Now You Can Go

The first question:

Question 1:

Mythology deals with symbols. It is not history; it is not concerned with objective reality. But that does not mean that it is not concerned with reality itself. It is concerned with subjective reality. These gods, these mythological symbols, do not exist outside you but they have a psychological existence and that psychological existence can be helpful, can be used. So the first thing to be understood is that they are not real persons in the world but they are real symbols in the psyche of man.

For example, Carl Gustav Jung came very near to discovering the secret of these symbols. He was working on mental patients, disturbed persons. He would tell his patients to go on painting things, whatsoever came to their minds. A person who is schizophrenic, divided, split, will paint certain things and the painting will show a particular pattern. All schizophrenic patients will paint certain things and the pattern will be the same. And when they get over their illness, their disease, they will start painting different things and that will happen to every patient. Just by seeing their paintings you can say whether the patient is ill or not.

Then Jung became aware that whenever a person who has been suffering with a divided personality again becomes one, undivided, he starts painting something like a mandala - a circle. That circle, that mandala, shows somehow a deep relationship with his own inner circle that has been regained.

Now, inside, he has become a circle, joined together. He has become one. Then in his paintings suddenly circles will erupt. So Jung came to conclude that your inner mind can express certain things in a certain state. If the state of mind changes, then your visions will change, your expressions will change.

Hindu mythological gods are certain visions of a certain state of mind. When you come into that state of mind, visions start happening to you. They will have a similarity. All the world over they will have a similarity. There will be minor differences because of culture, education, training, but deep down there will be a similarity.

For example, the mandala is one of the mythological symbols. It has been recurring all over the world. In old Christian paintings it is there. In old Tibetan paintings it is there. In Chinese, Japanese and Indian art the circle has a fascination. Somehow, when your sight becomes circular, when it becomes a current, joined together, undivided, you begin to see a circle in your vision, in your dreams. That circle represents your reality. In the same way, all symbols represent inner subjective realities. And if a society gives a particular shape to a deity, it becomes very helpful. It becomes very helpful for the seeker because now he can decode many inner visions.

Freud inaugurated a new era in the West by interpreting dreams. Before Freud, in the West, no one was really interested in dreams. No one thought that dreams could have some meaning or that dreams could have some reality of their own or that they could have some secret keys which could open the personality of men. But in India it has always been known. We have always been interpreting dreams. And not only dreams, because dreams are ordinary: we have also been interpreting visions. Visions are the dreams of those persons who are meditating and changing their consciousness. They are also dreams. In ordinary consciousness dreams happen and now Freudian psychology has come to conclude that a particular pattern of dreams shows a particular meaning.

For example, a person goes on seeing in his dream that he is flying in the sky, that he has become a bird. He goes on flying: over hills, mountains, rivers, oceans, cities, he goes on flying. Freud says this type of dream, a dream of flying, happens to the mind which is very ambitious. Ambition becomes flying in dreams. You want to be above everyone - above hills, above everyone. If you can fly, you will be above everyone. Ambition is an effort to fly above everyone. In dream, ambition becomes a pictorial image of flying.

Sexual dreams have a similar pattern all over the world. When boys become sexually mature they will start dreaming of holes, tunnels. Those holes, tunnels, are symbols of the feminine sex center, of the vagina. Girls will start seeing phallic symbols - pillars or minarets - in their dreams. And this happens all over the world: all over the world there is no distinction; this happening is similar. Phallic symbols will come to girls and hole-like symbols will come to boys.

If in a particular sexual state particular dreams happen, they have a reality. That reality is subjective.

It is just the same when you enter meditation: you are entering a different state of consciousness.

Then particular visions will start happening. They are also dreams but we call them visions because they are not normal. Unless you achieve a certain state in meditation they will not happen. They show that something is happening within. They project your inner realities on the screen of the mind in a pictorial way.

Remember that your unconscious mind does not know any language. Your unconscious mind knows only the most primitive language and that is of pictures. Your conscious mind has learned language symbols but the unconscious mind still remains pictorial just like a small child. It converts everything into pictures.

So, for example, Shiva's shivalinga has many meanings. One I told you about this morning, that it is the very source of life energy - a sex symbol. But that is only one meaning. The shivalinga is egg-shaped - white and egg-shaped. It happens in a particular state of meditation that this appears before you: a white egg-shaped thing filled with light. Light is coming out of it, rays are coming out of it.

Deep down, whenever you become cool, silent, and the whole being loses heat, this symbol appears.

