You are the mirror

Question 1:

Latifa, you are suffering from a disease called "Germany." It is out of this disease two world wars have happened. It was not the superiority of the race that was the cause of the wars, it was a deep feeling of inferiority. To cover it up, they tried hard to be superior.

Only the person who tries to be superior suffers, necessarily, from an inferiority complex; Only the nation that tries to be superior to others, suffers as a whole nation from a deep inferiority complex.

It is one of the most surprising facts, that India has never invaded any country. In ten thousand years' history there has been no invasion, and the reason is, India has never suffered from an inferiority complex. Invaders came and conquered India. Small groups of very primitive people conquered a vast land without much difficulty, for a simple reason - because the Indian consciousness was not afraid even of slavery. Even slavery could not make it inferior; its superiority was something to do with its inner growth, its evolution of consciousness.

It is not for any other reason that for two thousand years India remained a slave country, either of this land or of that land; and they were all small groups, small tribes, which could have been crushed by this vast continent without any difficulty. It was not cowardice: it was simply - if you are not suffering from an inferiority complex, the desire to fight, the desire to prove that you are superior, is not there.

Why did it happened in Germany? - The reason is that Germany was populated by millions of Jews, who have been carrying the idea that they are the superior race, the chosen race of God. And they have qualities... they are more intelligent, they easily become rich... and the Germans always compared themselves with their neighbors who were Jews. They were rich, they were intelligent; they were getting forty percent of the Nobel prizes, and the rest of the world was getting sixty percent.

The three great men of this century who are dominating people's minds are all Jews: Karl Marx was a Jew, Sigmund Freud was a Jew, Albert Einstein was a Jew.

Being in the shadow of the Jews, the Germans started feeling they were inferior. And once you start feeling inferior, you cannot remain with your inferiority; it is a constant pain, a constant remembrance that there are people who are superior to you. You have to prove somehow that you are superior to the Jews.

This was the reason why a madman like Adolf Hitler managed to make even great German intellectuals his followers - because he promised them that he would get rid of all the Jews. That was simply symbolic. Getting rid of the Jews, there would be nobody to remind them of their inferiority; and getting rid of the superior race chosen by God, they would certainly prove to the whole world that they are in fact the chosen race, the Nordic German Aryans.

Nobody has gone deeply into the psychology of these two world wars, but this is one of the fundamentals: the Germans were trying hard to get rid of their inferiority complex. All over the world people have puzzled, as to how Adolf Hitler convinced Germans that it was because of the Jews that they were defeated in the first world war. There seems to be no relationship at all.

It is so absurd an idea, that even a retarded person will understand that there is no real reason why Jews should be the cause.... They did not betray the country; they fought hand in hand with the Germans against the enemy; they produced all the destructive weapons; they gave their best scientists for the war, their sons as soldiers - why suddenly did Adolf Hitler start saying, "Jews are the cause of our defeat, and unless they are completely erased from Germany, Germany can never win?"

Looking at the surface there seems to be no relevance, no reasonableness; it is almost as if he had said, "We have been defeated in the first world war, because people are using toothpaste." Jews have exactly the same kind of relevance to the German defeat.

But looking deeper into the psychology, Adolf Hitler is right. Because of the Jews they always remained inferior. They never became aggressive - how can an inferior person be aggressive?

They never believed in themselves - how can an inferior person believe in himself? They knew beforehand they would be defeated; they are inferior people. Adolf Hitler wanted to prove: "We are superior." And the only way to prove it was to kill six million Jews. He killed six million Jews and millions of people from other countries. That gave a tremendous boost to the German ego; now nobody could say, "We are inferior."

Latifa, it is not your individual problem; it is a problem Germany has carried for centuries. It has almost become part of the collective unconscious; but by killing the Jews or killing anybody else, you cannot get rid of it.

You can pretend to be superior; you can even believe you are superior. You can even prove to the outside world that you are superior; but deep down you know perfectly well you are not superior.

All these cover-ups are not going to help. So when you come to me and you start meditating, slowly slowly those covers disappear, because they are created by the mind; and then the deep-rooted conditioning of inferiority surfaces.

The only way to get rid of it is to just watch it - let it surface, don't suppress it. If you suppress it, you will have to live with it. Let it surface, and you remain simply a watcher: that this idea of inferiority is only a thought, and you are not the mind that thinks.

You are the being that watches.

Your being is neither superior nor inferior.

It simply is; it knows no comparison.

