Man Can Be Transcended

The first question:

Question 1:

The first thing to be understood is that any problem rooted in the ego cannot be solved without transcending the ego. You can postpone the problem, you can bring in a little normality, you can create a little normalness about it, you can dilute the problem but you cannot solve it. You can make a man function more efficiently in the society through psychoanalysis but psychoanalysis never solves a problem. And whenever a problem is postponed, shifted, it creates another problem. It simply changes its place, but it remains there. A new eruption will come sooner or later and when the new eruption of the old problem comes it will become more difficult to postpone and shift it.

Psychoanalysis is a temporary relief because psychoanalysis cannot conceive of anything which transcends ego. A problem can be solved only when you can go beyond it. If you cannot go beyond it, then YOU are the problem. Then who is going to solve it? Then how is one going to solve it?

Then you are the problem; the problem is not something separate from you.

Yoga, tantra and all meditation techniques, they are based upon a different ground. They say that the problems are there, the problems are around you, but you are never the problem. You can transcend them; you can look at them like an observer is looking down from the hill into the valley.

This witnessing self can solve the problem. Really, just by witnessing a problem it is half solved already because when you can witness a problem, when you can observe it impartially, when you are not involved in it, you can stand by the side and look at it. The very clarity that comes out of this witnessing gives you the clue, gives you the secret key. And almost all problems are there because there is no clarity through which to understand them. You do not need solutions: you need clarity.

A problem rightly understood is solved, because a problem arises through a nonunderstanding mind.

You create the problem because you are not understanding. So the basic thing is not to solve the problem: the basic thing is to create more understanding. And if more understanding, more clarity is there, and the problem can be encountered impartially, observed as if it doesn't belong to you, as if it belongs to someone else; if you can create a distance between the problem and you - only then can it be solved.

Meditation creates a distance, it gives you a perspective. You go beyond the problem. The level of consciousness changes. Through psychoanalysis you remain on the same level. The level never changes; you are adjusted on the same level again. Your awareness, your consciousness, your witnessing capacity, doesn't change. As you move in meditation you go higher and higher. You can look down at your problems. They are now in the valley, and you have come to a hill. From this perspective, this height, all the problems look different. And the more the distance grows, the more you become capable of observing them as if they do not belong to you.

Remember one thing: if a problem doesn't belong to you, you can always give good advice on how to solve it. If it belongs to someone else, if someone else is in difficulty, you are always wise. You can give very good advice but if the problem belongs to you, you simply do not know what to do.

What has happened? The problem is the same but now you are involved in it. When it was someone else's problem, you had a distance from which to look at it impartially. Everyone is a good advisor for others but when it happens to oneself then all your wisdom is lost because the distance is lost.

Someone has died and the family is in anguish: you can give good advice. You can say the soul is immortal; you can say nothing dies, that life is eternal. But someone has died whom you loved, who means something to you, who was near, intimate, and now you are beating your breast and crying and weeping. Now you cannot give the same advice to yourself - that life is immortal and no one ever dies. Now it looks absurd.

So remember, while advising others you may look foolish. When you say to someone whose beloved has died that life is immortal, he will think you stupid. You are talking nonsense to him. He knows what it feels like to lose a beloved. No philosophy can give consolation. And he knows why you are saying this thing: because the problem is not yours. You can afford to be wise; he cannot afford it.

Through meditation you transcend your ordinary being. A new point arises in you from where you can look at things in a new way. The distance is created. Problems are there but they are now very far away - as if happening to someone else. Now you can give good advice to yourself, but there is no need to give it. The very distance will make you wise. So the whole technique of meditation consists of creating a distance between the problems and you. Right now, as you are, you are so much entangled with your problems that you cannot think, you cannot contemplate, you cannot see through them, you cannot witness them.

Psychoanalysis helps just for readjustment. It is not a transformation; that is one thing. And another thing: in psychoanalysis you become dependent. You need an expert and the expert will do everything. It will take three years, four years, or even five years if the problem is very deep, and you will become just a dependent - you are not growing. Rather, on the contrary, you are becoming more and more dependent. You will need this psychoanalyst every day or twice a week or thrice a week. Once you miss him you will feel lost. If you stop psychoanalysis you will feel lost. It becomes intoxicating, it becomes alcoholic.

You start being dependent upon someone - someone who is an expert. You can tell your problem to him and he will solve it. He will discuss it, and he will bring the unconscious roots out of you. But HE will do it; the solving will be done by someone else.

Remember, a problem solved by someone else is not going to give you more maturity. A problem solved by someone else may give HIM some maturity but it cannot give you maturity. You may become more immature. Then whenever there is a problem, you will need some expert advice, some professional advice. And I do not think that even psychoanalysts grow mature through your problems because they go for psychoanalysis to other psychoanalysts. They have their own problems. They solve your problems but they cannot solve their problems. Again the question of distance.

Wilhelm Reich himself tried again and again to be psychoanalyzed by Sigmund Freud. Freud refused to psychoanalyze him and all his life he felt hurt because Freud refused him. And Freudians, orthodox Freudians, never accepted that he was an expert because he himself had not been psychoanalyzed.

Every psychoanalyst goes to someone else with his own problems. It is just like the medical profession. If the doctor himself is ill he cannot diagnose himself. He is so near that he is afraid, so he will go to someone else. If you are a surgeon you cannot operate upon your own body - or can you? The distance is not there. It is difficult to operate upon one's own body. But it is also difficult if your wife is really ill and a serious operation is to be done - you cannot operate because your hand will tremble. The intimacy is so much that you will be afraid, you cannot be a good surgeon. You will have to take advice; you will have to call some other surgeon to operate on your wife.

What is happening? You have been operating; you have done many operations. And now what is happening? You cannot do it on your child or your wife because the distance is so little - as if there is no distance. Without distance you cannot be impartial. So a psychoanalyst can help others but when he is in trouble he will have to take advice, he will have to be psychoanalyzed by someone else. And this is really strange that even a person like Wilhelm Reich goes mad in the end.

We cannot conceive a buddha going mad - or can you conceive of it? And if a buddha can go mad, then there is no way out of this misery. It is inconceivable that a buddha goes mad.

Look at Sigmund Freud's life. He is the father and founder of psychoanalysis; he went on talking about problems very deeply. But as far as he himself was concerned not a single problem was solved. Not a single problem was solved! Fear was as much a problem for him as for anybody else.

He was so afraid and nervous. Anger was as much a problem for him as for anybody else. He would get so angry that in anger he would fall unconscious in a fit. And this man knew so much about the human mind but as far as he himself was concerned, that knowledge seems of no use.

Jung himself would fall unconscious when in deep anxiety; he would have a fit. What is the problem?

Distance is the problem. They had been thinking about problems but they had not been growing in consciousness. They thought intellectually, keenly, logically, and they concluded something.

Sometimes those conclusions may have been right, but that is not the point. They did not grow in consciousness, they did not become in any way superhuman. And unless you transcend humanity, the problems cannot be solved; they can only be adjusted.

Freud said, in the last days of his life, that man is incurable. At the most we can hope that he can exist as an adjusted being; there is no other hope. This is at the MOST! Man cannot be happy, Freud says. At the most we can arrange it so that he is not very much unhappy. That's all. But he cannot be happy; he is incurable. What type of solution can come out of such an attitude? And this is after forty years' experience with human beings! He concludes that man cannot be helped, that man is naturally, by nature, miserable, that he will remain in misery.

But yoga says that man can be transcended. It is not man who is incurable; it is his minimal consciousness that creates the problem. Grow in consciousness, increase in consciousness, and problems decrease. They exist in the same proportion: if there is a minimum of consciousness, there is a maximum of problems; if there is a maximum of consciousness, there is a minimum of problems. With total consciousness, problems simply disappear just like the sun rises in the morning and dewdrops disappear. With total consciousness there are no problems because with a total consciousness problems cannot arise. At the most psychoanalysis can be a cure, but problems will go on arising; it is not preventive.

Yoga, meditation, goes to the very depth. It will change you so that problems cannot arise.

Psychoanalysis is concerned with problems; meditation is concerned with you directly. It is not concerned with problems at all. That is why the greatest of Eastern psychologists - Buddha, Mahavira or Krishna - do not talk about problems. Because of this, Western psychology thinks that psychology is a new phenomenon. It is not!

It was just in this century, in the first part of this century, that Freud could prove scientifically that there is such a thing as the unconscious. Buddha talked about it twenty-five centuries before. But Buddha has never tackled any problem because, says Buddha, problems are infinite. If you go on tackling every problem, you will never REALLY be able to tackle them. Tackle the man himself. Just forget the problems. Tackle the being itself and help the being to grow. As the being grows, as it becomes more conscious, problems go on dropping; you need not be worried about them.

For example, a person is schizophrenic, split, divided. Psychoanalysis will deal with this split - with how to make this split workable, with how to adjust this man so that he can function, so that he can live in the society peacefully. Psychoanalysis will tackle the problem, the schizophrenia. If this man comes to Buddha, Buddha will not talk about the schizophrenic state. He will say, "Meditate so that the inner being becomes one. When the inner being becomes one, the split will disappear on the periphery." The split is there - but it is not the cause, it is just the effect. Somewhere deep in the being there is a duality and that duality has made this crack on the periphery.

You go on cementing the crack but the inner split remains. Then the crack will appear somewhere else. Then you cement that crack; then somewhere else the crack will go on appearing. So if you treat one psychological problem, another problem arises immediately; then you treat another and a third arises.

This is good as far as the professionals are concerned because they live off it. But this is not a help. The West will have to go beyond psychoanalysis and unless the West comes to the methods of growing consciousness, of inner growth of being, of expansion of consciousness, psychoanalysis cannot be of much help.

Now, this is happening already: psychoanalysis is already out of date. The keen thinkers of the West are now thinking about how to expand consciousness and not about how to solve problems - about how to make a man alert and aware. Now this has come; the seeds have sprouted. The emphasis has to be remembered.

I am not concerned with your problems. There are millions and it is just useless to go on solving them - because you are the creator and you remain untouched. I solve a problem and you will create ten. You cannot be defeated because the creator remains behind them. And as I go on solving, I am just wasting my energy.

I will push aside your problems; I will simply penetrate YOU. The creator must be changed. And once the creator is changed, the problems on the periphery drop. Now no one is cooperating with them, no one is helping to create them, no one is enjoying them. You may feel this word strange but remember well that you enjoy your problems; hence you create them. You enjoy them for so many reasons.

The whole of humanity is sick. There are basic reasons, basic causes, which we go on overlooking.

Whenever a child is sick he gets attention; whenever he is healthy no one gives him any attention.

Whenever a child is sick, the parents love him - or at least they pretend. But whenever he is okay, no one is worried about him. No one thinks to give him a good kiss or a good hug. The child learns the trick. And love is a basic need and attention is a basic food. For the child, attention is even more potentially necessary than milk. Without attention something will die within him.

You may have heard about new experiments in one English laboratory, Delabar, where they are experimenting with plants. Even plants grow faster if you give them attention - just look at them lovingly. Two plants are used for the experiment. Give one plant attention, love - just a smiling, loving approach - and to the other do not give any attention. Give everything else necessary water, fertilizers, sunrays; give everything equally to each but to one give more attention. To the other do not give any attention; whenever you pass nearby just don't look at it. And you will see that the one grows faster, brings bigger flowers, and the other grows in a delayed way and brings smaller flowers.

Attention is energy. When someone looks lovingly at you he is giving you food - a very subtle food.

So every child needs attention and you give attention only when he is ill, when there is some problem.

So if the child needs attention he will create problems, he will become a creator of problems.

Love is a basic need. Your body grows with food, your soul grows with love. But you can get love only when you are ill, when you have some problem; otherwise no one is going to give you love.

The child learns your ways; then he starts creating problems. Whenever he is ill or with a problem, everyone gives attention.

Have you ever observed? In your house the children are playing silently, peacefully. Then if some guests come they start creating trouble. This is because your attention goes to the guests and now the children are hankering for attention. They need your attention, your guests' attention, everybody's attention toward them. They will do something, they will create some trouble. This is unconscious but then it becomes a pattern. And when you are grown up, you still go on doing it.

For women, it is true that ninety-nine percent of their illnesses, their mental problems, are basically love needs. Whenever you love a woman, she has no problems. Whenever there is some problem in love, many problems arise. Now she is hankering for attention. And psychoanalysts are exploiting this need for attention, because a psychoanalyst is a professional attention-giver. You go to him:

he is a professional. For one hour he looks at you attentively. Whatsoever you say, whatsoever nonsense, he listens as if the Vedas are being preached. And he persuades you to talk more, to say anything, relevant or irrelevant, to bring your mind out. Then you feel so good.

You know, ninety-nine percent of patients fall in love with their psychoanalysts. And how to protect the client-expert relationship is a great problem because sooner or later it becomes a lovers' relationship. Why? Why does a woman patient fall in love with a male psychoanalyst? Or the reverse: Why does a male patient fall in love with a woman psychoanalyst? The reason is that so much attention is given for the first time. The love need is fulfilled.

Unless your basic being is changed, nothing will come out of solving problems. You have an infinite potential to create new ones. Meditation is an effort to make you independent, first; and second, to change your type and quality of consciousness. With a new quality of consciousness old problems cannot exist: they simply disappear. For instance, you were a small child; you had a different type of problem. When you became older they simply disappeared. Where have they gone? You never solved them, they simply disappeared. You cannot even remember what the problems were that belonged to your childhood. But you have grown and those problems disappeared.

Then you were a little older, you had a different type of problem; when you become old they will not be there. Not that you will be able to solve them - no one is able to solve problems - one can simply grow out of them. When you are old you will laugh at your own problems which were there, so urgent, so destructive that you had many times contemplated committing suicide because of them.

And then when you have grown old, you will simply laugh: Where have those problems gone? Have you solved them? No - you have simply grown. Those problems belonged to a particular state of growth.

Similar is the case as you grow deeper into consciousness. Then too problems go on disappearing.

A moment comes when you are so aware that problems do not arise. Meditation is not analysis.

Meditation is growth. It is not concerned with problems; it is concerned with the being.

The second question:

Question 2:

There is none and there cannot be. The third is already your state. These two are the alternatives to come out of that; the third you are already - confused. You can only come out of this confusion with any total effort. Why is it difficult to be total either in belief or disbelief? Why is it easy to be in the middle? - because if you are in the middle, then no change is needed: you are already there. And if you go on thinking about what to believe and what not to believe, your mind remains the same. It is your mind which chooses what to believe and what not to believe. You choose according to your mind.

Then how can this mind change? If your mind is the chooser, it will choose something which can become a food to it. It will go on discarding all that can be destructive to it or that can help it to change. The mind tries to remain in the status quo. It wants to remain static, because with change there is pain, insecurity. You will have to adjust everything again, every arrangement will have to be made again. It will be difficult.

So mind is basically orthodox, even the minds of those who think themselves revolutionary. Mind is orthodox, so every revolution becomes an orthodoxy in the end. All the revolutionaries turn out ultimately to be dogmatists. Every revolution ends in a static society. Why does is happen? - because the very nature of the mind is to be orthodox, to cling to the old. So if I say something, you can choose: you can choose that which will help you remain as you are. You will say, "This is true."

To that which will lead you to a transformation - to an unknown state, in insecurity, on an uncharted path, on an unknown journey and voyage - you will say, "This is not true."

So you can go on choosing; this is what you have been doing. So I say to you, "Be total!" Then change is bound to be there, the revolution will happen. When I say, "Believe totally in me," or, "Do not believe at all," I do not say, "Believe in me," I say, "Be total." Half-hearted, you will never move anywhere. And how can you decide what is true and what is untrue? There is more possibility that whatsoever you think is true will be untrue, or vice versa, because if you already know what is true, then there is no need - no need to come to me or anybody else. There is no need at all! But the mind goes on playing tricks.

One young man was here today to meet me. I told him, "Take a jump - a jump into sannyas."

He said, "I have been hearing J. Krishnamurti and I cannot be committed to anything." But he is not aware that he is already committed to J. Krishnamurti.

J. Krishnamurti says, "Do not be committed," so he is not committing himself. He has taken the advice; he has already become a follower. His mind is working a trick. It is thinking that now there is no need to follow anybody.

You have already become a follower but this is unconscious. You are not clear about what has happened to you. And this will not be of much help because this is unconscious. Unless it becomes conscious.... I say that if you feel Krishnamurti is right, then be committed to him consciously and totally. But make it conscious because only that which is conscious can be of help in transmutation, in transformation. That which is unconscious cannot be of much help. Or, if you think that you should not commit yourself to anyone, then you will have to safeguard your independence in many ways.

Then there is no need to go to J. Krishnamurti or to me or to anyone else because the very effort of going shows that you need help - that someone else is needed.

But you can go on playing with yourself; you can go on thinking, "I am just listening. I will choose:

whatsoever is true I will believe; whatsoever is not true I will not believe" - as if you have a criterion to judge what is true and what is not true. How will you judge it? Either you know it, then there is no need to go; or you do not know it, then you cannot judge.

Buddha used to say, "Do not ask me questions. Rather, do whatsoever I say, and after a year of doing I will allow you to ask questions. But for one year, do whatsoever I say. For this one year do not be a chooser; follow me totally. And after one year, when you have become clear, conscious, then you can ask, then you can choose because then you will have something like a criterion to judge by - a touchstone." But it almost always happened that after one year's deep meditation, when Buddha would say, "Now you can ask and now I allow you to choose," the man would say, "Now I have nothing to ask and now I have nothing to choose."

When I say to you, "Take a jump into sannyas," I mean this: for the time being do not be a chooser.

This is not going to be for your whole life but for the time being do not be a chooser, so that your mind is not allowed to come in. Do whatsoever I say. After a year of sincere effort of doing, I will allow you to choose. Then you can choose, then you can think. Then you have something by which you can judge. Right now you cannot judge but you go on judging.

I am happy with both types of people: those who can say, "I believe totally" - I can work with them - and those who say, "I do not believe at all" - I can leave them to themselves. But for the confused types who go on saying, "Some things I can believe and some things I cannot believe," nothing can be done. And they go on hanging around me - I cannot help them. They are unnecessarily wasting their time because they cannot take my help. They won't allow it. They are wasting time; they are missing an opportunity. Something would have been possible very easily if they were available but they are not available. And they say they will judge. They can go on thinking but they will never come to any conclusion.

You cannot come to any conclusion because your mind is confused. And if you choose out of confusion, you will be more in confusion. Any conclusion out of confusion will lead you into more confusion. A confused mind cannot choose. That is the meaning of surrender: when you feel you are confused, you go to someone; you feel that he has a clarity. I say, "You feel" - it is not that you think. If you feel that someone has a clarity that you do not have, then surrender. This is risky, dangerous, but one has to take the risk because without risk there is no possibility.

If you are too wise and clever and you do not want to take the risk, you will miss for your whole life and you will not come to any point of realization. Risk is basic. It is risky - because you cannot be absolutely certain whether the person to whom you are surrendering is really true or not. It is risky but try it. If he is not true then too you will have gained something because he cannot lead you anywhere. If he is not true and you risk your total being to him, you will become aware of what an untrue master is and you will never fall in the same trap again. But if he is true, then you will come to a new dimension of being. Nothing is lost; the risk is worth taking.

But you are clever - your cleverness is your barrier. Be a little foolish and take a jump; do not be so clever. You have already missed much by being clever. There are certain points where only fools, madmen, lovers, can enter; there are certain doors. Clever men never go there. It happens that through certain risks fools prove to be wise and the wise prove to be fools because fools can take the risk and the so-called wise cannot take it.

There is no alternative, no third alternative; these are the two possibilities. The third alternative is that which you are already. So if you think that the third is good, remain whatsoever you are; do not think of any change.

If you think that whatsoever you are is too much of a misery, a hell, then take a jump out of that hell. And the jump is always into the unknown, so risk is there; it is implied. Be a little daring, a little foolish.

When Buddha left his palace he was foolish. Even the driver who led him out of his kingdom told him. The name of the driver was Chhanna. Chhanna said to Buddha, "You are committing a foolish act. It is too risky: losing an empire, losing a kingdom, for something which is very vague. No one knows whether any soul really exists. It is foolish to lose that which you have for that which is uncertain."

Buddha would not listen to him. That man was old, more wise, so he said to Buddha, "You are young, and because of your youth you are not yet mature enough to understand what you are doing.

Come back! Everyone is trying to get into that palace which you are leaving. And where are you going - to be a beggar? If beggars could have achieved, then the whole world would have been beggars. And there are beggars on the streets and they have not achieved. Where are you going?

You are taking a risk."

Leaving the known for the unknown is always a risk. Buddha said, "I am fed up with the known. I have known it; now there is nothing more to know. So allow me to take the risk. Even if I lose, I lose nothing because I do not have anything. If I gain, I gain everything. The risk is worth taking. I cannot lose anything because I do not have anything. Those palaces and those beautiful wives, I have lived with them, I have known them. Now nothing is there to know. No mystery is there. Now it has become a boredom, a repetition, a habit. I have become a mechanical thing. Now there is nothing to go back to. I will take the risk. If I lose, I lose nothing because I do not have anything."

What have you got that you are so much afraid of surrender? What have you got? You are just like a naked man who is afraid of taking a bath in the river because he is thinking, "Where will I go to dry my clothes?" And he is nude, he has no clothes, but he is not entering the stream to take a bath because he is afraid that there is no place where he can dry his clothes. What have you got to lose?

And there is every possibility to gain - but I say 'possibility': that is the risk.

Religion is not for weaklings, it is only for those who have a strong will to move into the unknown.

Weaklings always remain confused because they go on traveling in two boats simultaneously - in two directions. They cannot move in one boat because they are afraid. And they are very clever, so they think that if one goes wrong at least the other will always be there. So they travel in two boats but they never reach anywhere because you cannot travel in two boats.