That is why the mythological story is that Shiva lives on the Himalayas, the coolest place in the world, where everything is cool. Just look at a shivalinga - a marble shivalinga. Just by looking at it you will feel a certain coolness entering in you. That is why above a shivalinga a pot is to be held continuously, and from that pot drops of water go on dropping on the shivalinga. It is just to make it cool. These are symbols just to give you a feeling of coolness.

In Kashmir there is one shivalinga, a natural shivalinga, which arises automatically when snow falls.

It is a snow shivalinga. Just by dropping of snow in a cave a shivalinga is formed. That shivalinga is the best one for meditation because it is so cool all around that it gives a glimpse of the inner happening - when the shivalinga appears within your consciousness, when it becomes a picture, a symbol, a vision.

These symbols have been found through centuries and centuries of work and effort. They indicate a certain state of mind. To me all mythological gods are meaningful subjectively. Objectively they are nowhere to be found. And if you start trying to find them somewhere objectively, then you will become a victim of your own imagination - because you can find them; you can project them so strongly that you can find them.

Human imagination is such a forcible thing, it has such a tremendous force within it, that if you imagine something continuously you will start feeling it around you. Then you can see it, then you can realize it. It will become an objective thing. It is not objective but you will feel it as existing outside you. So it is dangerous to play with imagination because then you can be hypnotized by your own imagination and you can come to see and feel things which are not. This is creating a private fantasy, a dreamworld; this is a sort of madness. You can see Krishna, you can see Christ, you can see Buddha, but this whole effort is wasted because you are moving in dreams and not in reality.

Hence, my insistence to always remember that these mythological figures are symbolic. They are meaningful, they are poetic, they are a certain language. They say something, they imply something but they are not objective personalities. If you can remember this, then you can use them beautifully.

They can be of much help. But if you think of them as objective, they will be harmful and by and by you will move into a dreamworld and you will lose contact with the reality. And to lose contact with the reality is to go mad. Be constantly in contact with reality. Still, do not allow the objective reality to kill the inner and the subjective. Be alive and alert in the inner world but do not mix them.

This is happening: either we allow the objective reality to kill the inner and the subjective, or we allow the subjective to project a dreamworld on the objective, and then the objective disappears. These are two extreme viewpoints. Science goes on thinking in terms of the objective and goes on denying the subjective. Religion goes on talking about the subjective and denying the objective.

I am totally different from both. My emphasis is that objective is objective and let it remain objective.

Subjective is subjective and let it remain subjective. Keep their purities and you will be saner for it.

If you mix them, if you confuse them, you will become insane, you will lose balance.

The second question:

Question 2:

Yes, transference can be helpful but not with an analyst. It can be helpful with a master. It can be helpful only if the person with whom you fall in love has himself gone beyond lust, has himself solved all his love problems. If you fall in love with a master.... By 'master' I mean one who has gone beyond attachment, lust, who has gone beyond all problems of love.

Otherwise the transference is going to be double. The patient is transfering, projecting, his own love need onto the doctor and the doctor is projecting his own love need onto the patient. And a doctor who has his own love need cannot be of much help. Really, he himself is ill, and two ill persons cannot help each other to be healthier. This is again going to be a frustration, not a growth in love.

Love can only grow if the other person has grown beyond ordinary problems, the ordinary conflict of love. What is the problem of love? The one problem is that the moment you are in love with someone you are also in hate with the same person. This is the first problem because whomsoever you love, side by side you hate him also.

Why do you hate a person you love? Love is a need and just like love there is another need and that is of freedom. The moment you love a person, you start feeling dependent; your freedom is lost.

And the person who is killing your freedom is bound to be hated. And the person who is making you dependent will appear not only as an enemy but as the arch-enemy because he is killing all your freedom, your liberty, your individuality. But love is a need, so you fulfill love at the cost of freedom.

You love a person and you hate that person also.

Then the second problem arises: the moment you are in love with someone, you are not in your senses. You are mad. Really, you are a lunatic. You are not alert, you are not conscious. You are moving as if in sleep. And if the other person is also the same - and a doctor or a psychoanalyst IS the same, there is no difference, he has no higher consciousness than you - then he is also moving in sleep. Two persons moving in sleep are bound to collide; they will be in conflict, struggle.