Jews have suffered unnecessarily because Moses gave them this idea that they were the chosen people of God. He had to; I can understand his helplessness. Jews were in Egypt, slaves, and Moses was trying to get them to revolt against the slavery.

Now people who have remained slaves for centuries cannot even conceive that they can revolt against their masters; the very idea is fearful. Those masters have been beating them, killing them - they have treated them like animals - for so long. The question before Moses was, "How to create some idea in the Jews, that they are capable of revolution?"

He invented a beautiful idea: that they were the chosen people of God; and people who were suffering in slavery, being beaten, killed, accepted the idea immediately. It was such a consolation.

But nobody raised the question that if we are the chosen people of God, then why are we slaves?

The idea was so contradictory; but it was so consoling that they gathered courage once they had accepted the idea. Moses had managed, first, to get them to accept the idea: "You are the chosen people of God;" then he told them, "Now revolution is very easy for you - nobody can prevent you."

Their inferiority was covered by being the "chosen people of God;" and now being the "chosen people of God" was used as a foundation for revolution against the Egyptians. It was good strategy at that point. The Jews revolted - they left the land of Egypt.

Then Moses gave them another idea, that "God has made a special land for you, Israel; so we are going towards Israel." I don't think he had any idea where they were going, because it took him and his people forty years of wandering in the desert, searching for the land "Israel." No country was ready to give them shelter. A small country which they started calling "Israel" was not anything special - a desert.

If this is what God creates for his own people then he seems to be a little crazy. But Moses had to say somewhere, "We have found!"... Three-fourths of his original people had died on the way, out of starvation, hunger - and God did not care at all.... His own people in search of the land he had created for them and that land was also very difficult. The people who reached Israel were almost third, fourth generation. Their forefathers had started from Egypt, and the third or fourth generation arrived.

The first generation gap was felt by Moses: these were not the people he had convinced to revolt.

He was almost ancient, perhaps one hundred years old; tired, tattered, he simply said, "This is the land" - to somehow settle his people. But the people were surprised, because the land was barren desert. Another age of difficulties began to produce out of that barren land; and Moses was so tired, and he had lost his old youthful inventiveness. He left the Jews in Israel saying, "You take care of the land. A few Jews, one tribe of the Jews, has got lost somewhere in the desert and I am going in search of it."

That tribe had reached Kashmir in India. And Moses reached Kashmir, but could not live long - perhaps a year or two years - and died in Kashmir. If he had brought his whole tribe to Kashmir, that would certainly have been something, showing them: "God has created it for you." Kashmir is so beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful part of the earth; and that's why one tribe that had wandered away by mistake, when they reached Kashmir thought: This must be Israel, and the others will also be coming here - so they settled there.

Now the people who are in Kashmir are all Mohammedans. They were converted forcibly by Mohammedans, from Jews to Mohammedans. But you can see their faces, their color, their noses - and you can be absolutely certain that they belong to the Jews. They are not.... Jews have a personality of their own, as every race has a personality of its own. Moses died in Kashmir.

Israel was such a barren place, there was no opportunity and no challenge for intelligence - and Jews have remained slaves for centuries. Hence, they have never known intelligence.

Mind is something like the land. If, for centuries, nothing has grown on the land, it becomes more and more powerful, and if you sow seeds in it, it will give you the best harvest possible, because its energy has never been used. First, Jews were slaves, their intelligence was never used, it remained a potential. Then, in Israel, there was no opportunity to use it - they started spreading all over Europe, wherever there was opportunity.

They proved to be superior to everybody, because they had such great potential, unused for centuries. They became the richest race in the world. It was not that they were God's chosen people, that was pure inventiveness of a revolutionary mind - Moses should be described as the first revolutionary of the world.

In one context it was perfectly right; but times change, contexts change, the same thing that had helped the Jews to become richer, more intelligent than others, became a curse: because everybody hated them, everybody was jealous of them; jealous of their intelligence, jealous of their riches, jealous of their possessions.

Hitler easily convinced Germany, that "It is the Jews. Their very presence is causing our failure."

And a man like Martin Heidegger, one of the Nobel prize winning philosophers of Germany, and perhaps the most difficult philosopher the world has ever known.... He has never written a book that is complete; he will start a book; the first volume will be published, but by that time - he has such a great intelligence - he will start doing something else.

It was not enough to complete the book - he is the only man whose every book is incomplete. He will just go up to a certain length, then suddenly he will come upon a greater idea... he will drop the old project, start on the new project. But even his incomplete books are proofs of tremendous genius.

