My disciples are my garden

Question 1:

Govind Siddharth, the laws of spiritual life are diametrically opposite to those of the ordinary mundane existence.

In the world, one wants to be respected whether one deserves it or not. In fact the less people deserve, the more they want. In the spiritual realm, the more you deserve the less you want.

I am happy to know that you feel embarrassed by people respecting you. That is a sign of real humbleness. And to say that you do not deserve it makes you worthy enough to be respected.

In the world, people declare themselves 'the great'. When Alexander the Great met Diogenes, he introduced himself: "I am Alexander the Great."

And Diogenes laughed and he said, "If you were really great, you would not have used that word for yourself. You should be ashamed. The true greatness does not assert itself, the true greatness radiates itself. It needs no language, it needs no expression, it needs no words - its presence is enough."

And I know the difficulty. When for the first time suddenly people start looking at you with respect, a humble person, a person who deserves it, feels embarrassed. Because it is the ego that demands respect, begs for prestige, power, respectability. True greatness is simply oblivious to it. The moment you respect such a person, he feels embarrassed - "What are you doing?" - because he is not expecting it, it is so unexpected.

And the humbleness, the simplicity, the innocence does not make anyone holier-than-thou. It makes you stand last in the queue, because you are so certain of your integrity, you need not go shouting about it, you don't need any recognition from anybody. Your own feeling is so absolute that even if the whole world rejects it, it makes no difference.

Recognition from others is sought only by people who are suffering from inferiority. A real superior man is not aware of his superiority, is not in any need of recognition from others. His superiority is just his nature.

Govind Siddharth, don't feel embarrassed if people respect you. You will have to learn, and to see people's respect in a new light; when people respect you, they are respecting their own potential.

They are respecting one of their brothers who has arrived. They are recognizing you not as you; you have become a mirror and they can see their possibilities opening. They are thankful to you because you have made them feel, for the first time, not inferior to anybody; you have given them their humanity, their respectability. You have become an argument, a proof for their own possible fulfillment.

So when they respect you, accept it with love, with respect, realizing the fact that they are seeing themselves in you. You have been of tremendous help to them because you come from them, you have been a fellow traveler.

As far as you are concerned it is certainly a beginning, but it is also an ending; it is a death and a resurrection. One chapter is closed, another has opened. One life that you have been living is now just a memory and another life is opening its doors - which you have dreamed about in thousands of ways, in thousands of lives, and for the first time the dream is becoming real. It is a beginning.

And remember it; it is always a beginning.

Changes will be coming, old chapters will be disappearing, new doors will be opening. And a moment comes when your sensitivity is such that each moment you die and each moment you are born. You die to the past and you are born for the future.

But it is tremendously beautiful on your part to feel that you don't deserve it. That is felt only by people who deserve it.

That's what I meant when I said that in the spiritual life, laws are diametrically opposite to what they are in the ordinary mundane world. Here you have to try to be somebody, because you go on feeling that you are nobody; you feel so empty, so meaningless, so faceless, that you are begging everybody - "Give me a face, a name, an identity." And people give it to you but those faces are just masks, those identities are just false. They make you hypocrites. They make you believe what you are not. And you have wasted many of your lives in believing in things which you are not and you have never been.

In such a moment of transformation as Govind Siddharth has passed through, one for the first time drops all the masks, all the old identities. One accepts oneself as nameless, as a nobody. And this is the tremendous miracle: that the moment you accept yourself as nobody, for the first time you have become somebody. For the first time you have attained to your original face.

And if people see it happening... it is good for people, because it will become a remembrance to them. Something that they had forgotten, your presence may make them remember. And you cannot take away their right to thank you. That's what 'respect' means.

The word 'respect' is beautiful. It does not mean honor; that is a dictionary meaning. Existentially it means re-spect, a desire to see again. Somebody looks at you, remembers something, wants to remember more, wants to look at you deeper, wants to be closer to you, wants to look into your eyes, wants to hold your hands. It has nothing to do with honor, it is simply an effort to remember his own forgotten treasure.

Question 2:

We are together here only for a single intention: to remind you that you are not what you have been taught that you are, that you are somebody else.