We in India have given another word for falling in love with a master, just to show the difference. We call it SHRADDHA - we call it trust, a loving trust. If you fall in love with a master - and you will fall - then there is a difference. You are in sleep, but the master is not in sleep. You will try in every way to create a conflict, violence, aggression but he can laugh at it - at you. He can be kind and he can arrange things so that there is no collision. He can arrange things so there is no violence and no hate. But with a psychoanalyst, you are meeting a person of the same state of mind. The quality of the mind is similar; you will both create problems for each other.

In love, lovers create problems for each other. They go on throwing their problems on the other.

And if both are throwing their problems on each other, then it cannot be a growth, it cannot come to a healthy maturity. Impossible! Again it will be an experience in failure. And the more you fail, the more you become experienced in failure. Then you know more how to fail. And with every love experience and relationship, if misery is created, by and by you will come to feel that love is a sort of disease.

There have been persons.... Oscar Wilde has said somewhere that love is a fever, a feverish state.

It is not health because whenever you are in love you are in a fever. You cannot sleep properly when you are in love, you cannot be at ease. You are uneasy, a turmoil goes on, a fever grips you.

The third problem is that whenever you are in love you try to possess the other, you try to become the master of the other - the possessor. And the same thing is being done by the other: he or she is trying to possess you. And what does this possession mean? What is possession? Possession means to transform the person into a thing so that you can manipulate him. Then the person has no freedom. And each lover is making an effort to kill the other as a person.

Only with a master will this not happen. With the master the disciple will try in every way to possess but you cannot possess a master. That is impossible, because you can possess a person only if he deeply cooperates with you. He may be insisting that he wants to remain independent but there also is a deep need to be possessed. A master cannot be possessed, so your effort toward possession will fail. And he will not try to possess you. Rather, on the contrary, he is trying to make you more of a person - more alive, more free, more conscious, more alert. His whole effort is to make you more a person than a thing. But lovers are trying to make each other a thing. A psychoanalyst is an ordinary person with some expertise but with no change of consciousness.

There are some psychoanalysts like Wilhelm Reich and his followers who say that this transference, this falling in love of the patient with the doctor, is good. But I have been reading the memoirs of Wilhelm Reich's wife and she says that he was making love to each woman patient but he would not allow his wife even to talk with another man.

His wife was away at some hill-station for two months. When she came back, he inquired about what she had been doing there - who she was meeting, whether she fell in love with someone....

And his wife says that he was making love with a new woman every day, yet he was jealous of his wife and possessive. How can this man be helpful? What type of help can come from this man? He himself is in trouble with his own love problems. It is possible that he is just giving a philosophy. He is a maniac, a pervert, and he is philosophizing the whole thing, he is rationalizing the whole thing.

I do not say that love cannot be helpful. Love can be helpful. But it can be helpful only when you are in love with a person who is higher than you; otherwise it cannot be helpful. And we call that love shraddha - a loving trust.

If you are in love with a master, with a buddha - and of course you will be; if you are near a buddha you will be - in the beginning your love towards Buddha will have a certian sexuality about it; it is bound to be so. That's why it happens around Buddha, around Mahavira... it is known about Mahavira that he had forty thousand disciples - monks and nuns. Of forty thousand monks and nuns, thirty thousand were women, only ten thousand were men. The proportion was three women to one man. Of four followers, three were women and one was a man.

These thirty thousand women must have had a deep love and in the beginning a sexual attraction.

It is bound to be so, it is natural. But by and by, the presence of Mahavira will change that sexual part. By and by, living near him, the sexuality will drop and the love will become purer; it will become more spiritual.

In the beginning it will be possessive. Even I feel that it becomes possessive. Around me there are many women and they start being possessive, unknowingly. And nothing is wrong in it; it is natural.

But if I am also of the same state of mind, then I cannot help them. Then, rather than me bringing them to a higher state of mind, they will bring me down to their level. And there is a constant struggle for equality. Remember, just as water seeks its own level, whenever you meet a person you both struggle to create a level. Either he should come down or you should go up but sooner or later you must settle on the same level; otherwise it will be difficult, you won't be able to remain related.

Just like water seeks a level, a relationship seeks a level. If you fall in love with me, then there will be a struggle. Long or short, it depends on what type of a person you are, there will be a struggle.

You will try to bring me down so that the equality is established. Nature likes equality. But if you can bring me down, then I cannot help you. So while you are trying to bring me down, I must try to bring you up to a higher state. And remember, to go to a lower state is very easy; to bring someone to a higher state is very difficult. It is a long struggle.

