I am the Fire!

The first question:

Question 1:

Lida Krausova, I don't find any reason myself Why should you be my disciple and why should I be your Master? There is no why to it. It is irrational, it is absurd - CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM. It is the MOST absurd thing in life. No reason can be supplied because none exists. All reasons are just to quench the constant curiosity of the mind.

To be with a Master, to be a disciple, is a love-affair. It is exactly that. Have you ever asked why one should fall in love? Have you ever asked why the sunset looks beautiful, why the seagull on the wing looks so fantastic, why the roseflower exists at all?

If you start asking why, then only the meaningless things will have meaning, and all the meaningful things will start disappearing into meaninglessness. Then money will have meaning, but not love.

Then machines will have meaning, but not the dew on the grass leaves in the morning sun. Then weapons will have meaning, but not hugging a human being.

Ask the question why and you will start destroying all that is beautiful, because the beautiful exists without any reason. That's why it is beautiful! Its beauty is unfathomable because the why cannot be answered. Its beauty is mysterious because no reason is capable of measuring it, no logic can fathom it, no arithmetic can figure it out. It remains there, utterly mysterious, utterly unknown, utterly unknowable in fact.

Albert Camus is right when he says that the only significant philosophical problem is suicide. The only significant philosophical problem? Suicide? I agree with him. If you ask why, then finally you will be left with only one ultimate question: Why live at all? For what? What is the meaning of being alive? Why go on breathing? Yes, that is the ultimate philosophical question. A real philosopher should stop breathing, because he will not find the answer to why. You are so absurd; you go on breathing? First decide why, then only take the next breath. If you cannot come to a conclusion, stop breathing. It is so unintelligent. Go on breathing, go on breathing, and not knowing why? Stop loving, because there is no why to it. Stop laughing, because there is no why to it.

To be a disciple is to be in love with the ultimate mystery of existence. It is absurd! So I cannot give you any reason why one should be a disciple.

But there is one thing I would like to say to you, Krausova: that the desire to be a disciple has arisen in you. Otherwise, from whence this question, from where? Why this question at all? The desire has arisen; now you would like to make that desire rational, hence the question. You want to satisfy your intellect - that there is a REASON to be a disciple: "I'm not a fool, I'm not mad. I am going into this disciplehood because there is a REASON to it." There is none, and all reasons are invented reasons.

You can invent, you can invent millions of reasons. Mind is so inventive - it can create so many fictions, and so easily and cheaply. Nobody is hindering you. You will be surprised to know that when you say "I am becoming a disciple because I want to know God," that is all bullshit. That is just trying to find a reason for some unreasonable act. Your mind feels a little guilty: "What are you doing?" The mind asks, "First supply the answer to me," and you say, "Because I am a seeker for God." And you don't know anything about God - how can you be a seeker for God? You have never met Him, you have never seen Him. You have never experienced anything divine; how can you search for Him? The search can arise only out of a certain taste that has happened to you, and that has not happened yet. Then you say, "I am in search of truth." What do you mean by truth? What is truth? Nobody has yet been able to define it. Yes, thousands and thousands of thinkers have tried, and all in vain. Nobody has been able to say exactly what truth is. And whatsoever is said about it becomes untrue. You cannot say, "I am a seeker for truth." These are ways just to put mind at ease:

"I want to know myself, I want to know what this existence is."

But I say to you again and again, becoming a disciple has nothing to do with these things. Becoming a disciple is just falling in love. It is utterly foolish! But only fools are courageous. It is idiotic!

Remember the story that we were talking about just the other day? - "Thus the wise man came to be called 'The Idiot'." If you can be so courageous to accept this absurd desire to become a disciple, then only can you become. I am not here to convince you. I am not here to give any reasons to your mind, because all reasons are false. The heart has its own reasons the mind knows nothing of, but those reasons are indefinable, elusive, ineffable, inexplicable. Explain them and they look very stupid.

Somebody asks you, "Why have you fallen in love with this woman?" and you say, "Because she has such a beautiful nose," and it looks so stupid! So you have fallen in love with this long nose? Or you say, "She has such beautiful hair?" How can one fall in love with hair? or with a nose? or with a color? or with a shape? That all looks so juvenile, but the mind hankers for some reason. The mind wants to know why and finds none - it starts creating its own reasons.

The real thing is not that you have fallen in love with this woman because she is beautiful. Just vice versa is the case: she looks beautiful because you have fallen in love. Love comes first, beauty is second. Beauty is just a shadow experience, because the same woman is not beautiful to others.

Sometimes others will laugh at you: "What do you go on seeing in this woman? I don't see anything at all." "She looks so horrible to me," somebody will say, "and you are mad."

Beauty arises when there is love. Beauty is an experience of a love-relationship. Wherever you fall in love, you will feel something beautiful happening. Fall in love with the trees and they become beautiful; that's how they look beautiful to the painter. Fall in love with anything and that looks beautiful. Fall in love with money and the money starts taking on a beauty. Have you not seen people touching their notes and rupees with such love and such care, almost caressing, kissing?

I have heard....

Once upon a time Goldstein was walking along a busy highway when he came upon the scene of an automobile accident. Several injured men were still lying about on the road.

The Jew approached one of the victims and asked, "Has the insurance man been around here?"

"No."

"Well then," said the Jew, "I will just lie down here by your side."

He can't see the misery. People are dying... and he can only see money.

And another story about the same Goldstein:

He was in court. He had caught his wife with a man in the bed.

The judge asked him, "You say, Goldstein, that the unwritten law would have justified you in killing Mr. Cohen, and that you had pulled a gun on him, yet you did not fire. Why?"

Mr. Goldstein: "Well, Judge, when I pointed my pistol at him, he said, 'How much you want for that gun?' I ask you, Judge, could I kill a man when he was talking business?"

If you are in love with money, then suddenly money has something that nobody will be able to see in it. Everybody will laugh at you, but you will be able to see it. Fall in love with anything and you start seeing things which are not available to others.

Love creates beauty. Love is creative. Love is the only creative force there is. So even things like money can become significant and meaningful, and can have a grandeur which is simply not there.

So when you come across a Christ or a Buddha or a Kabir, if you are utterly dull, dead, insensitive, if you are really mediocre, if you have lost all your intelligence, if you have become absolutely closed like a stone, you have lost all openings to your being - not even a window ever opens, no sunlight enters in you and no wind ever plays inside you and moves inside you - then maybe you can pass without falling in love. Otherwise it is impossible.

Disciplehood arises out of love.

And the Master is not a person. A Master is a Master only when he is not a person. When you can see into some being and you - cannot find the person there but an emptiness, a presence certainly but no person present, an awareness with no center, a flame, a light, a door beckoning you, then those who have courage, and those who have real intelligence....

And what do I call real intelligence? I call real intelligence that quality within you which allows you to live without asking why. An intelligent person lives, celebrates, delights. An unintelligent person goes on asking "Why? Why?" and wastes his life.

Krausova, you ask me, "I LIKE YOUR DISCOURSES..."

That will not help much. That will make you more knowledgeable, it will not impart any being to you.

You will become a little more informed, you will become a little more learned. Your mind will have a little more possession, your ego will feel good. Liking my discourses is not going to help much; it can even harm you - because these discourses are not really any knowledge that I am imparting to you. These discourses are only devices so that I can become available to you and you can become available to me.

I talk to you so that a relationship which goes deeper than talking can arise. These talks are just an opportunity for you to be close to me. These talks are engagements for your constantly chattering mind - so the mind becomes engaged in the talks and the heart can leap towards me. But if you think that it is enough, then you are getting satisfied by the outer shell and you are missing the real thing.

You say, "I LIKE YOUR DISCOURSES, I LIKE YOU AS A PERSON..."

I'm not a person, and if you like me as a person you have missed me. You have missed the impersonal that is present here. I am just an opening. Come close to me and I will help you to become impersonal too. The person is a facade, it is camouflage. The person is just a pseudo- phenomenon, it is invented. The personality is just that which you have been taught to do, that which you have been taught to be. The personality is given to you by the society. It is NOT your essence, it is the outer core - like clothes.

One has to go beyond the person; then only one comes to know who one is.

You say, "I LIKE YOU AS A PERSON AND I LIKE YOU AS THE MASTER."

You don't understand what you are saying: 'as the Master' - because the Master exists only with the disciple. The Master cannot exist without the disciple. I am a Master only to those who are disciples.

For others I am a teacher, not a Master. You are confused about these two words. You can like my discourses; then I am a teacher. You can like my person; then I am a teacher. When you start feeling in absurd love with me, discourses or not.... Because one day I may stop talking. Then? And that can happen any day. Then those who are in love with me will be here, and those who were only here for words will be gone. They will say, "Now what is the point?" I am a teacher to them, not a Master. When I have become silent, then those who love me - not for any reason at all - only they will be able to stay with me. All those who stay for certain reasons will be gone.

A teacher is one from whom you get knowledge. He teaches you, hence he is the teacher. The Master is one who destroys your knowledge; the function is totally opposite. The Master is one who helps you to unlearn. He does not give you learning, more learning; he starts shattering all that you have gathered in the past. He goes on hammering on the head. Slowly, slowly the rock of the head is turned into sand - it disappears. The Master exists only for the disciple; it is a relative phenomenon.

I am a Master only f you are a disciple. Only then do you know what it means.

So, Krausova, your use of the word 'Master' is simply out of confusion. You are saying that you love me as a teacher - but I am not a teacher! I am against all teaching! The work that is being done here is against all teachers. It is not against the Masters, but it is against the teachers. The teacher goes on teaching you something that he himself knows not. The teacher himself is just carrying borrowed knowledge. And if you are alert enough, you can see; you can easily see who is a teacher and who is a Master.

The teacher talks out of the memory. It has no depth, it does not come from his heart, it does not arise from his being. It is just an accumulation in his bio-computer called 'the mind'. Machines can do that. Sooner or later computers will be doing it and they will prove far better teachers than any human beings, because they will be far more efficient, quick, infallible - but no computer can ever be a Master. Teachers will be replaced by computers, but Buddhas cannot be replaced by computers, because the teacher simply goes on giving that which has been given to him. First you have to feed the teacher just like you feed the computer. The knowledge has to be put inside the memory of the teacher, then he starts giving it back to you.

