God Still Hopes

The first question:

Question 1:

THIS IS A WRONG QUESTION, basically meaningless. One should never jump ahead of oneself:

there is every possibility that you will fall on your face. One should ask the basic question, one should begin at the beginning. My suggestion is: ask a more basic question.

For example, you can ask, "Is there life after birth?" That would be more basic, because many people are born but very few people have life. Just by being born you are not alive. You exist, certainly, but life is more than mere existence. You ARE born, but unless you are reborn into your being, you don't live, you never live.

Birth is necessary, but not enough. Something more is needed, otherwise one simply vegetates, one simply dies. Of course, it is a very gradual death - and you are so unaware that you never know it, you never become aware of it. From birth to death, it is a long progression of death. It is very rare to come across an alive person. A Buddha, a Jesus, a Kabir - they are alive. And this is the miracle:

that those who are alive never ask the question: "Is there life after death?" They know it. They know what life is, and in that knowing, death has disappeared. Once you know what life is, death exists not. Death exists only because you don't know what life is, because you are yet unaware of life, its deathlessness. You have not touched life, hence the fear of death exists. Once you have known what life is, in that very moment, death has become nonexistential.

Bring light into the dark room, and the darkness disappears; know life, and death disappears. A person who is really alive simply laughs at the very possibility of death. Death is impossible; death cannot exist, in the very nature of things: that which is will remain, has remained always. That which is cannot disappear. But not theoretically; you have to come to this experience existentially.

Ordinarily this question remains in the mind, whether you ask it or not: the question, "What happens after death?" because nothing has happened before death, that's why the question. Because life has not happened even after birth, how can you believe and trust that life is going to happen even after death? It has not happened after birth, how can it happen after death? And one who knows life knows that death is another birth and nothing else. Death is another birth; a new door opens.

Death is the other side of the same door you call birth: from one side the door is known as death, from the other side the door is known as birth.

Death brings another birth, another beginning, another journey - but this will be just speculation to you. This will not mean much unless you know what life is. That's why I say, ask the right question.

A wrong question cannot be answered, or it can be answered only in a wrong way. A wrong question presupposes a wrong answer. I am here to help you to know something, not to help you to become great speculators, thinkers. Experience is the goal, not philosophizing - and only experience solves the riddle.

You are born, but not yet really born. A rebirth is needed; you have to be twice-born. The first birth is only the physical birth, the second birth is the real birth: the spiritual birth. You have to come to know yourself, who you are. You have to ask this question: Who am I? And while life is there, why not enquire into life itself? Why bother about death? When it comes, you can face it and you can know it. Don't miss this opportunity of knowing life while life surrounds you.

If you have known life, you will have certainly known death - and then death is not the enemy, death is the friend. Then death is nothing but a deep sleep. Again there is a morning, again things will start. Then death is nothing but rest - a tremendous rest, needed rest. After the whole life of toil and tiredness, one needs a great rest in God. Death is going back to the source, just as in sleep.

Every night you die a little death. You call it sleep; it would be better to call it a little death. You disappear from the surface, you move into your innermost being. You are lost, you don't know who you are. You forget all about the world, and the relationship, and the people. You die a small death, a tiny death, but even that tiny death revives you. In the morning you are full of zest and juice again, again throbbing with life, again ready to jump into a thousand and one adventures, ready to take the challenge. By the evening you will be tired again.

This is happening daily. You have not even known what sleep is; how can you know death? Death is a great sleep, a great rest after the whole life. It makes you anew, it makes you fresh, it resurrects you.

The second question:

Question 2:

First, never bring anybody else's questions to me. Bring the questioner, because I cannot answer anybody else's question. The questioner has to be here, in my presence, because deep down, my presence is the answer - not what I say, but what I am. Never bring borrowed questions. If it is not yours, it is meaningless. You tell the owner of your hotel, "You can come," and if he is really interested, he should come. I don't think he is interested in God or in anything - maybe curious, but curious people are just stupid.

Any stupid person can be curious. To be really an enquirer, one needs great intelligence.

Now, if he is interested, I am here in Poona, and he runs a hotel here. You are here from faraway countries, and he has not come. He is not interested, he is just curious. He is not ready to stake anything, not even coming here. It is not very costly to come here; he could have come. And he knows you are coming here every day, and he knows that you are a sannyasin. He knows that you have staked your life, you have gambled with your life, and he has not even become interested.

NEVER bring such questions to me. This type of question is foolish; it cannot be answered - because unless you ask intensely, unless you ask from the very core of your being, the question is irrelevant. The question becomes relevant only when you are behind it and you are ready to do something for it: you are ready to pay for it.

