The consistency of being

The first question:

THIS IS NOT ONLY your question, this is mine also! Ever since, I have also been wondering what happened to this guy Rajneesh. On that night, one moment he was there, and next moment he was not there.

And since then I have been looking for him within and without: not even a trace has been left behind, no footprints. If ever I get him, I will remember your question. Or, if it happens that you come across him somewhere, you can ask the question from my side also.

It is just like a dream. In the morning you are awake, you look around, you search for the dream in the sheets of the bed, under the bed, and it is not there. You cannot believe - just a moment before it was there, so colorful, so real, and suddenly it is not found at all, and there is no way to find it. It only appeared; it was not a reality, it was just a dream. One is awake and the dream has disappeared. Nothing happens to the dream.

To Rajneesh also, nothing happened; it was never there in the first place. I was asleep, that's why he was there. I awoke and I couldn't find him, and it happened so unexpectedly there was no time to ask the question. Simply the guy disappeared, and there seems to be no possibility to find him again, because there is only one possibility: if I fall asleep again, only then I can find him - and that is impossible.

Once you are totally conscious, the very root of being unconscious is cut. The seed is burned. Again you cannot fall into the unconscious.

Every day you can fall into the unconscious in the night, because the unconscious is there. But then your whole being becomes conscious; there is no place inside you, no dark corner, where you can go and sleep-and without sleep, no dream.

Rajneesh was a dream that happened to me. Nothing can happen to Rajneesh. What can happen to a dream? Either it is there if you are asleep, or it is not there when you are awake. Nothing can happen to a dream. Dream can happen to reality; reality cannot happen to a dream. Rajneesh happened to me as a dream.

So this is my question also. If you have ears, listen, and if you have eyes you can see. One day suddenly the old man is no longer found inside the house - just emptiness, nobody there. You move, you search: nobody is there, only a vast expanse of consciousness with no center, with no boundary. And when the personality disappears - and all names belong to personality - then for the first time the universal has arisen in you. The world of nam-roop, the name and the forms, disappears, and the formless is there suddenly.

This is going to happen to you also. Before it happens, if you have any questions to ask, ask your personality. Because once it happens, then you cannot ask. There is nobody to ask. Someday, suddenly you will disappear. Before it happens you can ask, but that too is difficult because before it happens, you are so fast asleep - who will ask? Before it happens there is nobody to ask, and when it has happened there is nobody to be asked.

The second question:

You always cling to words! - and I know that is natural. When you hear the words "samadhi", "seedless samadhi", "the seed has burned; now there is no more seed," you hear words, and then questions arise in your mind. But if you understand me, then these questions will become irrelevant. "The seed is burned", does not mean that actually something like that happens. What happens is simple, simply this: that when nirvichara samadhi is attained, thoughts cease. Suddenly there is no seed to be burned. It has never been there; you were in a hallucination.

This is a metaphor, and religion talks in metaphors because there is no other way to talk about things which belong to the unknown. It is a metaphor. When it is said the seed is burned, the only meaning is: now there is no desire to be born, no desire to die, no desire not to die; simply there is no desire. Desire is the seed, and how desire can exist when thoughts have ceased? Desire can exist only through thinking, in the form of thought. When thoughts are not there you are desireless. When you are desireless, birth and death disappear. With your desire the seed is burned. Not that there is a fire in which you burn the seed... Don't be foolish. Many have become victims of metaphors. These are poetic ways of saying certain things, through the metaphor.

And just understand the essential. The essential is that desire leads you into time, into this world. You would like to be this and that, you would like to attain this and that; future is created. Time is created by desire. Time is nothing but a shadow of the desire. There is no time in existence. Existence is eternal; it has never known any time. Time is created by your desire, because desire needs space to move. Otherwise, if there is no future where the desire will move? You will be always against a wall, so you create future. Your mind creates a dimension of time, and then the horses of desire can gallop fast. Because of desire you create future, not only in this life but in other lives also, because you know desires are so many... And desires are such they cannot be fulfilled: this life won't be enough - more lives are needed. If only this is the life, then too short is the time, too many things to do, and such a short time - nothing can be done. Then you create future lives.

