You are already that....

The first question:

THE EGO is you. You cannot move towards surrender; in fact you are the barrier, so whatsoever you do will be wrong. You cannot do anything about it.

You simply, without doing anything, have to be aware. This is an inner mechanism: whatsoever you do is done by the ego, and whenever you don't do anything and remain just a witness, the non ego part of you starts functioning.

The witness is the non-ego within you and the doer is the ego. The ego cannot exist without doing anything. Even if you do something to surrender, it will strengthen the ego and your surrender will become again a very subtle egoistic standpoint. You will say, 'I have surrendered.' You will claim surrender, and if somebody says that it is not true, you will feel angry, hurt. The ego is now there trying to surrender. The ego can do anything; the only thing that the ego cannot do is non doing, witnessing.

So just sit silently, watch the doer, and don't try in any way to manipulate it. The moment you start manipulating, the ego has come back. Nothing can be done about it; one has just to be a witness to the misery that ego creates, of the false pleasures and gratifications that ego promises. Doings in this world and doings in the other world; the spiritual world, the Divine, the material, whatsoever the realm, the doer will re main the ego. You are not supposed to do anything and if you start doing something you will miss the whole point. Just be there, watch, understand, and don't do. Don't ask, 'How to drop the ego?' Who will drop it?

Who will drop whom? When you don't do anything, suddenly the witnessing part is separate from the doer; a gap arises. The doer goes on doing and the seer goes on seeing. Suddenly, you are filled with a new light, a new benediction: you are not the ego, you have never been the ego; how foolish that you ever believed in it.

There are people who are trying to fulfill their egos; they are wrong. There are people who are trying to drop their egos; they are wrong. Because when the witness arises you simply see the whole game. There is nothing to be fulfilled and nothing to be dropped. The ego is not of any substance. It is made of the

same stuff that dreams are made of. It is just an idea, an air bubble -- just hot air within you and nothing else. You need not drop it, because in the very dropping or in asking how to drop it, you believe in it, you are still clinging to it.

It happened that a Zen Master awoke one morning and he told his disciple, 'I had a dream in the night. Will you please interpret it for me?' The disciple said, 'You wait, I will bring some cold water so you can wash your face.' He went away to fetch water and returned. The Master washed his face. By that time, another disciple passed nearby and the Master called him and said, 'Listen, I had a dream last night. Will you please interpret it for me?' The disciple looked, and seeing that the Master had washed his face he said, 'Wait, better that I fetch a cup of tea for you.' He brought a cup of tea. The Master sipped the tea, laughed and blessed both of the disciples. He said, 'You did well. If you had interpreted my dream, I would have thrown you out of the ashram, because when a dream is finished and one comes to know that it was a dream, what is the meaning of interpretation?' Even to interpret it shows that you are still in it. You still think that it is substantial.

That's why in the East we have never bothered about interpreting dreams. Not that we did not come upon the reality of it. Four or five thousand years before Freud, the East stumbled upon the reality of dreams, the phenomenon. We were the first to divide consciousness into three realms: the waking, the dreaming, and deep sleep. But we never bothered to interpret, because a dream is a dream; it is not substantial. One has to just awake out of it, that's all. And if you are already awake it is better to wash your face. Cold water will help more than the whole psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud. If you are awake, then a cup of tea is better than all of the Jungs put together. Be finished with it.

In the first place, dream is false, and then you start interpreting the dream. By your very interpretation it goes on taking on a new reality for you; it again becomes substantial. Not only is this so with the dream, it is so with your whole life. Your whole life is like a dream; it needs no interpretation. To know this much is enough: that it is a dream. You have to come out of it.

And how do you come out of a dream in the morning? Have you ever observed?

If you have observed, you will know how to come out of the ego. How do you come out of a dream in the morning, or out of sleep? How do you come out? You were fast asleep a second before, and then, suddenly, you hear the noises of the birds, the milkman is knocking on the door, the servant woman has come and started cleaning the floor: the morning noises.What is happening? -- you are becoming more aware. Just a moment before, you were deep in sleep with no awareness; then suddenly, the birds, the milkman, the servant, the wife talking to the children, the children resisting, not ready to get up. By and by, things are arising into consciousness; you are becoming alert. You may still doze a little: you may change sides, close your eyes, doze a little, but even in your half-sleep, half-wakefulness, you go on listening to things. You become aware and sleep is no longer there. The more aware you become, the more the dreams disappear.

The same is to be done while awake: listen more, feel more, be more alert in whatsoever you do. If you are taking a bath, then feel the touch of the water running over you, feel it as much as you can. The very feeling, the awareness, will bring you out of the ego; you will become a witness. If you are eating, then eat; but taste more, be more sensitive, be more in your eating and don't allow your mind to go here and there. Remain there fully alert, and by and by you will see that something is arising out of the sea of sleep; you are becoming more alert, aware.

In your awareness there is no dreaming, no ego. That's the only way. It is not a part of doing something, it is part of being aware; and the distinction must be remembered. You cannot do awareness, it is not an action. You can be aware, it is part of your being. So feel more, smell more, listen more, touch more, be more and more sensitive... and suddenly, something arises out of the sleep, and there is no ego; you are surrendered.

Nobody ever surrenders; one suddenly finds one moment that one is surrendered, surrendered to God, surrendered to the total. When you are not, you are surrendered. When you are, how can you be surrendered? You cannot surrender -- u are the barrier, you are the very stuff that the barrier is made of. So don't ask me, 'How do I surrender?' This is the ego asking. When I talk about egolessness or surrender, your ego starts feeling greedy for it. You think, 'How come I have not achieved this state up to now? I?. -- and have not achieved such a state up to now? I will have to achieve! This surrender cannot escape me. I will have to fetch it somewhere, somehow; it has to be got, it has to be purchased.'

The ego is feeling greedy for it and now the ego asks, 'How to do it?' The ego is the greatest technician in the world. The ego lives on know how. The ego is the very base of all technology. In the East technology could not develop because people became more and more alert to the ego, and the very root was cut. They lived surrendered lives.

How can you be a technician, a technologist, if you live a surrendered life? Then you leave everything to life and you float. Then you don't bother about what to do and how to do it. The West has become very, very expert in technology. The reason is that the West has been trying to protect, feed the ego, and the ego is the base inside: the whole structure of technology is based on the ego. If ego drops, the whole structure of technology drops. The world becomes again natural, not man made.

Then it is the creation of God. And God has not finished the creation yet, as Christians think. They think that He finished it within a week, in fact, within six days, and on the seventh day He rested.

God has not finished creation. Creation is a continuum; it continues. k is not ever going to be finished. At every moment God is creating. In fact, to say that God is creating is wrong -- God is creativity, creativity and continuum; an eternal creativity. But man, as the ego, stands against God. Then man starts trying to conquer nature. He starts trying to rape nature. The whole of technology is rape.

Surrendered, you are in love; with technology you are in rape. You are trying to rape the whole of nature, and the base is the ego.

Don't ask, 'How?' Just try to understand me, just try to see the point. Not much intelligence is needed. Everybody has enough intelligence to see the point. Just see the point and try to live with that vision, that understanding, that perception, that's all. Just watch the ways of the ego, and you be the watcher, never be the doer. The distance between the watcher and the doer is not very far if you are not alert. Just by your side is the doer. You slip from the watcher into the doer, and you are the ego; you slip out of the doer and into the watcher, and you are surrendered, you are no longer the ego.

The second question:

Nobody is ordinary. Who told you that you are ordinary.? From where have you got the notion that you are ordinary? Everybody is extraordinary! This is how it should be. God never created ordinary persons. How can God create ordinary persons? Everybody is special, extraordinary. But remember not to feed your ego with it. k is not on your part that you are extraordinary, it is on the part of God.

You come out of the total, you remain rooted in the total, you dissolve back into the total -- and the total is extraordinary, incomparable. You are also incomparable, but all the religions, the so-called religions, have tried to make you feel ordinary. This is a trick to provoke your ego. Try to understand this: the moment somebody says that you are ordinary, he creates a desire in you to become extraordinary, because you start feeling inferior.

Just the other day a man was here and he asked me, 'What is the purpose of life?

Unless there is a special purpose for me, how can I live? If there is a special purpose, then life is significant. If there is no special purpose, then life is meaningless.' He was asking, 'For what special purpose has God created me?

What have I been sent into the world to do?' This is the ego asking. He feels ordinary; nothing special.'Then how can one live?' You have to be peaks of egos, only then does life seem significant. Life is significant, and there is no purpose in it! It is a purposeless significance, like a song, or a dance -- like a flower; for no purpose at all it is flowering, for nobody special it is flowering. Even if nobody passes by the road, the flower will flower, the fragrance will be spread into the winds. Even if nobody ever comes to smell it, it is irrelevant. The very flower ing is the significance, not any purpose.