God is not available to such people. They are not ready to pay anything. They want God very cheaply. They want God second-hand. Now, you will listen to my answer, and then you will go and tell him. First, you don't know; you will not listen to what I say, you are bound to carry some wrong message. Of course, your mind will come in, you will distort it: you will add something, you will delete something from it, you will color it with your own mind, with your own interpretation, and then you will take it to him. It is already dead; you have killed it. Then you go and give it to him.

And if in this way enquiries are possible, then books are available. He should go and consult a library; all answers are written there. And he must have read something, otherwise the question would not arise. He must have heard the word 'god'.

Never do these things. If somebody asks such a question, drag him to me. Tell him, "You come and you face this man directly."

But, I suspect that the question is yours, and not the owner of the hotel's. But you are not courageous enough to say that it is yours. People are so ashamed, even of asking authentic questions. Why are people so ashamed? - because to ask a question proves that you are ignorant. So people would like to hide behind somebody else's back: now this "owner of the Grand Hotel" is a perfect place to hide.

People feel a little ashamed when they ask a question, because the very idea that "I am asking a question," means that "I don't know."

Once it happened: A man came to me and he said, "My friend has become impotent. Can you suggest something?"

I said, "It would be better for you to send your friend and he can say the truth: that his friend has become impotent. Why have you bothered? You could have sent the friend, and he could have told the truth: that his friend has become impotent. You are not even potent enough to ask a question?

Why bring this friend in?"

The first thing when you ask a question is to recognize your ignorance. From there the enquiry starts. A question is beautiful when the questioner knows that he doesn't know. Then a question is healthy - because the mother is healthy, and the question is your child. When you say, "I don't know, and I ask because I don't know," then the question is tremendously healthy, alive, its heart beating.

It breathes. And I love an alive question; then something can be done.

Now, you bring a dead question because you cannot accept the fact that you don't know. You know perfectly well that this owner of the Grand Hotel is ignorant that he is asking. That's why I am going to answer - because I know it is your question.

"WHY DID GOD CREATE THIS WORLD?"

First thing: it may be a surprise to you that God never created THIS world. This world is your creation. God has created a world, but you don't know about that world at all. THIS world He has not created at all: this world where Richard Nixon exists, where Vietnam exists, where Idi Amin Dada exists. This world God has not created: this world of Adolf Hitlers and Mussolinis, and fascism and communism, and Stalin and Mao. This world God has not created: this world where such tremendous poverty exists because people are so greedy, because people go on hoarding; this world where such ugly life exists, where not even a shower of love happens - desertlike, loveless, people just competing, fighting, conflicting - where such IMMENSE violence exists... THIS world God has not created. This is your world. You are the creator of it. You are this world. This world is your projection. This world vibrates on your ugliness.

So the first thing: God has not created this world. Please don't make Him responsible for it; He is not. Otherwise He would be the greatest criminal if He had created this world. At least I for one declare that He has not created this world. This is your creation.

But you will say, and logically too, that He has created us, and if we create this world then finally He is responsible. No, still I say He is not responsible - because He has created you as freedom. That is the thing to be understood.

This ugly world wouldn't exist if God had created you as slaves. If God has created you as robots, mechanisms, then this ugly world would not exist. Then you all would be Buddhas, but meaningless buddhas. If a Buddha cannot be an Adolf Hitler, if the very possibility is denied, then the Buddha is just a statue, meaningless. If you HAVE to be good, and there is no freedom to be bad, then what is the point of being good? The world would have been good if God had not created you as freedoms.

If He had forced you to be just mechanical repetitions, gramophone records, then you all would have been delivering a Sermon on the Mount, or writing a BHAGAVADGITA. But a gramophone record is a gramophone record.

God has created you as freedom. Of course, in freedom, the opposite is implied. Good you can do if you choose, bad you can do if you choose it that way, and the choice is yours. God has given you all freedom to choose.

That is the glory of man, and the agony - the glory, because man is free. Can't you see it? A tree is not free; a rosebush is a rosebush. Whatsoever is going to happen is already predestined. The rosebush is not free. If it decides not to grow roses, nothing will happen; roses will still come. If the rosebush decides to change the color of the roses, nothing will happen; the rose will remain of the same color as before. If the rosebush decides to become a lotus plant, nothing will happen; the rosebush will remain a rosebush. It is destined to be a rosebush. It is beautiful, but not free.

That's why I say: Nothing can be compared to man's beauty. Even roses are nothing compared to man's beauty. Because a rose has to be a rose, it is in a sort of bondage. It cannot do otherwise.

It cannot go astray: it has to be a saint. It has to be a Jesus, it cannot be a Judas. That's why a rosebush is just a rosebush - good to look at, but nothing to be compared to the beauty of human beings. The beauty comes because a person can be a Jesus or a person can be a Judas, and everybody carries both possibilities - Jesus and Judas.

Everybody is totally free, and the range is big - the whole spectrum. Man is a rainbow - all the colors.

