If you swim, you miss

Question 1:

Latifa, the ego is a puzzle. It is something like darkness - which you can see, which you can feel, which can obstruct your way but which does not exist. It has no positivity. It is simply an absence, an absence of light.

The ego does not exist - how can you surrender it?

The ego is only an absence of awareness.

The room is full of darkness; you want the darkness to leave the room. You can do everything in your power - push it out, beat it out - but you are not going to succeed. Strangely enough, you will be defeated by something which does not exist. Exhausted, your mind will say the darkness is so powerful that it is not within your capacity to dispel it, to expel it. But that conclusion is not right; it is German, but it is not right.

Just a small candle has to be brought in. You don't have to expel the darkness. You don't have to fight with it - that is sheer stupidity. Just bring in a small candle, and the darkness is not found anymore. Not that it goes out - it cannot go out, because in the first place it does not exist. Neither was it in, nor does it go out.

The light comes in, the light goes out; it has positive existence. You can light a candle and there is no darkness; you can blow out the candle and there is darkness. To do anything with darkness, you will have to do something with light - very strange, very illogical, but what can you do? Such is the nature of things.

You cannot surrender ego, because it does not exist.

You can bring a little awareness, a little consciousness, a little light. Forget completely about the ego; concentrate totally on bringing alertness into your being. And the moment your consciousness has become a flame, concentrated, you will not be able to find the ego. So you cannot surrender when you are unaware and you cannot surrender when you are aware. The ignorant cannot surrender.

And the wise man cannot even think of surrendering it, because it does not exist.

Ego is a mirage - it only appears to be. And when you are fast asleep spiritually, it is tremendously strong; naturally it creates problems for you. Your whole misery is created by it, your tensions, your anxieties. Your ego brings the whole hell into your life. Naturally you want to surrender it. And there are religious priests, teachers all over the world telling you how to surrender it.

Anybody who tells you how to surrender the ego is an idiot. He does not know anything about the nature of the ego, but he will look rational to you; he will be convincing. He will be appealing because he is speaking your own thinking aloud. He is your spokesman - this is what your mind says. He is more articulate than you are, and he brings all kinds of supportive arguments and proofs and quotations from scriptures, and they all say, "Unless you drop the ego you cannot attain to self-realization." Naturally, nobody objects to such people.

But I say unto you that the reality is just vice-versa: it is not that you surrender the ego and the self-realization happens, no. The self-realization happens first, and then you cannot find the ego.

That is its surrender.

Question 2:

My God! This is the time... even if you know how to swim, forget it! The tide has brought you to the shore; where are you going by swimming? Are you going to swim in the sand?

You are fortunate that the tide has brought you to the shore. Now don't be stupid. If you start swimming you will be swimming against yourself, you will undo what the tide has done.

There are things which only happen, which cannot be done.

Doing is the way of very ordinary things, mundane things. You can do something to earn money, you can do something to be powerful, you can do something to have prestige; but you cannot do anything as far as love is concerned, gratitude is concerned, silence is concerned. It is a very significant thing to understand that doing means the world, and non-doing means that which is beyond the world - where things happen, where only the tide brings you to the shore.

If you swim, you miss.

If you do something you will undo it; because all doing is mundane. Very few people come to know the secret of non-doing and allowing things to happen.

If you want great things - things which are beyond the small reach of human hands, human mind, human abilities - then you will have to learn the art of non-doing. I call it meditation. It is a trouble, because the moment you give a name to it, immediately people start asking how to do it. And you cannot say that they are wrong, because the very word 'meditation' creates the idea of doing. They have done their doctorate, they have done a thousand and one things; when they hear the word 'meditation' they ask, "So just tell us how to do it."

And meditation basically means the beginning of non-doing, relaxing, going with the tide - just being a dead leaf in the winds, or a cloud, moving with the winds.

Never ask a cloud, "Where are you going?" He himself does not know; he has no address, he has no destiny. If the winds change... he was going to the south, he starts moving towards the north.

The cloud does not say to the winds, "This is absolutely illogical. We were moving south, now we are moving north - what is the point of it all?" No, he simply starts moving north as easily as he was moving south. To him, south, north, east, west, don't make any difference. Just to move with the wind... with no desire, with no goal, nowhere to reach - he is just enjoying the journey.