And you will remain miserable till you find your reality. Your whole tension, anguish, anxiety consists only of a single thing: that you are trying to be somebody which you are not. Your whole life has become so strained, and it will remain so until you realize that your personality is only a drama and it is time to go home.

Sometimes a shock is needed, sometimes an accident, so that your mask slips down - and suddenly you look in the mirror; it is not your face. Sometimes a certain device is needed so that you can uncling yourself.

I have always loved a small incident....

In India, every year in every village, people dramatize the life of Rama. They are not great actors, but it has become almost a religious tradition, for thousands of years. And there are many difficulties.

There is a war between Rama and his enemy Ravana. Rama's young brother, Lakshmana, is hit by Ramana's arrow and falls down, unconscious. The greatest physician of those times is called. He says, "Something is possible but it is very difficult: a certain plant is needed to prepare the medicine, and that plant grows on a mountain far away.

Hanuman, a devotee of Rama, says that, "I will go and I will bring whatever is needed. Just describe it to me, because the mountain will be full of vegetation.

The physician says, "There will not be much difficulty, because in the night this certain plant gives light as if it were a candle. So you can recognize it without any difficulty."

Hanuman flies, reaches the mountain, waits for the night... but he is very much puzzled, because there are many plants, all different, which are radiant with light. He had forgotten to ask, "Is this the only plant which is radiant, or are there other plants too?" Now it is too late; he cannot go back. But he is a monkey god....

The only way is to take the whole mountain, so he takes the whole mountain so that the physician can choose the right plant for the medicine.

Now, in the drama it is a very difficult problem: writing all these miracles and fictitious things in stories is one thing, but to dramatize them is a real difficulty. The first difficulty is to make people see that Hanuman is flying - and he is not flying; he is just hanging on a rope and the rope is being pulled from the other side of the stage, and he is going fast, on the rope. And then he comes back with the mountain - and the mountain is nothing but a plastic mountain with beautiful small plants; each plant has candles hidden in it. And he comes with one hand on the mountain and the other hand on the rope.

But something goes wrong - the wheel, on which the rope has to be rolling, is stuck. In a village, particularly in India, it is expected. Now Hanuman is hanging in the middle of the stage, getting very embarrassed, and people are shouting and clapping and enjoying as they have never enjoyed... the mountain in one hand, the other hand on the rope, and the poor fellow cannot get down.

The manager rushes backstage, tries hard, but it is just a mistake of the carpenter who has made the wheel on which the rope has to move. And the situation is becoming so hilarious that just out of nervousness he cuts the rope - something has to be done.

Lakshmana is lying down flat on the platform, dead. Rama is standing there. Although he can see Hanuman is just over his head, still he is saying, "Hanuman, it is getting very late. Come soon!

Where have you gone?" And people are laughing, because this is stupid.

And even Lakshmana, who is supposed to be unconscious, hearing so much laughter opens his eyes and looks at Hanuman and starts laughing. And Rama says, "Shut up! You are not supposed to laugh, you are unconscious." So the poor fellow remains unconscious.

And at that moment the rope is cut and Hanuman falls on the stage. The whole mountain is shattered all over the stage. And he has a fractured leg - he is one of the wrestlers in the town - and he forgets completely that he is Hanuman.

And Rama goes on repeating the dialogue that is supposed to be..."Hanuman, you have done great."

He said, "Oh, shut up! First tell me who cut the rope!"

And Rama said, "But my brother is dying."

He said, "Let him die! My leg is broken. Where is that physician?"

Now the manager sees that things have gone from bad to worse. People are jumping and enjoying, and the poor Rama is trying somehow to manage but Hanuman is really angry; he has forgotten completely. The curtain is dropped; the manager can see no other way. And somehow the Hanuman has to be taken behind the stage: "Don't create such a scene. Have you forgotten that you are Hanuman?"

He says, "Who says I am Hanuman? First my broken leg! And I don't care whether Lakshmana dies or not; let everybody die. First my leg has to be taken care of."

But they say, "You have forgotten completely that you are Hanuman?"

