Dropping the Why

The first question:

Question 1:

Nobody knows - and there is no way to know it, and there is no need to know it. This constant questioning - why am I here? why am I doing this? - this constant hankering for the why, is a disease of the mind. No answer is going to satisfy you, because the why can be asked again. If I say something - you are here because of this - the why will be pushed back a little, that's all. You will again ask: Why? The why is nonending.

Once you understand it, you drop it. The why is ridiculous. Rather than asking: Why am I here? it is better to use the opportunity, it is better to flower, it is better to exist authentically. And this is the beauty of it, that once you start existing authentically, truly, once you stop all nonsense thinking and you start delighting in life, once you are no more a philosopher, the why is answered. But it is not answered by anyone from the outside - it is answered by your own life energy.

The answer is possible, but it is not going to come like an answer, it is going to come like a lived experience. The answer is going to be existential, not intellectual. The question is intellectual.

Drop it! Rather, be! Otherwise, you can go on asking.... For centuries man has asked millions of questions; not a single question has been solved by speculation, thinking, logic, reason. Not even a single question is solved. On the contrary, whenever people have tried to answer a question, the answer has created a thousand and one more questions.

Who created the world? - and it has been answered: God created the world. And then immediately the question arises: Who created God? or, Why did he create the world? When did he create the world? And why did he create such a world? - so miserable, so hell-like? The one who was answering you that God created the world must have been thinking that your question would drop; but out of one answer a thousand and one questions arise. Mind is a question-creating mechanism.

So the first thing to understand is: drop why. Immediately you become religious. Continue with the why - you remain philosophical. Continue questioning and you remain in the head. Drop questioning - suddenly the energy moves in a new dimension: the dimension of the heart. Heart has no questions, and there hides the answer.

It will appear paradoxical, but still I would like to say to you: When your questioning stops, the answer comes. And if you go on questioning, the answer will become more and more elusive.

Why are you here? - who can answer it? And if it can be answered, you will no more be a man, you will become a mechanism. This mike is here and there is a reason for it; it can be answered. The car is there in the porch; the why can be answered. If your why also can be answered, you become a mechanism like a mike or a car - you become a utility, a commodity. But you are a man, not a machine.

Man means freedom. Why is there freedom? You can raise the question, but the question is foolish.

The why about man cannot be answered. And if the why about man cannot be answered, how can it be answered when you put it for the ultimate, for God? Even about man the why cannot be answered - about God also it is almost impossible even to raise the question rightly.

My effort is not to answer your questions, but to make you aware that out of a hundred questions, ninety-nine are simply foolish. Drop them! And once you have dropped the foolish questions - they look very philosophical - the one question remains. And that question is no longer concerned about irrelevant, nonessential things. That one question is concerned about existence, about you, your being. Not why you are here, not about the purpose of your being here, but about your being here - who you are: Who am I?

This can be known - because for it there is no need to go to anybody else; you can go inside. For it, there is no need to look in the scriptures - you can look withinwards. For it, you have just to close your eyes and move into inner silence. And you can have the feel - who you are. You can taste the flavor - who you are. You can smell it, you can touch it. This is existential questioning. But why you are here, I don't know. And there is no need to know about it.

The second thing to be understood: that whenever you ask such questions, they are indicative of certain states of mind. For example, whenever you are miserable, you ask why. Whenever you are blissful, you never ask why. If you are suffering, you ask: Why am I suffering? But if you are dancing blissfully, at ease, deep in contentment, do you ask: Why am I blissful? Then the why looks ridiculous.

We ask why about something which is not acceptable to us. We ask why about suffering, misery, hell. We never ask why about love, happiness, blissfulness, ecstasy. So the why is simply an indication that you must be miserable. So rather than asking why you are here, ask why you are miserable. Then something can be done, because misery can be changed.

Buddha used to say to his disciples: Don't ask metaphysical questions, ask existential questions.

Don't ask who created the world, don't ask why he created the world. These questions simply show that you are living in misery. Ask why you are miserable - then the question is alive and something can be done about it, something which will change your misery, which will transform the energy that is involved in misery, will release it from the misery. And the same energy can become a flowering of your being.