Man is not predestined. Hence we have created this world out of our freedom. The responsibility is ours. If you want to become a Buddha, you CAN become one. Nobody can force you to become a Genghis Khan. The choice is yours. God is not dragging you anywhere. He has given you enough rope... you can go astray, you can come back. Because of this possibility of going astray this world exists. This world can be changed, can be utterly changed. Once we change our consciousness, this world can become a totally different affair.

You ask, "why did God create THIS world?" so the first thing: He has not created this world, He has created you, He has created human freedom - and one should feel grateful that He has made you free. Otherwise, if you are forced to become a Jesus, then to be a Jesus is mechanical, meaningless; there is no significance, no poetry in it. Because you can miss the target....

The Christian word 'sin' is very significant. Its original root means: missing the target. The original root for the word 'sin' comes from 'missing the target'. You can miss; it is up to you. Sin is missing the target, it is going astray. And God will not prevent you: His love is so infinite that He will love you even if you have gone astray. He loves the sinners as much as the saints. And if you listen to Jesus, Jesus says he loves the sinners even more, because they need more love.

Have you not watched it? If a child is ill the mother cares more about the ill child than the healthy child - naturally so. It is justified. The healthy is healthy, so there is no need for the mother to be over-careful. But the ill is ill: the mother sits by the side of the bed, massages the child, takes more care. Jesus says God cares more for the sinners, those who have missed the target. He goes on showering His mercy on them.

THIS world is our going astray, our sin. It has nothing to do with God.

The second thing: "Why did God create this world?" The second thing is that in the Christian, in the Judaic, in the Mohammedan world, a very wrong conception exists about God, as if He is separate from His creation; as if one day He created the world and then forgot all about it; as if God is a painter - the painting is finished and the painting becomes separate from the painter. No, the East knows far better. The East says: God is not separate from His creation. The creator is not separate from His creation. He is involved in it, He is in it, He IS it. Creator is creation. That's why I insist again and again: don't call God "the creator", call him "creativity". God is a DYNAMIC creativity.

Creator is a dead concept - as if one day He finished. That's what Christians go on thinking: in six days He created the world and the seventh day He rested. In six days, finished? Then what has He been doing since then? He must be getting very tired, not doing anything. He must be getting fed-up. He must be bored: have mercy on Him.

He is not finished yet. The creation is never finished; it is an ongoing process. The creation is never complete, and God goes on and on and on. He is not finished with it. If He were finished with it, then that would be the end. He is still involved, He is still in love. He is still painting, He is still sculpturing... He still hopes.

Rabindranath has said, "Whenever I see a new baby born, I look at the sky and say: God still hopes."

A new baby is a hope. Of course, He failed with the old generation, so He creates a new generation.

He says, "Let us see; maybe this time I will succeed." His optimism is infinite He is like a poet who goes on composing new poems every day. Every day he feels a little satisfied and a little dissatisfied - satisfied because something has happened in the poetry, something has been caught, a ray of light; but something is still missing. Tomorrow morning, another try.

Rabindranath had written six thousand poems, and when he was dying, an old friend said to him, "You can die peacefully and in deep content, because you are the greatest poet."

Rabindranath opened his eyes and said, "Stop this nonsense! Right now I am telling God: What are you doing? I have been trying and trying, and I have not yet succeeded! Much has happened, but I am not satisfied. And just now I was getting closer and closer, and this is the time to take me away? I was just getting closer and closer, and I was feeling that just by the corner it is there - the poetry for which I have been trying. My six thousand poems are my six thousand failures... maybe the six-thousandth and first? And is this the time to take me away? What are you doing? My whole life, I have been trying and trying and trying, and now I feel the crescendo was coming and I was coming to the peak, and this is the moment you withdraw me?"

God is not yet finished: God still hopes. Hence, we can also hope. In His hope is our hope too. He has not utterly failed. He still trusts you, He still goes on creating. So this concept of a dead creator somewhere in the past....

Christian theologians are so foolish that they have even decided the date, the year: four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ, He created the world - on a certain Monday of course. Early, at six in the morning, when you start the Dynamic Meditation, He started this whole dynamism. Early in the morning, six o'clock - he must have fixed the clock with an alarm. It is all foolish.

Creation is timeless: it has always been there, it will always be there - because God IS creation, God is creativity. So I never call God a painter, I call Him a dancer.

When the painting is finished, the painter is separate and the painting is separate. In dance, it is totally different. Dance is the most spiritual phenomenon, because the dancer and the dance are one. You cannot separate them, the duality does not exist. There is a tremendous oneness: the dancer is the dance, the dance is the dancer. If you take away the dance, the dancer is no more a dancer. If the dancer stops, the dance stops - they are not two. God is as involved in His world as a dancer is involved in his dance. Hence I tell you to revere the world, never condemn it; God is involved in it, God is present everywhere.