He said, "Nonsense, I have never been Hanuman, it is just a drama. I am myself: Ram Kishore Pande is my name. 'Hanumana, Hanumana....' In being Hanuman this has happened! Next year, I will see who becomes Hanuman. I am not going to become Hanuman, and I will not allow anybody else to do it either. In this village, nobody is going to become Hanuman. If you cannot manage things rightly, you should not impose such things on us poor people. Now I will remain lame for my whole life. My leg... neither is Hanuman going to help nor Lakshmana, nor Rama. And where is that physician?"

The physician had escaped, because he was afraid - that rascal is dangerous, he may start beating him or doing anything: "You were trying to revive a dead man. Now at least make my leg right."

The identity that you have got is a drama.

It is not your reality.

And this is our whole intention - and this has been the intention for millions of years, at least in this country, of all those people who are intelligent - to discover the original face, to find out who exactly you are.

It looks surprising that except in this country, nowhere in the world have people been sitting and trying to find out, "Who am I?" This is the only country where, for centuries, people have been trying to find out who they are. They are not asking you, they are not asking anybody else. They are trying to dig deeper and deeper within themselves to find the very source of their life and being.

Yes, this is my intention. And this should be your intention. We meet only because of this intention.

There is no other meeting ground between me and you.

Question 3:

Jayantibhai, the authentic man means one who has come out of his personality.

You have two words: personality and individuality.

Personality is the false identity given by the society to you.

And individuality is what nature has given to you.

Individuality is existential. Personality is social.

Ordinarily, everybody is living as a personality; hence, his life is not authentic. It is false, it is deceptive, it is a hypocrisy. He is not only cheating others, he is cheating himself. He is deceiving others and he is deceiving himself too.

The word 'personality' comes from Greek drama. Greek drama has a speciality: in ancient Greek drama all the actors have masks. You cannot find out who the actor is, you see only a mask, but the voice that comes through the mask is of the actor.

It was called persona in Greek: sona means sound, sound coming through a mask. You cannot find out who the real face is.

Slowly, slowly, we have forgotten the origin of the meaning of the word 'personality'.

But watch yourself, and you will be surprised: everything that you are is borrowed. All your thoughts are borrowed. Even about feelings you are not certain.

People write letters to me and they say, "I think I have fallen in love." Great..."I think that I have fallen in love." They cannot trust their feeling, they are thinking.

The personality is surrounding you from everywhere, and your individuality becomes almost a hidden thing. You never allow it to live - because the society does not want you to live in freedom according to your nature; the society wants you to live in the way that the society finds useful.

The personality is very useful: it is never rebellious, it is always a slave. It has no guts to say no. It knows only to say "yes sir." Even in moments when your innermost being is saying no, your personality goes on saying, "Yes sir." You are living a split life.

Society supports your personality; hence, the personality has become very powerful.

There is nobody to support your individuality; hence, individuality - which is your nature, which is your real power, which is your authentic being - remains in darkness, repressed.

You are asking me: What is an authentic man?

An authentic man is a man of rebellious spirit. He rebels against his own personality, whatever the cost. He is not ready to compromise as far as his freedom is concerned; he would rather die than to be enslaved.

My whole teaching is to bring the authentic being to the surface, from the hidden corners of darkness where you have pushed it.

You are enemies of yourselves; you have crippled your own being. And then you go on complaining that life is miserable - it is your doing! You have compromised, for small comforts from the society.

And for small comforts from the society, you have sold your soul. Now you have comforts but no soul - good furniture, good house, good salary... but for whom? You are non-existent. This is the misery, this is the hell that every man is passing through.

And there are people who are exploiting the situation. The politicians become your leaders because they say they will bring a utopia into the world - soon there will be no poverty, there will be no suffering, no exploitation, no inequality. All their slogans give you a consolation, and a feeling, "Follow this man." Although for thousands of years these same people, the same kind, have been giving you the same idea of utopia, the utopia never comes.

Perhaps you may not be aware that the very word 'utopia,' in its roots, means that which never comes.

The politicians are giving you great utopian ideas; the religions are giving you great ideas of heaven, paradise, moksha. But if you have an authentic life, you don't need the priest. You are so fulfilled, you are so blissful that no paradise can become in any way an improvement on it. You are living this day in the most beautiful way possible... loving, in friendship. No utopia is going to make your life richer.