You are here - who are you? And that question you cannot ask me. A real question has to be faced by yourself. How can I answer your question - who you are? If you cannot answer, then how can I answer your question, who you are? Whatsoever I say will be from the outside - and you are there deep, very deep within yourself. You have to move deep, you have to fall into your own abyss, into that inner space where only you are and nobody else; not even a thought passes by.

Only in that space will you have the answer - not a verbal answer, not that somebody will say from within you that you are a soul, or you are God. Nobody will say anything because there is nobody - pure silence. But that silence is the answer. In that silence, you feel, you know. There is no need to give you any information. No words are needed. You have touched your rock bottom, your innermost core.

It happened - a small boy was initiating his younger brother about the school:

Said the first grader to his four-year-old brother: "The smart thing for you to do is not to learn to spell your first word. The minute you learn to spell 'cat' you are trapped. From then on the words get longer and longer and longer."

If you are here, you have spelt the word cat. And the question is asked by one of my sannyasins, Yoga Pratima. You have spelt the word cat already. Now the words will become longer and longer and longer - you are trapped! So rather than asking why you are here, use this opportunity. Allow me and allow yourself... towards a transformation of your being. Allow me to enter you! Don't ask stupid questions. Open your doors.

Rather than answering you, I can help you towards an inner transformation where all questions disappear - and the answer appears. But that is experiential. You will know it, but you will not be able to tell others. You will know it, your whole being will show it; your eyes will say something about it, there will be a glow around you. People who have eyes to see, they will be able to see that you have known it. But you will not be able to say who you are. No word can express that - it is so tremendously vast. You can have it, but you cannot express it.

So what do you want? Should I give you a verbal answer why you are here? Can't you imagine, whatsoever I say will be irrelevant? I can say: Because in your past lives you have earned many good karmas, you have been very virtuous - that's why you are here. Is that going to help? That will make you even more egoistic. That will create a barrier between me and you. Rather than being open, you will become more closed.

What do you want? Do you want that I have called you as a chosen few? You have not come, but you have been called? You would like such answers, but they are meaningless and harmful - because once you start feeling that you are the chosen few you will miss me, because all these are the tricks of the ego. It goes on playing so many games.

Don't ask for answers. Ask for the answer. Then I can show you the way, I can lead you towards the temple. Once inside the temple, you will know. And there is no other way to know it.

Knowing from somebody else can never really be knowledge. It remains, at the most, information.

Knowing from somebody else is never intimate. It remains just on the periphery. It never penetrates to your innermost core, it never hits home. Philosophy and religion differ in this. Philosophy goes on thinking in terms of questions and answers, reasoning, syllogism, logic - it is thinking. Religion is not thinking at all. It is more practical - as practical as science, as pragmatic as science. The method of religion is not speculation; the method of religion is experience. Meditate more, and in the interludes, in the gaps, in the intervals, when one thought has gone and another has not come in, you will have the first glimpses of satori, samadhi.

This word 'interlude' is very beautiful. It comes from two Latin words: 'inter' and 'ludus'. Ludus means games, play, and inter means between. Interlude means between the games. You are playing the game of a husband or a wife; then you play the game of a father or a mother. Then you go to the office and you play the game of being a banker, a businessman - a thousand and one games you play, twenty-four hours. Between two games, interludes.

Go into yourself. For a few moments every day, whenever you can get an opportunity, drop all games, just be yourself - neither a father, nor a mother, nor a son, nor a banker, nor a servant:

nobody. These are all games. Find out the interludes. Between two games, relax in, sink in, drown into your own being - and there is the answer.

I can show you the way to drown in interludes, but I cannot give you the answer. The answer will come to you. And it is true only when it comes to you. Truth has to be one's own - only then is it truth, only then does it liberate. My truth will become a theory to you; it will not be a truth at all. My truth can blind you, but cannot make your eyes more perceptive. My truth can surround you as a security, but it will be borrowed - and truth cannot be borrowed.