It is your desire that becomes the seed, and through the desire you move and move, from one dream to another. From one life to another when you move it is nothing but moving from one dream to another. When you become thoughtless, when you drop all thinking and simply remain in the present moment, suddenly time has disappeared.

The present moment is not part of time at all. You divide time in three tenses: past, present, future. That is wrong. Past and future are time, but the present is not part of time, the present is part of existence. Past is in the mind: if your memory is vast, where will be the past? Future is in the mind: if your imagination is dropped, where will be the future? But the present will be there. It does not depend on you and your mind. The present is existential. Only this moment is true; all other moments either belong to the past or to the future. The past has gone, is no more, and the future has not come yet. Both are non-existential. Only the present is real, only one moment of present. When the desires cease and thinking ceases, suddenly you are thrown to the present moment, and from the present moment opens the door to eternity. The seed is burned. With the dropping of the desire the seed disappears of its own accord - it was created by the desire.

The third question:

Yes, many things have to be understood. First, religious people are always serious. I am not a religious person, but many religious persons, misunderstanding me, come to me. Religious persons are always serious; they are ill. They are frustrated with life, so much frustrated, failed completely, that they have lost the quality to enjoy. In life nothing but anguish they have come across. In life they have never been able to celebrate. They become religious out of the frustration of life; then they are serious, and they have the attitude that they are doing something very great. They are trying to console their egos, that you may have failed in life, but you are succeeding in religion; you may have failed in the outer world, but in the inner you have become a paragon. In the world of things you may have failed, but your kundalini is rising, chakras are opening. And then they compensate: they start looking at others with a condemnatory eye. "Holier than thou" is their attitude; all are sinners. Only they are going to be saved, everybody else is going to be thrown into hell. These religious people have created hell for others, created even for themselves. They are living a compensatory life - not real, but of imagination. These people will be serious.

I have nothing to do with them. But thinking that I am also that sort of religious man, sometimes they become hooked with me. I am a totally different type of religious man, if at all you can call me religious. To me, religion is fun. To me, religiousness is celebration. To me, religion is festive. I call religion "the festive dimension". It is not for religious people, for serious people. For serious people there is psychotherapy; they are ill, and they are deceiving nobody but themselves.

To me, religion has totally a different quality. Not that you have failed in life, that's why you have come to religion, but because you have become matured through life. Even your failures... There are failures, but the failures are not because of life; the failures are because of your desires. You have become frustrated-not that life is frustrating, but because you hoped too much. Life is beautiful; your mind created the trouble. Your ambition was too much. Even this beautiful and vast life could not fulfill it.

The ordinary religious man leaves the world; the really religious man leaves ambition, leaves hoping, leaves imagination. Knowing through experience that every hope comes to a point where it becomes hopelessness, and every dream comes to a point where it becomes a nightmare, and every desire comes to a point where nothing but discontent is left by it in you - knowing this through experience, one becomes seasoned, mature. A growth happens into consciousness. Out of this growth one drops ambition, or the ambition drops by itself out of this growth. Then a person becomes religious.

Not that he renounces the world the world is beautiful! There is nothing to renounce - but he renounces all expectations. And when there is no expectation, how can there be frustration? And when there is no demand, how can there be unfulfillment? And when there is no ambition, how can be there any nightmare? One simply becomes loose and natural. One lives the moment and does not worry for the tomorrow. One lives the moment, and lives it so totally because there is no hope and no desire in the future. One brings his whole being to the moment, and then the whole life is transformed. It is fun, it is a feast, it is a celebration. Then you can dance and you can laugh and you can sing, and to me this is how a religious consciousness should be - a dancing consciousness, more like children, less like dead corpses. Your churches, your temples, your mosques are just like graveyards - too much serious.

