The watchman - Questions and Answers

Question 1:

That's the quality of truth: it is neither old nor new - or, it is both. Truth is eternal.

In a way you have heard it millions of times, in many contexts. You may not have understood it but you have heard it. You carry the memory. It is not that you are here for the first time on this earth. In the time of Buddha, in the time of Jesus, in the time of Krishna, certainly you were there. You have heard it but you have not understood it. That's why you are again here. The day you understand, you disappear. Understanding is a great death, death from this world of fantasy, dream, illusion.

You are right. Your feeling is right that you have heard it before. It sounds familiar and yet it reveals much. It sounds familiar because it is familiar. Still, it reveals new dimensions, because a new understanding is dawning on you.

Truth is neither old nor new because it doesn't belong to time. Anything that belongs to time is bound to be new or old. That which is new today will be old tomorrow. That which is old today was new yesterday. New and old are two aspects of time. Truth is timeless, truth is timelessness. It is always there - as old as existence, and as new as this moment.

If you understand, the familiarity carries deep mysteries hidden behind it. So don't be deceived by the familiarity. You may have heard the words; you have not understood the truth. Otherwise you are transformed. Transformation is a function of truth. Says Jesus: 'Truth liberates.' The moment you understand, you are liberated. There is nothing else to do afterwards. The very understanding is enough, is liberation.

Listen, but don't compare. Listen, but don't bring your memory in. Otherwise your memory and your feeling that it is familiar will be a distraction.

The moment your mind says it is familiar, the mind is saying there is nothing new to understand.

There is muc! There is an infinite amount to be understood.

Don't look through the memory and don't compare. Look direct. Look immediate. Look without memory. Let there be a clarity of perception. Don't compare with anything that you have heard before.

I tell you, you may have heard it before, but you have not understood it. So what is the point of hearing it before? And if you are too much in this idea of familiarity, you will miss it again. And again, whenever you will hear it, the idea will be there that it sounds familiar.

Comparison is a disease. It obstructs; it doesn't help. So even when you feel it is familiar you also feel, side by side, new flowers of understanding blooming. They bloom in spite of your comparison.

If the comparison is completely dropped, you are liberated. If you can rightly listen to me, there is nothing else to do. One moment of total listening will be enough. You will be awake. And one moment is enough because that becomes the door for eternity.

Question 2:

In self-awareness, there is no within and no without. You don't turn within. In self-awareness, the within and the without have disappeared. There exists only one. Within and without is the division of the mind, is the division of the analytical mind. What it within? And what is without? How do you demark?

So when people say: 'turn withinwards,' they are just using your language to help you because if they say: 'turn beyond within and without,' it will be almost impossible for you to understand what they mean. But that is exactly what they mean.

Self-awareness is a total unity of within and without, the higher and the lower, the valley and the peak. All dualities meet and merge into it.

Yes, 'introvert' has a morbid connotation; it is a morbidity. A person who is an introvert is a person who is incapable to move without. He is confined, closed, a flower which cannot open, a song which cannot burst, a river which cannot flow to the open sea. The introvert is morbid. He cannot relate, he cannot love, he cannot move in the world, he cannot spread, he has no expansion. Confined.

Closed. Like a seed - he is not like a tree.

But remember, the extrovert is also morbid. In Western psychology the introvert is morbid, but the extrovert is thought to be healthy. That simply shows that this type of psychological thinking has been developed by extroverts - nothing else. They think they are healthy and that the opposite is unhealthy.

There is an opposite school also in the East. The Eastern psychology thinks the introvert healthy and the extrovert unhealthy. But to me, both are unhealthy, because both are confined to a certain direction and are incapable to move to the opposite.

To me, health means: the capacity to move in all directions. To be healthy is to be whole. The word 'health' comes from the same root as the word 'whole'. To be healthy is to be whole, to be whole is to be all together. So to be healthy means: where opposites meet and are no more opposites but are transformed into complementaries.

A healthy person is one who when he wants to move in, he moves. There is no hindrance. He has no compulsion to be an extrovert. And vice versa. If you are compulsively an introvert - whenever you start moving without, there are inner hindrances. You have to fight, you cannot flow, you have to force. Then you are ill.

A healthy person, a healthy being, a healthy energy, is always ready to move anywhere. There is no compulsion to be somewhere in particular. A healthy energy is a flowing energy. When you go to the market, you move out. Nobody inside condemns: 'To move out is worldly, materialistic.' Nobody condemns. When you go to the temple you move withinwards. Nobody condemns: 'To go within is morbid. This is for foolish people, unworldly, simpletons. This way you will lose all, because all the riches are outside. Where are you going by closing your eyes and watching your navel? You are becoming a fool.'

In the West, when they want to condemn the East, they call them 'navel-watchers' or 'lotus-eaters'.

One cannot be alive by just eating lotuses. They must be mad people.

And when in the East, people want to condemn the West, they call them 'money-oriented' 'materialistic' 'worldly'.

But both these types of psychologies are ill and morbid. A true psychology is still to be born - a psychology of the whole person, a psychology of flow, of no compulsion, no obsession.

A man should be as capable of coming in and going out as you are capable of going into and coming out of your house. When the climate is beautiful, you go out. You sit in the garden under the tree.

Then the sun rises and it is too hot - you seek shelter, you come in. In the day you go out, in the night you come in. A deep balance is needed.

And for a deep balance, opposites should not be taken as opposites - and they are not; they are complementaries, yin and yang, man and woman, day and night, summer and winter, SANSAR and NIRVANA.

Remember - my whole emphasis is for the meeting of the opposites. Then you are not confined, then you have no limitation, then you are unlimited, then no boundary exists. And this is the emphasis of Hassidism also.

A Hassidic sage is as worldly as anybody, and a Hassidic sage is as unworldly as anybody. He lives IN the world, but he is not OF the world. He moves in the world, but remains untouched by it. He is beyond. This is true religion.

The religion that you call religion is not true religion. It is just in opposition to the world. It iS a choice.

That's why if you choose that type of religion, you may change, but fundamentally you will remain the same. The change will be just on the surface. The change will be just as if one goes from one imprisonment to another.

One imprisonment is on this side of the road, another is on that side of the road. You live in one prison and you think of the other. as if THERE is freedom. It is opposite. Things ARE different there, but again it is a confinement.

Between these two imprisonments there is the open road - the way of the white clouds. Just exactly in the middle, between two opposites, is the way.

To me, an extrovert is morbid; an introvert is also morbid. When you are neither, you are healthy.

Remember the word 'flowing'. The more energy flows, the more healthy it is. You can reach to the highest peak and you can come down to the lowest world - and there is no problem. You can meditate and you can love.

Meditation is going withinwards, love is going without. Meditation is reaching to one's own being.

Love is an effort to reach to the other's being.

There are religions which say that if you meditate, you cannot love. There are religions which say that if you love, how can you meditate?

Christianity is an extrovert religion. The emphasis is on serving people, love, compassion. The emphasis is not on meditation - because if you meditate, that looks selfish. When the world is in such a misery, people are hungry, ill, dying, and you are meditating - the whole thing looks to be too cruel. Somebody is dying on the road, a beggar, and you are sitting in your temple and meditating.

It looks selfish. 'Throw this meditation away,' says the extrovert religion. 'Go and help people - that is the only way to reach God.'

One of the greatest Indian poets, Rabindranath, was much impressed by Christianity. He has written a poem in which he says: 'Don't seek me in the temple. I am not there. If you really want to seek me, come to the road where the stone-cutter is cutting the stones or where the farmer is tilling the ground. I am not in the temples. Come to the world where the labourer is working and the beggar is begging. There I am.' This is an extrovert religion - a reaction against too much introversion.

In India, introvert religions have existed. They say that this world is MAYA, illusion. Beggars have always been dying and they will always die and you cannot change anything. Move withinwards, close your eyes. In your deepest core of being is God. Outside, it is just a dream world. Don't waste your time there. The real is within.

To me, both are morbid. A part is always morbid - only the whole is healthy.

So I tell you: God is everywhere. In the temple when you close your eyes, there is God. And on the road also, where the stone-cutter is, working hard in the hot sun - there also is God. Only God is.

God is the whole. But mind always tries to choose a part.

I have heard: You must have known a very famous movie dog, Rin Tin Tin. His trainer was asked to describe Rin Tin Tin. He tried to describe, but the dog had such marvellous qualities, such indefinable qualities, that he was at a loss to describe and define the qualities. So at last he stumbled upon a definition. He said: 'Rin Tin Tin is God in the form of a dog.'

'God' and 'dog' - both words have the same balance. God may be the introversion of energy. Dog may be the extroversion of the energy. But the energy is the same, because only one energy exists.

The world is a unity. The mind creates opposites.

One very great Zen monk, Rinzai, was asked once.... The questioner must have been a very sceptical mind. He asked: 'You go on emphasizing that everything is God and everything is Buddha.

Do you mean to say that even a dog is a Buddha?' Rimai laughed. Didn't answer. On the contrary, he jumped, and started barking. That's exactly the right answer: a Buddha barking like a dog. He showed the fact rather than talked about it.

You are morbid if you are confined to anything - whatsoever the name. You are healthy if you are flowing in all directions together. If opposites meet in you, you become perfect. That's why a perfect man can never be consistent; he has to be contradictory, because opposites will be meeting in him.

Only ordinary people can be consistent. The true sage is never consistent - cannotbe - because he will have to move in all the directions together.

Walt Whitman says: 'I'm vast. I contain contradictions.' Then what to say about God? - vast! He contains all contradictions. He is in the lowest and He is in the highest. In the lowest He exists as the lowest. In the highest He exists as the highest. He is in sex and He is in samadhi. He is in this world as matter and He is in that world as non-matter. He is the sinner and He is the sage. The true sage is always contradictory. That's the difficulty in understanding him.

It is very easy to understand your mediocre saints; they are plain. No contradictions exist in them; they are always the same. You can rely, you can predict. They are like a simple line, no complexity.

They are simple and, in a way, simpletons. They don't have the beauty of complexity.

The true sage is very complex; he contains contradictions. And that's why it has always been very difficult to recognize him. He eludes. You catch hold of him from one direction, and he is moving in another. You cannot see because your eyes are morbid. You can see only a part. You can see a man as a sinner, you can see a man as a saint, but it is difficult to understand a man like Gurdjieff who is both.

In him, the sinner and the sage meet. In him, even the sin is transformed. In him, even the sage is transformed and becomes a worldly being. To understand Gurdjieff you will have to drop all your categories, all your labels of sinners and saints, and this and that. The true sage is godly. God is contradictory.

That's what Krishna says in the Gita. He says: 'Don't be worried, because I am the killer and the killed. Don't be worried, because I am in both. The one who is killed, I am - and the one who is going to kill also is me. My two hands, right and left, in a game of hide and seek.'

All your conceptions of God are very poor. Theologians go on trying to explain but they can never explain because the contradiction creates the trouble.

If you say: 'God is just,' then you cannot say: 'God i5 compassion.' That's the trouble for the theologian. If God is just, then compassion cannot exist. If God is compassion, then He cannot be just. Both are not possible together. For thousands of years theologians have been thinking how to manage. God seems to be unmanageable, chaotic.

God is both. He is compassionate in His justice and He is just in His compassion. But then it is absurd, because how can a judge be both? If the judge has compassion, then he would like to forgive. If he is just, then the criminal has to be punished - punished according to the law, with no compassion. Then he has to remain indifferent. Justice has to be neutral. Compassion is love; it cannot be neutral.

God is both. Let me tell you: God is bondage, God is freedom - both. That's why I say: 'Don't be in a hurry.' Even in the market He exists. Even in this world, so ungodly, He exists - because otherwise is not possible.

Once you can see it, such deep silence descends in your being. Because when you can see the contradictions meeting in God, then the contradictions within you immediately meet and dissolve.

Then freedom becomes your nature. Then you move freely, then you become freedom. Then there is no goal.

The only goal is to delight here-now. Nothing is to be achieved, because all achievement is always against something. You have to leave this and attain that. You have to drop this and do that. All achievements, ambitions, goals, are choosing something against something else. And God is both.

That's why Krishnamurti goes on insisting that the only way to attain to truth is to be choiceless.

Choose - and you have become morbid. Don't choose, float choicelessly. Don't be the chooser.

Just watch and flow - and you are freedom. This is what MOKSHA is - absolute freedom.

Question 3:

If you are afraid of yourself. only then are you afraid of other people. If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others. Because in relationship with others, it is only you mirrored. The other is nothing but a mirror.

So whatsoever happens in relationship, always know it must have happened before, within you - because the relationship can only magnify. It cannot create; it can only show and manifest.