Philosophers have been wondering what would have been the result if he had completed them, because he was moving in such new dimensions, never touched; where no mariner has ever reached - virgin lands, which no philosopher had ever bothered about. And his insight is so deep, that to understand him, you need a very high quality intelligence; otherwise you cannot understand what he is saying.

Even Martin Heidegger became a follower of Adolf Hitler, because of that German inferiority. And Adolf Hitler gave the promise, and he managed the promise - for almost five years he went on conquering, convincing the Germans that "certainly we are the chosen race of people; we were just not aware of it: Adolf Hitler has made us aware of it." But then Germany was defeated again, and the whole covered up inferiority complex erupted.

Latifa, it is not just your problem, it is the problem of the whole German race; and the way out of it is not to get identified with it.

Nobody is superior.

Nobody is inferior.

Everybody is unique.

Because there are not two persons who are the same, you cannot compare marigolds with roses:

they are two different flowers. You cannot compare two human beings with each other, they are two different flowers. But this is not a question of intellectual conviction, it is a question of being aware, and destroying the identification.

Don't try to be superior, just try to be yourself. You are not inferior, but, remember it: nobody else is inferior. You are not superior.

Aristotle has created a difficulty for human beings. He created one of the basic troubles in the human mind, because he knew only: either you are superior, or you are inferior. In everything it was either, or: either you are white or you are black; either you are a saint or you are a sinner.

He never bothered to look at the rainbow, and the whole span of all the colors between white and black. And each color has its own beauty, has its own dance, has its own place in existence, which no other color can take.

My approach is that each individual is unique; I want to destroy the very idea of comparison. You are yourself, I am myself; neither I am superior, nor I am inferior to you. Just, it happens I am this way; it happens you are that way. But this has to come out of your meditations. What I am saying is my meditation, you are not to believe in it - you have to go into the experience of it. And the day you will see - you are just yourself.

For example, Latifa, think of one thing: everybody in the third world war dies, except Latifa.... Will she still think herself to be inferior? Inferior to whom? Will she feel herself to be superior? But superior to whom? There are only dead bodies all around; with dead bodies you cannot be inferior nor can you be superior.

And in truth, we are all alone; as alone as Latifa will be alone when the whole world is destroyed.

Even at this moment everybody is alone, just himself. A simple awareness and acceptance of oneself as one is, is enough, and the whole problem will disappear. Otherwise, it will torture you, it will remain like a wound your whole life.

You say, "When I look at the moments when I feel separate from You, from my love and the rest of existence, it is usually the shadows of comparison and jealousy; and when I go deeper I usually get in touch with a deep insecurity, and the feeling of being inferior."

It is perfectly good to go deeper into your feelings. But remember one thing: the one who is going deeper, the one who is coming across inferiority, insecurity, jealousy, is separate from them. It cannot be one with them, otherwise how can it feel inferiority, insecurity, jealousy?

You are the witness; so, as you go deeper, you will come across many things which you have suppressed; or perhaps for thousands of years your whole race has suppressed; or perhaps the whole of humanity has suppressed.... But you are as pure as a mirror.

When you are going deeper, the mirror reflects jealousy, but the mirror is not jealousy; the mirror reflects insecurity, but the mirror is not insecurity; the mirror reflects inferiority, but the mirror is not inferiority. The mirror is not identified with anything that it reflects - the mirror is just empty, silent, clean. You are the mirror.

In meditation you will come to recognize that you are the mirror. All other things are reflected in you, but the mirror does not become a buffalo, because a buffalo looks into the mirror. When the buffalo is gone, the mirror is again empty, even while the buffalo was looking into the mirror, the mirror was empty. A small mirror cannot contain that big buffalo.

You may have observed small children, when they see a mirror for the first time. Very small children who are learning to crawl on all fours... just put a mirror in front of them, and they will be very much surprised, seeing another boy. They will look with wondering eyes, and it is absolutely certain, that they will go behind the mirror, to find the boy - where the boy is hiding. They may touch the mirror to see, and they will be surprised that the other boy is also touching; then the only way to find him is to go behind the mirror. Every child will go behind the mirror to look for the boy who is hiding there.

A mirror is just a reflecting phenomenon; so are you. Be a mirror, and then all these problems, whatever their names, will start disappearing - they are only reflections. You need not try to get rid of them. The very idea of getting free of them, or getting rid of them, still accepts that they are realities of your being.