When the doctor and the patient are of similar consciousness, only their knowledge differs - not their being. One man has studied psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry: he is an expert. The other has not studied it; that is the only difference. Their memories differ, their information differs. As far as their minds are concerned they are different, but as far as their consciousness is concerned they are similar.

So I do not think this phenomenon called transference, projection of love, can be of any help; it cannot be. It can be only if the psychoanalyst is also a master, is also a guru. Then it can be of help; otherwise it cannot be of any help. The person with whom you fall in love must be of such integrity that you cannot bring him down no matter what you do. And you will make every effort, you will make a desperate effort, to bring him down. This is natural because you feel uneasy with a person who is higher than you. Either you must go higher, which is difficult, or he must come down - and it looks easier for you to bring him down.

If he can come down, or if he is already down and simply imposes that he is not down, then he cannot be of much help. But if he remains higher than you, then your love can really become a growth.

Disciples and masters are in constant struggle, remember this, in constant struggle because the disciples are trying to bring the master down and the master is trying to bring the disciples up. It is a very penetrating struggle and the disciples will not leave anything undone. Not that they know: they do not know what they are doing. But they are unconscious, so they can be forgiven. The master cannot be forgiven because he must be aware, he must be alert, he must be conscious of what is happening around him.

A psychoanalyst is not a master; that is why I say that in the West, the relationship between psychoanalysts and patients has become a sexual license - nothing else. It is helping neither.

And the second part of the same question is: "Is not this concept the same as that of surrender in Eastern tradition? Is it not possible that Freud discovered its value through some esoteric leak?"

No! Surrender is different from love. In love you remain yourself. Love is a relationship between two persons who remain two. It is a relationship, it is a bridge. Surrender is not a relationship. You simply disappear, you are no more. When you surrender to a master, you say, "I am not now. Now do whatsoever you like; I am not." It is not a relationship. Surrender is not a relationship, because one disappears through it and a relationship needs two. Only the master remains.

Really, when you surrender the master is working in you - you are not there. Then it becomes very easy to work because the struggle that the disciple puts up, the resistance that he usually gives, is no more there. He is simply in a let-go. When the master says come to the left, he comes to the left. Or if he says come to the right, he comes to the right. Whatsoever the master says he simply follows. He doesn't allow his ego to assert itself; it is not a relationship.

Love is a relationship. Both the lovers are trying to remain themselves; hence, the struggle. Both are trying to be related and yet to remain independent. This is contradictory because the very relationship will change you and you will have to compromise and adjust with the other. And you will not be the same again.

A person who is unmarried will not be the same person when he is married. He cannot be! It is impossible to remain the same person because now a new compromise has entered. Now a new person has entered and a relationship is created. This relationship will change both. Remember, in love both change; in surrender, only the surrendered changes - not the master. He is not related.

He remains aloof, he remains far away, he remains distant. You surrender and you change. In love it is always a condition. You give something to take something. This is a give and take. In surrender, you simply give; there is no condition to it.

Surrender is a very different phenomenon. Really, the West is absolutely unacquainted with it. The master-disciple relationship is absolutely an Eastern happening. In the West there are teachers and the taught, not masters and disciples. That is why Krishnamurti's teachings have been so influential in the West, because he says there is no master and no disciple.

The East has come to evolve a new type of relationship - if you can call it a relationship - in which one exists and the other dissolves, in which the surrendered changes but the master makes no compromise. It is one way.

Love is two way. Both do something; both give and take. It is an exchange. Surrender is one way.

The disciple simply offers himself. The master remains untouched. Only then can he work. If he is changed by you, he cannot change you. So many times masters look very hard: they look very unkind, they look very cruel because you go on weeping and crying and they remain untouched.

Or even if they show that they are touched, you can see that they are pretending, that they are play-acting.

Surrender is one way, totally one way. That is why it is so difficult. If you feel that the other is also bending, it becomes more easy. Then it is a contract, then it is a marriage. Marriage is a contract.

Surrender is not a marriage; there is no contract. You simply dissolve yourself on your own and the master will not even thank you. You are dissolving yourself totally, surrendering, and he will not even say a single thank-you to you. He may not even look at you.

It is said that Bayazid, one Sufi mystic, came to his master and the master said, "Are you ready to surrender? Otherwise, go and move in the world to have some experience of the world, some experience of the failures of the ego, so that you do not resist."

But Bayazid said, "I am ready."

The master said to Bayazid, "Now remain silent. Unless I say something to you, you need not say anything."