So of course there are many people around me who are serious; they have not understood me at all. They may be projecting their minds on me, they may be interpreting whatsoever I am saying according to their own minds, but they have not understood me. They are wrong people. Either they will have to change or they will have to leave. Finally, only those people will be with me who can celebrate life so totally, with no complaint, with no grudge. Others will go; sooner they go, the better. But this happens: thinking that I am religious, old religious-type people also sometimes come to me, and once they come they bring their own minds with them and they try to be serious here also.

One man came to me, old man. He was a very famous Indian leader. Once he attended a camp, and he saw a few sannyasins playing cards. Immediately he came to me and he said, "This is too much! Sannyasins playing cards?" I said, "What is wrong in it? Cards are beautiful, and they are not doing anybody any harm - just enjoying playing cards." And this man was a politician, and he is playing cards in politics and gambling, but that he cannot understand. Just people playing cards is simple - just celebrating the moment. And this man in his whole life was playing cards, very dangerous cards, violent, stepping on people's heads, doing everything that a politician has to do. But he was thinking himself religious. And poor sannyasins, just playing cards, they are condemned. He said, "I never expected." I told him that to me there is nothing wrong in it.

There is nothing wrong when you are not harming anybody. When you harm somebody, then it is wrong. Sometimes things which have been thought to be wrong are not so wrong. For example: you are talking nonsense to a person and throwing rubbish in his head - and only rubbish you can throw; you don't have anything else - that's okay. But a person sitting in the corner and smoking a cigarette - that is wrong? He is at least not throwing rubbish on anybody's head or in anybody's head. He has found a substitute for the lips: he doesn't talk, he smokes. He may be harming himself, but he is not harming anybody. He may be a fool, but he is not a sinner.

Always try to think on the lines that if you are harming somebody, only then is something wrong. If you are not harming anybody and if you are a little aware-in the "anybody", you will also be included - if you are not harming anybody, included you, everything is beautiful. Then you can do your thing.

Sannyas to me is not a serious thing. In fact it is just the opposite: it is a jump into non-seriousness. Seriously you have lived for many lives. What you have gained? The whole world teaches you to be serious, to do your duty, to be moral, to be this and that. I teach you fun; I teach you being festive. I teach you nothing but celebration. Just remember only one thing: your celebration should not be harmful to anybody else, that's all.

But the ego is the problem. If you take life as fun, and you celebrate it like a feast, then your ego will disappear. The ego can exist only when you are serious. childlike, then the ego disappears. So you have a haughty look, you walk uptight; you are doing something very serious nobody else is doing: you are trying to help the whole world and reform. You take on your shoulders the burden of the whole world. Everybody is immoral; only you are moral. And everybody is committing sin; only you are virtuous. Then the ego feels very good.

In a celebrating mood, ego cannot exist. If celebration becomes your very climate of being, ego will disappear. How can you maintain your ego laughing, dancing, enjoying? - it is difficult. You can maintain your ego when you are doing shirshasan, standing on your head, or doing difficult, foolish postures. Then you can maintain the ego: you are a great yogi! Or sitting in a temple or in the church with all other dead bodies around you, you can feel very, very big, great, super.

Remember, my sannyas is not for this type of people, but they come. Nothing is wrong in coming. Either they will change, or they will have to leave. You don't be worried about them. I assure you that I am not serious.

I am sincere, but not serious, and sincerity is a totally different quality. Seriousness is the disease of the ego, and sincerity is a quality of the heart. To be sincere means to be true, not serious. To be sincere means to be authentic. Whatsoever you are doing, you are doing full of your heart. Whatsoever you are doing, you are doing it not as a duty but as your love. Sannyas is not a duty, it is your love. If you take the jump, you take out of your love, out of your authenticity. You will be sincere to it, but not serious. Seriousness is sad, sincerity is gay. A sincere person is always gay. Only a false person becomes sad, because he gets into a mess. If you are false, each falsehood will lead you into another falsehood. If you depend on lies, you will have to depend on more lies. By and by, a crowd of lies is around you. You are suffocated with your own false faces: then you become sad. Then life looks like a mess. Then you cannot enjoy it because you have destroyed the whole beauty of it. Except your false mind, nothing is ugly in the existence; everything is beautiful.