The mirror does not care whether a buffalo is looking in it, or a donkey is looking in it. It does not matter; it does not change the quality of the mirror at all. The greatest genius may be looking into it, and the greatest idiot may be looking into it: the mirror remains the same. Reflections don't change its quality, its being.

You are a mirror.

Discover this mirror and don't be bothered about getting rid of jealousy, of insecurity, of inferiority.

There are thousands of problems; if you start trying to get rid of them you will need many lives....

It was because of so many problems that the East believed in many lives, because one life is not enough. You don't have much time.

Half of your life, if you count, is wasted in sleeping, taking food, taking a bath, shaving twice a day....

Accumulated in seventy years it is going to be a big amount. Going to some stupid job, seeing the movies, playing football, fighting with your wife, worrying about a thousand and one things which will never happen, remembering all the old things which have happened - and now there is no point in remembering them. You just count, and you will be surprised if in seventy years you can get even seven minutes for meditation.

Naturally, the East had to invent that in one life the problems cannot be solved, you don't have time, you will need many lives. But nobody has gone deeper into it, that in one life you cannot solve problems, but you are going to create many problems. And the second life will be more burdened with problems: the first life's problems and the second life's problems - and for meditation, again those seven minutes. Looked at in that way, even if you have thousands of lives, you are not going to get rid of them. They will go on growing, they will go on becoming bigger, they will go on becoming thicker, you will be more in their clutches.... That is a whole wrong attitude.

I am not saying that there are not future lives. I am saying that the idea appealed to people just because they needed time. The idea is right, but it should not be accepted because you need time to solve your problems. Your problems can be solved this moment, there is no need to wait for tomorrow.

So from this moment, Latifa, you are a German mirror. I am not saying Indian mirror, because you cannot trust an Indian mirror - you cannot trust anything made in India. People make things in India, and write on them, "Made in USA."

Once a watch was presented to me in Bombay. I looked at the watch; it looked absolutely Indian craftsmanship, but on the back of the watch was written, "Made in USA." So I asked the man who had presented it to me, "Are you certain that this watch is made in USA?"

He laughed, and said, "USA means Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association, it is just a small place near Poona."

Sindhis are very clever people; they have made the name Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association... USA; made in USA.

I have come across things in which it is written... if you don't carefully note, you will see: "Made in Germany." But if you carefully look, it is not "Made in Germany," but "Made as Germany." They have changed the ?in' into ?as'. But "Made as Germany" - what does it mean?

That's why I say, you are a German mirror. Just get more and more settled in your quality of mirroring, and all the diseases that you are talking about are bound to disappear within a second.

I believe in such miracles.

Question 2:

Surabhi, it is your conditioning against everything that is pleasant. Pleasure has been condemned so many times that you have forgotten that it is one of the great lies. You say, "It seems that whenever I have experienced a feeling of well-being inside, it is always followed by a wave of self-condemnation."

That wave of self-condemnation is coming to you from your conditioning, most probably the Christian or the Catholic conditioning. Just condemn anything - and when you start condemning things before children, they don't have the capacity to argue against it. They trust in their parents and if they see condemnation, they learn the art of condemning themselves.

But nature gives you moments of well-being, of pleasure; you cannot resist that either. You are sitting in two boats: one is made of your conditionings; and another is your natural boat that you have brought with you - your life. You cannot leave pleasures completely, but you can do one thing - and that's what everybody has done - be half-hearted.

When they are feeling something pleasant, they hold themselves back; they are in a strange position.

That's why you feel as if you are being strangled by it... a tension. Your conditioning is saying, "Don't go that way," and your whole nature is going that way. Deep down you want to go that way because it is so pleasant, so beautiful. But your mind goes on saying, "Listen, don't go that way, it is sin, you will suffer for it. Just for a momentary pleasure you will be thrown into eternal hell. Think of it, wait."

So you are always wavering between pleasure and the anti-pleasure attitude. That gives you the feeling of being strangled.

There are a few people who have dropped all their conditionings and go on moving in their natural course of life. They are happy people, dancing and singing - enjoying. Religious people condemn them: these are the sinners; eat, drink, and be merry is their only religion. They will suffer much.

There are people, very few, who have dropped their natural desires completely, and have settled into their social conditioning. They don't feel any joy, their song of life is lost. They feel crippled; they cannot dance. They can do one thing only; all their energy which would have been divided into many dimensions has become concentrated only on one thing: condemn those who are still enjoying.