The second question:

Question 2:

The question is complex, and you will have to be very alert to understand it, because with complex questions misunderstanding is more possible than understanding.

The first thing: disciplehood is a great decision. You can become a disciple only if you drop your decidophobia - because it is a great decision, it is a commitment. You cannot become a disciple if you are afraid of taking, making decisions. This is the greatest decision in one's life - to trust somebody else as the master, to trust somebody else and stake your whole life. It is a gamble. Much courage is needed. Too many people come to me; they say they would like to become sannyasins, but they are afraid. The decision is too much, and a thousand and one things have to be considered before they take the decision.

Decidophobia means you are afraid of deciding anything. Disciplehood is a decision. If you are born a Hindu, that is not disciplehood. If you are a born Hindu and a shankaracharya comes to your town and you go and pay your respects, that is not disciplehood. You never decided in the first place to be a Hindu. This is coincidence, your Hinduism is just an accident. Somebody else is a Christian, and the pope comes and he goes to pay his respects - this is not disciplehood. He has never decided to be a Catholic or a Christian.

In fact, you remain a Hindu or a Christian because you cannot decide to get out of them. It is not a decision, it is a lack of decision. Because you are afraid of deciding, you continue whatsoever you have got from tradition, heritage, from your father and mother. Just think: people deciding their religion by their blood - is there any greater stupidity possible? Religion being decided by your blood? Then take the Mohammedan's blood and the Hindu's and the Christian's blood, and go to the expert and ask him which is the Hindu's blood and which is the Mohammedan's blood. No expert can show you; blood is simply blood. There are differences in blood, but those differences are not religious.

Deciding your religion just by birth, it is as if you are deciding your future by the I Ching, or going to an astrologer, deciding your future by the stars, or Tarot cards. These are not decisions, these are tricks how not to decide. Somebody else decides for you. The book of I Ching was written five thousand years back - somebody, nobody knows his name now, is deciding for you. You ask so-long-dead people to decide your future. You ask the past to decide your future. But it is helpful in a way, because you are no longer needed to decide. If you are a Hindu, just by your birth... you have not decided it. Your disciplehood is not disciplehood, it is decidophobia.

Just look: in small things you think so much, and in great things you don't think at all. If you go to the market to purchase clothes, you decide - ordinary things, trivia, you decide. It is as if there is a rule that if you drive your car slowly then drive carefully, but if you are going beyond fifty miles per hour then close your eyes. In small things - purchasing clothes or toothpaste or soap - you decide.

Religion, God, meditation, prayer, you leave to somebody else to decide.

In great things you want to be blindfolded, and tradition works as a blindfold. People who are not born blind become almost blind because of a constant blindfold. Blinkers are on your eyes.

Somebody's blinkers are known as Hindu, somebody's as Christian, somebody's as Jaina, but they are all blinkers, blindfolds, given to you by the society because you are afraid of opening your eyes.

So better let somebody else decide; then you are freed of the responsibility, and you can say: We are obedient. Tradition is great, we simply follow the tradition. The past is great, and we follow the past.

You can rationalize these things, but this is not disciplehood. Disciplehood is always a personal choice. For example, you are here. I am neither a Christian, nor a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Jaina, nor a Buddhist, and if you decide to go with me, it is going to be a decision. If you suffer from decidophobia, you cannot go with me; then you will remain within your fold in which you were born accidentally.

Once you decide - and 'decide' means you have to decide, the responsibility is yours and personal, it is a commitment. And I know it is very difficult to decide; hence much courage is needed. You can be Hindu easily; you can be Christian easily. But to walk with me you will have to drop your decidophobia. Only then do you become a disciple.

So it depends what type of disciplehood you are keeping in your mind. In the world there are very few disciples. Yes, the people who decided to go with Jesus were disciples.

Jesus passes by a lake, and two fishermen have just thrown their net in the lake. He comes by their side, puts his hand on one of the fishermen's shoulders. The fisherman looks at Jesus - those tremendously penetrating eyes, those tremendously silent eyes, more silent than the lake - and Jesus says to that man, "What are you doing? Why are you wasting your whole life in catching fish?