Meditation makes you a cloud - of consciousness. Then there is no goal. Never ask a meditator "Why are you meditating?" because that question is irrelevant. Meditation is in itself the goal and the way together.

Lao Tzu, one of the most important figures in the history of non-doing.... If history is to be written rightly then there should be two kinds of histories: the history of doers - Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Alexander, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini; these are the people who belong to the world of doing. There should be another history, a higher history, a real history - of human consciousness, of human evolution: the history of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Bodhidharma; a totally different kind.

Lao Tzu became enlightened sitting under a tree. And a leaf had just started falling - it was in the fall, and there was no hurry; the leaf was coming zig-zag with the wind, slowly. He watched the leaf.

The leaf came down on the ground, settled on the ground, and as he watched the leaf falling and settling, something settled in him. From that moment, he became a non-doer. The winds come on their own, the existence takes care.

He was the contemporary of a great thinker, moralist, law giver, Confucius. Confucius belongs to the other history, the history of the doers. Confucius had great influence over China - and has even today.

Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu were the disciples of Lao Tzu. These three people have reached to the highest peaks, but nobody seems to be impressed by them. People are impressed when you do something great. Who is impressed by somebody who has achieved a state of non-doing?

But Confucius had heard the name of Lao Tzu, and was interested - "What kind of man is this who says that real things can be achieved only by non-doing? Nothing can be achieved by non-doing; you have to do, you have to become a great doer." And hearing that Lao Tzu was very close by in the mountains, Confucius went with his disciples to see him. He had many disciples - kings, princes.

He was a great teacher. But he stopped everybody outside. He said, "Let me go inside the cave to see him, because as I have heard he is a dangerous man and I don't know how he is going to behave with me. You simply remain outside. If I call you in, you can come; otherwise, I will tell you afterwards what happened."

And it was wise of him not to take that whole group of disciples with him, because when he came back he was perspiring. And they said, "What happened? - because it is so cold, and the winds are so cool in the mountains, and you are perspiring."

He said, "You should be glad I am alive. That man is not a man, he is a dragon. He is really dangerous. Avoid him!"

We don't know from Lao Tzu's side what happened in the cave, but we know what Confucius reported.

He said, "As I entered in, he did not even look at me. I went around him, but he did not take any note of me. Even that was enough to give me a trembling - in that dark cave, that man sitting there so silent, as if he is not. Finally I had to break the silence, to break the ice, and I said, 'I am Confucius.'

"And that old, dangerous fellow said, 'So what? Remain Confucius.' And the conversation would not start because - how to talk with this man? I said, 'I have come here to talk with you.'

"He said, 'Okay, you can talk. I have never prevented anybody from talking. Talk, but there is nobody here to answer you.'

"Gathering courage," Confucius said, "I asked, 'But what about you?' And he laughed and he said, 'About me! Yes, I used to be, but it is for a long time that I have not been. The house is empty. There is no host here, but if you want you can be a guest.'"

Seeing that there was no way to have a nice, gentlemanly conversation with this man, Confucius said, "I have come from a long distance" - thinking that he would feel a little compassion.

Lao Tzu said, "That shows that you are stupid. You don't know anything about me; otherwise, you would not have come. Now you are wanting some compassion from me. A man who is absent, how can he be compassionate?"

Confucius said, "At least give me some advice - how to relax, to rest."

Lao Tzu said, "For that you will have to wait. Death will come, and in your grave you will relax and rest, not before that. Because if you want to rest before that, then forget that crowd that you have left outside. You remain here and I will go - just a lion's roar and they will all escape, none will come back to this cave again. You rest and relax."

So Confucius said, "No, don't do that. They are my disciples. Some are kings, some are princes, some are great, rich people. I cannot afford it."

Lao Tzu said, "That's why I said that in life you cannot afford relaxation; only death can help. Those who understand can relax in life and rest in life. And the miracle is: for them there is no death, because they have already done what death does. Those who are stupid don't rest, they don't relax.

Then nature has managed a device called death, so they can relax in their graves.