These people are called saints. Their only work from morning to evening is condemnation. Slowly, slowly condemnation becomes their only pleasure. The more they condemn, the more they feel themselves holier, superior, divine, spiritual; and the others become materialists. There is only one consolation for them, that after death they will be in paradise, enjoying everything that they are missing here. And all these people who are running after momentary pleasures will be suffering in hell for eternity.

Even teachers like Jesus have supported these ideas. Lazarus asked Jesus, "You say, ?Blessed are the poor, because theirs is the kingdom of God', but how to believe you?" Here we are starving; the summer is hot and the rains have not come for two, three years. The wells have become dry; even water has become a difficulty."

Jesus says to Lazarus, "Don't be worried, Lazarus; soon you will see, after death you will be sitting in the lap of God. And this rich man, who is giving a feast today to other rich and powerful people of the city, will be hungry and thirsty in hell. And they will say from there, ?Lazarus, give us something to eat; we are thirsty too.' And this is going to be their eternal fate. Even if you want to give to them you cannot give - because nothing passes from heaven to hell. You will have all the pleasures, and they will have all the sufferings. So it is only a question of a few years. It is worth suffering for a few years, and then enjoying for the whole of eternity."

To console the poor... and the poor have always been in the majority, they are the real clients of all religions. The religions have to console them, and they found out - all the religions of the world - the same consolation, after death....

The trouble is that nature is too powerful; conditionings cannot destroy it completely, they can only poison it. And this, Surabhi, is what you are suffering: poisoning by conditioning.

Whenever you feel a certain well-being it is followed by a wave of self-condemnation. What is wrong in feeling well-being? You are not harming anybody. Well-being is not something quantitative that you have taken, so others cannot feel it. You have not deprived anybody. In fact, by your well-being you may trigger other people's well-being.

To be with a man who is full of well-being, radiates a certain joy which is contagious. Why should you feel self-condemnation? You have not done anything wrong. Just see that your conditionings have to be dropped - and they can be dropped because they are not part of your nature, they have been forced upon you by society. They are arbitrary. And the deeper and more intense the laughter and celebration becomes, the deeper and more intense the condemnation that follows in its wake.

Your dancing, your celebrating, your singing is not harming anybody. It may heal somebody, but it cannot harm anybody. These birds are singing and they don't feel any condemnation. They don't go to the Catholic priest to confess every Sunday "Father, forgive me. I again sang this week. I could not resist - when the sun rises and flowers open their fragrance.... I try hard, but I am a helpless, small bird, not much strong, so I have been singing the whole week. Now, forgive me, and ask God to forgive me."

These trees don't go to the priest; they dance, they enjoy the sun, they enjoy the wind, they enjoy the rain - they enjoy you. They must be waiting for you every morning, every evening, because we are all connected with each other. They must be waiting: it is time, you must be coming. And when you sing and when you clap, do you think these trees mind it? They enjoy it.

Man is the only foolish animal in the world, and the priests have found your weakness. Your weakness is that your mind can be filled by any garbage, whether you want it or not. People are continually pouring garbage into each other's minds - you will not see people sitting silently.

I used to travel a lot and it was the most troublesome thing to have another passenger with me.

I always chose to travel in an air-conditioned coupe, so at the most there would be one other passenger; mostly there was nobody. But even one passenger is enough. And I was traveling around the year continually; so many incidents....

I would enter into the compartment and the man might start smiling - that means now he is approaching - and I would put my finger on my lips, and he would look at me very disappointed. But still he would ask, "Are you silent?" And then to watch his fidgetiness was such an entertainment. He would open his suitcase, close it, take one book, look into it, put it back, read the same newspaper that he has been reading the whole day, put it back again... and I am simply looking at him! And finally he would say, "You can remain silent, but don't stare at me, because I am feeling so nervous."

Why should he feel nervous? He would go into the bathroom, come again, go back, come again - just to keep himself engaged. People cannot sit silently.

Once in a while it would happen - I had many devices for these people - as I entered and the person looked at me I would tell him, "This is my name, this is my father's name, this is my father's father's name. I have so many uncles, so many brothers, so many sisters."

He would say, "But I have not asked!"

I would say, "You will be asking, so it is better to finish quickly!... That all my uncles are married, one uncle has two children."

He would say, "But I have not even spoken a single word - why are you saying all these things?"

I would say, "I know that soon you will ask my name, my father's name, where I live, where I am going, what is my business. I am telling you on my own, so nothing is left. If something is left you just tell me, because I want to finish it within five minutes; and then for forty-eight hours I am going to be silent, and then don't ask anything."