Buddha gives you something which has not been given to him from the outside, something which has arisen in him as a fragrance, something which has bloomed in him. That is the difference between a teacher and a Master. And if you are sensitive, alert, intelligent, you will be able to see:

there will be a flame when a Master speaks. He will be TOTALLY what he is saying. His assertions will be PASSIONATE. He will be behind those assertions, he will be the validity of those assertions.

When a teacher repeats those things, he hesitates, he's afraid: "Maybe it is right, maybe it is not right" - there is doubt. He's not behind his assertions. He cannot say that he is a witness. Something IS BOUND to go wrong. Something is BOUND to be dead, stale. And the teacher is BOUND to commit mistakes, because that is not his own vision. Somewhere or other he will find it difficult to stand behind the assertion; his doubts will start filtering in. He's an imitator, and something or other will betray him.

I have heard....

An American soldier was attending a swank banquet in a London town-house given by Lady Brighton. In the midst of the gaiety, everyone felt quite embarrassed when above all the clamor, the lady loudly broke wind.

One of the Englishmen immediately rose and declared, "Ladies and gentlemen, I beg your pardon."

Fifteen minutes later the Lady Brighton cut one again. This time a Frenchman arose and apologized.

And when half an hour later, the lady emitted a colossal fart, the one American guest arose, bowed to the Englishman and the Frenchman, and declared, "Gentlemen, this one is on me!"

You can imitate, but it will show: it will show where you are, who you are. The teacher can pretend only so far, and maybe the stupid people, the unintelligent people, are deceived by it. But the teacher is not the Master.

The Master is one who has witnessed reality, who is not propounding anything on the basis of somebody else's witnessing, but who is himself a witness. But to know this you will have to become a disciple.

What does the word 'disciple' mean? It comes from a root which means simply learning, capacity to learn. If you come across Christ, would you not like to be closer and closer to him, to learn something, to see something, to be something that he has become? He is like a tree in bloom and you are like a seed. Would you not like to listen to this tree and its story and its struggle? All those seasons, summer, winter, rain, and all those long years of arduous effort, uphill tasks - it was almost miraculous to survive, and the tree survived - and now the tree has bloomed. The seed has bloomed. The seed has to come into DEEP closeness with a tree: that is the meaning of being a disciple.

But I am not supplying any reason, I am simply elaborating about the meaning. I am not saying to become a disciple. Nobody can become; it happens - suddenly the desire arises and the desire is strong, so strong that it puts your whole mind aside. And that desire must have arisen, hence the question.

Don't ask for any reason from the outside. Just listen to your desire, your heart's desire, listen to your own longing. If you feel that you would like to have an intimate relationship with me, if you feel that you would like to come as close as possible to me, then that's enough. That desire is enough; no other reason is needed. Then you fall in love.

All that a man can do is prevent himself from falling. Nobody can fall in love, but one can prevent.

Man's capacity to negate is more than man's capacity to posit. You cannot create love but you can prevent it. Remember this capacity for negation.

You cannot bring God into your life, but you can close your doors and prevent Him from coming. You cannot bring the sun inside the room, but you can close the doors and pull the curtains and you can stop it from coming. You cannot create the wind but you can stop it coming to you, reaching you; you can move into a hole behind a rock.

Man's capacity to negate is infinite. And if you don't negate, that's all: if this desire is arising in you to become a disciple, just don't negate your desire. Wait, allow it, let it happen, and suddenly you will see something new has penetrated into your being, and you will never be the same again.

The second question:

Question 2:

I am the Upanishad, and you ask about some rotten Upanishads? I am the fire! and I am inviting you!

and you are talking about some three-thousand, four-thousand-year-old scripture? The scripture is dead and its fire is long gone; there is no fire in it any more. And the word 'fire' is not fire, remember.

Don't be deceived by the word. I say to you - forget about the Upanishad - I say to you: He is the aloneness that is within you. God is the aloneness that is within you. When you are alone, you are God. But remember, aloneness does not mean, cannot mean, loneliness. When you are lonely you are simply miserable, not God. When you are lonely you are simply missing the other, you have not transcended the other. When you are lonely you are crying and weeping; you would like to be with the other.

And that's what happens: the people who escape from the world and go to the monasteries don't become alone, they become only lonely - and loneliness is a very negative emptiness. It has no positivity in it, it is escape. And the mind will go on thinking of the other because the other has still not been lived. You escaped unripe. When the fruit is really ripe it falls on its own accord.

Be ripe in life, because only life and its heat can ripen you. Be ripe! Go through the other! You will have to go many times through the other, you will have to experience the other in many, many ways - as a friend, as an enemy, as a lover, as a hater, as a brother, as a sister, as a wife, as a father, as a mother. You will have to experience the other in many, many ways - as the son, as the daughter.

When you have experienced the other in all the possible dimensions, you will come to see the point that you can be with the other but you remain alone. Your aloneness is INDESTRUCTIBLE. Even while you are making love to your woman you are alone and your woman is alone. Two alonenesses meeting, but alonenesses remain intact, untouched. And that's the dignity, the grandeur, the beauty, because that is the freedom. Otherwise your freedom would be gone.

Your inner space cannot be encroached upon by anybody else; it is unencroachable. You can be thrown into a prison cell, but your innermost aloneness remains free. Somebody can put a dagger into your heart, can kill you, but your aloneness remains untouched by the dagger. You can be thrown in fire, all will burn, but your aloneness will not burn. That aloneness is God.

God is not outside, God is your innermost core. God is you in your essential being. He is the aloneness that is within you. God is within you, not without. In fact, to say He is within you is not right - He is your within. The within is He. And once you have known this within, you will

be surprised that the within contains the without. And once you have known it as your innermost aloneness.... You will be surprised - the very word 'aloneness' comes from all-oneness. When you have become REALLY alone, you will see that ALL IS contained by your aloneness. You have come to that all-oneness.

"HE IS THE ALONENESS THAT IS WITHIN YOU.... YOU ARE STANDING ALL ALONE BEFORE THE SACRED FIRE AND FROM THIS TIME ON...

The sacred fire is the Master, because only the Master can become the fire in which all that is useless in you will be burned. Only by passing through the fire of a Master will you become pure gold. All the impurities will be burned. This is nothing to do with the ordinary. You can find ways of protecting yourself from the ordinary fire. The only fire that you cannot protect yourself from is the Master. The very word 'upanishad' is significant. It comes through the Master-disciple relationship.

'Upanishad' means sitting by the side of the Master. The very word means sitting by the side of the Master - just sitting, nothing else is needed, because when you sit, when you just sit, you start coming closer and closer and closer. When your activity disappears you come closest. With your activity, your ego disappears - then you are in the fire. The Master purifies you. Fire is just an outer symbol for the Master. That's why the orange color has been chosen for sannyas down the ages: it is the color of fire. By becoming a sannyasin you are entering into fire, into the fire of a Master.

"YOU ARE STANDING ALL ALONE BEFORE THE SACRED FIRE AND FROM THIS TIME ON, THE FIRE THAT WILL BE GIVEN TO YOU WILL BE LONELY...."

Somebody must have translated it wrongly. It can't be lonely, it can only be alone. But people translate literally: that's what I mean when I say 'a teacher'. Now anybody who has translated this passage from the Upanishads knows nothing. He knows words. He may be a scholar - he knows Sanskrit, he knows English. The translation is literal but not spiritual, and literal translations have done much harm. People go on translating ancient treatises: they can be translated ONLY by a Master because those words are not used in an ordinary sense. You cannot find those words in the dictionary. They are found only in inner experience. Of course outer words have to be used, but a Master goes on giving new meanings to those words.

I liked Pradeepa's suggestion: she wants to make a dictionary of my words, of the meaning that I give to them. I speak my own language. I don't care about grammar, about the form. My only concern is that what I say should correspond as closely as possible, as approximately as possible, to the experience that I have come to know.

"YOU ARE STANDING ALL ALONE BEFORE THE SACRED FIRE, AND FROM THIS TIME ON THE FIRE THAT WILL BE GIVEN TO YOU WILL BE LONELY, AND YOU WILL BE ALONE WITH IT."

Once you enter into the fire of a Master, the duality is dropped: the disciple and the Master become one. A new kind of aloneness arises.

There is a Tibetan saying of immense significance which says: To be with the Master is to be alone.

Strange.... It also says that when you can be with somebody and absolutely alone, then only can you be certain that he is your Master. It has much pregnant meaning in it. If you can be with your

Master, absolutely alone, nude - as you can be only when you are alone - only then are you with the Master, only then have you trusted. If you go on hiding something from the Master, then you remain separate.

That is the meaning of 'surrender'. Surrender means that from this moment on you will not hide, you will not have any secret of your own. Surrender means surrendering the secrets. Surrender means surrendering the privacies. Surrendering means that now you will not be in any way defending yourself.

Why do you keep secrets? - because you are afraid. You are afraid that if those secrets are known by others they may manipulate you, they may blackmail you, or they may start exploiting you because of those secrets. You feel afraid, you feel vulnerable. You can surrender your secrets only when you have trust, when you know that no harm is going to happen.

To be with the Master is to be in such a space where you are alone. The closer you come to the Master, the more and more the disciple and the Master meet and mingle and disappear, the more aloneness is left - that purity, that freedom, that silence.

"ARE YOU READY TO ACCEPT THAT ALONENESS?"

Are you ready to become an initiate? Are you ready to enter into the temple of fire?

The questioner is Dady C. Dady.

Here you are facing the fire, and you are talking about some old scriptures. I ask you: Are you ready to accept that aloneness? Are you ready to accept that fire? The fire is available, and one knows not for how long it will be available. Tomorrow it may be gone. It is either now or never. Don't waste your time in bringing scholarly questions. Open your existence to me. I'm not a commentator, I am saying what I have seen. I'm not supporting any Upanishad, any Bible, any Koran. I am talking from the same source from where the Upanishads were born, from where the Koran came, from where the Bible arose. I am at that very source.

Now this is stupid, to ask me such questions. You should be more intelligent. But people think if they can ask scriptural questions they are asking great questions.

Be existential. Ask something that is troubling you, ask about something that has become a barrier to your growth. Ask about you. How is this passage going to help you? And this has been so again and again, down the ages. And I tell you, Dady C. Dady, you may have been there in those days when the Upanishads were written, and then you must have been asking the teachers, those Masters, those seers, something about the Vedas. And you must have been there when the Vedas were written, but then you were asking something about more ancient scriptures. Now you are asking about the Upanishads; when I am gone you will ask about me!

It is better to relate with me.

A little ant was racing round and round a medium-sized cracker-box. His pal, another ant, observing the first ant, couldn't understand what the furious hurry was, so he asked his running friend, "Just what is your hurry, pal?"

The first ant replied, "Well, there is a sign here that says: Tear Along the Dotted Line."

The third question:

Question 3:

You all look to me like Buddhas pretending not to be Buddhas, except for a few; except for the few who don't know that they are Buddhas, so they are pretending to be Buddhas.

You will be surprised if you look from my eyes. Two types of people are here: the first type, the majority, who are pretending not to be Buddhas, and the minority who are pretending to be Buddhas.

And both are wrong! - because you are all Buddhas. Whether you pretend this way or that, it makes no difference. Both attitudes are out of ignorance.

A disciple came to a Zen Master and said, "Now I have realized! Now I know I am a Buddha!"

The Master was very angry and said, "Get out of here!"

The disciple had come with great hopes that the Master would reward, recognize. And the Master was very angry. He had been angry before, but never so much. And the disciple said, "What is the matter? Why are you getting so angry? I was thinking you would be happy because you were always telling us, 'You are Buddhas, you are Buddhas! Right now you can become Buddhas!' And now, when I have become, I say to you I have become a Buddha!"

And the Master took his staff and he said, "I will beat you! I will beat the Buddha out of you! You get out of here! First throw this Buddha away!" - because to think you are not a Buddha is wrong; so is it when you start thinking you are a Buddha!

You are a Buddha, so there is no need to think that you are a Buddha. The very thinking shows that you have again missed. When one understands, one simply relaxes and becomes ordinary. Then there is no point in talking about Buddhas.

You ask me, "IF, FOR BUT ONE MINUTE, I COULD BE BEHIND YOUR EYES DURING MORNING LECTURE! WHAT DO WE LOOK LIKE TO YOU?"

You simply look great! - playing a thousand and one games, hiding, covering yourselves, and all in vain, because whatsoever you do is not going to help. You ARE Buddhas. You remain Buddhas.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

One should not choose at all. Choose and you go wrong. Prefer and you have gone wrong. Non- preference, no. choice....

You ask: To be selfish or to be altruistic?

Now these things are separate only in language, and that creates great anxiety. But in life they are not separate things. To be altruistic is the only way to be selfish, to be selfish is the only way to be altruistic. It sounds paradoxical, but if you meditate over it you will be surprised. And that is so about all paradoxes of life!

If you want to be happy, really happy, can you be happy in an unhappy world? Can you be happy in an unhappy family, can you be happy with unhappy human beings? It is not possible. It is like you want to be healthy - can you be healthy when everybody is ill and unhealthy? How long can you protect yourself? Your health depends on everybody else's health. If everybody else is healthy, the more is the possibility for you to be healthy. If everybody is ill, the sooner or later you will be ill. And if you protect yourself so much from illness, then your protection will become your illness. You will be constantly worried about protection, and that will create stress. That will make you sc tense that you will not be able to live at all.

We are not separate, we are together.We are so much together that we are members of each other.

I penetrate you you penetrate me. So this division of selfishness and altruism is a false division. If a person becomes REALLY selfish and only thinks about himself and nothing else, do you think he will be able to be happy at all? He will not think about his wife. he will not think about his children, he will not think about his neighbors, he will not think about anybody else. Do you think he will be happy? He will be like a cancer cell.

That is the difference between other cells and the cancer cell - a cancer cell is ABSOLUTELY selfish, it only thinks about itself. So when a cancer cell enters into your body and you become host to a cancer cell, it starts eating you up. And it simply goes on eating you up, and it never gives anything back. And it does not worry about any other cell in the body. Sooner or later it has eaten the host.

And when the host dies, do you think the guest can live? The guest dies with the host. The cancer cell will have to die when the body dies, because it cannot exist without the body which was hosting it. So in fact by being selfish it has committed suicide. The cancer cell is a stupid cell; it has no intelligence. Other cells are far more intelligent: they eat, they give, they take, they give, and a balance is kept. The egoistic person is like a cancer cell.

And what about the other, the extreme opposite - the public servant, one who is ready to martyr himself, one who is always searching for some opportunity to sacrifice himself? He's also not healthy because he goes on sacrificing himself, and the more he sacrifices the more unhappy and miserable he becomes deep down. And naturally when he is unhappy and miserable, he vibrates misery around him.

You have watched it: if your mother is too much of a sacrificing mother, which mothers tend to be....

In fact, all mothers are Jews. I have not come across a mother who is not a Jew. They sacrifice too much! They are great martyrs but then they take revenge, which is natural. If somebody sacrifices too much escape from that place, because sooner or later he will surround you like a prison. He will demand, "I have sacrificed so much!" He will make you feel guilty every moment of your life.

Millions of people feel guilty because of mothers, because they have been so sacrificing. And later on every person feels, "I have not done anything. I have not given anything back to my mother - and how much she sacrificed." Because of this sacrifice, no child is ever able to forgive the mother.

Forgive or forget, neither is possible. In fact, that's why you are so against the parents, you will be surprised to know. Why are you so against the parents? Why do parents create such tension in you? Why is it not a beautiful experience to be with the parents? It is here every day . Whenever a mother comes, the sannyasin becomes afraid. A father comes and the fear arises. What fear? The fear is that the father simply makes you feel guilty: "I have done so much for you. What have you done? And I am getting old, and you are doing Kundalini here? And you are enjoying? Think of me and think of your mother! And we sacrificed our lives, and we educated you. And we were poor and we did this and that and that, an you never lacked anything. Have your forgotten it all?" You become uneasy with the parents. The relationship is not healthy. Why is the relationship not healthy? - they have been too altruistic.

Be selfish and you commit suicide. Be too altruistic and you again commit murder.

Don't choose. There is no need to choose between these two. Just be natural, spontaneous.

Respond to life each moment with no prejudice, with no a priori notion. Don't try to become altruistic, and don't try to become selfish. There is no need. Remain easy, relaxed. and there are moments in life when you will need to be selfish, but then it will happen spontaneously. And there will be moments when you will have to be altruistic - that too will happen spontaneously. Don't have a fixed gesture, remain fluid. That's my whole approach to the problem of choice: remain fluid, don't choose.

Once you have chosen you are in difficulty, because then you cannot respond to the reality. You have to go on reacting out of your chosen part. If you are selfish and you have chosen it ;as your philosophy, then there are moments when joy arises only by sharing - and you cannot share, because to share seems to be altruistic. So you remain confined in your selfishness and you miss the joy. Now what kind of selfishness is this which goes on missing joy? This is just being unintelligent, nothing else.

Or you have chosen to be altruistic, and then you start seeing that somebody else is exploiting you, and you go on because you have to be altruistic. Somebody is destroying you and you go on being destroyed - in fact, you start feeling that you are a great martyr. Look! - "Sooner or later the church is going to make me a saint." But you are destroying this man because you are allowing yourself to be destroyed by him. You are making him violent, you are teaching him something ugly. he will do it to other people too.

So move in life with no notion at all. let each moment be decided on its own - not with a discipline, not with a concept that you have carried all along. never act out of your philosophies, respond to the reality, and sometimes you will find you are selfish, and sometimes you will find you altruistic. and that is good. You are a flow.

Don't feel guilty about being selfish, because selfishness is natural - otherwise you would not survive at all. And don't feel that you have done something great when you are altruistic, because that too is natural. Otherwise you will never be able to love, and without love there is no joy.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

Dinas Wadia, my message to you is this: that I don't see anything as trivial. If you can remain meditative, loving, you transform the very trivialities into profundities. The profane becomes the sacred and the marketplace becomes a temple. It depends on you. To me, nothing is trivial. I never come across anything trivial.

Cleaning my teeth is as meditative as anything else. Taking a bath is as meditative as anything else.

Eating and going to sleep is as meditative as anything else. God is everywhere, in every act, in every small thing.

Remember, this existence is a hologram. A hologram means that each part contains the whole. It is not that the part is only part. The part may be on a smaller scale, but it contains the whole. For example: just a drop of sea water - it is a hologram. It is very small, it is not the sea, of course, but it contains the whole of the sea, all the secrets of the sea are there. If you can understand a single drop of sea water, you have understood all the oceans that have existed and that will ever exist. It is a hologram.

Each small act is a hologram; it contains the totality. It depends on you, on how you look at it.

Now you are creating an unnecessary problem. Here, listening to me, you become very, very drunk and absorbed, and you enjoy this drunkenness. Then you go to your office and you cannot get so absorbed. That is missing the whole message. When you are in the office, you have to put me at the back of the mind; that's natural. Otherwise you will not be able to function well in the office. You can't go on listening to my voice in the office; you should not.While driving, if you go on thinking about me, then there is every possibility of some accident. While driving, driving should be the figure and everything should become the background. Listening to me, I become the figure and everything else becomes the background. If listening to me here you go on driving, or calculating, or thinking of the office or money matters and things like that, then you are missing me.

And the joy that arises in you is not because of me. It arises only because here everything else moves into the background, and you allow it to move, and you become absolutely absorbed in this moment, herenow. Now, when you go back home you have to be absorbed the same way in each moment. Eating, eat, and let everything disappear into the background. One has to constantly change one's inner pattern, because every moment something else has to be given attention to.

Driving, you have to be attentive to driving. Calculating, you have to be attentive to calculation.

The secret of joy is that if you can get absorbed in every activity that you do, you will find the same peace flowing in you and the same silence flowing in you that you find here. It has nothing to do with me. It has something to do with your getting absorbed, totally absorbed.

But it will be difficult, because you call other things trivialities. You have condemned them. Because of the condemnation, absorption will be difficult. Don't condemn a thing. Respect, from the smallest

to the greatest, because nothing is small and nothing is great. The great depends on the small and the small contains the great. Life is a hologram. The seed contains the whole tree, the whole blue-print of it.

Each small act contains the whole of life, all its depth, all the dimensions.

You ask me, "HOW DO I KEEP THE FLOW CONSTANT?"

First just drop your condemnatory attitude and the flow will be constant. You need not keep it. You are disturbing the flow, not the trivialities - because there are none. You are disturbing the flow.

Because something is trivial, so you do it half-heartedly, you drag yourself A Zen Master has said.... Somebody asked, "You have become enlightened, now what do you do?" And he said, "I chop the wood and I carry the water from the well. How wondrous it is, how miraculous it is!" But the man said, "But these are trivial things - chopping wood, carrying water from the well? I also do these. What is the difference then?" And the Master said, "I used to do them before too, but the difference is great. Then I used to think these were trivialities, now they are not.

It is my prayer, it is my meditation. Chopping wood, I am worshipping Buddha. Carrying water from the well, I am worshipping Buddha."

If this attitude arises in you, the flow will keep itself flowing.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

There are great similarities and great differences.

The child is as innocent as a Buddha. They are as full of wonder... Buddhas are as full of wonder as any child. The child functions from a state of not-knowing, so functions a Buddha - but there are differences too, and great differences.

The child's innocence is a natural innocence - it will be lost, it will have to be regained. The child's innocence is only un-experience, it is not an earned phenomenon. It is like the first teeth: they will fall, the milk-teeth are going to fall. The child is going to go astray; it has to go, it has to fall from its innocence. That is the meaning of the biblical story of Adam's fall; Adam means every child. It is not a story that happened somewhere in the past, it happens every day. Whenever a child is born it happens again. It is repeated again and again. It is one of the most significant parables ever discovered by man. There is no comparison to it.

Each child is born in the Garden of Eden, is innocent, naked, knows nothing and is full of wonder, lives moment-to-moment. When a child is angry he is simply angry - he is anger, in fact; and when a child is loving he is love, he is simply love. And he goes on moving from one stage to another without any hitch, hesitation. Just a moment before he was so loving, and now he's so angry and he says to you, "I will never see you again!" and the next moment he is sitting in your lap and asking for

a story or for a song. It is moment-to-moment, he carries no past. But he will fall. This innocence cannot last. The fall is intrinsic. It is significant too, because only if he falls from this innocence will he attain to that innocence which is called Buddhahood. He has to go astray, he has to lose all track, he has to move in the deepest hell, in misery, in anguish, in agony. Then, through experience of life, he will start moving backwards. He will start searching again for those days of innocence; the memory will haunt him, the nostalgia of them.

That's what happened to the stream when she came across the desert. And when the desert said, "Evaporate to the winds," the stream started feeling some memories arising: "Yes, it has once been so.?'

When you come across a Buddha some memories arise in you and you start feeling, "Yes, I have tasted something of this." The taste is forgotten, almost forgotten, but still something lingers on the tongue. It is not absolutely forgotten. Forgotten, certainly, but one remembers that one has forgotten it - that much remembrance is there. It is not absolutely erased, it can't be erased. You have lived in that wonder called childhood; coming close to a Buddha again those childhood memories start surfacing. Again you start feeling like becoming a child, the second birth. You become twice-born.

Buddha is again a child, but now this childhood will never be lost. It has been earned. It has come through the experiences, sweet and bitter and all.

Buddhahood is similar to childhood, and yet not similar.

A little boy was prodding his mother's bust and saying, "Mummy, what are these?" Now the mother was too shy to tell him the truth, so she replied. "They are balloons and when you die they get bigger and float you up to heaven."

The lad went away but a short while later he came rushing back in shouting, "Mummy, Mummy, the maid is dying."

His mother was taken aback and asked why he should say that the maid was about to die. "Well,"

replied the lad, "both her balloons are out, Daddy is blowing them up and she keeps shouting 'God, I'm coming!"'

A child is innocence. He does not know what is what. He trusts. He has not yet doubted, he has not yet fallen from that innocence. He has not tasted of the Tree, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

The teacher explained to her class, "Every good story must contain four elements - sex, religion, royalty, and mystery. In the next half-hour, produce a short story made up of these four subjects."

Inside of ten minutes a boy announces, "My story is finished."

"So soon!" exclaims the astonished teacher. "Stand up and read it out loud."

"Holy Moses," said the Princess, "I think I am pregnant again. I wonder who done it this time."

This un-knowing, this state of ignorance, this beautiful ignorance, makes the child available to mysteries. The whole life looks like a mysterious world, a fairyland. Everything seems to be so

superb, so psychedelic, so colorful. Just small shells on the seabeach, and they look so precious to the child. Just colored stones, and they are Kohinoors. The child lives in a totally different world; he lives in the world of poetry.

The Buddha again enters into that world, and the poetry is enhanced, far deepened by his experiences. He had lost all touch with the innocence; now the innocence has been regained, paradise regained. It was lost; and when you lose something and regain it, then for the first time you recognize its value, its true value. The child cannot have any idea of the value. How can you have an idea of value when you have never lost it? Take the fish out of the ocean and THEN she starts feeling the value of the ocean. In fact, before this moment, she had not even been aware of the ocean. She had taken it for granted.