"Don't be worried. You will have a good marble grave with great inscriptions on it in golden letters:

Here lies the great Confucius, the teacher of kings and emperors. But if you want to be with me, you have to understand: I am going to be a death to you. Without that - unless I kill you, destroy you - there is no way of saving you."

Confucius somehow said, "I will come again."

Lao Tzu laughed. He said, "Don't lie. You will never come again. This time you came because you had no idea what kind of man you were going to meet. But I enjoyed it. Now go and tell the crowd all the lies you want." So we don't know exactly what transpired in that cave. This much is from Confucius. Much more must have happened there, which needs guts even to report.

Lao Tzu's whole teaching was the watercourse way: just go with the water wherever it is going, don't swim.

You are blessed that the tide has brought you to the shore.

But the mind always wants to do something, because then the credit goes to the ego. Now the credit goes to the tide, not to you. If you had come swimming to the shore, you would have come with a great ego, that "I managed to cross the English channel."

Feel humble. It is not a question of learning swimming; it is a question of understanding why you have asked this question. Your ego is feeling unfulfilled, you cannot take the credit; the whole credit goes to the tide. But why not give the credit to the tide, why not give the credit to existence?

Existence gives you birth, gives you life, gives you love; it gives you everything that is invaluable, that you cannot purchase with money. Only those who are ready to give the whole credit of their lives to existence realize the beauty and the benediction; only those people are religious people.

It is not a question of your doing. It is a question of your being absent, non-doing, letting things happen.

Let go - just these two words contain the whole religious experience.

Have you sometimes seen people drowning in water? While they are alive they come up again and again and shout, "Help! Help!" And again they go down - come up, go down - and finally they don't come up.

But after two or three days they come up - and then they don't go back down - but now they are dead.

The village where I was born was by the side of a beautiful river, and I have seen a few people drowning in the river - it was a mountainous river; in the rainy season it became miles wide, and the current was so strong that to cross it was just to risk your life - but when they died, they suddenly came up, started floating.

In my very childhood I learned one thing: that there is something which dead people know and the living people don't know. Because the living shout "Help! Help!" and go down; and the dead simply come up - no shouting, and they float so easily, and no drowning anymore. They must know some secret. I used to ask my father, "What is the secret that the dead people know?"

He said, "You are mad, and you will drive me mad. Now how am I supposed to know? They are simply dead, they know nothing."

I said, "I cannot trust that, because I can see them floating so beautifully - there must be a secret that the living are missing." And when I started swimming, I came to know the secret.

In the beginning, when you learn swimming it seems so difficult, almost impossible. You get so many times drowned - water goes in the nose, in the mouth - but just within three or four days you are perfect, as if you have been swimming for lives. And just within three or four weeks you can float like a dead man, without swimming, without moving your hands. You can just lie down, relaxed, and the river is no longer trying to drown you.

I told my father, "I have learned the secret. It is not a big thing, it is a simple thing: because the dead are not trying to swim, they are relaxed. They are not worried about drowning, they are already dead - what can they do? They are in a state of non-doing. And the living are trying hard to save themselves. It is not the river that drowns them, it is their effort to save themselves that drowns them. Because now I know exactly how to be like a dead body in the water, I can lie there for hours and the river is not interested in drowning me. But it is a non-doing, I am not doing anything."

In life you are trying to do everything. Please, leave a few things for non-doing, because those are the only valuable things.

There are people who are trying to love, because from the very beginning the mother is saying to the child, "You have to love me because I am your mother." Now she is making love also a logical syllogism - "because I am your mother." She is not allowing love to grow on its own, it has to be forced.

The father is saying, "Love me, I am your father." And the child is so helpless that all that he can do is pretend. What else can he do? He can smile, he can give a kiss, and he knows that it is all pretension - he does not mean it, it is all phony. It is not coming from him. But because you are his daddy, you are his mommy, you are this, you are that.... They are spoiling one of the most precious experiences of life.

Then wives are telling husbands, "You have to love me, I am your wife." Strange. Husbands are saying, "You have to love me. I am your husband, it is my birthright."

Love cannot be demanded. If it comes your way, be thankful; if it does not come, wait. Even in your waiting there should be no complaint, because you don't have any right. Love is nobody's right, no constitution can give you the right of love. But they are all destroying everything - then wives are smiling, husbands are hugging....