If you love yourself, you love others. If you are afraid of yourself, you are afraid of others. Because, in coming in contact with others you will start manifesting your being.

You have been conditioned - in the East, in the West, everywhere. Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jain - you all have been conditioned to hate yourself. It has been taught to you continuously that to love oneself is bad. 'Love others. Hate yourself.'

This is asking for absurdities, impossibilities. If you don't love yourself, who is nearest to yourself, how can you love anybody else? Nobody loves himself - yet he is trying to love others. Then your love is nothing but hatred - masked, hidden.

I tell you to love yourself first, because if love happens within you, only then it can spread to others.

It is just like throwing a stone into a silent lake. The stone falls, ripples arise, and then they go on moving, moving to the farthest bank. They will go on and on and on, but the stone must have fallen within you first.

Love must have happened to you. You must love yourself; that is a basic requirement - which is missing all over the world. That's why the world is in such a misery. Everybody trying to love but it is impossible to love because the basis is not there - the foundation lacking. Love yourself. And then suddenly you will find yourself reflected everywhere.

You are a human being and all other human beings are just like you. Just forms differ, names differ, but the reality is the same. Go on moving farther and farther - then animals are also like you. The form differs a little more. But the being? Then the trees are also like you. Go farther and farther; the ripples spread - then even rocks, because they also exist like you. Existence is the same, similar.

This is the only way to love God: start by loving yourself and let the love spread. Then don't let there be any boundaries. Go on and on - to the very infinity. This is what prayer is, this is what devotion is.

But if you miss the first point, if the stone has not been thrown, and then you go on waiting and watching, and the ripples never arise....

It cannot start anywhere else; It can only start in your heart. Because love is a ripple in the heart, a vibration in the heart, a throbbing, a sharing of whatsoever you are, a deep, intense urge to go and reach the other, to share your being and your delight and your song.

But your heart is almost dead-frozen, and you have been taught to condemn yourself - that you are ugly, that you are bad, that this is sin. 'Don't do this. You are guilty.' You cannot accept yourself.

How can you accept anybody else?

A deep acceptance is needed. Whatsoever and whosoever you are, a deep acceptance is needed.

Not only acceptance - but a delight that 'I am.' 'I', 'Here', 'Now' - all the three points, the triangle of being, should be filled with delight. You should not ask anything else. There should not be any 'ought'. Drop all 'shoulds' and the whole world becomes different. Right now, you continuously think: 'I should be this and that. Then I can love and be loved.' Your God is nothing but the greatest condemnor looking at you from the skies, saying: 'Behave well.' This gives you a bad feeling about yourself.

By and by, you become afraid because you are suppressing yourself. If you relate with somebody, the suppression may break, everything may bubble up, surface. Then what? So you are afraid, afraid to come in contact with anything - so you remain hidden within yourself.

Nobody knows how ugly you are. Nobody knows how angry you are. Nobody knows how full with hatred you are. Nobody knows your jealousy, possessiveness, envy. Nobody knows. You create an armour around yourself, you live within yourself. You never make any contact - so that you can manage your image. If you come deep in contact, the image is bound to break. The reality, the real encounter will shatter it - that is the fear.

YOU ASK: WHY AM I AFRAID OF OTHER PEOPLE?

You are afraid because you are afraid of yourself. Drop that fear, drop the guilt that has been created in you.

Your politicians, priests, parents, they all are guilt-creators, because that is the only way that you can be controlled and manipulated. A very simple, but very cunning trick to manipulate you. They have condemned you, because if you are accepted, not condemned - loved, appreciated, and if it is relayed to you from everywhere that you are okay - then it will be difficult to control you. How to control a person who is absolutely okay? The very problem doesn't arise.

So they go on saying - the priests, the politicians, the parents - that you are not okay. Once they create the feeling that you are not okay, now they become the dictators; now they have to dictate the discipline. 'Now this is the way you should behave....' First they create the feeling that you are wrong; then they give you guidelines of how to be right.

Here you are with me, involved in a totally different experiment. I have no condemnation, I don't create any guilt feeling in you. I don't say: 'This is sin.' I don't say that I will love you only when you fulfill certain conditions. I love you as you are, because that's the only way a person can be loved.

And I accept you as you are, because I know that is the only way you can be. That's how the whole has willed you to be. That is what the whole has destined it to be.

Relax, and accept, and delight - and there is transformation. It comes not by efforts; it comes by accepting yourself with such deep love and ecstasy, that there is no condition, conscious, unconscious, known, unknown.

Unconditional acceptance - and suddenly you see you are not afraid of people. Rather, you enjoy people. People are beautiful. They are all incarnations of God. Maybe Rin Tin Tin... but still...

incarnations of God. You love them. And if you love them, you bring their God to the surface.

Whenever you love a person his godliness comes to the top. It happens - because when somebody loves you, how can you show your ugliness? Simply, your beautiful face comes up. And, by and by, the ugly face disappears.

Love is alchemical. If you love yourself the ugly part of you disappears, is absorbed, is transformed.

The energy is released from that form. Everything carries energy. Your anger has much energy involved in it, your fear also has much energy, crippled and suffocated in it. If the fear disappears, the form falls down, energy is released. Anger disappears - more energy is released. Jealousy disappears - still more energy.

Whatsoever are called sins simply disappear. I don't say that you have to change them; you have to love your being and they change. Change is a by-product, a consequence. So much tremendous energy released - you start floating higher and higher and higher, you attain to wings.

Love yourself. That should be the foundational commandment. Love yourself. All else will follow, but this is the foundation.

Question 4:

Individuality is your essence. You come with it, you are born with it. Personality is borrowed. It is given by the society to you. It is just like clothes, subtle clothes.

A child is born naked; then we hide his nakedness - we give him clothes. A child is born with essence, individuality. We hide that too, because naked individuality is rebellious, non-conformist.

Individuality is exactly what it means. It is individual. Personality is not individual; it is social. Society wants you to have personalities, not individualities, because your individualities will create conflict.

The society hides your individuality and gives a personality.

Personality is a learned thing. The word 'personality' comes from a Greek root which means mask - PERSONA. In Greek drama, the actors used to wear masks to hide their real faces and to show some other face. From PERSONA comes the word personality. It is a face that you wear; it is not your original face.

When the personality disappears, don't be afraid. Then for the first time you become authentic. For the first time you become real. For the first time you attain to essence. That essence in India has been called ATMA, the soul.

The ego is the center of personality, and God is I he center of essence. That's why so much insistence, from every corner, that ego has to be dropped. Because you must know what you are, not what you are expected to be.

Personality is false; it is the greatest lie. The whole society depends on personality. The state, the church, the organizations, the establishments - they are all lies. The Western psychology goes on thinking too much about the personality. That's why the whole Western psychology is a psychology based on a basic lie.

In the East, we think of the essence, not of the personality. That which you have brought, that which is your intrinsic nature, SWABHAVA, that which is your intrinsic essence - THAT has to be known.

And that has to be lived.

Personality is that which you are not, but try to show that you are. Personality is that which, when you move in society, you have to use as a convenience.

You are walking, you have gone for a morning walk. And then somebody passes by. You smile. The smile can be either from the essence or from the personality. The smile can really be a delight in seeing the person, in seeing the God in that person, in seeing the heart, the love, the formless, that has become incarnate in that person.

That's why in India we never use phrases like 'Good Morning'. They don't mean much. We say:

'Ram, Ram...' We welcome each other by the name of God. It is a symbolic act: 'I see God within you.' 'Ram, Ram' means 'I see Ram within you. Welcome. I am happy, blessed, that you passed If it comes from the essence, then the smile spreads all over your being. You feel a deep content. You feel blessed that this man passed by. The man may be gone, but the blessing remains and lingers around you like a subtle perfume.

But you can simply say: 'Good Morning' - because the man is a banker, or a political leader, or can be sometimes mischievous, or can be dangerous. It is risky not to say 'Good Morning.' Then you say it and you smile; you bring a smile to your face. That is PERSONA, that is personality.

In each act you have to watch. It is arduous, but it has to be done. There is no other way. In each act you have to watch from where it comes. From personality or from essence?

If it comes from essence, the essence will grow, because you will give an opportunity for the essence to be manifested, expressed. If it comes from the personality, then personality will become harder and harder and harder, and it will suffocate the essence completely.

Watch. Remind yourself again and again: 'From where does it come?'

If you come home and you bring ice cream, flowers - to your wife, is the present from the personality or from the essence? If it is from the personality it is a lie. You may have talked to somebody else's wife, and you were charmed. You felt attracted, a desire arose in you. And then you started feeling guilty: 'This is not faithfulness. So bring ice cream home.'

Remember - your wife will immediately suspect. Otherwise, you never bring ice cream. There must be something in it; you must be hiding something. Why are you so good today?so suddenly, unexpectedly good?

You cannot deceive women; they have an instinct, they are lie detectors. They immediately feel - because they don't think. Their feeling is immediate and direct. They function from the center of emotion.

You are feeling guilty; then you bring some presents to the wife. It is a gift from the personality. It is very dangerous.

A similar but opposite case can happen. The situation may be the same. You were talking to your friend's wife. You were charmed. She was graceful and beautiful, and because of her beauty, because of her grace, you remembered your wife. Because when you love a person every other beautiful person reminds you of the person. It has to be so. If the woman was charming, it immediately reminds you of your beloved. Something of the beloved was there - a part, a gesture.

Something of your wife was there. You loved the woman in that moment because she reminded you of your wife. Then you are full of the memory.

Then you may bring ice cream or flowers or something... or nothing - just a smile. Then it is from the essence, then it is totally different. The situation may be the same, but you can behave in a totally different way.

Personality is an effort to deceive. Essence is an effort to reveal your being; whatsoever it is - it is.

Let it be revealed, and be open, and be vulnerable.

Try to live from the essence and you will become religious. Try to live by the personality and you will be the most irreligious possible.

To me, religion doesn't mean a ritual. It doesn't mean going to the church or the temple. It doesn't mean reading the Bible or the Gita every day, no Religion means to live from the essence, to be authentic, to be true.

And remember, howsoever you lie, you cannot lie, because a lie is a lie. Deep down you know it is a lie. You may pretend that you don't know but your pretension will be there and that will indicate. You cannot lie to anybody because anybody who has any eyes, who has any awareness, any intelligence, will penetrate into it.

There was a case. A woman was suing Mulla Nasruddin. She claimed that her child was Mulla Nasruddin's child. And Mulla was denying vehemently in the court.

Finally, the judge asked: 'Say only one thing - did you sleep with this woman, Nasruddin?'

Nasruddin said: 'No, your honour - not a wink.'

Your lies are apparent, because the truth has a way of coming up. It finds a way. In the end the truth is known, and you wasted your whole life in lies.

Don't waste a single moment. All the time that is wasted in lies is absolutely wasted. And through lies nobody ever becomes happy; it is impossible. Lies can give only pretensions of happiness; they cannot give you true happiness.

True happiness is part of truth. Hindus have defined God as 'bliss' - SATCHITANAND. ANAND, bliss, is the final, the ultimate core.

Be true, and you will be blissful. Be authentic, and you will be happy. And that happiness will be uncaused; it will be just a part of your being true.

Happiness is a function of truth. Whenever there is truth, happiness functions. Whenever there is not truth, happiness stops functioning and unhappiness functions.

Don't be afraid.

You say: I AM CONFUSED ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INDIVIDUALITY AND PERSONALITY. WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IS LEFT OF THE INDIVIDUAL AFTER THE EXIT OF THE EGO?

In fact, because of the ego, nothing of the individual is left. When the ego is gone, the whole individuality arises in its crystal purity: transparent, intelligent, radiant, happy, alive, vibrating with an unknown rhythm. That unknown rhythm is God. It is a song heard in the deepest core of your being.

It is a dance of the formless. But one can hear the footsteps.

Everything real arises only when the ego has gone. Ego is the deceiver, the falsification. When ego is gone, YOU are there. When ego is there, you simply think you are, but you are not.

Question 5:

If you really are doing your own thing you have come closer to my inner temple. There is no other way. I am here to help you to do your own thing. I am not here to drag you away from your own thing. That's what the so-called religions have been doing all along.

Remember this: I am not to make anything out of you.

If you can be yourself, it is enough - more than enough. If I can help you to be yourself then the right thing has happened. If, in some way, I become an opportunity to distract you from your own being, then I am an enemy, not a friend.

So never again think it a prerequisite to drop all activities and interests not connected with me and my work. YOU are my work. YOU are my activity. Nothing else is more important than you. You are supreme; there is no higher value than you. So if you are fulfilled, my work is done. If you are blissful, my activity is fulfilled. There is no other work. I have no idea, ideology that has to be fulfilled through you - no.

I am, at the most, just an opportunity where you can find yourself. When you reach to your innermost home, you have reached to my temple. And there is no other way.

Question 6:

Remember - if you are really a master you never mistreat the servant. That is one of the qualities of the master.

You mistreat the servant only when you are not certain that you are master. That mistreatment is a deep insecurity. You try to mistreat to know whether you are the master or not. If you are absolutely certain that you are the master, you love the servant. You treat him as a friend, you respect him even. So only those who are suspicious of their own mastery treat the servants in a wrong way.

A man who is absolutely certain, who knows he is the master - then there is no problem.

It is said of a Hassidic Master, Magid.... He went to see another Master. He was a little late. The lecture hall was full and the other Master was speaking, so he sat just near the door where people had left their shoes.

Somebody looked at him. The quality of Magid attracted him. He told his neighbour that some rare being was there - 'But why is he sitting there? That is not a place for a Master to sit. And he is so radiant.' And it is said that by and by the whole audience turned towards him.

The Master who was talking, and who was a faker, was surprised at the phenomenon.

Magid had not uttered a single word; he was just sitting with closed eyes. The pseudo-Master later when they were alone, asked Magid: 'Tell me the secret. What happened? I was there, the leader of the congregation, and I was to talk. What happened? Why did people turn towards you?'

Magid said: 'Since I became a Master it almost always happens. It is not something to be done. It simply happens.'

A Master has a quality. When you are really the master, you have become a watcher and become the master.

And it is such a simple thing that you just say something and it happens. You just say to the mind:

'Enough - now you be the servant, because you are the servant.' And, I say, it is just that simple.

You are afraid: that is why it cannot happen. You know that it will not happen. Then you can say something and it will not happen. But it is not happening because you knew it would not happen.

Otherwise it will happen.

You have not treated the mind REALLY as a servant. Otherwise, you simply say: 'Sit down,' or you simply say: 'Listen' - and the mind listens.

Vivekanand was in America. He talked one morning and he told a story, and he emphasized the fact that faith can move mountains. One old woman who was worried by a mountain very much said:

'This is good! I never tried it.'

Just behind her house there was a big mountain. And because of the mountain the sun would not come to her house. Because of the mountain, air would not reach. Her house became very stuffy.

So she said: 'This is simple. Now I will go and I will have faith.'

She went immediately to her house. She opened the window and looked at the mountain for the last time - because now it would disappear. There would be no chance again to see it. She closed the window, closed her eyes, and said: 'I have faith. Now move.' Thrice she said it, because she thought maybe once it may not work.

Then she opened the window. The mountain was still there. She started laughing and said: 'I already knew it was not going to happen.' If you know all the way, then it will not happen - because you have not fulfilled the condition.

I also say that faith can move mountains - but faith, remember!

And faith need not say it thrice. It is doubt which says it thrice. What is the point? Once you say it, you're finished - and faith will not open the window and look. It is finished!

I have heard, in a town it happened: rains were not coming. It was already getting very late in the season so the priest of the town gathered all the people one morning, called them all to come to the temple so that they could pray for it to rain.

The whole town went - and the whole town laughed at a certain child. A small child came with an umbrella. So everybody talked and laughed and said: 'You fool - why are you carrying your umbrella? You may lose it somewhere. Rains are not coming.'

The child said: 'But I thought that when you would pray, the rains would come.'

Only one child was carrying an umbrella. How can rains come? If that child had prayed, there was a possibility of rains.

Faith can only be total - otherwise not. And the people who were laughing about that child were simply stupid. If you don't have total faith, then why are you going to pray? And when prayer will not be fulfilled, you will say that you knew it was not going to happen all along.

Faith is a different quality of inner functioning. If you really say to the mind: 'Be the servant from now onwards' - it is finished! Don't open the window again to see. And this is how it happens, and this is how it is going to happen to you, because there is no other way.

When you are a master you treat the servant like a friend. You feel grateful to the servant. He serves you. Why mistreat him?

Mistreatment comes only when you see that the servant is the master. Then you react, then you are angry, then you mistreat. Your mistreatment simply shows that the servant is not the servant and the master is not the master.

Question 7:

There is no need to comment. I bless you. This is what should happen.

Question 8:

The essence is predestined, the personality is just an accident. That which you are is predestined, that which you appear to be is just an accident. Your being a Hindu, your being a Christian, is an accident. Your being a man, your being a woman, is an accident. Your being a German or an Indian is an accident. Your being black or white is an accident. But your BEING, simply your being, is destined.

Try to find that which is destined, and don't be too concerned with that which is irrelevant, accidental.

Your nose is a little long or a little short. Don't be bothered much about it; it is just accidental. Or your skin has a pigment and you are black. Or your skin doesn't have that pigment - not worth more than four annas. Don't be too worried about it. It is just irrelevant.

Try to find that which is absolutely destined. That is your nature, that is your essence.

But you are lost in accidents. You pay too much attention to accidents; you are too worried about them. Your whole time and energy is wasted in them. You become so much occupied with the non-essential that the essential is forgotten.

This is the state of the man who is asleep: always focused on the non-essential. Thinking of money, thinking of power, thinking of the house, thinking of the car, thinking of this and that - but never looking at that which is your innermost core, which is you. That innermost core is absolutely destined. Outside, nothing is destined. Inside, everything is destined. Pay more attention to it.

That's what sannyas is all about: a turning towards the essential, and a turning away from the non-essential.

I am not saying that you don't eat, that you don't live in a house - no. That is not the meaning. Live in a house, but don't be too concerned. One has to eat to live. Eat - but don't make eating your whole business. There are people who continuously think of eating.

Money is needed, but don't make money your God. Use it when you have it. When you don't have it, then use that non-having also, because that has its own beauties. When you have money, you can have a place. Have it. When you don't have the money, become a vagabond and live under the sky. That has its own beauty. When you have money, use it. Don't be used by the money. When you don't have it, enjoy poverty. Richness has its own richness, poverty has its own richness also.

There are many things which only a poor man can enjoy - never a rich man. There are many things only rich people can enjoy - never a poor man. So, whatsoever opportunity.... When you are rich, enjoy that which a rich man can enjoy. Whenever you are poor, enjoy that which poor men enjoy.

But what do you do? - you do just the reverse. When you are rich, you suffer for those things which only poor men can enjoy. And when you are poor, you suffer for those things which only a rich man can enjoy. You are simply foolish; I don't see intelligence.

I was staying with a friend. He is a vice-chancellor, an old man, a drunkard - almost always drunk - but he is a very good man, as drunkards are always. A very sweet, a very polite, a very loving man.

In the night, he had taken too much, and I was sitting with him. He became suddenly afraid. He became so paranoid that he told me: Please write a letter immediately to the police station - to send two intelligence officers.'

I wrote the letter, but I committed an error. I wrote to the police superintendent: 'Please send two INTELLIGENT officers.'

The old drunkard looked at the letter and started laughing and said: 'Who has ever heard of intelligent officers? Write "intelligence officers", not "intelligent officers".'

It is almost impossible to find an intelligent officer, because it is almost impossible to find an intelligent man. Intelligence is absolutely lacking.

When you have money, enjoy it. Live like a king when you have it. But I see people - they have money and they live like beggars. They are saving it for the future, and when it is lost, then they start thinking about it: 'Why did we waste time? We should have enjoyed.'

Poor persons, poor people, always thinking about living in palaces, while they can enjoy the tree where they are. The singing birds, and the sun, and the air - the world is more open to a poor man.

A poor man can enjoy a beautiful sleep, because for a rich man, sleep has become difficult. He may have better sleeping-rooms, he may have more comfortable mattresses, but he will not be able to sleep. Then he will think about beggars and will feel envious and jealous that these poor people are sleeping so well, snoring, and, 'I cannot sleep.'

When you can sleep well, sleep well. When you have beautiful mattresses, enjoy them - and suffer insomnia. But be intelligent!

Question 9:

There is not a secret in it, just male chauvinism. It was difficult for man to think that a woman was made first and man followed. No - it is against the pride.

The original version said that Lilith was created first - and it seems natural that woman should come first, because she carries the womb. A woman should come first. That seems natural, biological, true. But it is difficult for man to entertain the idea. He changed the story. He created another myth that Adam was created first. But then there was trouble - because then how to produce Eve from Adam? So a rib was taken, because there was no womb. Now the whole story is foolish.

With a woman it would remain simple. With man it was almost impossible. A rib was taken out and Eve was created.

The first story is true. I agree with the first. I reject the second.