That's what Kabir goes on saying: Feel the awe, the reverence, the wonder, because He is still working everywhere. You can catch hold of Him, still painting, still sculpting, still dancing. It is not something that happened sometime in the past. It is happening right this moment: He is speaking through me, He is listening through you. The creation is still going on. It is never going to end, it is an endless journey.

In fact, existence has no goal. It is a PURE journey. The journey in itself is so beautiful: who bothers for the goal?

Saint Teresa has said, "Heaven is all the way to heaven. Has He not said: I am the Way?" Such a beautiful assertion, of tremendous import: "Heaven is all the way to heaven" - don't wait for some heaven as a goal - "heaven is ALL the way to heaven. Has He not said: I am the way?" God is the Way, not the goal. God is here, not there. God is now, not then. God is in you, in me, all around.

Only God is.

So you cannot ask this question: "Why did God create this world?" He never created it, He is still creating, and if you really want to know why, go to the artists. Don't go to theologians and don't go to philosophers and don't go to pundits: go to the artists. Go to a Van Gogh when he is painting and ask him why he is painting. Go to a dancer, hold his hand and ask him, "Why are you dancing?" Go to a singer and ask him, "Why are you singing?" And you will know the answer.

The painter will shrug his shoulders. He will say, "What else can I do? I love painting. Why? There is no why. I love painting. It is the way I am. It is the way I feel most happy to be. This is the only way I feel tremendously blessed, that's why. There is no other why." Ask a dancer, "Why are you dancing?" and he will say, "What else can one do? Life is to dance." Or ask a lover why he is in love.

Have you ever loved somebody? And if somebody comes and asks you why, what will you say? Will you really have any answer as to why you love? You will say, "Why? There is no question about it.

That's the way I feel my best, at my very peak. That's the way I feel blooming. That's the way bliss happens to me."

Now, there is no question about bliss. If you are happy, you are happy; nobody asks you why you are happy. Yes, if you are miserable, a question is relevant. If you are miserable, somebody can ask you why you are miserable, and the question IS relevant - because misery is against nature, something wrong is happening. When you are happy, nobody asks you why you are happy, except for a few neurotics. There are such people; I cannot deny the possibility.

I have heard about a patient. The psychiatrist was bored with him. Of course, he was getting enough money out of him, but he was getting, by-and-by, bored - three, four, five years of psychoanalysis, and the man was repeating the same again and again and again. The psychiatrist said, "You do one thing: you go to the mountains for a few days. That will be very helpful." So the patient went to the mountains, and do you know what? Next day arrived a telegram for the psychiatrist. The patient said in the telegram: "I am feeling very happy. Why?"

Feeling very happy: why? - an explanation is needed. No, happiness needs no explanation.

Happiness is its own explanation. God is creating because that is the only way He can be happy, that is the only way He loves, that is the only way He sings, that's the only way He can be at all.

Creation is His innermost nature. No why is needed.

The third question:

Question 3:

A lot of difference, a great difference. The difference is as much as between West and East. The difference is as much as between will and surrender.

The monastery is a Western concept. You should never transalate 'ashram' as 'monastery'. That is corrupting the word 'ashram', destroying its whole meaning. A monastery is on the path of will:

people are trying hard to know the truth, struggling hard to find God. The monastery is strenuous, tense.

The very word 'ashram' means rest, relaxation. The very word 'ashram' means tremendously relaxed. An ashram is a place where you go to relax, the monastery is the place where you go to seek, to search. Monastery is aggressive, male; ashram is female, passive. Ashram is effortless.

A monastery is nothing but effort. In the monastery you are working to achieve God, and in an ashram you are playing: that's the difference. The ashram is a fun; the monastery is very serious.

The word 'monastery' comes from 'monk'. The monk is a very serious man; he has renounced the world, renounced the wife, renounced the children, renounced this and that. The monk is very dry, hence all the old Western monasteries existed in the deserts. The great monasteries existed in the deserts, dry - dry inside, dry outside, no rest, no shade of a tree, no greenery, no flowers flowering; just effort and effort and effort; no oasis of rest. And the monk means a person who has decided to be lonely.

The word 'monk' means lonely, one who has decided to live on his own. That's why from the same root come 'monopoly', 'monogamy', 'monotony' - the same root: one, alone. A monastery is a place where many people live in their loneliness, but they don't live together. The togetherness is not there. A monastery is not a community. People are there, many people may be living there, but each is living alone. Together, they are lonely. It is not a community. Each is seeking God; great effort has to be made: one has to be ascetic, one has to continuously flog one's own body, one has to torture, one has to fast, one has to destroy all attachment to the world. How can you relax? The world is a sin and you are born in sin - how can you relax, how can you rest, how can you celebrate?

You will be surprised: the word 'celebration' comes from a root CELERE, and 'celere' means fasting.