One of America's most famous authors, Dale Carnegie, writes that every husband has to tell his wife at least three times a day, "I love you, darling." Are you insane? But he means it, and it works; and many people, millions of people, are practicing Dale Carnegie followers. "When you come home, bring ice cream, flowers, roses, to show that you love" - as if love needs to be shown, proved materially, pragmatically, linguistically; every now and then uttered again and again so nobody forgets it. If you don't tell your wife for a few days that "I love you" she will count how many days have passed, and she will become more and more suspicious that this man must be saying it to somebody else, because her quota is being cut. Love is a quantity. If he is not bringing ice cream anymore, ice cream must be going somewhere else, and this cannot be tolerated.

We have created a society which believes only in doings, while the spiritual part of our being remains starved - because it needs something which is not done but happens. Not that you manage to say "I love you" but that suddenly you find yourself saying that you love. You are surprised yourself at what you are saying. You are not rehearsing it in your mind first and then repeating it, no; it is spontaneous.

And in fact, the real moments of love remain unspoken. When you are really feeling love, that very feeling creates around you a certain radiance that says everything that you cannot say, that can never be said.

I have been struggling from my very childhood on each and every point. I told my father, "I will not respect you because you are my father. I will respect you if you are respectable. Whether you are my father or not is irrelevant; it is of no consequence. I will love you if you are lovable, if you are loving; and remember that it is not because you are my father, it is just because you are a man worth loving."

I had to fight with my teachers, my professors: "I will respect you only if you are respectable. If you are not respectable, then don't ask me to show respect to you - because that is what hypocrisy is.

You are teaching me hypocrisy, and I don't expect any of my teachers to teach me hypocrisy."

There used to be a mock parliament in the university every year, just to give training to the post- graduate students, because a few of them might reach the parliament. And the vice-chancellor himself used to be the president. I was there as one of the members of a mock parliament, and I had to address him. He had to be addressed as "Honorable President."

So I said, "Honorable President - although he is not honorable, I am just fulfilling the formality, and anyway this is a mock parliament...."

He was very angry with me. He called me afterwards: "What do you mean that I am not honorable?"

I said, "Everything that the word means. I have not seen anything worth honoring in you - you have not divorced your wife."

He said, "But is that dishonorable?"

I said, "Yes it is, because you don't love her, you love another woman. To be honest, you should have divorced your wife and married the other woman. But to save your hypocrisy, your respectability, you are playing this game - and the whole university knows it, and you know that everybody knows it. So where is the respectability? Your wife hates you, you hate your wife; for years you have not spoken with each other. Why are you wasting her life? And I respect her more than I respect you, because although she hates you she has not said a single word against you to anybody; and you have been telling all kinds of lies against her just to protect your own dishonesty, insincerity. Do you want me to bring up other things also?"

He said, "Just wait. This is enough. But there was no need - you could have come to me and told me."

I said, "That was the right moment. And anyway, it was a mock parliament. Even if I go to the real parliament I am going to do the same. Unless I feel honor for somebody, I have to make it clear that this honor is only formal. The other side is not worthy of it; the honor is being given to the chair, not to the man - so any man can sit on it, it doesn't matter, I will still call it 'honorable.'"

We live without any rebelliousness - and the ultimate result is that slowly slowly hypocrisy becomes our very characteristic. We forget completely that it is hypocrisy.

And in the mind, in the being of a man who is a hypocrite, anything of the world of non-doing is impossible. He can go on doing more and more; he will become almost a robot. His whole life is doing. Day and night he is doing, because everything that he has is an outcome of doing.

But if had you suddenly an experience of happening, take it as a gift from existence - and make that moment a beginning of a new lifestyle. Forget swimming. Allow the tide to take you - to any shore.

Don't be worried, you will find me on any shore watching you. It is not that on this shore it was just a coincidence that you came on the tide and you found me, no. If you come on the tide, wherever you come you will find me.

But come on the tide.

If you come swimming, you will not find me on any seashore.

My whole approach is of non-doing.