You have to see the strategy: keep people false, so they remain miserable. Miserable people need priests, politicians, psychoanalysts, all kinds of charlatans, because they are in such misery they are ready to fall in anybody's trap, whoever gives them hope.

Hope is almost like opium: you forget your misery, you start dreaming beautiful dreams.

I don't know what the situation is now, but in my childhood I have seen laborers working on the farms or making the roads, and they were so poor that their women also had to work... with small children, a six-month old child. Now what can the woman do with the child? How can she manage to work and keep the child? I was surprised to see that whenever there was any road being made, there were children lying in the grass by the side of the road - enjoying, so blissful.

I inquired, "What is the matter?" - because these children are such nasty people. The whole day they will sleep, and the whole night they will cry; strange ideas they have. But here are the mother and the father working on the road and they are just by the side, under a tree in the shade... so blissful. I asked, and I found out what they did: they gave a little opium to the child so that the whole day - whether they were hungry, whether they were lying in the heat, it didn't matter - the opium would keep them unconscious of their reality.

Hope is the opium of the people.

And they go on giving hope.

Hope is the greatest business in the world. For thousands of years priests have been exploiting, giving hope: "In the next life..." And nobody has asked them, "Why not in this life? And this life must have been 'the next life' in the previous life. We have been miserable in the past life, and we waited for this life - we are miserable. And you are again saying 'next life' - or in paradise."

Not a single eyewitness, no proof, no evidence exists of any paradise.

But the miserable person is ready to believe in anything; the belief has to be a consolation.

Why are people, the masses, against me? The psychological reason is that I am trying to destroy their hope - and if their hope is destroyed, their reality is misery. And I want them to realize that they are miserable so that I can point out to them why they are miserable:

They are miserable because they are not authentic.

Drop the personality. Live naturally, live intensely. Do not allow anybody else to dominate you; you have allowed too many people to dominate you.

I was staying in a home. A small child was playing. I asked him a few questions and we became friends. And I asked, "What are you going to become in life?"

He said, "As far as I know, I am going to become insane."

I said, "Why? Why you are going to become insane?"

He said, "Because my mother wants me to become a doctor, my father wants me to become an engineer, my uncle wants me to become a professor, my other uncle wants me to become a scientist.

My whole family is wanting me to become this, to become that. I know that if I become all these things, one thing is certain: I will become insane. And nobody is asking me - 'What do you want to become?' Nobody seems to be interested in me; they have their own ambitions, and I am simply an excuse to fulfill their ambitions."

Everybody is in a place where he should not be. The poets are making shoes, the shoemakers have become prime ministers. Everything seems to be topsy-turvy, and everybody is miserable.

The authentic person has to rebel. He has to say to the whole world, "I am going to be myself, whatever the cost. If I want to be a musician.... Perhaps everybody cannot be Yehudi Menuhin or Ravi Shankar. Most probably, I will be a musician on the street begging, but still I will be happy that I am fulfilling my own desire, that I am not being dominated by somebody else."

Those who are dominating may have good intentions. Nobody is doubting their intentions. And perhaps if you had followed their intentions you would have been the richest man in the country, and now you are just a beggar with your guitar on the street. But I say to you that to follow your own nature and to be a beggar with a guitar in the street is more fulfilling, more blissful than to be the richest man in the country, if it is not your desire.

One great surgeon, the greatest in his country, was retiring, and his friends had gathered to celebrate. His students had gathered - because he was really a master surgeon; there was no comparison at all with anybody else. He was a brain surgeon. Even at the age of seventy-five, his hands were not shaking a bit - because while you are performing surgery on the brain, if your hand shakes just a little bit, it can cut thousands of small nerves in the brain. You can damage the person for his whole life. Your hand has to be almost like steel, and you have to hit the exact point...

because there are seven million nerves in the brain, and seven hundred centers in your small skull.

The instruments are very fine, and the man has to be really an artist not to cut any other cells, any other nerves, which are so close knit... seven million, in a small skull. And to remove exactly the nerve that you want to remove... it is the most delicate job in the world.