Be sincere, be authentic and true, and whatsoever you do, do it out of love. Otherwise, don't do it. If you want to be a sannyasin, be out of love. Otherwise, don't take the jump - wait, let the right moment come. But don't get serious about it. It is nothing; it is nothing like seriousness. To me, seriousness is a disease, a disease of the mediocre mind who has failed in life. And he has failed because he is mediocre. Sannyas should be the culmination of your maturity: of failures, successes, everything that you have seen and lived and you have grown through it. Now you understand more, and when you understand more you can enjoy more.

Jesus is religious; Christians, no. Jesus can be festive; Christians, they cannot be. In the church you have to carry a very serious face, gloomy. Why? because the cross has become the symbol of the religion. Cross should not be the symbol; death should not be the concern. A religious person lives so deeply that he knows no death: there is no energy left to know death; there is nobody to know death. When you live life so deeply, death disappears. Death exists only if you live on the surface. When you live deeply, even death becomes life. When you live on the surface, even life becomes death. Cross should not be a symbol.

In India we have never made cross-like things symbols. We have Krishna's flute or Shiva's dance as symbols. If ever you want to understand how a religious consciousness should grow, then try to understand Krishna. He is festive, celebrating, dancing. He is a lover of life, with the flute on his lips and a song. Christ was really a man like Krishna. In fact, the very word Christ comes from Krishna. Jesus is his name: Jesus the Krishna, Jesus the Christ. Krishna has many forms. In Bengal, in India, it has a form which is christo. From Christo, in Greek it becomes christos, and from there it moves and becomes Christ. Jesus must have been a man like Krishna, but Christians say he never laughed. This seems absurd. If Jesus cannot laugh, then who will laugh? They have painted him in such seriousness. He must have laughed! In fact he loved women, wine: that was the problem; that's why Jews crucified him. He loved women, Mary Magdalene and others, and Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. He must have been a rare man, a very rarely religious man. He loved eating; he always enjoyed feasts. And eating with Christ must have been something of the other world.

It happened: Christ died on the cross. Then it is said that after three days he resurrected - and a very beautiful story. He resurrected: Mary Magdalene saw him first. Why? - because only the eyes of love can understand resurrection, because the eyes of love can see the inner, the immortal. Men followers passed by the side of Jesus who was standing there, and they won't see. The symbol is beautiful: only love can see that innermost deathless. And when Mary Magdalene came into the town and told people, they thought she has gone mad. Who believes a woman? - people say love is mad, love is blind - nobody will believe. Even the apostles, Jesus' closest disciples, even they laughed and said, "Have you gone mad? We will believe only when we see."

And then it happened that two disciples were going to another town and Jesus followed them, with them talked, and they talked about Jesus' crucifixion and what has happened. And they were very much troubled, and Jesus is walking with them and talking with them, and they didn't recognize. Then they reached the town. They invited the stranger to take food with them, and when Jesus was breaking the bread then suddenly they recognized him, because nobody could have broken the bread that way - only Jesus.

This story I have loved tremendously. They talked and couldn't recognize; they walked for miles together and couldn't recognize, but the very gesture of Jesus breaking the bread, suddenly... because they had never known any man to break bread with such a festive mood, to celebrate food - they had never known any man. Suddenly, they recognized and said, "Why didn't you say that you are Jesus resurrected?" The gesture...

And Christians say this man never laughed. Christians have completely destroyed Jesus, distorted, and if he ever comes back - and I am afraid he will not come because of these Christians - they won't allow him in the churches.

The same is possible around me also. Once I am gone, the serious people are dangerous. They can take possession, because they are always in search of taking possession of things. They can become my successors, and then they will destroy. So remember this: even an ignorant person can become my successor, but he must be able to laugh and celebrate. Even if somebody claims that he is enlightened, just see his face: if he is serious, he is not going to be successor to me! Let this be the criterion: even a fool will do, but he should be able to laugh and enjoy and celebrate life. But serious people are always in search of power. People who can laugh are not worried about power - that is the problem. Life is so good, who bothers to become a pope? Simple people, happy in their simple ways, don't bother about politics.