Just allow a few moments in twenty-four hours when you are not doing anything, allowing the existence to do something to you. And windows will start opening in you - windows which will connect you with the universal, the immortal.

Question 3:

It can create a question in anybody - if sannyasins are growing in love, in awareness in my presence, then the natural thing should be that they start desiring to be closer to me, and an attachment is bound to follow.

But if there is no attachment and no desire to be close, I can see - you are puzzled; why is it happening, what is happening?

It is something very delicate. You want to be attached to someone only when you feel that you are not close. All attachment shows a deep fear of losing, so we cling; attachment is clinging. And you want to be close only when you feel that you are missing something by not being close.

If by not being close you are gaining more, if by not desiring attachment your growth is going at an unimaginable speed, you would not like to be close or to be attached. You would like to be more and more independent, more and more individual - no attachment, no desire to be close. Because unless you accept your individuality with absolute love and respect, you are not going to grow to your ultimate growth.

There are teachers in the world who would force you to be attached to them, who would like you to be in a certain bondage, a contract.

Just the other day one sannyasin from Holland wrote to me, "There is a man here; many sannyasins are going to listen to him. Almost eighty percent of his audience is of sannyasins. Is it right? Can I also go to listen to him?"

I said, "It is absolutely right. My sannyasin can go to listen to anybody. My sannyasin can go to any well, can drink from any well. It does not take him away from me; in fact, it simply makes him more individual - and that is my whole teaching, that he should be an individual, independent, not a slave." Otherwise, in the name of spirituality there are so many slaveries all around.

One man came to me and he said to me, "I have been wanting to come to you for two years, but I was going to a shankaracharya and he prohibited me: 'If you go to see this man, you will see me dead.' I was so afraid - if he dies, the whole responsibility will be on my head, so I had to wait.

Now he is dead." Just the day before, he had died, and the next day the man was here. "Now I am free; otherwise, I was so afraid just to think that if I come - he is old, and if he dies...." This kind of slavery.... But can you help these people to become real, authentic individuals? And if you are so afraid, you are also afraid about your teaching. You are also afraid about your being, about your experience.

No, my sannyasins are absolutely free to go anywhere - to any mosque, to any synagogue, to any temple, to any teacher - because with me they have no commitment. It is a friendship completely born out of freedom.

Question 4:

The two things are two aspects of one phenomenon.

In the beginning when I insisted that you should wear orange and the mala, it was for a particular reason. It was a statement to the world about your rebellion, that you don't belong to the old and the dead traditions; that you have found a new way of life, a new way of being. And it is not only your conviction; you are devoted totally to it, whatever the consequence.

Against the whole world, standing alone, it helped your courage, it helped your intelligence. It helped you to unburden all the past knowledge, traditions, religions. That phase is over. Now there is no need. The second phase of the work has begun.

I don't insist that you wear orange clothes or mala.

We have already made the whole world aware of the movement, of its philosophy, of its approach.

There is no need to go on struggling with the dead forever.

Now, if you choose to wear orange and the mala it is not my insistence, it is your insistence - then naturally its meaning and significance has changed. Now it is your gratitude, your love, your thankfulness for whatever has happened to you and is happening to you.

Now it is not a statement to the world, but an indication to me.

Now it is no more a struggle with the world, but simply a love affair with me. First it was my insistence, now it is your insistence.

Question 5:

The mind is full of thoughts; it is impossible that you don't have any questions.

When you ask a question, be sincere. When the mind is full of thoughts, it is bound to have many questions. Perhaps the questions are so many that you cannot find what is truly your question - but don't say that you don't have any question. This is one possibility.

So look again, and find out. In your so-many thoughts you will find dozens of questions, and don't be shy in asking them.

There is another possibility, and that is, perhaps you don't have any question. But then you cannot have any thoughts in the mind.

If you don't have any questions, then I am the answer.

You can choose; if really you don't have any questions, then I am the answer. So tomorrow you think again. You will have to take one position of the two: either you have to accept that you have thoughts - then you will have to accept that you have questions; or you will have to accept that you have no questions - but then it means you don't have any thoughts. And a person who has no thoughts, for him, I am the answer.

No words are needed.

Then I come to him without any words.

Then just open your doors and let me in.