So first he was shocked, but he understood that he was going to ask these things. That's what people are asking each other - where they live, what they do. What is your concern? How does it matter to you where I am going or from where I am coming? - and it is expected that I should ask you the same questions.

So I used to say to these people, "In five minutes I will say everything possible, in a summarized form; and five minutes I will give you - you can say in five minutes all the things that could be asked of you - and then for forty-eight hours we both are going to be silent."

People used to think that this man seems to be mad! And for forty-eight hours there was such a circus to see: he would call the waiter and he would eat too much, and I saw that he was eating again and again, and calling for coffee and some cold drink. I was simply looking at him, not doing anything.

Finally he would get so tense that he would call the conductor, "I want to change. You put me into some other compartment."

But I would tell the conductor, "I will remain with him."

The conductor would say, "But this is strange."

I would say, "No, we are companions. I have introduced myself, he has introduced himself. Now it is a forty-eight hour contract, so if you have two seats, only then change him."

Most probably he had not two seats empty, and even if he had, the man would decline: "I don't want to go - what is the point? If I have to live with this man for forty-eight hours in another compartment, then this compartment is good."

All the conductors knew me, so when I would go out they would say, "Don't torture him. That poor fellow looks so shocked, as if he is traveling with a ghost or something."

People are chitchatting continually; pouring all their rubbish into your head and inviting you to pour your rubbish in their heads. And that rubbish becomes part of your mind.

Otherwise, Surabhi, can't you see it simply, that your well-being does no harm to anybody? Why should you feel self-condemnation? It is just the rubbish that your parents and your priests have forced into you. Your singing, your laughter, your celebration - if it can do anything it will be something good. Why should you feel a condemnation coming just behind it? These are your dead priests; centuries of dead people who are enjoying themselves in their graves, resting, relaxing; and they have given you these ideas. Just a little awareness, and you will not find any content in your condemnation.

I can understand it if you are harming somebody, if you are being violent with somebody, if you are angry with somebody and a condemnation comes in - it is understandable, it is reasonable. You misbehaved and your consciousness is trying to say, "Do not do such a thing again."

But this cannot be true about celebration and singing and dancing and well-being - so just watch it. And when you feel condemnation coming in, dance more madly. Transform the energy that is condemnation into more intense celebration. Make it clear to your conditioned mind that if it interferes with you, you are going to do the same thing more and more.

If after laughter you feel condemnation, then go on laughing for hours until that stupid condemnation feels tired, saying "This woman is not worth it, I should choose some other Catholic!"

You are asking me, "Will there ever be a point when it will disappear, or will it remain a shadow of my enjoyment?"

It depends on you. It can disappear this very moment; but if you choose, it can remain. It is your guest. Just throw the guest out with all his luggage and say goodbye to him forever!

Make it clear. Don't look back, "Go somewhere else - there are many Christians around; enter into somebody else's head. I am finished with you!"

Try it! Pack all the suitcases, everything, and throw them out of the window. It is your decision you have accepted the guest. Don't forget that you are the host and the guest is only the guest, and can remain only with your permission. And such ugly guests, when I can give you beautiful guests.... Be a little choosy.

The guests that you have been carrying in your head up to now are your diseases; they are making you sick. They are not allowing you to laugh, they are not allowing you to dance, they are not allowing you to celebrate. What do they allow? Just to be serious and sad - miserable. Look at the point: when you are miserable, there will be no self-condemnation.

This is the conspiracy that has been made by the religions against each of you. To be miserable is perfectly okay, to be sad is perfectly okay; your religion has nothing to say about it. But to laugh, to enjoy, to be drunk with beauty, with bliss, with ecstasy - and immediately all your religions start condemning you.

The religions have virtually made the earth a hell. If you were left alone, without any interference from your religions, this very earth could have been a paradise. At least in this house of God you should remember you are in paradise; and here the discipline is different. If you are miserable, condemn it; if you are celebrating, appreciate it - give a gift to yourself.

When you see somebody celebrating, appreciate it - just a rose flower will be enough; give a gift to him. Perhaps this way you will learn that celebration can be appreciated. There is no need to condemn it.

Surabhi, your problem is very simple, it is an arbitrary problem created by others. It is not your problem, it is not coming out of your natural being. So today, when there will be singing and dancing, remember, if this self-condemnation comes in, throw it out. And the way to throw it out is to jump and jog and enjoy! Kill it by your blissfulness.

It is killing your blissfulness. You have every right to kill it by your blissfulness - by your ecstasy.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho!