I am a destroyer

The first question:

Question 1:

THE QUESTION IS FROM PREM PANKAJA. Daydreaming is perfectly okay as far as love and fame are concerned - they are part of a dream world. You can dream as much as you like. Love is a dream, so is fame; they are not against dreaming. In fact, when dreaming stops, they disappear.

They exist in the same dimension, the dimension of dream.

But you cannot dream about Enlightenment. Enlightenment is possible only when dreaming disappears. Enlightenment is absence of dreaming - day or night, that doesn't matter.

Enlightenment means now your consciousness is fully aware. In an aware consciousness dreaming cannot exist. Dreaming is like darkness. It exists when the light is not there. When the light is there, darkness simply cannot exist.

Dreaming exists because life is dark, dim, dismal. Dreaming exists as a substitute - because we don't have real joy, hence we dream; because we don't really have anything in life, hence we dream; otherwise, how will we be able to tolerate the emptiness that we are? how will we be able to tolerate our existence? It will be absolutely unbearable. Dreams make it bearable. Dreams help us. They say to us, "Wait. Today things are not going right? Don't be worried: tomorrow everything will be put right. Everything HAS to be right. We will try - maybe we have not tried enough yet. Maybe we have not worked in the right direction. Maybe fate was not with us, God was against us, but it cannot be for ever." And God is compassionate, kind; all the religions of the world say God is very kind, very compassionate. It is a hope!

Mohammedans continuously repeat: God is Rahim, Rehman - compassionate, kind. Why? For what do they repeat again and again? Each time they utter the word'God' they will repeat'the compassionate, the kind'. Why? If He is not kind then where will our hope and dreaming exist. He HAS to be kind for our dreams to exist, because THERE exists our hope: in His kindness, in His compassion. Tomorrow things will be okay; tomorrow they are going to be okay.

Daydreaming is good as far as love and fame are concerned, as far as outgoing energies are concerned - because outgoing, we are going in a dream. The world is a dream phenomenon; that is what Hindus mean when they call it MAYA illusion. It is made of the same stuff dreams are made of. It is a daydream seen with open eyes.

But Enlightenment is a totally different plane of being. Dreams don't exist there. And if you continue to dream, Enlightenment will not be possible.

Just the other day I was reading a beautiful anecdote:

A parson had a parrot, but despite all efforts to try and teach it to speak the bird remained dumb. The parson mentioned this one day to an elderly lady parishioner who visited him. She was interested and said, "I also have a parrot which does not speak. It might be a good idea to put the two birds together and see what happens."

Well, this they did, the parrots being put in a large cage while the parson and his lady parishioner withdrew out of sight but not out of hearing. At first all was quiet, then came some fluttering and the old lady's parrot was heard to exclaim, "What about a spot of love, deary?" to which the parson's parrot replied, "That's what I have been silently praying and waiting for for years today my dream is fulfilled. I can speak today."

If you are waiting and praying and dreaming for love and fame, it will happen one day! It is not a difficult phenomenon. One just needs stubbornness... and it happens. One just needs to go on and on and on... it is bound to happen, because it is YOUR dream. You will find some place or other where you can project it and you can see it, almost as if it has become a reality.

When you fall in love with a woman or a man, what are you doing exactly? You were carrying a dream inside you; now suddenly the woman functions as a screen - you project your dream on her.

You start feeling, "My dream is fulfilled." The woman projects her dream on you; you function as a screen, and she feels her dream is fulfilled. If you go on dreaming, some day or other you will find a screen, somebody will become a screen, and your dream will be fulfilled.

But Enlightenment is not a dream. It is a dropping of all dreams. So please don't dream about Enlightenment. Love is possible through dreaming in fact, it is possible only through dreaming.

Fame is possible through dreaming - in fact, it is only possible through dreaming, it happens ONLY to dreamers. But Enlightenment is not possible through dreaming - the very existence of dreaming will make it impossible.

Dream for it and you will miss. Wait for it and you will miss. Hope for it and you will miss. Then what are you supposed to do? What you are supposed to do is to understand the mechanism of dreaming. You can leave Enlightenment aside; it is none of your business. You just look deep into the faculty of dreaming, understand how dreaming functions. That very understanding will bring a clarity. In that clarity dreaming stops, disappears.

When dreaming is not, Enlightenment is.

You forget about Enlightenment! You are not to even think about it - how can you think about it?

And whatsoever you think is going to be wrong. How can you hope for it? - ALL hopes about it are going to be wrong. How can you desire it? It cannot be desired. Then WHAT are we supposed to do?

Try to understand desiring. Try to understand hoping. Try to understand dreaming. That's what is needed. You simply try to understand how your mind has been functioning up to now. Seeing into the functioning of the mind, mind disappears. Just a good look into the inner mechanism of the mind, and suddenly it comes to a halt. In that halt, there is Enlightenment. In that halt, there is a taste of a totally new dimension of existence.

Dreaming is one dimension: existence is another dimension. Existence is: dreaming is simply a belief.

The second question:

Question 2:

THIS IS A VERY SIGNIFICANT QUESTION - it is from Jayananda. The question is significant because it shows two different approaches concerning the inner reality of man.

The Western approach is to think about the problem, to find the causes of the problem, to go into the history of the problem, into the past of the problem, to uproot the problem from the very beginning, to uncondition the mind, or to recondition the mind, to recondition the body, to take out all those imprints that have been left on the brain - this is the Western approach. Psychoanalysis goes into the memory; it works there. It goes into your childhood, into your past; it moves backwards. It finds out from where the problem has arisen - maybe fifty years before when you were a child the problem arose in your relationship with your mother, then psychoanalysis will go back.

Fifty years of history! It is a very long, dragging affair. And even then it doesn't help much - because there are MILLIONS of problems. It is not only a question of one problem. You can go into one problem's history; you can look into your autobiography and find out the causes. Maybe you can eliminate one problem, but there are millions of problems. If you start going into each problem..to solve one life's problems you will need millions of lives. Let me repeat it: to solve ONE life's problems you will have to be born again and again, millions of times. This is almost impractical. This cannot be done. And all those millions of lives when you will be solving the problems of this life, those lives will create their own problems... and so on and so forth. You will be dragged more and more into the problems. This is absurd!

Now, the same psychoanalytical approach has gone into the body: rolfing, bio-energetics, and other methods are there which try to eliminate imprints on the body, in the musculature. Again, you have to go into the history of the body. But one thing is certain about both the approaches, which are on the same logical pattern, that the problem comes from the past, so somehow it has to be tackled in the past.

Man's mind has always been trying to do two impossible things. One is: to reform the past - which cannot be done. The past has happened. You cannot REALLY go into the past. When you think of going into the past, at the most you go into the memory of it; it is not the real past, it is just the memory. The past is no more there, so you cannot reform it. This is one of the impossible goals of humanity; man has suffered very much because of it. You want to undo the past - how can you undo it? The past is absolute. The past means: all potentiality of it is finished; it has become actual.

Now there is no longer any potentiality to reform it, to undo it, to redo it. You cannot do ANYthing with the past.

And the second impossible idea that has always dominated the human mind is: to establish the future - which cannot be done again. Future means that which is not yet; you cannot establish it.

Future remains unestablished. Future remains open. Future is pure potentiality! Unless it happens, you cannot be certain about it.

Past is pure actuality - it has happened. Now nothing can be done about it.

Between these two, man stands in the present always thinking of the impossibles. He wants to make everything certain about the future, about tomorrow - which canNOT be done. Let it sink as deeply in your heart as possible: it cannot be done. Don't waste your present moment for making the future certain. The future is uncertainty; that is the very quality of the future. And don't waste your time looking back. The past has happened, it is a dead phenomenon. Nothing can be done about it.

What, at the most, you can do is you can reinterpret it. That's all. That's what psychoanalysis is doing: reinterpreting it. Reinterpretation can be done - but the past remains the same.

Psychoanalysis and astrology: astrology tries somehow to make the future certain, and psychoanalysis tries to redo the past. Neither is a science. Both things are impossible, but both have millions of followers - because man LIKES it that way. He wants to be certain about the future, so he goes to the astrologer, he consults the I CHING, he goes to a Tarot reader, and there are a thousand and one ways to fool oneself, to deceive oneself.

And then there are people who say they can change the past - he consults them also.

Once these two things are dropped, you become free of all sorts of foolishnesses. Then you don't go to the psychoanalyst and you don't go to the astrologer. Then you know the past is finished...

you also be finished with it. And the future has not happened; whenever it happens, we will see - nothing can be done about it right now. You can only destroy the present moment, which is the only moment available, real.

The West has been continuously looking into the problems, how to solve them. The West takes the problems very seriously. And when you are going in a certain logic, given the premises, that logic looks perfect.

I was just reading one anecdote:

A great philosopher and world renowned mathematician is aboard an aeroplane. He is sitting in his seat and thinking great mathematical problems, when suddenly an announcement comes from the captain: "I am sorry, there will be a a slight delay. Engine number one has cut out and we are now flying on three engines."

About ten minutes later another announcement: "I am afraid there will be further delay - engines two and three have cut out and there is only number four left."

So the philosopher turns to the fellow sitting next to him and says, "Good golly! If the other one cuts out we will be up here all night!"

When you are thinking in a certain line, the very direction of it makes certain things possible, absurd things also possible. Once you have taken human problems very seriously, once you start thinking about man as a problem, you have accepted some premise you have taken the first step wrongly.

Now you can go into the direction, and you can go on and on. Now such great literature has come up in this century about mind phenomena, psychoanalysis; millions of papers are written and treatises and books. Once Freud opened the doors of a certain logic, it dominated the whole century.

The East has a totally different outlook. First, it says no problem is serious. The moment you say no problem is serious, the problem is almost ninety-nine percent dead. Your whole vision changes about it. The second thing the East says is: the problem is there because you are identified with it.

It has nothing to do with the past, nothing to do with its history. You are identified with it - that is the REAL thing. And that is the key to solve all problems.

For example: you are an angry person. If you go to the psychoanalyst, he will say, "Go into the past... how did this anger arise? In what situations did it become more and more conditioned and imprinted on your mind? We will have to wash out all those imprints; we will have to wipe them off.

We will have to clean your past completely."

If you go to an Eastern mystic, he will say, "You think that you are anger, you feel identified with the anger - that is where things are going wrong. Next time anger happens, you just be a watcher, you just be a witness. You don't get identified with the anger. Don't say,'I am anger.' Don't say,'I am angry.' Just see it happening as if it is happening on a TV screen. Look at yourself as if you are looking at somebody else."

You are pure consciousness. When the cloud of anger comes around you, just watch it, AND remain alert so that you don't get identified. The whole thing is how not to become identified with the problem. Once you have learnt it... and then there is no question of'so many problems' - because the key, the same key will open all the locks. It is so with anger, it is so with greed, it is so with sex:

it is so with everything else that the mind is capable of.

The East says: Just remain unidentified. Remember - that's what Gurdjieff means when he says'self-remembering'. Remember that you are a witness! Be mindful! - that's what Buddha says.

Be alert that a cloud is passing by! Maybe the cloud comes from the past, but that is meaningless.

It must have a certain past, it cannot come just out of the blue; it must be coming from a certain sequence of events - but that is irrelevant. Why be bothered about it? RIGHT NOW, this very moment, you can become detached from it, you can cut yourself away from it. The bridge can be broken right now - and it can be broken ONLY in the now.

Going into the past won't help. Thirty years before, the anger arose and you got identified with it that day. Now you cannot get unidentified from that past; it is no more there. But you can get unidentified this moment, this very moment. And then the WHOLE series of angers of your past is no more part of you.

THE QUESTION IS RELEVANT. Jayananda has asked:" You spoke in several recent discourses on the no-problem, the non-existence of our problems. Having been brought up in a repressive Catholic family..."

You can, right now, become a non-Catholic. NOW! I say. You will not have to go back and undo whatsoever your parents and your society and the priest and the church have done. That will be a sheer wastage of precious present time. In the first place it has destroyed many years; now, again, it will be destroying your present moments. You can simply drop out of it, just as a snake slips out of the old skin.

"Having been brought up in a repressive Catholic family, and having spent twenty-one years in an equally crazy educational system - are you saying that all the coats of armour, all the conditionings and all the repressions do not exist...?"

No, they exist. But they exist either in the body or in the brain; they don't exist in your consciousness, because the consciousness cannot be conditioned. Consciousness REMAINS free! Freedom is its innermost quality, freedom is its nature. In fact, even asking it, you are showing that freedom.

When you say "twenty-one years in a crazy educational system"; when you say "having been brought up in a repressive Catholic family" - in THIS moment you are not identified. You can look: so many years of Catholic repression, so many years of a certain education. In this moment when you are looking at it, this consciousness is no longer Catholic; otherwise, who will be aware? If you had really BECOME Catholic, then who would be aware? Then there would be no possibility of becoming aware.

If you can say "twenty-one years in an equally crazy educational system," one thing is certain: you are not yet crazy. The system has failed; it didn't work. Jayananda, you are not crazy, hence you can see the whole system as crazy. A madman cannot see that he is mad. Only a sane person can see that this is madness. To see madness as madness, sanity is needed. Those twenty-one years of crazy system have failed; all that repressive conditioning has failed. It CANNOT really succeed.

It succeeds only in the proportion that you get identified with it. Any moment you can stand aloof...

it is there, I am not saying it is not there: but it is no more part of your consciousness.

This is the beauty of consciousness: consciousness can slip out of anything. There is no barrier to it, no boundary to it. Just a moment before you were an Englishman - understanding the nonsense of nationalism, a second later you are no longer an Englishman. I am not saying that your white skin will change; it will remain white - but you are no more identified with the whiteness; you are no more against the black. You see the stupidity of it. I am not saying that just by seeing that you are no more an Englishman you will forget the English language, no. It will still be there in your memory, but your consciousness has slipped out, your consciousness is standing on a hillock looking at the valley.

Now, the Englishman is dead in the valley and you are standing on the hills, far away, unattached, untouched.

The whole Eastern methodology can be reduced to one word: witnessing. And the whole Western methodology can be be Reduced to one thing: analyzing. Analyzing, you go round and round.

Witnessing, you simply get out of the circle.

Analysis is a vicious circle. If you REALLY go into analysis, you will be simply puzzled - how is it possible? If, for example, you try to go into the past, where will you end? Where exactly? If you go into the past, where did your sexuality start? When you were fourteen years of age? But then it came out of the blue? It must have been getting ready in the body. So when? When you were born? But then when you were in the mother's womb, wasn't it getting ready? Then when? The moment you were conceived? But before that? Half of your sexuality was mature in your mother's egg and half of the sexuality was maturing in your father's sperm. Now go on..where will you end?

You will have to go to Adam and Eve. And even then it does not end: you will have to go to Father God Himself. Why in the first place did He create Adam?...

Analysis will always remain half, so analysis never helps anybody really. It cannot help. It makes you a little more adjusted to your reality, that's all. It is a sort of adjustment. It helps you to attain a little bit of understanding about your problems, their genesis, how they have arisen. And that little intellectual understanding helps you to adjust to the society better, but you remain the same person.

There is no transformation through it, there is no radical change through it.

Witnessing is a revolution. It is a radical change - from the VERY roots! It brings a totally new man into existence, because it takes your consciousness out of all the conditionings. Conditionings are there in the body and in the mind, but consciousness remains unconditioned. It is pure, always pure.

It is virgin. Its virginity cannot be violated.

The Eastern approach is to make you mindful of this virgin consciousness, of this purity, of this innocence. That's what Saraha is saying to the king again and again. Our emphasis is on the sky and the Western emphasis is on the clouds. Clouds have a genesis; if you find out from where they come, you will have to go to the ocean, then to the sunrays and the evaporation of the water and the clouds forming... and you can go on, but it will be moving in a circle. The clouds form, then again they come, fall in love with the trees, start pouring again into the earth, become rivers, go to the ocean, start evaporating, rising again on sunrays, become clouds, again fall on the earth.... It goes on and on, round and round and round. It is a wheel. From where will you be out? One thing will lead to another and you will be in the wheel.

The sky has no genesis. The sky is uncreated; it is not produced by anything. In fact, for anything to be, a sky is needed as a must, a priori; it has to exist before anything else can exist. You can ask the Christian theologian - he says "God created the world." Ask him whether before He created the world there was any sky or not. If there was no sky, where did God used to exist? He must have needed space. If there was no space, where did He create the world? where did He put the world? Space is a must... even for God to exist. You cannot say "God created space." That would be absurd, because then He would not have any space to exist. Space must precede God.

Sky has always been there. The Eastern approach is to become mindful of the sky. The Western approach makes you more and more alert to the clouds, and helps you a little, but it doesn't make you aware of your innermost core. Circumference - yes, you become a little more aware of the circumference, but not aware of the center. And the circumference is a cyclone. You have to find the center of the cyclone. And that happens only through witnessing.

Witnessing will not change your conditioning. Witnessing will not change your body musculature. But witnessing will simply give you an experience that you are beyond all musculature, all conditioning.

In that moment of beyondness, in that moment of transcendence, no problem exists - not for you.

And now it is up to you. The body will still carry the musculature and the mind will still carry the conditioning - now it is up to you: if sometimes you are hankering for the problem, you can get into the mindbody and have the problem and enjoy it. If you don't want to have it, you can remain out.

The problem will remain as an imprint in the bodymind phenomenon, but you will be aloof and away from it.

That's how a Buddha functions. You also use memory; a Buddha also uses memory - but he is not identified with it. He uses memory as a mechanism. For example, I am using language. When I have to use language, I use the mind and all the imprints, but continuously I am not the mind - that awareness is there. So I remain the boss, the mind remains a servant. When the mind is called, it comes; its utility is there - but it cannot dominate.

So your question is right: problems WILL exist, but they will exist only in the seed form in the body and the mind. How can you change your past? You have been a Catholic in the past; if for forty years you have been a Catholic, how can you change those forty years and NOT be a Catholic? No.

Those forty years will remain as a period of being Catholic. No - but you can slip out of it. Now you know that that was just identification. Those forty years cannot be destroyed, and there is no need to destroy them. If you are the master of the house, there is no need. You can use even those forty years in a certain way, in a creative way. Even that crazy education can be used in a creative way.

"What about all the imprints left on the brain, on the musculature of the body?"

They will be there, but as a seed: potentially there. If you feel too lonely and you want problems, you can have them. If you feel too miserable without misery, you can have them. They will remain always available, but there is no need to have them, there is no necessity to have them. It will be your choice.

The future humanity will have to decide whether it has to go on the path of analysis or it has to change to the path of witnessing. I use both methods. I use analysis, particularly for seekers who come from the West - I put them in the groups. Those groups are analytical, those groups are by-products of psychoanalysis. They have grown: Freud will not be able to recognize encounter if he comes; or primal therapy will be difficult for him to recognize - what is happening? Have all these people gone mad? But they are offshoots of HIS work; he was the pioneer; without him there would be no primal therapy. He started the whole game.

When Western people come to me, I put them into the groups. That is good for them. They should start with what is easier for them. Then by and by, slowly I change. First they go into cathartic groups like encounter, primal therapy, and then I start putting them into intensive enlightenment, then vipassana. Vipassana is a witnessing. From encounter to vipassana there is a great synthesis.

When you move from encounter to vipassana, you are moving from West to East.

The third question:

Question 3:

WHAT ACTIONS? Can you detect any actions in me... except talking? And in that too I take every care to contradict everything I say. So in. the end, just emptiness.... That is the use of contradiction.

If I say plus one, IMMEDIATELY I say minus one - and the total result is zero.

I am not a doer. I don't do anything. All that you can call action is my talking to you. And that is so contradictory that it cannot bring either good or bad. I go on negating myself. And if you understand this state of no-action, you will have understood the highest possibility of consciousness. The highest consciousness is not a doer. It is a being. And if something like action appears there, it is just playful.

My talking is just a play.

And the whole effort is that you don't become dogmatic about me. You cannot become - I don't allow that possibility. I contradict so much: how can you create a dogma? If you try to create a dogma, immediately you will find I have contradicted it.

A Christian missionary used to come to see me, and he said, "You have spoken so much. Now what is needed is a small book which introduces your philosophy - something like a Christian catechism, in short."

I said, "That will be difficult. If somebody is going to put me In short', he will go mad. And he will not find any way to choose and what to choose. Once I am gone, many people are going to become insane working on their Ph.D. theses on me - because I have said all that can be said, and I have denied all that can be denied.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

IF YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, then there is no problem about the ego. That is the whole purpose of why I go on talking against the ego so that you are not and God is. If you have come to such a deep understanding, that the ego is also God's play, then it is perfectly good! Then there is no problem.

Then there is no need to drop because you have nothing to drop.

If you understand that ego is also God's play, then you are not in it. Everything is God's - that's what egolessness means - even ego.

But beware! You may be just playing a trick upon yourself, and mind is very cunning. In the name of God you may be trying to save your ego. It is up to you! But be watchful. If you have REALLY understood that all is God's, then you are not.

So where is the ego? What does ego mean? It means: I have a private life; I am not part of the universal flux. I am not part of the river - I am swimming, I am going upstream; I have my own private goals. I don't care where the existence is going; I have my own private goals, and I am trying to find them and achieve them Ego means having a private goal. Ego is idiotic.

The word idiot' is very beautiful. It means having a private idiom. It means having a private goal, a private style. Ego is idiotic. It simply says that "I am not part of the universal: I am private, I am separate. I am an island, I don't belong to the continent." This not belonging to the whole is what ego is, this idea of being separate.

That's why all the mystics have been saying: Drop the ego. What are they saying'? They are saying: Don't be separate. Dropping the ego does not mean anything else: don't be separate - be together with existence. And don't flow against the river - that is foolish; you will be simply tired and defeated. Go with the river! All the way, go with the river. You are part of the river. And then there will be relaxation and rest and joy.

With the river there is joy. Against the river there is strain, anxiety. Ego creates anxiety and strain.

Now, you ask: "Why do you talk so much against the ego'? Isn't the ego also a manifestation of God, a game played by existence?"

If you have come to understand that, then to you at least I am not saying to drop the ego; then you don't have any ego to drop. But be very careful and cautious. Mind is so cunning. I have heard this small anecdote:

A monkey and a hyena were walking through the jungle together when the hyena said, "Every time I go through those bushes over there a big lion jumps out and keeps on hitting me and hitting me, and I don't know why!"

"Well, I will come with you this time," said the monkey, "and I will stick up for you."

So they walked along together, and just as they got to the bushes a lion jumped out on them and started hitting the hyena. The monkey just climbed up in a tree and watched, so when the lion had gone the half dead hyena asked the monkey, "Why didn't you come down and help me?"

And the monkey said, "You were laughing so much I thought you were winning."

Beware of the ego! It can find ways and means to protect itself. It can rationalize well; the ego is a great rationalist, and a rationalization is its whole foundation.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

THE QUESTION IS FROM ARUP. Now, the first thing: you say that I have to say to you, "Everything is going absolutely beautifully with you."

Just by my saying it, it will not become beautiful. It may give you a consolation, but I am not here to give you any consolation. Either take the real thing or don't bother at all. Consolation is a false thing. It is a toy to play with; it is just to pass time. And passing time is wasting time.

And, another thing, you say, "Everything is going absolutely beautifully" - difficult. "Absolutely beautifully" - difficult. Nothing is absolute here on the earth... except witnessing. Ugly is not absolute, beautiful is not absolute. Happiness is not absolute, unhappiness is not absolute. Only witnessing. And when you witness, you neither feel ugly nor beautiful, neither happy, nor unhappy - you simply feel a witness.

My whole work is to make you a witness. You would like to have everything beautiful - you don't want to be a witness. You want to have more pleasurable experiences. That's why you constantly seek consolation. People come to me not really to be helped but to be consoled, just to be patted on the back. If I say everything is going good, they feel good, but how long is this feeling going to help? It will wear off sooner or later. Again they have to come, and again they wait for me to pat them on the head. This is not going to help you. You need a transformation. And this will create a dependence on me, and I am not to make you dependent on me - you have to be independent, you have to be your own self, you have to be on your own.

"No matter how much your mind is trying, now it is too late."

It is never too late! You can again slip into the old skin, you can again become identified with it. And when it is REALLY too late, then you will not ask this question. Then you will know that now there is no possibility of going back. This will be a certainty in you. This will be your own knowing. You will not need my certificate for it. Just because you need a certificate, it shows it has not happened - you are wavering.

I have heard:

Mulla Nasrudin was standing in the court. "This crime was the work of a master criminal," said the prosecutor, "and was carried out in a skillful, clever manner."

Blushing, Mulla Nasrudin, the defendant, rose to his feet and said, "Sir, flattery will get you nowhere - I ain't gonna confess."

But he has confessed. Arup has confessed - this is not a question, this is a confession - that she feels worried is natural. It is inhuman to expect no worry, at this stage at least. Sometimes she feels wavering; that is human, natural. It is good to accept it, rather than deny it, rather than create a screen and hide it. "Please say this to me so that I can stop worrying about it."

How will you stop worrying about it? - just by my saying it? If it were so easy, I would have said it to everybody. It is not so easy. Whatsoever I say, you will interpret it in your own way, and you will find new worries. Whatsoever I say, you will have to interpret it - you cannot accept it totally, you cannot trust it totally. And I am not saying that you HAVE to trust it totally; I am saying this is simply natural. I don't ask any unnatural thing from you. I don't ask any absurd things from you. It is natural! Sometimes you waver, sometimes you are against me, sometimes you are very negative.

Sometimes you feel just to drop everything and go away back to your old world. I don't say that you are doing something criminal - no - it is just human. It is very natural. If you are not doing such things, then something is wrong, then something is amiss.

Whatsoever I say will again be interpreted by the same worrying mind. Even if I say exactly: Yes, Arup, everything is going absolutely beautifully with you... you will think, "Was Osho joking? Does he really mean it?" The worrying mind will jump upon it. Your interpretations are bound to be there.

Listen to this small story:

A priest was returning home late at night from a meeting. As he drove along, he suddenly remembered that he had not said evensong. He pulled up at the side of a quiet country lane, got out of his car and using the light of his car headlamps began to say the office.

Not long after he had begun, and much to his surprise, a lorry came along. The driver of the lorry, thinking that something was wrong, stopped, let down his window, and asked, "Having a spot of trouble, mate?"

"No, everything is alright, thank you," replied the priest.

The driver put his lorry in gear and, not to be outdone as he pulled away, cried out, "All I can say is:

that must be a helluva good book you are reading there!"

Now just think of somebody reading a book on a lonely lane by the headlights of the car - what will you think? Can you imagine somebody reading the Bible? What is the hurry to read the Bible? Can somebody be so interested in reading the Bible? Can't he wait and go home and read it there? The lorry-driver must have interpreted according to his mind - he said, "All I can say is: that must be a helluva good book you are reading there!"

You continuously interpret. And you interpret, naturally, according to your mind. What I say will not be heard; you will hear it in your own way. If you are worrying, you will worry about it. If you are doubting, you will doubt about it. If you are negative, you will be negative about it. If you are trusting, you will trust.

Arup says, "Just say to me so that I can stop worrying about it." No, worrying cannot be stopped that easy. My saying it will not help you will have to do something. You will have to do what I say. You will have to be a little more practical. You will have to do witnessing.

There were three very hungry tramps, and they came to the house where the governor was cooking rice, and he said to them that they could stay the night and whoever had the best dream could have some hot rice.

So the next morning the first trampsaid, "I dreamt that I was the king."

The second tramp said, "That's nothing - I dreamt I was God Himself."

And the third tramp said, "My dream was very ordinary and I don't stand a chance of winning at all:

I dreamt about that hot rice getting cold, so I went down and ate it."

This is what I mean by being practical. So, Arup, be practical! Do what I say - just my saying it won't help... and the rice is really getting cold. You want me to help create a dream in you, and the rice is getting cold. You just go down and eat the rice!

This will just give you a dream if I say: "Arup, everything is going absolutely beautifully with you. No matter how much your mind is trying, now it is too late. I have got you safely under my wing and there is no way back."

In the first place I cannot say it because the very desire to be safe and secure is against spiritual growth. I am pushing you into a dangerous realm. I am pushing you into an abyss. You would like to be safely under my wings - now, I am throwing you into the very turmoil of existence... with no safety, with no security. I am not a protector - I am a destroyer. I am not your security. If you REALLY understand me, I am going to become your dangerous life.

You will always be insecure if you have understood me. You will never ask for safety and security.

You will abhor safety and security. You will think of them as enemies - they are. You will enjoy being in the Open, vulnerable to all that is possible in life. Yes, vulnerable to death too;'all' includes death too. A REAL life is encountering death each moment. Only unreal, plastic lives are safe.

No, I cannot say that, that I have got you safely under my wing and there is no way back. You can fall, you can fall from the very last rung. Unless you become Enlightened, there is a way back; you can go back. You can deny, you can betray, you can reject. You can fall into the misery again - from the very last rung also you can fall. Until and unless you have crossed the whole ladder, even the last rung, until and unless you are just a nobody, you can fall back. A slight ego, just a tremor of ego, is enough to bring you back. It can again condense, it can again integrate, it can again become a new trip.

And safety is not my way. To be a sannyasin means you are ready to live life without safety. That is the greatest courage, and with that great courage, great bliss becomes possible.

"And you are going to be more and more and more blissful from now on."

I am not an Emile Coue - I am not a hypnotist. Yes, you can hypnotize yourself this way. That was the very methodology of Coue. He would tell his patients, "Think, dream, imagine, visualize - each night before going to sleep, each morning after the sleep, repeat again and again and again'I am getting better, I am getting healthier, I am getting happier....' Repeat, go on repeating."

Yes, it helps a little. It creates an illusion around you. But would you like me to help you in creating illusions? My whole approach is that of dehypnosis; it is not of hypnosis at all. I don't want you to be hypnotized by any illusion. I want you to be utterly dehypnotized of all illusions. When you are in a state of disillusionment, utter disillusionment, Enlightenment is very close by.

Then Arup says, "Thank you Osho. I hope it is so..."

See! Her mind has already started interpreting.. "I HOPE it is so..." It is not so - she simply hopes.

How you can deceive yourself!

"I hope it is so, but sometimes I waver."

And I am not condemning your wavering - it is perfectly okay to waver sometimes, it is perfectly human to waver sometimes. It is perfectly right! Never condemn it! Accept it! Don't try to create a false unwavering - that will be of the mind and will be a deception, and will not lead you anywhere.