Come with me, I will teach you how to catch men. Why go on wasting your life catching fish? Come follow me!"

A great moment. The man must have wavered between decidophobia and disciplehood. But then he gathered courage, he threw the net into the lake, and he followed Jesus.

By the time they were getting out of the town, a man came running and said to the fisherman, "Where are you going? Your father who was ill is dead. Come back home!"

And the fisherman asks Jesus' permission: "Let me go for three, four days so I can finish with the last rites for my dead father, and then I will come."

And Jesus said, "Forget all about it. There are enough dead people in the town, they will bury the dead. You come follow me!" And he followed, he forgot all about his dead father.

This is disciplehood. Those who followed Jesus were disciples, but Christians are not disciples; now they are following a dead tradition. Those who followed Buddha were disciples, but Buddhists are not disciples. you are my disciples; some day or other your children's children will also remember me - they will not be my disciples. If your children start remembering me, loving me, because of you, then they are not related to me - then they have a fear of decision. Don't create that fear in your children's minds. Let them decide themselves.

Life can become very rich if people are left to decide. But the society tries to force decisions on you.

Society is afraid that if it does not decide for you, you may not be able to decide. But, in fact, because of this, by and by you lose the capacity to decide things. And once you lose your decisiveness, you lose your soul.

The word 'soul' means an integrated unity within you. It comes out of great, fatal decisions. The more you decide and the more risky the decision is, the more integrated you become, crystallized.

If you have decided - and remember the emphasis - if you have decided to be with me, this is a great revolution in your life, a momentous phenomenon. But if you are not the deciding one - you came here because your wife was here or your husband was here, your friends were here and you came here and you saw so many people moving in orange, and you started feeling an outsider, and you started feeling a little uneasy, that you look alien, and because of that you also took sannyas - then this is decidophobia, this is not disciplehood; then you have followed the crowd. Your sannyas is not worth anything - because it is not your sannyas at all. You have imitated. Never imitate. Be decisive on your own, and every decision will give you more and more integration.

And this is a great decision - to commit yourself, to get involved totally, to move with me towards the unknown. The mind will create a thousand and one doubts, hesitations; the mind would like to cling to the past - but if you decide, in spite of all this, you rise above your past, you transcend your past.

But don't try to be clever. Try to be authentic and true. Don't try to rationalize... because you may have taken sannyas without any decision on your part. You may have drifted with the crowd. Then you will rationalize it. You will say: Yes, this is my decision. But whom are you trying to kid? You are deceiving only yourself.

I have heard an anecdote:

The mother was scolding her oldest son: "I have told you before that you should let your little brother play with the toys half the time."

"I do!" protested the kid. "I use the sledge going downhill and let him use it going uphill - half the time!"

Don't try to be clever. You can call your decidophobia a disciplehood - but you are not deceiving me, you are deceiving only yourself. Be clear about it. Great clarity is needed in the search for truth.

The third question:

Question 3:

There is a great difference. Not only a difference: obeying and surrender are diametrically opposite.

Listen well.

If you are surrendered then there is no question of obeying. Then my voice is your voice; you don't obey it. Then I am no more separate from you. If you are not surrendered, then you obey it, because my voice is separate from yours. You manage to obey, you enforce a certain discipline on yourself.

There must be some greed behind it. You must be looking for some result. So you obey, but deep down you remain separate. Deep down the resistance goes on continuing. Deep down you are still fighting with me. In the very word 'obey' there is resistance.

Obeying is ugly. Either surrender or be on your own. Obeying is a compromise: you don't want to surrender, one thing; and you are not confident to remain on your own, another thing. So you compromise. You say: I will remain on my own, but obey. I will listen to you, whatsoever you say, and will find ways and means to obey it.

Surrender is a totally different thing. There is no duality in surrender. When a disciple surrenders to a master, they have become one; that moment the duality has disappeared. Now the master is no more thought of as separate, so who is going to obey and who is going to obey whom?