Immediately, when an enlightened person disappears from the body, the people who are serious are fighting to become the successors. And they have always destroyed, because they are the wrong people, but the wrong people are always ambitious. Only right people are not ambitious, because life is giving so much, there is no need for ambition to become a successor, or to become a pope, or to become this and that. Life is so beautiful that more is not asked. But people who have no enjoyment, they enjoy power; people who have missed love, they enjoy prestige; people who have somehow missed the celebration of life and the dance, they would like to be popes - high powered, controlling people. Beware of them; they have been always the destroyers, the poisoners. They destroyed Buddha, they destroyed Christ, they destroyed Mohammed. And they are always around, and it is difficult to get rid of them, very, very difficult, because they are so seriously there... you cannot get rid of them.

But I assure you that I am always for happiness, joy, a life of dance and song, enjoyment, because to me that is the only prayer. When you are happy, overflowing with happiness, there is prayer. And there is no other prayer. Existence listens only to your existential response, not your verbal communication. What you say doesn't matter: what you are... If you really feel that God is, then celebrate. Then there is no point in losing a single moment. Dance if you feel God is, with your whole being, because only when you dance and sing and you are happy - or even if you sit silently - the very climate of your being gives such a peaceful, deep contentment with life. That is prayer; you are thanking. Your thankfulness is your prayer. Serious people? - I have never heard that serious people ever enter heaven. They cannot.

Once it happened that a sinner died and reached heaven. A saint died on the same day, and the messengers started taking him towards hell. The saint said, "Wait! Something has gone somewhere wrong. You are taking that sinner, and I know him well! And I have been twenty-four hours meditating and praying to God, and I am taken to the hell? I would like to ask God himself. What is this? Is this justice?" So he was brought to God himself, and the man complained and said, "This is simply unbelievable! - that this sinner... I know him well; he has been my neighbor. He has never prayed; he has never taken your name once in life, and I have been twenty-four hours praying... Even in my sleep I go on repeating, Ram, Ram, Ram - and what is happening?n It is said God said, "Because you killed me with your boring continuous Ram. You almost killed me, and I would not like you to be nearabout. Just think, twenty-four hours! You won't give me a single moment of rest. This man is good. At least he never troubled me, and I know he never prayed, because his whole life was a prayer. He looks like a sinner to you because you think just in praying and verbal nonsense there is virtue. He lived and lived happily. He may not have been always good, but he was always happy and he was always blissful. He may have erred here and there, because it is human to err, but he was not an egotist. He never prayed, but from his deepest core of being there was always a thankfulness. He enjoyed life and he thanked for it."

Remember: serious people are all in hell; devil loves seriousness very much. Heaven is not like a church, and if it is, then nobody who has any senses will ever go to heaven. Then it is better to go to hell. Heaven is life, life millionfold.

Jesus says to his disciples, "Come to me and I will give you life in abundance." Heaven is a poetry, a continuous song, like a river flowing, a continuous celebration with no break. When you are here with me, remember, you will miss me if you are serious, because there will be no contact. Only when you are happy you can be near me. Through happiness a bridge is built. Through seriousness all bridges are broken; you become like an island, unapproachable.

The fourth question:

In life everything is a rhythm. You are happy and then follows unhappiness. Night and day, summer and winter; life is a rhythm between two opposites. When you try to become aware the same rhythm will be there: sometimes you are aware and sometimes not.

So don't create a problem, because you are such experts in creating problems that out of the blue you can create a problem. And once you have created a problem then you want to solve it. And then there are people who will supply you with answers. A wrong problem is always answered by a wrong answer. And then it can go on ad infinitum; then a wrong answer again creates questions. From the very beginning one has to be aware not to create a wrong problem. Otherwise the whole of life goes on and on in the wrong direction. Always try to understand not to create a problem. Everything pulsates into a rhythm, and when I say everything, I mean everything. Love, and there is hate; awareness, and there is unawareness. Don't create any problem: enjoy both.