Let it be as it is. Accept it as it is, and become more and more watchful, become more and more of a witness. Only in that witnessing will you be safe. Only in that witnessing will you become more and more blissful every day - not by repeating it! Only in that witnessing will you stop wavering. Only in that witnessing will you come to the center of your being - where death exists not, where only life abundant is, where one is drinking the nectar Saraha talks about.

The sixth question:

Question 7:

"What is it exactly that is obstructing my vision from seeing the obvious?"

THE VERY DESIRE TO SEE IT. The obvious cannot be desired. The obvious is! You desire: you go away. You start seeking for it: in that very moment you have made it distant, it is no more obvious, it is no more close by; you have put it far away. How can you seek the obvious? If you understand it is obvious, how can you seek it? It is just there! What is the need to seek it and to desire it?

The obvious is the divine. The mundane is the sublime. And the trivial is profound. In your day-to- day, ordinary activities, you are meeting God every moment of it - because there is nobody else.

You cannot meet anybody else; it is always God in a thousand and one forms. GOD IS VERY OBVIOUS. Only God is! But you seek, you desire... and you miss. In your very seeking you put God very distant, far away. That is an ego trick. Try to understand it.

The ego is not interested in the obvious, because the ego cannot exist with the obvious. The ego is NOT interested at all in the close-by. The ego is interested in the distant, faraway. Just think: man has reached to the moon, and man has not reached to his own heart yet... the distant. Man has invented space travel, but still he has not developed soul travel. He has reached Everest, but he does not bother to go into his own being. The close-by is missed and the faraway is sought. Why?

The ego feels good - if the journey is hard the ego feels good. There is something to prove. If it is difficult, there is something to prove. To go to the moon, the ego feels good, but to go into one's own being will not be much of a claim.

There is an old story:

God created the world; then He used to live on the earth. You can imagine: His troubles were too many. Everybody was complaining; everybody was knocking at odd hours. In the night people would come and they would say, "This is wrong, and today we need rain and it is so hot." And somebody would come just afterwards and he would say, "Don't bring rains - I am doing something and it will spoil everything." And God was getting almost mad: "What to do?! So many people, so many desires, and everybody expecting and everybody needs fulfillment, and their desires are so contradictory. The farmer wants the rain and the potter wants no rain, because he has made pots and they will be destroyed; he needs hot sun for a few days" - and so on and so forth....

The God called His council and asked: "What to do? - they will drive me crazy. And I cannot satisfy them all. Or they will murder me someday! I would like some place to hide."

And they suggested many things. Somebody said, "That is not a problem - you just go to Everest.

That is the highest peak in the Himalayas; nobody will ever reach there."

God said, "You don't know! Just after a few seconds" - for God that is just after a few seconds - "Edmund Hillary will reach there with Tensing, and then the trouble will start. And once they know, then they will start coming in helicopters and buses, and everything will.... No, that won't do. It will solve things for a few seconds." Remember, God's time has a different way. In India we say millions of years is one day of God - so a few seconds.

Then somebody suggested, "And why not the moon?"

He said, "That too is not very far - a few seconds more and somebody will reach the moon."

And they suggested faraway stars, but God said, "That is not going to solve the problem. It's simply a sort of postponement. I want a permanent solution."

Then an old servant of God came close, whispered something in His ear, and God said, "You are right. That will do!"

And the old servant had said, "There is only one place where man will never reach - you hide in man himself." And that is the place where God has been hiding since then: in man himself. That is the last thing man will ever think.

The obvious is the missed, because ego is not interested. Ego is interested in hard, difficult, arduous things, because there is a challenge. When you win, you can claim. If the obvious is there and you win, what sort of victory is this? You are not much of a winner. That's why man goes on missing the obvious and goes on seeking the distant.

And how can you seek the distant when you cannot even seek the obvious?

"What is it exactly that is obstructing my vision from seeing the obvious?"

The very desire is taking you astray. Drop the desire and you will see the obvious.

"I just do not understand what to do and what not to do."

You are not to do anything. You have just to be watchful of all that is happening around you. Doing is again an ego-trip. Doing, ego feels good - something is there to do. Doing is a food for the ego; it strengthens the ego. Non-doing, and ego falls flat on the ground. It dies. It is no more nourished.

So just be a non-doer. Don't do anything as far as God, truth, and the search for it is concerned. It is not a search in the first place, so you cannot do anything about it. You just be. Let me say it in another way: if you are in a state of being, God comes to you. Man can never find Him; He finds man. Just be in a silent space, not doing anything, not going anywhere, not dreaming - and in that silent space suddenly you will find He is there. He has always been there! Just you were not silent, so you couldn't see Him, you could not hear His still, small voice.

"When will I be able to hear the sound of silence?"

When? - you ask a wrong question. Now or never. Hear it now! because it is there, the music is on, the music is all over. Just you need to be silent so that you can hear it. But never say 'when'; 'when' means you have brought future in; 'when' means you have started dreaming; 'when' means not now... and it is always now. It is always now-time. For God there is only one time: now; and only one place: here. 'There', 'then' - drop them.

And the last question:

Question 8:

THE QUESTION IS FROM RISHI. Each time I utter a word, I feel at a loss - because that which I want to say cannot be said. And that which has to be conveyed, cannot be conveyed. Then you will naturally ask, why do I go on speaking?