The child takes everything for granted. He has not yet fallen from grace. He has to fall. The fish has to come to the shore, the fish has to feel the thirst, the misery, the separation - only then, the jump. And then the ocean feels so beautiful, so tremendously valuable. The value arises through separation. Every child has to become a sinner. That's why it happens again and again that if some child is protected from going astray, if he is protected too much and is never allowed to do anything wrong, he remains shallow, he has no depth. His saintliness is just superficial, skin-deep, or not even that much. Scratch him a little and he will fall.

That's why your many so-called saints look shallow. You can't see the glint of intelligence in their eyes, you can't see the sharpness in their being. They look dull and stale, no sharpness, no intelligence. They have simply been trying not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. They have simply been trying to protect their milk-teeth. They are simply trying not to lose their childhood.

Childhood has to be lost. One has to go into the path of sin. One has to go deep, as deep as possible, into sin. Sin simply means going away from God, going away from your childhood innocence, nothing else. And then, out of the misery that you will create by going away, one day, when the misery has come to a saturation point, when the misery has come to a peak, you will suddenly feel the desire to go back. Enough is enough! That is the moment when one becomes an initiate, a disciple, a sannyasin. That is the moment when one starts searching for the lost land. And when you have arrived, it is the same place, but you are not the same.

So the child and the Buddha exist in the SAME space, but still it is not the same because the child is a child, and a Buddha is Buddha. Buddha is the child who has gone far away and has now come back.

Remember the Jesus parable:

A man had two sons. They quarrelled, they divided his property, and the elder remained with the father and the younger went to the capital. The younger lived a life of sin: gambling, drinking, prostituting. Soon he lost all his property, became a beggar, started begging. The other son remained with the father, worked hard, was obedient, was religious, was virtuous, increased the property tenfold. And one day the news came that the beggar-son was coming back.

He had suffered a lot, he was almost falling apart. He was no longer his old self; all was lost, he was just a miserable lot. But the idea came to him, "I will go back to my father. I am not worthy to be his

son, but he can at least accept me as a servant. There are so many servants in my father's house.

I will serve as a servant, I am not worthy to be called his son. I will go and fall at his feet and ask for forgiveness. And I will ask just one thing: .that I be a servant, just let me be here."

The father heard the news that the son was coming back. He prepared a great feast, most precious wine was brought from the cellars, he invited all the people of the town. His elder son was in the field working hard the whole day in the hot sun, and when by the evening he was coming back, somebody on the way told him, "Just look at the injustice of your father. This is unfair! You have been serving him, you have been religious, obedient, virtuous, and not a single feast has ever been given for you.

And now your father has ordered that the fattest calf has to be butchered for the feast and the best wine has to be brought from the cellars. And there is great rejoicing, because your younger brother is coming back! And he has lost all, all virtue. He has been a sinner. This is unfair!"

And naturally, it looks logically so - it is unfair.

And the elder son was angry and sad and annoyed and irritated. He went back to the father and he said, "What are you doing? You never gave a single feast for me, I was never welcomed. And what has your other son done that you are arranging such a big feast for him?"

The father laughed and said, "Don't get annoyed. You don't know - he went astray and is coming back home. He has sinned and is coming back home. He has lost all, and has understood something in losing that all. And you have always been with me; there is no need to welcome you. Let me receive him with great joy. I have been waiting for him."

To whomsoever reads this story, it looks a little unfair. Whatsoever reasons Jesus gives for it, it looks unfair - but this is how it happens. It is a tremendously meaningful parable.

Your saints who have been just trying to protect their first childhood remain superficial. That was the case with the elder son; he was superficial. His virtue was imitation, his obedience was only fear.

He was a coward, he didn't risk. The other son was courageous - he risked, he gambled, he lost.

The sinner one day starts feeling, "I can go back. I can just be a servant in my father's house." That desire for going back is the beginning of Buddhahood. Adam means the child is going away from childhood, Christ means the return of Adam. The child is coming back, back to the natural state of innocence.

So the Buddha and the child exist in the same space, but the child is getting ready to go out of it, and Buddha has come back. He is back home. The child is simply preparing to go away, and Buddha is back home. So they are similar, and they are not similar too. They are as totally different as is possible.

Childhood has to be lost; only then can you attain to Buddhahood.

And the last question:

Question 7:

EVERY SOUND AROUND ME SEEMS TO BE SAYING TO ME, "BHAG-WAN". FOR INSTANCE, THE HORNS OF THE RICKSHAWS AND CARS, THE SOUNDS OF THE BIRDS. THINGS AND ANIMALS MAKE JUST ONE SOUND DURING THE WHOLE DAY: "BHAG-WAN". I CANNOT GET RID OF IT!!! IT'S LIKE A TUNE IN MY HEAD. PLEASE CAN YOU EXPLAIN IT TO ME. AM I IN LOVE? OR IS IT HYSTERICAL? WHAT CAN I DO TO GET RID OF IT? PLEASE HELP!