There is no third alternative. You will have to decide this or that; only then does a revolution set in.

The old will have to die for the new to be born and there can be no compromise.

The old cannot continue in some form in the new; it has to be dropped completely. Religion is both a death and a rebirth. And when I say to you: Choose one, be total in your choice, it is going to be a death - that is the fear. But unless you die you cannot be reborn.

The last question:

Question 3:

Three things: one, by 'total' I mean whatsoever is possible; I do not mean the whole. You cannot surrender the whole right now, because you are not the whole, so how can you surrender the whole?

By 'total' I mean that which you can: don't withhold anything. That which you can: your whole capacity - not your whole being because you are not that so how can you surrender it? But let all that you can do be included in the surrender.

It is going to be partial - partial in the sense that your whole being will not be involved in it. You have an unconscious part. You cannot bring that into it; it is impossible for you. You do not even know what it is, where it is, how it functions and how it can be brought into the surrender. You cannot do it. Do not leave anything undone of whatsoever you can do. By 'total' I mean surrender with all your conscious capacity. Through this surrender, by and by, the inner being will come up and will be included in it.

In the beginning it can only be in this way. So do not wait until you are ready to surrender the whole being because then there will be no need to surrender - because when you have already become whole there is no need to surrender. Surrender is a technique to become whole. So take a jump as you are and as much as you can; that is all.

Secondly, do not be worried about when it will happen. It can happen the next moment, it may not happen for lives together. It depends. It CAN happen the next moment. If your jump is intense, total, if you have put into it whatsoever you could, it can happen the next moment. But if you withhold something, then it will take time. It can take lives together. But even if it happens in many lives it is early because already you have been alive for millions of lives and it has not happened.

So even if it takes a few lives it is not too much; it is early. Do not be worried about it because even that worry will become a barrier to total surrender and that worry will create an inner condition.

Knowingly or unknowingly you will be expecting it to happen soon. That will become a desire and that desire will become a barrier.

So do not think about what will happen; do not make a condition. Let it happen unconditionally. Say deeply within your heart, whenever it happens, "I am not." And if it does not happen, say, "Whether it happens or not I am still ready to surrender." Then it will happen very soon. It can happen in the very surrender itself; it may not take a single moment.

I will tell you one story, one very old Hindu parable. Two sannyasins are meditating under two trees, and Narada passes by. Narada is a messenger between the two worlds, 'this' and 'that'; he moves between both. He goes on carrying news from here to there and from there to here.

He passes the first monk who is very old, who is doing deep austerities and who has been working for salvation for many lives. The monk asks, "Narada, are you going to the other world? Then ask the divine how much time I still need, how much more time I will have to exist in this body. It is too much!

I have been working for many lives. Now how much time is left for the ultimate transformation?

Please ask it."

The way the old monk asks this is very tense, full of lust, full of conditions, as if he is complaining.

He feels already he has been making arduous efforts for too many lives - as if some injustice has been done to him. The tone, the very way, is of complaint.

Narada passes by the second tree. A young man is dancing there, singing, celebrating his ecstasy.

He doesn't even look at Narada. Narada stands there. The young man sees him but he goes on dancing. So Narada himself asks him, "Don't you have any question? The other monk under your neighboring tree has asked. Would you like me to bring news for you too about when your salvation is going to happen?" The man goes on dancing and he doesn't say anything.

Narada goes to the other world. He comes back. He says to the old monk, "I asked God, and he said three lives more."

The old monk was chanting on his MALA, his beads. He threw away the beads and said, "Three lives more!" He got very angry and disappointed.

Narada reached the other tree. The young man was still dancing. Narada said, "Though you didn't ask me to ask, still I asked. But I am afraid to tell you, because that old man has thrown his beads and is so angry and disappointed. I am afraid to tell you!"

The young man said, "Still you can say it because whatsoever is, is blissful and whatsoever happens is good. You can tell me; do not be worried."

So Narada said, "I asked God and he said that you will have to be born as many lives as there are leaves on the tree under which you are dancing."

The young man became so full of ecstasy. He said, "Just this many leaves? So few? - because the earth is so full of leaves, infinite leaves!" He again started dancing and it is said that immediately, that very moment, he disappeared from the earth.

This is surrender. This is total acceptance - no complaints, no conditions, no expectations.

Immediately he was liberated; that very moment he was liberated.

I do not know about the old monk; nothing is said. But I do not think three lives will be enough for him. He must be somewhere here also, still working.