I am trying hard. Maybe today I have failed... tomorrow. Yesterday I failed... today. I go on speaking in different ways: maybe this way you have not heard; in some other way maybe it will be closer to you. This way somebody has heard; you have not heard. In another way maybe you will be able to hear it. But I am at a loss continuously. Words don't come easily - because the message is wordless. I am not a priest; I am not trying to give you some dogma; I am not trying to explain some theory to you. Something has happened in me, something has happened to me - I am trying to convey THAT. I am trying to commune with you.

Words are very awkward. They are very tiny and very small. They cannot contain that which I want them to contain. So EACH moment I am at a loss. People who don't have any experience are never at a loss; any word will do.

I have heard a beautiful story - meditate over it:

A parish priest was having a few words with his Bishop, and in the course of conversation said, "It is alright for you, my lord, when you prepare a sermon you can deliver it to several churches in the diocese, but I have to give two new sermons every Sunday."

The Bishop replied, "You should be able to give a sermon on almost any subject at a moment's notice as I can."

"I will take you up on that," said the parson. "You come to my church next Sunday and I will put you to the test."

The bishop agreed and in due course went to the pulpit to find a card with the one word 'constipation' written on it - that was the subject. Without hesitation, he started: "And Moses took two tablets and went out on to the mountainside."

A priest is never at a loss. He has so many scriptures available, he can always find something from his memory. I am continuously at a loss - because what I want to say to you is not a subject matter:

it is my subjectivity. What I WANT to say to you is my heart! it is not my mind. Unfortunately, I have to use the mind because there is no other way. Even to convey the heart one has to use the mind - hence the absurdity of it. It is very irrational. It is trying to do the impossible! But there is no other way... I am helpless.

But if you ask: Am I ever at a loss for words? I am constantly. Each single word, and I hesitate: will it do? How can it do? Knowing it is not going to help, I go on using it. It is a necessary evil. Silence would be better, far better, but when I LOOK at you then I hesitate. If I become silent, it will be even more difficult for you to come closer to me. You cannot understand the words, how will you be able to understand the silence? And if you can understand silence, you will be able to hear that silence in my words too.

If I become silent, then at the most five percent of you will be around me. Those five percent can understand through the words too, because they are listening to my silence not to my words. So there is no problem for those five percent. But the other ninety-five percent who cannot understand words and cannot understand the silence contained in them will be simply lost. I will not be able to help them at all. Through my words, they at least go on hanging around.

In their hanging around there is a possibility that in some unguarded moment they may have a contact with me, some unguarded moment and in spite of themselves they may come closer to me, they may stumble upon me; some unguarded moment, and I may penetrate into their heart, something may be stirred. It is a perhaps, but it is worth going on.

That five percent will be helped either way, but this ninety-five percent will not be helped by silence.

And that five percent also, if I had been silent from the very beginning, would not be here. That five percent shows the way, so that the ninety-five percent by and by will be ninety percent, eighty-five percent, eighty percent....

The day I feel at least fifty percent of people can understand silence, then words can be dropped.

I am not very happy about them. Nobody ever was: neither was Lao Tzu, nor was Saraha, nor was Buddha - nobody ever was. But they all had to use words, not because silence cannot be a communion - silence can be a communion, but for that a very higher consciousness is needed.

Once it happened:

Two great mystics of India, Kabir and Farid, met, and for two days sat silently together. The disciples were very much frustrated: they wanted them to talk, they wanted them to talk so that they could hear something valuable. They were hoping, for months they were hoping, that Kabir and Farid would meet, and there would be a great showering, and they would enjoy it. But they were just sitting silently, and the disciples were dozing, yawning - what to do? And what happened to these two people? - because they were never silent before. Kabir was never silent with his disciples and neither was Farid silent with his disciples: they were continuously hammering on their disciples.

"Why? What has happened? Have they gone dumb?" But they could not say anything; it was not appropriate.

After two days, when Kabir and Farid hugged each other and said goodbye - that too in silence - and when the disciples were left with their Masters, they jumped upon their Masters. And the followers of Kabir said, "What went wrong? And for months we have been waiting for Farid to come, and he came, and you never spoke a single word. And we were waiting and waiting... we got tired!

These two days have been hell!"

And Kabir laughed. He said, "But there was nothing to say - he can understand silence. If I had said anything, he would have thought me ignorant - because when silence is there and silence can say it, what is the use of words?"

And the followers of Farid asked Farid, "What happened? Why didn't you speak?"

Farid said, "Are you mad? Speaking with Kabir? We are exactly at the same space, so there is nothing to convey, nothing to say! The moment I looked into his eyes and he looked into my eyes, we recognized. The dialogue finished at the first moment!"

"Then for two days... what were you doing for two days?"

And Farid said, "We were just enjoying each other - each other's space. We were guests to each other. We overlapped each other, we overflowed each other, we mingled with each other - we danced, we sang. But it all happened in silence. When silence can speak, what is the need of language?"

I am continuously at a loss for words. Each word I utter very hesitatingly, knowing well that it is not going to suffice, it is not adequate. Nothing is ever adequate - truth is so vast and words are so small.