In the old Western monasteries, when the monks were fasting, it was called celebrating. Now, a feast can be a celebration, but how can a fast be a celebration? But that's how fasting was imposed - as celebration. Torture, self-torture, was thought to be prayer. The world is thought to be against God, so you have to leave the world if you want to achieve God.

The ashram has a totally different perspective. The ashram means a community, a communion of people, of souls who are alike. You will be surprised: the modern Hindu ashram is not really Eastern, remember. The modern Hindu ashram is so influenced by the Christian monastery that it is not Hindu at all. If you really want to have a glimpse of a Hindu ashram, you will have to go to the days of the VEDAS. The Master was there, but the Master was not a monk. He was a married man: he had a wife, he had children, the ashram was his family. That's why the ashram was called GURUKUL. 'GURUKUL' means: the family of the Master. He had children, he had a wife, he lived a relaxed life - deep in the forest, deep in nature - a spontaneous way of life, unhurried; not searching, but waiting; not putting God against the world, but enjoying the world because God IS in it. And the disciples who lived with him were his family, GURUKULA. It was not an institution. it was a family.

They were children to him, his own kids. They may have been older than him; that is not the point - but they were his kids.

This community lived in a very deep, relaxed way - dancing, singing, feasting, celebrating, enjoying nature: the stars, the moon, the sun, the morning, the evening, the day, the night, and listening to God's voice in nature. Hence, the Master had moved to the forest. It was not against the world, remember. When the Christian monk moved out of the world, he was against the world. When the Eastern sage moved to the forest, he moved because he was all for the world, and in the marketplace the world has been corrupted and destroyed so much. Know the distinction: it is tremendous.

The Eastern sage used to move into nature because there, God is more present. Man has not yet interfered. It is difficult to find God on an asphalt road, howsoever hard you look. You will not even find a glimpse. It is very difficult to find God in a factory - difficult, very difficult - because the human noise is too much. The mechanical, the technological, is too much; the natural has gone far away.

I have heard....

There was a survey in London, and a million children reported that they had never seen a cow.

Now this is too much: a million children have never seen a cow? How will they ever be able to understand what God is if they have never looked into the eyes of a cow? God is more crystal-clear in the eyes of a cow than in the eyes of a pope or a SHANKARACHARYA. One million children have not seen a cow? Now these one million children will suffer tremendously. There are thousands and thousands of people who have never seen the Himalayas, the snow-covered peaks, the eternal snow - virgin, never trod upon. There, God is still more present, is more throbbing, alive; man has not destroyed yet.

The Eastern sages moved into the forest, not because they were against the world but because they wanted to really know the world that God had created, uninterfered with by man. When the Christians move to a monastery they move against the world, because the world is a place of sin.

They both move, but they both move for different reasons, diametrically opposite. And the Eastern word 'ashram' is beautiful: it means rest. You have lived in the world, you have known the world; now to rest you go to an ashram. You have seen the world - the ugliness of it, the futility of it, the uselessness of it, the meaninglessness of it - now you would like to rest. Now you go deep into the forest, you sit under the shady trees, you listen to the murmur of the brooks and the song of the birds, and you see the sunrays playing on the treetops in the morning, and you watch the silent stars.

You relax. By-and-by, you relax into your nature with the help of nature outside you. It becomes a harmony - the inner nature and the outer nature. You start playing with the outer nature. It is not a seeking; a Hindu ashram is not seeking. It is a place to rest.

Seek, and you will never find - because the very seeking makes you tense. The East says: Seek not, and He will find you. Seek and you will never find, seek and you will seek in vain. Blessed are those who can rest in prayer, who can rest and trust, and who can say, "Okay, whenever you feel like coming, come. I am not in a hurry." The East is not in a hurry, the East has no time-consciousness.

It says, "Okay, if in this life, good; and if you decide to come next life, good. You will find me still here.

There is no hurry."

The West is too much in a hurry. In the West the concept of one life has made such a tense knot in the human mind. Only one life? - seventy years? - three score and ten years, and finished? And of these seventy years, twenty-five years are lost in education, for almost twenty-five years you will be sleeping, and for the remainder, shaving and going to the office, coming from the office... and the traffic and the conflict and the children and the court and the divorce - all these things. What is left? If you count everything, you will be simply surprised: not even seven minutes are left for God.

A great hurry arises: move fast! Do something! Otherwise, how will you find God?

God is not something to be found. It is something you relax in, it is an inner space. When you are not, it is there. And when you are not, you are only not when you are not a seeker. The seeker holds you as an ego. WHO is seeking?

The ashram is a totally different concept: you relax, you just be. You do small things. You feel hungry - you eat. You feel tired - you go to sleep, with no hurry, with no worry. You just allow God to come in His own way, in His own time. This is the concept of the ashram.