While aware enjoy awareness, and while unaware enjoy unawareness - nothing is wrong, because unawareness is like a rest. Otherwise, awareness will become a tension. If you are awake twenty-four hours, how many days you think you can be alive? Without food a man can live for three months; without sleep, within three weeks he will go mad, and he will try to commit suicide. In the day you are alert; in the night you relax, and that relaxation helps you in the day again to be more alert, fresh. Energies have passed through a rest period; they are more alive in the morning again.

The same will happen in meditation: few moments you are perfectly aware, at the peak; few moments you are in the valley, resting - awareness has disappeared, you have forgotten. But what is wrong in it? It is simple. Through unawareness will arise again awareness, fresh, young, and this will go on. And if you can enjoy both you become the third, and that is the point to be understood. If you can enjoy both it means you are neither - neither awareness nor unawareness, you are the one who enjoys both. Something of the beyond enters. In fact, this is the real witness. Happiness you enjoy - what is wrong when happiness has gone and you have become sad? What is wrong in sadness? Enjoy it. And once you become capable of enjoying sadness, then you are neither.

And this I tell you: that if you enjoy, sadness has its own beauties. Happiness is a little shallow; sadness is very deep, it has a depth into it. A man who has never been sad will be shallow, just on the surface. Sadness is like a dark night - very deep. Darkness has a silence into it, sadness also. Happiness bubbles, there is a sound in it. It is like a river in the mountains; sound is created. But in the mountains, river can never be very deep; it is always shallow. When the river comes to the plain it becomes deep, but the sound stops. It moves as if not moving. Sadness has a depth.

Why create trouble? While happy, be happy, enjoy it. Don't get identified with it. When I say be happy, I mean enjoy it. Let it be a climate which will move and change. The morning changes into the noon, the noon changes into the evening, and then comes night. Let happiness be a climate around you. Enjoy it, and then comes sadness... enjoy that too. I teach you enjoyment, whatsoever the case. Sit silently and enjoy sadness, and suddenly sadness is no more sadness; it has become a silent peaceful moment, beautiful in itself, nothing wrong in it.

And then comes the ultimate alchemy, the point where suddenly you realize you are neither - neither happiness nor sadness. You are the watcher - you watch peaks, you watch valleys; you are neither.

Once this point is attained, you can go on celebrating everything. You celebrate life and you celebrate death. You celebrate happiness, you celebrate unhappiness. You celebrate everything. Then you are not identified with any polarity. Both the polarities have become available to you together, and you can move from one to the other easily. You have become liquid-like, you flow. Then you can use both, and both can become a help into your growth.

Remember this: don't create problems. Try to understand the situation, try to understand the polarity of life. In summer it is hot, in winter it is cold - so where is the problem? In winter enjoy cold, in summer enjoy heat. In summer enjoy the sun; in the night enjoy the stars and the darkness, in the day the sun and the light. You make enjoyment your continuity, whatsoever happens. In spite of it you go on enjoying. You try it, and suddenly everything is transfigured and transformed.

The fifth question:

I have none to change. You can change if you have it; how can you change it if you don't have it?

And never try to compare two moments, because each moment is unique in itself. Yes, some days I am like winter and some days I am like summer, but I have not changed my mind - I have none.

It is how it happens: you ask a question, I have no ready-made answers for it. You ask the question and I respond. I don't think whether I am consistent with my past sayings or not. I don't live in the past and I don't think of future - that whatsoever I am saying, may I be able in the future also to say the same thing. No, there is no past and no future.

Right this moment you ask a question and whatsoever happens, happens: I respond. It is a simple response, it is not an answer. Next day you again ask the same question but I will not respond in the same way. I cannot do anything about it. I have no ready-made questions. I am like a mirror: whatsoever face you bring, it reflects. If you are angry it reflects anger, if you are happy it reflects happiness. You cannot say to the mirror that "What is the matter? Yesterday I was here and you reflected an angry face; and today I am here and you are reflecting a very happy face. What is the matter with you? Have you changed your mind?" The mirror has no mind; the mirror simply reflects you.