But you have been taught that you are ordinary.'Become great poets, become great painters, become great leaders of men, great politicians, become great

saints.' As you are, all the religions condemn you, 'You are nothing, a worm on the earth. Become something! Prove that you are something be fore God' -- as if to prove your mettle. But I tell you that this is absolutely absurd. These religions have been talking irreligion. There is no need for you to prove anything. The very phenomenon that God has produced you is enough; you are accepted. God has mothered you, it is enough. What more can you prove? You need not be great painters, you need not be great leaders, you need not be great saints. There is no need to be great, because you are already great. This is my emphasis: you are already that which you ought to be. You may not have realized it, that I know. You may not have encountered your own reality, that I know. You may not have looked within yourself and seen the emperor within, that I know. You may be thinking that you are a beggar and trying to be an emperor. But as I see you, you are already the emperor.

There is no need to postpone celebration. Immediately, right this moment you can celebrate. Nothing else is needed. To celebrate, life is needed and life you have. To celebrate, being is needed and being you have. To celebrate, trees and birds and stars are needed, and they are there. What else do you need? If you are crowned and caged in a golden pa1ace, then will you celebrate? In fact, then it will become more impossible. Have you ever seen an emperor laughing and dancing and singing in the street? No, he is caged, imprisoned: manners, etiquette....

Somewhere, Bertrand Russell has written that when for the first time he visited a primitive community of aboriginals living deep in some hills, he felt jealous, very, very jealous. He felt that the way they danced... it was as if everybody were an emperor. They had no crowns, but they had made crowns with leaves and with flowers. Every woman was a queen. They didn't have kohinoors, but whatsoever they had was too much, was enough. They danced the whole night and then they fell asleep, there on the dancing-ground. By the morning they were again back to work. They worked the whole day, and again by the evening they were ready to celebrate, to dance. Russell says, 'That day, I felt really jealous. I cannot do this.'

Something has gone wrong. Something frustrates within you; you cannot dance, you cannot sing, something withholds. You live a crippled life. It has never been meant for you to be crippled, but you live a crippled life, you live a paralyzed life. And you go on thinking that being ordinary, how can you celebrate? There is nothing special in you. But who told you that to celebrate something special is needed? In fact, the more you are after the special, the more and more it will become difficult for you to dance.

Be ordinary. Nothing is wrong with ordinariness, because in your very ordinariness you are extraordinary. Don't bother about the conditions to decide when you will celebrate. If you bother about fulfilling certain conditions, do you think that then you will celebrate? You will never celebrate, you will die a beggar. Why not right now? What are you lacking? This is my observation: if you

can start right now, suddenly the energy is flowing. And the more you dance, the more it is flowing, the more capable you become. The ego needs conditions to be fulfilled, not life. Birds can sing and dance, ordinary birds. Have you ever seen any extraordinary birds singing and dancing? Do they ask that they first have to be a Ravi Shankar or a Yehudi Menuhin? Do they ask that first they have to be great singers and go to colleges of music to learn, and then they will sing? They simply dance and simply sing; no training is needed.

Man is born with the capacity to celebrate. When even birds can celebrate, why not you? But you create unnecessary barriers, you create a hurdle race. There are no barriers. You put them there and then you say, 'Unless we cross them and jump them, how can we dance?' You stand against yourself, you stand divided against yourself, you are an enemy to your self. All the preachers in the world go on saying that you are ordinary, so how can you dare to celebrate? You have to wait. First be a Buddha, first be a Jesus, a Mohammed, and then you can.

But just the opposite is the case: if you can dance, you are already the Buddha; if you can celebrate, you are already the Mohammed; if you can be blissful, you are Jesus. The contrary is not true; the contrary is a false logic. It says: first be a Buddha, then you can celebrate. But how will you be a Buddha without celebrating? I say to you, 'Celebrate, forget all Buddhas!' In your very celebration you will find that you have yourself become a Buddha. Zen mystics go on saying, 'Buddha is a barrier; forget about him.' Bodhidharma used to say to his disciples, 'Whenever you say the name of Buddha, immediately wash your mouth. It is dirty, the very word is dirty.' And Bodhidharma was a disciple of Buddha. He was right because he knew that you can create idols, ideals, out of the very word 'buddha'. And you will then wait for lives and lives to become a Buddha first, and then you will celebrate. That is not ever going to happen.

One Zen monk, Lin Chi, used to say to his disciples, 'When you move into meditation, always remember that if you meet Buddha on the way, immediately cut him in two! Don't allow him a single moment, otherwise he will take hold of you and he will become the barrier.' A disciple asked, 'But when I am meditating and Buddha comes' -- and Buddha comes to Buddhists, as Jesus comes to Christians; not the real Buddha, he is nowhere to be found -- 'how am I to cut him? From where will I get the sword?' The Master said, 'From where you got your Buddha -- imagination -- get the sword from the same place, cut the Buddha in two and move ahead.'

Remember this, that the teachings of the awakened ones, all the awakened ones and all of their teachings, can be summarized into a simple sentence, and that sentence is: you are already that which you can be. You may take many lives to realize it; that is for you to determine. But if you are alert, not even a single moment is to be lost. 'Thou art that,' tattwarnasi swetketu, you are already that, there is no need to become. Becoming, the very effort to become some thing, is illusory. You are, you are not to become. But preachers tell you that you are ordinary and they create a desire in you to become extraordinary. They make

you feel inferior and create a desire to become superior. They create an inferiority complex and then you are in their grip. Then they teach you how to become superior. First they condemn you, create a guilt within you, and then they show you the path to be virtuous.

You will really be in difficulty with me because your mind would like the same, because that gives you time. And I don't give you time. I say that you are already that. Everything is ready. Start the feast, celebrate it! Your mind says, 'But I have to get ready, a little time is needed.' That's why, in this postponement, preachers come in. Through this gap they enter into your being and destroy you. They say, 'Yes, time is needed. How can you celebrate right now? Prepare, train yourself.

Many things have to be discarded, many things have to be improved. You need a long training and discipline. It may take many lives with much long training and discipline. k may take many lives, and only then will you be able to celebrate.

How can you celebrate right now?' They appeal to you because then you can relax and you can say, 'Okay, so if it is a question of a long time, right now is not the problem. We can go on doing whatsoever we are doing.' Some day in the future, a golden tomorrow, a rainbow-like thing.... When it is achieved, you will dance.

Meanwhile you can be miserable; meanwhile you can allow yourself to be miserable; meanwhile you can enjoy self-torture -- it is up to you. If you decide for misery, no need to create so much philosophy around it. You can simply say, 'I enjoy misery.' It is really surprising that nobody ever asks, 'How can I be miserable right now? A discipline is needed, training is needed. I will go to Patanjalis, and ask great Masters, and then I will learn how to be miserable.'

It seems that to be miserable needs no training; you are born to be miserable. But then why does bliss need training? Both are two aspects of the same coin. If you can be miserable without training, you can be blissful without training. Be natural, loose, and just feel things. And don't wait -- start! Even if you feel that you don't know the right steps, start dancing.

I am not saying that dancing is going to be your art. For art, training may be needed. I am simply saying that dancing is just an attitude. Even not knowing the right steps, you can dance. And if you can dance, who bothers about the right steps! -- dancing in itself is enough. It is an overflowing of your energy. If it becomes an art by itself, it's okay; if it doesn't become, it's okay. In itself it is enough, more than enough. Nothing else is needed.

So don't say to me, 'You are at the peak of consciousness.' Where are you? Where do you think you are.? Your valley is in your dreams. Your darkness is because you remain with closed eyes; otherwise you are there where I am. It is not that you are in the valley and I am at the peak. I am at the peak, and you are also at the peak, but you dream about the valley. I live in Poona, you also live in Poona.

But when you fall asleep, you start dreaming about London and New York and Calcutta, and you visit thousands of places. I don't go any where; in my sleep also, I am in Poona. But you go wandering. You are at the same peak where I am,

it is just that you remain with closed eyes. You say, tIt is too dark.' t talk about light and you say, 'You must be somewhere else on a high peak. We are ordinary people living in darkness.' But I can see that you are sitting on the same peak with closed eyes. You have to be beaten out of your sleep, shocked. And then you will see that the valley never existed. Darkness was not there; only your eyes were closed.

Zen Masters do well. They carry a staff and they beat their disciples. And it has happened many times that when a staff is descending on the head of a disciple, suddenly he opens his eyes and starts laughing. He had never known that he was on the same peak. It was a dream that he was seeing.

Be alert. And if you want to be alert, celebration will be very, very helpful. When I say celebrate what do I mean? I mean that whatsoever you do, don't do it as a duty, do it from your love; don't do it as a burden, do it as a celebration. You can eat as if it is a duty: long-faced, dull, dead, insensitive. You can throw food inside yourself without ever tasting, without ever feeling for it. It is life; you live through it. Don't be so insensitive to it. Indians have said, 'anam brahman,' food is Brahman. This is celebration: you are eating brahman, you are eating God through food, because only God exists. When you are taking a shower, it is God showering because only God exists. When you go for a morning walk, it is God on a morning walk. And the breeze is also God, and the trees are also God -- everything is so Divine. How can you be a long-face, dead and dull, moving in life as if you are carrying a burden?

When I say celebrate, I mean become more and more sensitive to everything. In life, dance should not be apart. The whole life should become a dance; it should be a dance. You can go for a walk and dance.

Allow life to enter into you, become more open and vulnerable, feel more, sense more. Small things filled with such wonders are lying all around. Watch a small child. Leave him in the garden and just watch. That should be your way also; so wonderful, wonder-filled: running to catch this butterfly, running to catch that flower, playing with mud, rolling in the sand. From everywhere the Divine is touching the child.

If you can live in wonder you will be capable of celebration. Don't live in knowledge, live in wonder. You don't know any thing. Life is surprising; everywhere, it is a continuous surprise. Live it as a surprise, an unpredictable phenomenon: every moment is new. Just try, give it a try! You will not lose anything if you give it a try, and you may gain everything. But you have become addicted to misery. You cling to your misery as if it is something very precious.

Look at your own clinging.

As I told you, there are two types of persons: sadists and masochists. Sadists go on torturing others, masochists go on torturing themselves. There is a question that somebody has asked, 'Why, why are people like that, either torturing others or torturing themselves? Why is there so much aggression and violence in life?'

It is a negative state. You torture because you cannot enjoy. You torture, become violent, because you cannot love. You become cruel because you don't know how to become compassionate. It is a negative state. The same energy that is cruelty will become compassion.With an unalert mind the energy becomes violence; with an alert mind the same energy becomes compassion. In sleep the same energy becomes torture, either of yourself or of somebody else. When you are awake, the same energy becomes love, for yourself and for others also. Life gives you an opportunity, but there are thousands of causes for something to go wrong.

Have you ever observed that if somebody is in misery, you show sympathy, you feel much love? It is not the right kind of love, but you show sympathy. If somebody is happy, celebrating, blissful, you feel jealous, you feel bad. It is very difficult to sympathize with a happy man. It is very difficult to feel good for a happy man; you feel good when somebody is unhappy. At least you can think that you are not so unhappy and you have an upper hand; you show sympathy.

A child is born and the child starts learning things. Sooner or later he discovers that whenever he is unhappy, he attracts the attention of the whole family. He becomes the center and everybody feels sympathy for him, everybody feels love for him. Whenever he is happy and healthy and everything is good, nobody bothers about him. On the contrary, everybody seems to be cross. A child may be jumping and dancing, and the whole family is cross; the child may be lying in bed ill with fever, and the whole family is sympathetic. The child starts learning that somehow to be ill, to be miserable, is good; to be happy and dancing and jumping and to be alive is bad. He is learning and this is how you have learned.

To me, when a child is happy, jumping, the whole family should be happy and jumping with the child. And when a child is ill, care should be taken of the child but no sympathy should be shown. Care is okay; sympathy, no. No-love, indifference, will look very hard on the surface: the child is m and you are indifferent. Take care, give medicine, but be indifferent, because a very subtle phenomenon is going on. If you feel sympathy and compassion and love, and you show it to the child, you are destroying the child forever. Now he will cling to misery, misery becomes valuable. And whenever he jumps and dances and screams all around in happiness and runs all over the house, everybody is cross.

At that moment, celebrate, be with him, and the whole world will be different.

But up until now society has existed on the wrong lines, and those lines go on persisting. That's why you cling to misery. You ask me, 'How is it possible for ordinary beings like us to celebrate right now, here and now?' No, it is not possible. Nobody has ever allowed you to celebrate. Your parents persist in your mind. Up until the very moment of your death your father and mother follow you. Continuously they are after you, even though they be dead. Parents can be very, very destructive; up until now they have been. I am not saying that your parents are responsible, because that is not the question: their parents did the same to them. The whole structure is wrong, psychologically wrong; there are

reasons for them also. That's why such a wrong thing goes on and on and cannot be stopped. It seems to be impossible.

Of course, there are reasons for it. A father has his own reasons: he may be reading his newspaper and the chi1d jumps and screams and laughs, but a father should be more under standing. A newspaper is worthless. Even if you can read it silently, what are you going to get out of it? Throw the news paper! But the father is in politics, in business, and he has to know about what is going on. He is ambitious and the newspaper is part of his ambition. If one has to achieve some ambitions, seek some goals, one has to know the world. The child seems to be a disturbance.

The mother is cooking food and the child goes on asking questions and goes on jumping, and she becomes cross. I know that there are problems; the mother has to cook food. But the child should be the first preference, because a child is going to be the whole world, a child is going to be the to morrow, a child is going to be the coming humanity. He should be the first, the priority should be his.

Newspapers can be read later on, and even if not read, you are not going to miss much. It is the same nonsense every day: places change, names change, but the same nonsense continues. Your newspapers are just mad. The food can be delayed a little, but the curiosity of the child should not be delayed, should not be postponed, because right now he was in a mood and the mood may not come again. Right now he is hot and something is possible. But do you see mothers dancing with their children, jumping, enjoying rolling on the floor? -- no.

Mothers are serious beings, fathers are very serious; they carry the whole world on their shoulders. And the child lives in a totally different world. You are forcing him to enter into your sad, miserable attitude to life. He could have grown as a child, he could have kept the quality, the quality of wonder, surprise, and the quality to be here and now, in the moment.

This I call the real revolution. No other revolution is going to help man: French, Russian or Chinese, no revolution is going to help man; they have not helped.

Basically the same pattern between the parent and the child continues, and there is the cause. You can create a communist world, but it will not be much different from the capitalist world. The labels will be different only on the surface. You can create a socialist world, you can create a Gandhian world, but it will not be different because the basic revolution is between the mother, the father, and the child. Somewhere within the parents and the child is the link; and if that link is not changed, the world will go on moving in the same rut.

When I say this I don't mean that I am giving you an excuse to be miserable. I am simply giving you the explanation so that you can become aware. So don't try to say in your mind, 'Now what can be done? I am already forty or fifty or sixty, my parents are dead and even if they were alive, I cannot undo the past. It has happened, so I have to live as I am.' No, if you understand the thing, you can simply drop out of it. There is no need to cling to it.

You can become a child again. Jesus is right when he says, 'Only those who are like small children will be able to enter the Kingdom of my God' -- absolutely right! Only those who are like small children....

This is the revolution: to make everybody like a small child. The body may grow but the quality of consciousness should remain innocent, virgin, like a child.

You are already where you need to be, you are already in that space which you are seeking. Just make a little effort to come out of your clinging to misery. Don't invest in misery; invest in celebration. You take one step towards life and life takes one thousand towards you. Just take one step out of your clinging to misery. The mind will go on pulling you backwards. Just be indifferent to the mind and tell the mind, 'Wait, I have lived enough with you, now let me live without mind.' That's what a child is: living without mind, or, living with no mind.

The third question:

Negative and positive moods will both develop. If you want to be very, very happy, side by side the capacity to be very, very unhappy will develop. If you want that the negative should not develop, then you have to cut the positive also.

This is what has happened. You have been taught not to be angry, but if you are not capable of being angry, compassion will suffer. Then you will not be able to be compassionate. You have been taught not to hate, but love will suffer, you will not be able to love -- and this is the dilemma.

Love and hate grow together. In fact, they are not two things. Language gives you the wrong impression. We should not use the words 'love' and 'hate', we should use lovehate; it is one word. There should not even be a hyphen between them -- lovehate -- not even a hyphen. Because that too will show that they are two, but bridged somehow. They are one! Light darkness, they are one; lifedeath, they are one. This has been the whole problem for the human mind. What to do?

-- because if love grows, the capacity to hate also grows.

So there are only two possibilities: either allow the hate to grow with love, or, kill love along with hate. And hitherto, the second alternative has been chosen. All the religions have chosen the second alternative: hate has to be cut -- even at the cost of love, hate has to be cut, anger has to be cut. So they all go on preaching love and they all go on saying, 'Don't hate.' Their love becomes phoney; it is just talk. Christians go on talking about love -- it is the phoniest thing in the world.

It is how life is: the opposites are together there. Life cannot exist with one pole, it needs two poles together: the negative and the positive electric poles, the man and the woman. Can you conceive of a world with only man? It would be a dead

world. Man and woman, they are the two poles, they exist together. In fact, to say man and woman is not good; say 'manwoman' with no hyphen between them. They exist together.

Nothing is wrong in hate if it is part of love. This is my teaching. Nothing is wrong in anger if it is part of compassion -- it is beautiful. Wouldn't you like Buddha to be angry with you? It would be something like a blessing, a benediction; Buddha angry with you! In the greater whole of compassion, anger also becomes beautiful; it is absorbed.