If you really want to know a real ashram, my ashram is the only ashram - because all other ashrams are ABSOLUTELY corrupted by the Christians; they think they are Hindu but they are not. Because there is a certain attraction in the Christian argument, it appeals. First, the very idea of will appeals:

you have to work hard. The Christians have given a work ethic to the world. Work! Play? Forget about play. Play is for children. You work, you are a grown-up, you work hard, you work for your whole life, and then in the end - like a carrot dangling - you will have your reward. In the end! And that end never comes. You work and work and work and you die working. One day you fall into your grave.

In the East we don't have that work ethic. We say: Relax, enjoy, play, fool around, have fun, don't be serious. And the end is not in the end, and the end is not in the result; it is in the process itself. Let me repeat: "Heaven is all the way to heaven. Has He not said: I am the Way?" This relaxed attitude by-and-by helps you to disappear, to disappear utterly. And when you are not, suddenly one day you see God is there. And you see... you are amazed that He has always been there. If you were not seeking Him, you would have known Him at any time. Your very seeking was the hindrance - because the sought was hiding in the seeker, and you were rushing hither and hither.

The monastery is of the West; the monastery is the argument of the West. The ashram is of the East, the argument of the East. And I say to you that all the other ashrams in India have become Christian, because the Christian monastery appeals very much. The modern world is made by the West; the East is no more East.

Will helps you to feel more egoistic. Everybody wants to feel that he is somebody, and you can feel that you are somebody only if you do something. Just fooling around, you cannot feel like somebody. Just having fun, you cannot feel like somebody. You have to do something to prove that you are somebody. And then the Christian ethic says: Religion is service, so go and serve people.

The Eastern attitude is: Religion is not service. Service may come as a by-product but it is not synonymous with religion. Religion is meditation, prayer, relaxation. Religion is to go into yourself. I you have arrived deep into your own being, maybe - and that is a maybe, a perhaps - you may start serving people. But the service will not be a duty, it will be just sharing. And the East says: It is just a "perhaps", because it may not happen to everybody in the same way. Each is so unique. When it happened to Meera, she started dancing; she forgot all about service. Of course, there were poor people, and it would have been more economical if she had served poor people, but she simply started dancing and singing. And I say she did well. If she had served a leper or a poor person, or if she had opened a school and had made a hospital, that would have been a great loss - because her songs are so tremendously beautiful. Her dance has changed the quality of human existence:

she has pulsated a new tune. No, it would not have been good. It is good that she allowed her own expression. There have been people who never went anywhere when they became enlightened; they remained under their trees. That's how it happened to them.

In the East we accept the uniqueness of the individual. We don't enforce any ethic on top of him.

We simply say: When you have come home, then whatsoever happens is good. Then whatsoever God wills through you, let it be so. Amen. You don't interfere. If He wants to be silent in you under a bodhi tree, then let Him be silent. Through silence He will create pulsations which will change the centuries the coming centuries. For thousands of years those pulsations will help people to attain higher states of consciousness, altered states of consciousness. So don't bother and don't interfere.

If He wants to remain quiet and silent, let Him be. If He wants to dance in you, let Him. If He wants to go and serve poor people, let Him. If He wants to become a Meera, good; if He wants to become a Chaitanya, good; if He wants to become a Buddha, good. Whatsoever He wills, let His will be done.

But the Christian argument is important: The world is poor, people are suffering, and you are meditating? Go and serve people! It is logical, it appeals to reason. The ashram has disappeared.

I am trying to create a new commune - new in the sense that it no longer exists; otherwise it is the most ancient one. It existed once, now only the memory remains - not even the memory. It has disappeared, faded away: a commune where people are simply relaxing and doing their things, moving through their feeling, not through reasoning; functioning through the heart not through their heads... and taking it easy.

Yes, the very word 'ashram' means: take it easy.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

There is no possibility, sir - because I have none. I am the Way. If you see through me, through and through, only then will you find. If you listen to my words - and that's what you are doing; the questioner is not a sannyasin - if you are just standing outside me....

To become a sannyasin means to stand inside me, to become part of my family, to belong to me. I AM THE WAY. I am not preaching some way to you, I am simply preaching myself. I am not giving you, handing over, some technique, some method, some way. And if you are trying to figure it out, you will become more and more confused. I can drive you crazy. Either be a sannyasin, or escape.

If you are a sannyasin, then your madness has a method to it. If you are not a sannyasin, then you will become more and more confused. You will become mad without a method. And when you have become too confused, if you escape from here that won't help. I will go on haunting you.

