awakened man. God-self is another name for the awakened man.

That's why a man like Gautam Buddha said there is no God. And you can ignore the atheists, who have never explored their inner being, but you cannot ignore Gautam Buddha or Mahavira. Both say there is no God.

To say it in other words: When God is asleep, we call him man, and when man is awake, we call him God. The awakening of man is his godliness; there is no other god. So division is not threefold.

You are divided into the animal and man - the animal has to go to sleep and the man has to come to awakening. And both things happen simultaneously. The awakened man you can call the god.

H.G. Wells was writing about the world's history. When he came to write about Buddha - he studied much about Buddha and was very much puzzled: What to say about this man? What he said is so significant that perhaps it is difficult to find another statement made in this century which is more significant. He said about Buddha: "Gautam the Buddha is the most godless man and yet the most godly."

There is no need of any God if you are awake.

Your awakening, your enlightenment makes you laugh, that "I was looking for God in the sky and he was hiding within me."

A small story.... It is just a story, but full of meaning and juice.

When God created the world, he used to live in the world. But he became tired, because from the morning on, everybody would start coming with complaints: somebody has no child, somebody's child is sick, somebody's child has died; somebody has fallen in love but the parents are not allowing him to marry the woman... and millions are the problems. And just one poor God! And those who could not get him in the day would torture him in the night - he was unable even to sleep.

Finally, he asked his advisor, "What should I do? These people will kill me! They don't allow me rest, and they bring a thousand and one problems. They should solve those problems. I have given them every capacity, intelligence, to solve all their problems but they want to throw all responsibility on me, thinking that 'Why should we bother? Why did you create us in the first place? If you created us then take care of our problems."'

The advisor whispered in his ear, "There is a place where these people will never go."

He said, "Just show it to me."

And he said, "You just hide inside these people themselves. They will go searching for you all over the world but they will never go inside. You can rest, relax." And he is resting and relaxing there.

If you want to know whether the story is true or not, go in!

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.