Grow in love and let hate also grow; let it be part of your love. I tell you not to put love against hate, no. I tell you to love with hate, and there will be a transfiguration, a transformation of the energy. Your hate will be so beautiful; it will have the same quality as love. Sometimes one has to be angry. And if you are really in compassion, you use anger for your compassion.

Always remember that the polarity is there -- how to give it a harmony? The old way was to cut them apart: drop hate and try to be loving without hate. Then love becomes phoney because the energy is not there. And you are so afraid of love because the hate will grow immediately. Afraid of hate growing, love is also suppressed. Then you talk about love but you don't really love. Then your love becomes just a talk, a verbal thing, not alive and existential.

I am not saying to go and hate. I am saying to love, grow in love, and of course hate will grow with it. Don't be worried about it. You go on growing in love and the hate will be absorbed by love. Love is so great that it can absorb hate. Com.

passion is so big, vast, that a little bit of anger can be absorbed by it. It is good.

Really, compassion without anger will be like food without salt. It will not have the salt, the energy in it. It will be tasteless, stale.

Of course, the negative will always grow with the positive. For example, if there exists a society which says, 'The left side of your body is wrong, so don't allow it to grow; only the right side of the body is right, so let the right side of the body grow and the left side of the body has to be suppressed, cut completely,' what will happen? Either you will become a cripple, because if you don't allow the left, the right will not grow, they grow together; either you will become a pigmy, as many human beings have become pigmies, or you will become a hypocrite. You will hide your left side and you will say that you only have the right side. And you will always hide the left side somewhere. You will be a hypocrite -- false, inauthentic, a lie, a living lie -- as religious people are.

Out of one hundred, ninety nine so-called religious people are liars, absolute liars, because whatsoever they are saying is absurd, cannot be true. They say that they love, and they say that they don't hate. It is impossible! It is against the very mathematics of existence! They must be liars. There is no need to probe into their individual cases; it is against the grain, it is not possible. Ninety nine per cent are hypocrites and the one per cent are simple people. These ninety nine per cent are clever, intelligent people. They hide the left side; they grow in both sides but simply hide the left side and talk about the right. They show the right to the

world and the left i9 their private world. They have back doors to their houses.

At the front door they are one thing, at the back door some. thing else. The one per cent who are innocent people, simple, not very articulate or intelligent, not cunning, remain pigmies. They really suppress, and when they suppress the left, the right is suppressed. They remain pigmies.

I have come across two types of religious people: ninety-nine per cent hypocrites, one per cent pigmies. But the whole lot is useless, the whole lot is a burden, the whole lot is a foolishness. I would not like you to become like that, I would not like you to become a pigmy. You have to grow to your total height. But that is possible only if negative and positive both are allowed freedom. Both are your wings. How can a bird fly with one wing? How can you walk with one leg? The same exists on every layer of life: two are needed. In opposition, they give the tension and the possibility of movement. They appear to be against each other, but they are complementary. They are not, in fact, opposites; only the poles are opposites. They help each other to grow. I would like you to grow to your ultimate height, and I would not like you to be hypocrites either. Be true.

Then what is my message to you? My message is: love is great, so great that you need not bother about hate. Let hate be a part in it, let it grow -- it will add salt to your taste. Com. passion is vast; a little bit of the sky can be given to anger -- there is no harm. But anger should be part of compassion. Anger should not be apart, it should be part of compassion. Hate should be part of love, and death should be part of life, pain part of pleasure, misery part of celebration, of blessing, darkness part of light. And then nothing is wrong; there is no sin. Sin should be part of virtue.

Be great! Rise to your ultimate height; don't remain pigmies. If you remain pigmies you will always be complaining against God, because how can you feel fulfilled? Rise to your height and don't be afraid. The negative will rise with you; it is beautiful. The negative is part, complementary, but the negative should be part of the positive. It has to be because it is negative. A negative cannot become the whole, and the positive cannot become a part of the negative. This has to be understood.

How can life become a part of death? Death is just an absence. How can light become a part of darkness? Darkness is nothing but the absence of light; but darkness can be absorbed into light.

Look outside -- the sun has risen. So much light is showering under the trees, small parts, fragments of shadow; nothing is wrong. A weary traveller comes and sits under a tree and is sheltered. It is hot outside, and under the tree it is cool. That shadow under the tree is a part.