You say, "Will I ever learn your ways?" There is no possibility, sir. It is impossible, because there are no ways I am preaching here. In fact, I am destroying all ways. I am trying to take all ways from you. Here, my whole effort is to create an anarchy in you, a chaos - because YOUR ways are the hindrances to God. When you are in an anarchic state - not knowing who you are, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what is what - in that beautiful chaos, freedom exists. In that freedom only is God possible. I am trying to create a space here, not a way. I am not making a superhighway so people can follow on it. I am throwing you into the wild where no map exists, and I am not going to give you any guide. Here I am not teaching you a certain doctrine - no, not at all. I am trying to take away all the doctrines that you have already learned. Here, I am trying to help you unlearn, to unlearn the ways so that the Way can exist. And the Way is not one of the ways. The Way has nothing to do with your choice, or with your mind, or with your reason, or with your logic.

When you are completely at a loss, the Way exists, God exists.

Here, it is not a question of any theology, it is a question of love. And if you stand outside just like a spectator, and observer, you will get something, but that will not be the true thing - and you will get it in a very fragmentary way, and you will get it according to you. And you cannot get me according to you, remember: make it a point. You can get me only according toe, not according to you. That is the meaning of becoming a sannyasin: that you say, "Okay, now we will take you as you are, according to you." If you take me according to yourself, that will be simply a misunderstanding. Then we are poles apart.

I have heard....

A very voluble preacher was working himself into a frenzy during a sermon on hell and damnation.

A little four-year-old boy in the congregation could not take his eyes off the wild figure in the pulpit.

Finally, he whispered to his mother, "What will we do if he ever gets loose?"

Now a child has his own understanding. He is there, listening, but with his own understanding.

If you are trying to understand me with your own understanding, you will not understand me at all.

You will get some wrong conceptions, notions, and whatsoever you carry from here will be a burden to you rather than a relief. It will disturb you, and it will ALWAYS create trouble for you. Never be anywhere halfheartedly. Either be or don't be, but never be halfhearted - otherwise you are committing some wrong against yourself.

You can hear me, certainly, without becoming a sannyasin; you can meditate here without becoming a sannyasin; you can remain an outsider, aloof, neutral, and you may think that you are very clever - but you will get into trouble. And I am warning you: then it is at your own risk.

The trouble will be that something will start happening, and it will never be the right thing. Because I don't trust much in techniques: techniques are just devices to bring you closer to me. Techniques are just devices for you to play with so that you remain occupied.

I talk to you, but talking is not the goal. I have to deliver something which cannot be talked about.

That I can deliver only when I feel that your heart is open. Till the heart is open, I will go on persuading your mind - but whatsoever I am doing with the mind is not the real thing. The real thing has to be delivered to you when your heart is ready, when you are in a deep trust, when you have accepted me. And remember, you will think, "That's what I'm thinking: whether to accept you or not."

If you accept me through your rationalizations, thinking, that will not be acceptance. You will still be accepting yourself, your own thinking. If you decide, "Yes, this man seems to be right, and now I am going to take the jump," it is no more a jump at all. You have missed the jump. Now you are still trusting your own thinking: you have decided, concluded, that this man is right: "Now I go into the journey" - you are still not going. The step has to be taken in innocence, not in cleverness. The step has to be taken like a child. The step has to be taken in trust, in foolishness.

Yes, I repeat it: only those who are foolish enough to take the jump will ever be able to find out what the Way is.

Have you not watched? Down through the centuries, this has been happening: when Christ was on the earth, only a few foolish people believed in him, a few foolish people. You may call them apostles now, but they were foolish people: somebody was just a fisherman, another was a woodcutter, somebody was a shoemaker - just those types of people. Not a single rabbi followed him, not a single professor, not a single pundit, not a single respectable man. All were unknown, ordinary people: a fisherman, a woodcutter, a farmer, a prostitute, a drunkard - that type of person followed him, and that too was a very limited number. And all the rabbis were against him. They were clever people: they knew, they already knew. All the scholars were against him. In fact, all the scholars, all the rabbis, all the learned people, they conspired. They arranged it that this man should be killed, because this man was a danger, and they were afraid. His very presence was fear-creating - because he was such an alive scripture; who would listen to these dead rabbis who talk about dead scriptures? He was the Way. And these rabbis were teaching so many ways to reach God, and here was the man who declared: "I am the Way, and I am the Truth. Come, follow me. All those who are heavily burdened, come to me and rest in me." Now this was too much!

You can be here like a learned man, standing by the side, looking from the corner of the eye, not looking directly. Then you will miss.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

I feel it every day: I feel it every day when I listen to the birds in the almond. I always enjoy it, I always feel the tremendous beauty of it. That's why I have to lecture every day - because then I HAVE to sing.

My lecture is a song. It is not against the birds that I am singing here; it is in symphony with them.

This is MY way of singing. And trust me... when birds sing I feel happy; when I sing they feel happy.

It is a bargain.