Your question is more important than my answer. In fact, your question creates the answer in me. Half is supplied by you, the other half is just an echo. So it depends - it will depend on you, it will depend on the trees surrounding you, it will depend on the climate here, it will depend on existence in its totality. You ask a question, and I am nothing here, just a vehicle - as if the whole answers you. Whatsoever is your need, the answer comes to you. And you don't try to compare, otherwise you will get into a mess.

Never try to compare. Whenever you feel that something suits you, you simply follow it, do it. And if you do it you will be able to understand whatsoever comes later on. Your doing will help, comparison won't help. You will go completely mad if you go on comparing. Every moment I go on saying things.

Later on, when I have spoken my whole life, those who will study them, and those who will try to sort out what I meant will go simply mad; they will not be able. Because that is now how it is happening... They are philosophers; I am not a philosopher. They have a particular idea to impose on you; they go on insisting the same idea again and again. They have something which they would like to indoctrinate you. They would like to condition your mind into a certain philosophy. They are teaching you something.

I am not a teacher. I am not teaching anything to you. Rather, just on the contrary, I am trying to help you to unlearn.

Whatsoever suits you, follow it. Don't think whether it is consistent or not. If it suits you it is good for you, and if you follow it, soon you will be able to understand the inner consistency of my all inconsistencies. I am consistent; my sayings may not be. Because they come from the same source, they come from me, so they must be consistent. How otherwise it is possible? - they come from the same source. Their shapes may differ, words may differ: deep down there must be a consistency running, but that you will be able only when you go deep down within yourself...

So whatsoever suits you, you simply don't bother whether I have said something against it or not. You simply move, do it. If you do it you will feel my consistency. If you simply think, you will never be able to take any step because every day I will go on changing. I cannot do anything else, because I don't have a solid mind, rock-like, which is always the same.

I am like the climate, not like a rock. But your mind will again and again think I said this, and then I said that - what is right? Right is that which is easy to you. Easy is right; what fits you is right, always.

Always try to think in terms of your being and my saying, whether they fit. If they don't fit, don't bother. Don't think about them, don't waste time; move ahead. Something will be coming which will fit you.

And you are many, so I have to speak for many. Their needs are different, their requirements are different, their personalities are different, their past karma is different. I have to speak for many. Not only for you I am speaking; you are just an excuse. Through you I am speaking to the whole world. So I will speak in many colors, and I will paint in many ways, and I will sing many songs. You simply think about yourself - whatsoever suits you, you hum that song and forget others. By humming that song, by and by, something will settle within you; a harmony will arise, and through that harmony you will be able to understand my consistency through all the inconsistencies.

Inconsistencies can only be on the surface, but my consistency is of a different quality. A philosopher is consistent on the surface. Whatsoever he says - he looks into the past, connects it with his sayings, looks into the future, connects it with the future - he creates a chain on the surface. That type of consistency you will not find in me. A different quality of consistency which is difficult to understand unless you live it...

Then, by and by, waves disappear which were inconsistent, and you come to the depth of the ocean where a silence resides, consistent always, whether on the surface there is a storm or not, big waves, great turmoil, or silence, no waves, not even a ripple. Whether it is tide or ebb makes no difference; deep down the ocean is consistent.

My consistency is that of being, not of words. But when you will descend into your own ocean inside, then you will be able to understand it. Right now, you don't bother.

When a certain shoe fits you, purchase it and wear it. You don't bother about other shoes in the shop. They don't fit you: no need to bother about them. They are not meant for you, but there are other people; please remember them also. To somebody those shoes will fit. You just look for your own feet and for your own shoe. And feel, because it is a question of feeling, not of intellect.

When you go to the shoe shop, what you do? There are two ways: you can measure your feet and you can measure the shoe - that will be an intellectual effort, a mathematical effort whether it fits or not. The second is: you simply put the shoe on your foot, you walk and feel whether or not it fits. If it fits, it fits. Everything is okay; you can forget about it. Mathematical measurement may be perfect and shoe may not fit, because shoes know no mathematics. They are completely uneducated. Don't bother about it.