"Why does so much reaction come against discipline?"

Because the surrender has not yet happened. Otherwise, discipline is beautiful; there is nothing like discipline. If surrender has happened, then you don't enforce discipline, it comes spontaneously.

When I say something to you, and you are surrendered, you hear my voice as your own. In fact, you will see immediately that this is what you wanted to do, but you were not clear about it. You will be able to understand that I have told you something about which you were groping in the dark. You had a certain feel for it, but things were vague - I have made them clear for you. I have spoken for you. I have brought your own heart's desire to you.

In surrender that is going to happen. Then what is the point of calling it 'obeying'? It is not obedience.

In obedience, a certain conflict is hidden.

I have heard one anecdote:

One man had been having trouble with a teenage son, so he sent him out to a cattle ranch operated by an old friend. After the youth had been working on the ranch a couple of months, he asked about his progress.

"Well," said the rancher friend, "he's been working good. Already he speaks cow language."

"Sounds all right."

"But," said the old cowman seriously, "he ain't learnt yet to think like a cow."

That's the difference. Once you start thinking like a cow then there is no question of any obedience, disobedience. Once you start thinking like me, then there is no question, then there is no problem, no conflict, no struggle, no effort. In fact you are not following me, you are following yourself. In deep surrender this happens.

Ordinarily, people have a very wrong notion about surrender, particularly in the West. Surrender is a deeply Eastern concept. People think that in surrender your individuality will be lost. Absolutely wrong, one hundred percent wrong. In surrender your personality is not lost. In fact in surrender your personality for the first time becomes clear; because if you surrender, you surrender the ego, not the personality, not the individuality. Just the wrong notion that you are somebody... you drop that notion. Once that notion is dropped, you are at ease, you grow; your individuality remains intact, in fact grows bigger and bigger. Of course there will not be the feeling of 'I', but a tremendous growth will happen.

If surrender is not there, then millions of questions arise about how to obey.

I was called to a seminar; many universities' vice-chancellors and chancellors had gathered there.

They were much worried about the indiscipline in the schools, colleges and universities, and they were much worried about the new generation's disrespectful attitude towards the teachers.

I listened to their views and I told them, "I see that somewhere the very basis is missing. A teacher is one who is respected naturally, so a teacher cannot demand respect. If the teacher demands respect, he simply shows that he is not a teacher; he has chosen the wrong profession, that is not his vocation. The very definition of a teacher is one who is naturally respected; not that you have to respect him. If you have to respect him, what type of respect is this going to be? Just look: 'have to respect' - the whole beauty is lost, the respect is not alive. If it has to be done, then it is not there.

When it is there, nobody is conscious about it, nobody is self-conscious about it. It simply flows.

Whenever a teacher is there it simply flows."

So I asked the seminar: "Rather than asking students to respect the teachers, you please decide again - you must be choosing wrong teachers, who are not teachers at all."

Teachers are as much born as poets, it is a great art. Everybody cannot be a teacher, but because of universal education millions of teachers are required. Just think of a society that thinks that poetry is to be taught by poets and everybody is to be taught poetry. Then millions of poets will be required.

Of course, then there will be poets' training colleges. Those poets will be bogus, and then they will ask: Applaud us! - because we are poets. Why are you not respecting us? This has happened with teachers.

In the past there were very few teachers. People used to travel thousands of miles to find a teacher, to be with him. There was tremendous respect, but the respect depended on the quality of the teacher. It was not an expectation from the disciple or from the student or the pupil. It simply happened.

If you are surrendered, obedience simply happens without any self-consciousness. Not that you have to follow - you simply find yourself following. One day you simply recognize the fact that you have been following, and there has been no conflict, no struggle. The more you try to be obedient, the more resistance will grow.

I have heard:

A woman complained to her doctor: "You just don't know how bad I feel. Why, I can't even eat the things you told me not to!"

Once you say to somebody: Don't do this! a deep desire arises to do it. Don't eat this - a deep desire arises to eat it. Mind functions always negatively; the very function of the mind is to negate, to say no.

Just watch yourself, how many times you say no in the day, and reduce that quota. Watch yourself, how many times you say yes - increase that quota. And by and by you will see just a slight change in the degrees of yes and no, and your personality is changing basically. Watch how many times you say no where yes would have been easier; there was no need really to say no. How many times you could have said yes, but either you said no or you kept quiet.

Whenever you say yes, it goes against the ego. The ego cannot eat yes; it feeds itself on no's. Say:

No! No! No! and within yourself arises great ego.

Just go to the railway station: you may be alone at the window to purchase a ticket, but the clerk will start doing something, he will not look at you. He is trying to say, "No." He will at least make you wait. He will pretend that he is very busy, he will look into this register and that. He will force you to wait. That gives a feeling of power, that he is no ordinary clerk - he can make anybody wait.

It happened just in the beginning days of Soviet Russia, when Leon Trotsky was the war minister there. He was very strict with rules, discipline, this and that. There was going to be a great meeting of the Communist Party, and he was in charge to issue passes. He completely forgot that he also needed a pass to enter the hall. When he went there the policeman who was standing at the gate stopped him. He said, "Where is your pass?"

Leon Trotsky said, "Don't you recognize me?"

He said, "I recognize you perfectly well - you are our war minister. But where is your pass?"

Trotsky said, "Look at the other passes you are holding in your hands. They are signed by me."

The policeman said, "Maybe, but this is the rule, that nobody can enter without a pass. So go back home and find a pass."

Leon Trotsky has written in his diary, "I could see how powerful he was feeling that day - saying no to the war minister, making him feel tiny."

People go on saying no. The child says to the mother: Can I go outside and play? and immediately, without thinking for a single moment, she says: No! Politics! What is wrong in being outside, going outside and playing? And the child is going to go; the child will insist, and he will go into a tantrum, and then mother will say, "Okay, you can go." This could have been done in the first place, in the very beginning, but even a mother cannot lose an opportunity to say no.

The first thing that comes to your mind is no. Yes is almost difficult. You say yes only when you feel absolutely helpless and you have to say it. Just watch it! Make yourself a yea-sayer; drop no-saying, because it is the poison of no on which the ego feeds itself, nourishes itself.

A religious man is one who has said yes to existence.

Out of that yes, God is born.

Yes is the father of God.

That yes attitude is the religious attitude.

But remember: I don't insist on obeying. Either be with me totally, or don't be with me at all.

Compromise is not good, compromise kills. Compromise will make you lukewarm, and nobody can evaporate from that state. Compromise comes out of fear. Take courage: either be with me or don't be with me - but don't be in a limbo. Otherwise, one part of your mind will go on saying: I have to follow, I have to do this, and another part will go on saying: No, why should I do it? And this constant conflict within yourself dissipates energy, it is destructive. It will poison your whole being.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Look within, it has never been so and you cannot be an exception. All seekers who have gone within have gone through the gaps. The gaps are there, but you have not looked and hence the question has an 'if'. Please don't ask 'if' questions. I am not talking about theories, I am talking about facts.

It is as if somebody says: What if there is no heart within? But the if is just speculative. Close your eyes and you will hear the heartbeat. If you are to ask the question, the heart is bound to be there.

If you are there to raise this question, the gaps are bound to be there. Without gaps, thinking cannot exist. Between two words the gap is a necessity; otherwise the two words will not be separate, they will overlap. Between two sentences there is a gap - necessarily so, otherwise there will be no division between the sentences, between two thoughts.

Just look within....

At the supper table one night a farmer was very angry.

"Where were you boys when I called for you to help me an hour ago?" he demanded.

"I was in the barn setting a hen," said one.

"I was in the loft setting a saw," said another.

"I was in grandpa's room setting the clock," said the third.

"And I was in the pantry setting a trap," said the fourth son.

"A fine set you are!" exclaimed the farmer. "And where were you?" he asked, turning to the youngest son.

"I was on the doorstep setting still."

So find a few moments when you can be just "setting still"; immediately you will be in the gaps.