It is said that for twelve years Bayazid remained silent. He would come every day, sit by the side of the master, and wait. And it is said that just by waiting he achieved.

One day, after twelve years, the master for the first time looked at him, and that was the moment, Bayazid remembers, when he was absolutely in waiting. Not a single thought was there. It was then that the master looked at him. This was the recognition that, "Now you are accepted."

Then another three years passed, and one day the master took Bayazid's hand in his own. Bayazid remembers that that was the day when even the waiting had disappeared. Even that was a subtle thought: "Waiting, waiting, waiting - someday something is going to happen." Even that had disappeared when the master took his hand in his own.

Then three more years passed and one day the master called him near, took him near his heart, embraced him and said, "Now you can go." These were the first words uttered: "Now you can go."

This is surrender.

And Bayazid remembers: "That was the moment when I was so totally one with existence, with the present moment, that the master had disappeared. I was sitting by his side; he was no more there - no one was there. Simply the existence was there. That was the moment the master called me near, embraced me, and said, 'Now you can go.'" This is surrender - one way.

But when disciples come to a master, in the beginning they fall in love, not in surrender. And they call that love surrender. That creates problems because love is NOT surrender. Surrender is a higher state - totally, qualitatively different, undemanding, nonpossessive, not asking for anything, unconditional. But this is by nature so, that surrender is not known to you while love is a natural phenomenon. First love stirs you. And if the other person is not in a love need, then only can he bring your love toward surrender.

It will depend on how much you resist. You can resist your whole life: then it will not happen. And no master can do anything unless YOU are cooperating, unless you allow, because no master can be aggressive. If you are open, he can enter; if you are nonresistant, he can change and transform you.

Surrender is the easiest way to be transformed. All other ways are difficult and take a long time. If you can put yourself aside, then the master can immediately enter in you and can change your total being. But no master can be aggressive. Against your will nothing can be done. Surrender means that you are totally cooperative. Whatsoever is done, you will cooperate. In the West it has never existed.... Even Jesus' followers, the twelve apostles, were not surrendered really.

On the last night, when Jesus was going to be caught by the enemies, and the rumor was that he was going to be crucified, killed, murdered, Peter said, "I will follow you wherever you go."

Jesus laughed and said, "Before the sun rises in the morning you will have denied me three times."

And it happened so. Jesus was caught. It was dark and people had caught him, the enemies, and they started taking him away somewhere. Peter followed. Someone saw his face. They had lighted torches so someone saw his face. Peter looked like a stranger because those in the group were known to each other, so someone said, "Who are you? Are you a follower of Jesus?"

He said, "No, I do not know him at all."

And Jesus looked back and said, "You have denied me already."

On the last night, when he was departing, the disciples asked him, "We know that soon we will enter the kingdom of God. You will sit at God's right hand because you are his only begotten son, but it will be good if you can tell us where we twelve will be sitting. What will be our positions?"

This is not surrender. This is not surrender at all. They are ambitious, they have egos, and they are thinking in terms of greed and contract. Jesus could not get surrendered disciples. Because of that, Christianity went against him. It carries the name of Christ, but it does not belong to Christ at all. It is absolutely against him because only surrendered disciples can carry the real message, the authentic message. Those who are not surrendered, they will distort it. So it can be said now the pope is the MOST anti-Christ person in the world. The concept of surrender is Eastern.

Someone said to Buddha one day, "You have ten thousand monks around you. How many of them have become buddhas - enlightened?" Buddha said, "So many." So the person asked, "If so many have become enlightened among these ten thousand monks, then why do they not shine like you?

Why are they not known like you? Why are they not worshipped and adored like you? Why have they not become godmen?"

So Buddha said, "They are just waiting for my permission - just waiting. If I tell them to, they will disclose themselves. They are surrendered disciples. If I say, they will disclose themselves - they are just waiting for me. If I do not say anything, they will dissolve into the cosmos without uttering a single word."

This is something absolutely different which has not existed anywhere else.

The East has come to create surrender, the phenomenon of surrender, out of the elements of love.

But it is a new synthesis, it is a new phenomenon. It is not natural. Love is natural: surrender is supernatural. It is something new which does not come out of evolution itself. It has been created by superconscious beings. It is a new phenomenon, it is a creation.

The last question:

Question 3:

This is so clear, there is no need for any explanation. This is not a question - just a statement of fact. And this is good! If you really feel you are a puppet, you do not need to do anything else. If you really feel you are in the hands of some greater force, you are no more. And this is what is needed - to be no more.