And he was successful. No operation of his had ever failed. He was respected all over the world, rewarded with a Nobel prize, but on the day that he was retiring he was not happy. Everybody was enjoying, drinking, dancing. He was standing in the corner, sad, lost. A friend came close to him and asked, "What is the matter? We are celebrating here for you, and you are standing so sad - as if somebody has died."

He said, "I am thinking of something which makes me utterly sad."

The man said, "You, and sad? The world's greatest brain surgeon... everybody is jealous of you."

He said, "But you don't know my inner feeling. I never wanted to become a surgeon in the first place.

I wanted to become a musician, but my parents forced me to become a surgeon. My whole life has been nothing but a long slavery. I would have been far happier to be an unsuccessful, unknown, anonymous musician than to be a world-famous surgeon - because this is not me.

"This was my parents' desire, it was their ambition. I have been manipulated, exploited, my whole life has been destroyed just in fulfilling my parents' desire. And now I am too old, and I don't think that I will be able, but I am going to try.... Because this was not my life. I lived somebody else's idea."

The authentic man is one who lives his life according to his own innermost core, who lives his individuality. It needs guts, it needs courage, because you are moving into an unknown area.

While your parents and your well-wishers are experienced people - they know what will be right for you, they know what is going to produce more money, more respectability - you don't know anything.

But the authentic man lives the unknown, allows the unknown, moves on the unknown path, risks everything. He may not find gold mines, but he finds a tremendous satisfaction. His life is a life of blessings; his death is a death of fulfillment.

Question 4:

It is so.

But the realization has come a little late, because in Rajneeshpuram also I was the gardener.

Think it over again. With me, you cannot be a gardener.

My disciples are my garden, and when they blossom and flower I rejoice as any gardener rejoices.

With each of my disciples coming to flower, I attain enlightenment again - because from my side, there is no distinction at all, no distance. Particularly as you become blissful, the distance starts becoming less and less. In your misery - you have to forgive me - I cannot be with you. The greater your misery, the further apart we are.

But in your blissful moments, you are are so close that there is no distance at all. In your enlightenment, you are not even close - you are one.

I feel that again another spring has come to me.

So this time you are right. The last time you were wrong. Those two years there in Rajneeshpuram in my garden, working as a gardener, were only a device to keep you close to me - but I was the gardener. And from now onwards, wherever you are, I will remain the gardener.

So behave like a beautiful rosebush - bring as many flowers to your being as possible.

Question 5:

Milarepa, it is very difficult for me to be straight.

I am not a straight guy.

Enlightenment is very close, but it all depends on you whether you allow it to happen or you keep yourself closed. I know the night is very dark, and in the darkest part of night to believe that the morning is very close is very difficult. But that's how it is: when the night is darkest, the dawn is closest.

But the sun can rise and you can still keep your doors closed, you can keep your eyes closed. And the sun is a gentleman; it will not knock on your doors - "Open! It is morning." It will come up to your door and wait.

The question is very relative. Enlightenment can happen any moment if you are really bent upon it; otherwise, you can go on postponing for lives. You have been doing that.

How have you passed your many lives before? It is not that you have heard the word 'enlightenment' for the first time. It is not that the desire to be enlightened has arisen in you for the first time. Perhaps thousands of times... but it never became intense enough, it never became total enough, it remained lukewarm.

So it depends on you: if your desire for enlightenment is lukewarm, it may take many, many lives; if it is intense, there is no need to wait for tomorrow - it can happen this very moment, herenow.

And please don't ask me to be straight.

These matters are not for straight guys.

It is not simple arithmetic, that I can say three years, two years, one year, one life....

It all depends on you. You can go on sleeping forever, you can wake up right this moment.

Question 6:

The indications that you are on the right path are very simple: your tensions will start disappearing, you will become more and more cool, you will become more and more calm, you will find beauty in things in which you have never, ever conceived could be beautiful.

The smallest things will start having tremendous significance. The whole world will become more and more mysterious every day; you will become less and less knowledgeable, more and more innocent - just like a child running after butterflies or collecting seashells on the beach.

You will feel life not as a problem but as a gift, as a blessing, as a benediction.

These indications will go on growing if you are on the right track.

If you are on the wrong track, just the opposite will happen.

Question 7:

Purna, your heart is with me.

I am a master thief.