Sitting silently, you will be in the gaps.

Thoughts are intruders; gaps are your real nature. Thoughts come and go. The emptiness within you always remains; it never comes, never goes. The emptiness is the background, thoughts are moving figures against it. Just as you write on a blackboard with white chalk - the blackboard is there, you write with white chalk - your inner emptiness functions as a blackboard, and on that blackboard thoughts move.

Slow down! Slow down a little. Just sit silently, relaxed, not doing anything in particular. If you ask 'if' questions, you are wasting time. In the same time and with the same energy, those gaps can be experienced and you can become immensely rich. And once you have tasted the gaps, then the hold of thoughts on you will disappear.

The last question:

Question 5:

Creativity can never be indifferent. Creativity cares - because creativity is love. Creativity is the function of love and care. Creativity cannot be indifferent. If you are indifferent, by and by all your creativity will disappear. Creativity needs passion, aliveness, energy. Creativity needs that you should remain a flow, an intense, passionate flow.

If you look at a flower indifferently, the flower cannot be beautiful. Through indifference, everything becomes ordinary. Then one lives in a cold way, shrunken in oneself. This calamity has happened in the East, because religion took a wrong turn and people started thinking that you have to be indifferent to life.

One Hindu sannyasin came to see me once. He looked around my garden, and there were many flowers, and I was working in the garden when he came to see me. He said, "Are you interested in the flowers and gardening?" On his face there was a look of condemnation. He said, "But I was thinking you must be indifferent to all these things."

I am not indifferent. Indifference is negative, it is suicidal, it is escapist. Of course, if you become indifferent many things will not bother you; you will live surrounded by your indifference. You will not be distracted, you will not be disturbed, but just not to be distracted is not the point. You will never be happy and overflowing.

In the East, many people think that to be indifferent is the way of religion. They move away from life, they become escapists. They have not created anything. They simply vegetate and they think they have attained something - they have not attained anything.

Attainment is always positive and attainment is always creative. God is creativity - how can you reach God by being indifferent? God is not indifferent. He cares about even small blades of grass, he cares about them also. He takes as much care to paint a butterfly as he takes care to create a buddha.

The whole loves. And if you want to become one with the whole, you have to love. Indifference is a slow suicide. Be in deep love, so much so that you completely disappear in your love, that you become a pure creative energy. Only then do you participate with God, hand in hand you move with him.

To me creativity is prayer, creativity is meditation, creativity is life.

So don't be afraid of life, and don't close yourself in indifference. Indifference will desensitize you, you will lose all sensitivity; your body will become dull, your intelligence will become dull. You will live in a dark cell, afraid of the light and the sun, afraid of the wind and the clouds and the sea - afraid about everything. You will wrap a blanket of indifference all around you and you will start dying.

Move! Be dynamic! And whatsoever you do, do it so lovingly that the very act becomes creative and divine. I am not saying that you all should become painters and poets; that's not possible. But there is no need also. You may be a housewife - your cooking can be creative. You may be a shoemaker - your shoemaking can be creative. Whatsoever you do, do it so totally, so lovingly, so intimately; get involved into it so your act is not something outside. You move in your act, your act becomes a fulfillment. Then I call you religious. A religious person, a religious consciousness, is immensely creative.

Never use the phrase: Who cares? That attitude comes from the ego - who cares? No, if you really want to grow, care more. Let care be your whole style of life. Care about each and every thing. And don't make any distinction between the great and the small. Very small things... just cleaning the floor, do it with deep care, as if it is the body of your beloved, and suddenly you will see you are being born anew through your own creativity.

Each creative act becomes a rebirth for the creator, and each indifferent act becomes a suicide, a slow death. Be overflowing. Don't be misers. Don't try to hold - share! And let care be your very center of life. And then there is no need to go to the church, no need to go to the temple, no need to kneel down before any god and pray. Your butterfly life, your way of life, is prayer. Whatsoever you touch will become sacred. I say whatsoever, unconditionally.

Love makes everything sacred. Carelessness makes everything ugly.

Enough for today.