I remember it happened: the man who found the law of average, a great mathematician - he was a Greek, and he was so filled with his own discovery of the law of average, that one day he was going for a picnic... his wife and seven children. They had to cross a river, so he said, "Wait." He went into the river; at four, five places he measured the depth of the river: somewhere it was one foot, somewhere it was three, somewhere it was only six inches. Rivers are not consistent with mathematics. He calculated on the sand, found the average: one and a half feet. He measured all his children, found the average: two feet. He said, "Don't worry, let them go. The river is one and a half feet, the children are two feet." Perfect as far as mathematics goes, but neither children nor the river, nobody bothers about mathematics.

The wife was a little afraid, because women are never mathematical. And it is good that they are not because they give a balance - otherwise, the man will go mad. She was a little apprehensive. She said, "I don't understand your law of averages, but to me, it seems that few children are very small and the river seems to be deep." He said, "You don't worry. I have proved the law of average to great mathematicians. Who are you to create a suspicion about it, a doubt? You just see how it works."

The mathematician walked ahead. The woman, afraid, walked at the back so she can look what happens to the children because she was worried about... And few children, small ones, started going underwater. She cried, "Look! The child is drowning!" But the mathematician ran to the sand on the other bank; he said, "Then there must have been something wrong in my calculation." Not to the child who was drowning... she ran to the other bank: "Don't be mathematical with me! I am not a mathematician and I don't believe in any law of averages."

Each individual is individual, and there exists no average man. And I am talking to many, and through you, to millions. I can do two things: either I can find an average principle, then I will be always consistent, I will always talk about two feet. But I see few are seven feet, few are only four feet, and I have to manage many types of shoes and many types of techniques. You simply look for your own feet; find the shoe and forget about the whole shop. Only then you will be able to understand someday the consistency that exists within me. Otherwise, I am the most inconsistent man on the earth.

The last question:

Yes; once I said that if it is needed I will come back. But now I say it is impossible. So please speed up a little. Don't wait for my coming again. I am here only for a little while more. If you are really sincere then speed up, don't postpone. Once I said... I said to people who were not ready at that moment. I am always responding; I said it to people who were not ready. If I had said to them that I am not coming, they would have simply dropped the whole project. They would have thought, "Then it is not feasible." They cannot do in one life and I am not coming next, so it is better not to begin. It is too big a thing to attain in one life. But now, to you I say I am not coming any more, because that is not possible - hoping that you are now ready to understand it and speed up.

You have already started the journey; you are just... Any moment, if you speed up, you can reach to the ultimate. Any moment it is possible. Now postponement will be dangerous. Thinking that I will come again, your mind can relax and postpone. Now I say I am not coming.

I will tell you one story: once it happened Mulla Nasrudin was telling to his son that "I had gone for a hunt in the forest and ten lions, not only one, suddenly jumped on me." The boy said, "Wait papa. Last year you said five lions, and this year you say ten lions." Mulla Nasrudin said, "Yes, last year you were not mature enough, and you would have got very much afraid - ten lions. Now I tell you the truth. You have grown up and this is what I say to you."

At first I said to you that I will be coming - you were not grown up enough. But now you have grown up a little, and I can say you the truth. Many times I have to say lies because of you, because you will not understand the truth. The more you grow, the more I can drop lies and the more I can be true. When you have really grown up, then I will tell you simply the truth: then there is no need. If you are not grown up, then the truth will be destructive.

You need lies just like children need toys. Toys are lies. You need lies if you are not grown up. And if there is compassion, then the person who has deep compassion is not bothered about whether he says a lie or a truth. His whole being is to help you, to be beneficial, to be a benediction to you. All the Buddhas have lied; they have to, because they are so compassionate. And no Buddha can say the absolute truth, because to whom he will say? Only to another Buddha it can be said, but another Buddha will not need it.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 3 138 Osho