What I am saying to you is not a lecture. 'Lecture' is an ugly word. How can I lecture? This is a song, this is a spontaneous outflowing, it is an overflowing. I feel happy; that's why I say so many things to you. In fact, it is not to explain anything to you. I am not explaining. It is simply to convey my joy, my delight in life; that's the way I can dance. These words are my gestures.

And listen to me as you listen to a poet or to a bird. Never listen to me as you listen to a philosopher:

it is not a lecture, it is not a sermon. I am not pouring morality into you. I am not giving you any "shoulds", "oughts"; I am not giving you any ideals. I am simply conveying that I am tremendously happy... can't you see it? I am simply conveying that I have arrived. You can also arrive. I am simply making so many gestures so that if one gesture is missed, another may not be missed; if another is missed, I will make a thousand and one gestures. Some day, some gesture may hit you in the right moment. Some day, in some moment, you may be ready and ripe, and suddenly it will happen.

Listening to me is just a way to commune with me. I am speaking, you are listening - there can happen a great communion. When the listening is perfect, total, when you have just become ears, suddenly there will be an upsurge of energy, a lightning, a satori. You will have understood. And I will not have been trying to explain to you, and you will have understood. I am simply transferring understanding. These are not explanations.

You can miss me only if you are deaf - and many people are deaf. You can miss me only if you are blind - and many people only appear to have eyes: they are blind.

A man visiting an insane asylum found one of the inmates with his ears to a brick wall. "Here, take a listen here," said the inmate, and the visitor obligingly put his ear at the indicated position.

"I can't hear anything," he said, baffled.

"I know," said the inmate. "It has been like that all these years I have been here; I have not heard anything either."

But still he is listening, putting his ear to the wall.

There are two misfortunes in life. There are people who go on listening to walls: lectures, sermons, priests, popes, SHANKARACHARYAS - people who have not experienced themselves, people who are second-hand, people who are carbon copies. If you listen to them you will listen for years, and you will not be able to find anything. They are walls, there is nothing inside them. This is one misfortune: getting attached to a wall.

There is another misfortune: you may be with a Buddha, a Krishna, a Christ, a Mohammed, but YOU may be a wall. Then he can go on hammering, he can go on saying, and you don't listen. Jesus says so many times to his disciples: "If you have ears, listen; if you have eyes, see. I am here."

These are not lectures that I am delivering to you. This is my being that I am sharing with you.

Become more sensitive, become more loving, become more receptive, become more feminine, become a womb - and sooner or later you are bound to get pregnant with me.

But there are people who really don't want to listen; they have some investment in not listening.

There are people who come to listen, and yet don't want to listen. They cannot miss listening, and they cannot allow it either. When they are not here they feel that they are missing something, they should have been here. When they are here they become stiff, they become afraid, they become scared. If they listen too much, if they go into it too much, maybe they will not be able to return. This is how they go on hanging; they remain in a limbo.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasruddin inserted a classified in a local newspaper offering a one-hundred-rupee reward for the return, with no questions asked, of his wife's pet cat.

"That's a mighty big reward for a cat - and in India!" observed the clerk, accepting the advertisement.

"Not for this one," said Mulla cheerfully. "I drowned it."

Now there are many people like that: they know they don't want to listen, and yet they come and they try to listen. They know that they have already drowned the cat so there is no possibility of its being found again, but still they go on searching for it. Maybe they are trying to deceive others, but remember, mind it: if you try to deceive others, there is every possibility that sooner or later you will be deceived by your own efforts. When others are deceived, you will be deceived by their being deceived.

Be alert. You have to take me in tremendous alertness. Only then... only then will you be able to see what is transpiring here.

The last question:

Question 6:

This is from Yatri. He is asking why sometimes I am late. I am amazed myself. The reasons are different. I am amazed because I am amazed at why sometimes I am not late.

Time does not exist for me; it is a miracle how I manage. And he is asking: "What are the three most esoteric reasons for your arriving at the lecture at such an exotic number of minutes past eight?"

First, I am drunk.

Second, I am drunk.

Third, I am drunk.

And the VERY last question:

Question 7:

That's true. I know no mathematics, but one thing I would like to tell you - even Einstein was not better than me. He was sometimes even worse.

Once it happened: He was traveling in a bus. To pay the fare, he gave a certain amount of money to the conductor. He deducted the money for the ticket and returned the remaining money. He counted it - just a few coins - but he thought that he had been cheated. So he said to the conductor, "What do you think? Are you kidding me? You have not returned the right amount of money." The conductor counted it again. It was just a small amount; he counted it again. He said, "It is absolutely right."

Einstein counted it again. He said, "No!" The conductor was very angry, and he said, "What is the matter with you? Can't you count? Don't you know .. figures?" Einstein has reported it in his memoirs.

Even Einstein was not such an Einstein. I am certainly not; I get mixed up: first question, second question... and then I forget. That's true. You should be surprised that I don't start from the last question.