But I think when you say you feel like a puppet there is a little condemnation. You do not feel good about feeling like a puppet! But still you are. Who is feeling like a puppet? If you are REALLY feeling like a puppet, then who is it that is feeling like a puppet? Who can feel, who is there to feel? You will be a puppet and there ends everything.

So do one thing: drop this idea that you are a puppet. Simply be aware of the cosmic forces around you. You are nothing - not even a puppet. You are just a crossing point of so many forces, just a crossroads of so many forces passing. And because so many forces pass, a point arises. Just at the crossing, a point arises. If you draw many lines crossing each other, a point will arise. That point becomes your ego and you feel that you are.

You are not. Only the cosmos is. You are not even like a puppet: that too is carrying the ego in a new form. And because the ego is being carried, it feels a little condemnation about the whole situation.

Be ecstatic that you are not because with the disappearance of YOU all misery disappears. With the disappearance of the ego there is no hell. You are freed - freed from yourself. Then there are only cosmic forces working eternally. You do not exist anywhere, not even like a puppet. If this can go deep in you, you have arrived. You have come to the real thing all religions want you to come to.

You have touched the core - the very ground.

But it is difficult. You may be imagining it; you may be making it up really. It is very difficult. You can think it but thinking will not help unless you feel it, unless it becomes a realization. It can happen only through deep meditation; otherwise it cannot happen. Only in meditation can you come to a point where you feel that "Everything is happening and I am not the doer." And not even this, that "I am not the doer": you are simply not there; things are happening in a space. You have become a space and things are happening there - but you are not there.

This can happen only when all your thoughts cease and your being becomes unclouded - unclouded by thoughts. You exist only in that pure existence; you can feel this. But if you feel that this is happening this is a good sign. Then move ahead and drop that puppet also; do not carry it. When you are no more, why carry a puppet? Drop that puppet also. Be free totally from the ego.

This is why I am here - to make you completely free of the ego. That is why I say to jump, to dance, to sing, to be ecstatic, like a madman. If you can do this then the ego cannot exist because the ego always exists as a controller. If you do not control anything, it disappears. It is a function of control.

When you start dancing, the ego says, "What are you doing? You will look foolish. Such an intelligent man like you dancing like a primitive?" The ego will say, "Do not do it! Control yourself!" If you control, the ego remains. Be uncontrolled; do not listen to this controlling force. Just allow yourself for the first time to be simply alive without any control and immediately you will feel that the ego is not there.

Existence is there, forces are there, but the ego is not there.

To me, to exist uncontrolled is the only discipline. If you can exist uncontrolled, you have attained to the highest discipline possible. If you do not control yourself and there is order, then this order doesn't belong to you. This order comes from the higher sources. If YOU discipline yourself, then you are the source of your whole life. Then you are cut off from the cosmic source. Drop yourself completely.

I will tell you one anecdote, and then we will try this dropping.

One day, a king came to Buddha with a very precious diamond in one hand and a lotus flower in the other. He thought that Buddha might not like the diamond because he had renounced all riches, so he brought the lotus flower in order not to take a chance. He would have liked to present the diamond. It was rare; it belonged only to him. That was the point really; Buddha was not the point.

He was going to present Buddha with a diamond that no one else could present. And then it would be known all over the world that this king had presented Buddha with such a precious thing.

That was the point; Buddha was just an excuse. But Buddha might not like the diamond, he might not accept, so he brought a lotus flower. That too was rare because this was not the season for it. It was unseasonal.

He came before Buddha with his diamond in his right hand. Buddha, just seeing him, said, "Drop it."

The man understood that he didn't like it, so he dropped the diamond on the ground. Then he brought the lotus flower in his left hand and Buddha said, "Drop that also." So he dropped it.

Then he brought his empty folded hands. Buddha, for a third time, said, "Drop that also."

Now he had nothing to drop, so he looked puzzled, confused. Buddha said, "Do not think - drop that also."

Then suddenly he understood that Buddha was not saying to drop the diamond or the flower but the ego which brought the diamond and the flower.

He fell down at Buddha's feet, and Buddha said to the assembly, "This man is a man of understanding."

When he arose, when he stood back, he was a different man - altogether different. The old had simply disappeared. The man who had fallen at Buddha's feet was no more; a new man had come up. What had changed? The ego....

Now get ready, and drop it...!