Let everything negative be part of the positive. And the contrary is not possible because the positive exists, the negative is just an absence.

This is possible. I tell you this is possible because this has happened to me. That's why it is very difficult to understand me. You would like me to be one pole and I am both. But this has happened to me; this can happen to you. And this is what

has always been happening to people who have moved in the right dimension and who have accepted all. I have not denied anything because from the very beginning this became my deepest observation: if you deny something, you will never be whole. How can you be whole if you deny something.? That something will always be missing. This became a deep observation with me, that nothing is to be denied and every thing is to be absorbed.

Life has to become not a single note, but a harmony. A single note, howsoever beautiful, is boring. A group of many notes, many even divergent, diametrically opposite notes, when they meet in a harmony, create a beauty. The beauty is neither in the positive nor in the negative; the beauty is in the harmony. Let me repeat it: the beauty is neither in truth nor lie, the beauty is neither in compassion nor anger; the beauty is in the unity. Where opposites meet, there is the temple of the Divine. Where contradictions meet, that is the pinnacle, the crescendo of life.

The last question:

Then indulge! Then be sensual! Why are you so afraid of life? Why do you want to commit suicide? What is wrong with indulgence and what is wrong with being sensual? You have been taught so, and this is what I am saying. Then you become afraid of being sensitive because if you are sensitive, then everything will grow with sensitivity. Sensuality will grow -- it is beautiful, nothing is wrong with being sensual. An alive man will be sensual. What is the difference between a dead man and an alive man? The dead man is no longer sensual; you touch and he doesn't feel, you kiss and he doesn't respond.

I have heard one anecdote about Picasso. A lady was appreciating Picasso's pictures and she said, 'Yesterday I went to a friend's house and there I saw your self portrait. And I loved it so much, and I was so impressed, that I kissed the portrait.' Picasso looked at the lady and said, 'And did the portrait reply? Did the picture kiss you in response?' The lady said, 'How foolish, how can the picture respond?' Then Picasso said, 'Then that was not me. A dead thing; how could it be me?' If you are alive, your senses will function to their total capacity; you will be sensual. You need food and you will taste; you will have a bath and you will feel the coolness of the water; you will move in the garden and you will smell the fragrance -- you will be sensual. A woman will pass and a breeze will pass within you. It has to be so -- you are alive! A beautiful woman passes and nothing happens in you.? _ you are dead, you have killed yourself.

Sensuality is part of being sensitive. Because of the fear of sensuality all the religions are afraid of sensitivity, and sensitivity is awareness. So they go on talking of being aware, but they cannot allow you to be sensitive, so you cannot be aware. k becomes just talk. And they cannot allow you indulgence. In fact, they have coined the word 'indulgence'. It has a condemnatory note in it. The moment you say 'indulgence', you have already condemned.

This is the dilemma: religious people condemn indulgence, and they create indulgence. They condemn sensuality and they create sensuality. How does it happen? When you go on suppressing your senses, the very suppression creates indulgence. Otherwise, a really alive man is never indulgent. He enjoys, but he is never indulgent. A man who has been eating well every day cannot indulge in food. But go on a fast, then indulgence comes. A man who has been fasting goes on think ing about food, food, food. Food becomes the obsession. He eats for twenty four hours. Then, when he comes to break the fast, he indulges to the very other extreme. On one extreme he fasted, on the other extreme he wilt eat too much.

Just two days ago a sannyasin came from England and he told me that he loves fasting. He eats very little and that too on alternate days. I said to him, 'Fasting can become a dangerous thing. Sometimes it can be used, but as a medicine, not as a way of life. Fasting can never become a way of life.' I talked to him and I talked him out of his fasting obsession. For three days he was not seen at all. I waited, 'Where has he gone, what has happened?' After three days he came and he said, 'I was ill. You talked about fasting and you said that it is not good; so I indulged in food. I ate too much.'

This always happens: from fasting you move to too much of an extreme. Just in the middle somewhere, is the right thing. Buddha again and again used the word 'right' with everything: right-food, right-memory, right-knowledge, right effort.

Whatsoever he said, he always joined the word 'right' to it. The disciples would ask, 'Why are you always joining this word 'right'?' He would say, 'Because you people are dangerous. Either you are on this extreme or the other.' If you fast, then indulgence will arise. If you try to be celibate, then in sex indulgence will arise. Whatsoever you force on yourself will finally force you towards indulgence.

A really sensitive man enjoys life so much that the very enjoyment cools and calms him down. He has no obsessions. He is sensual.

And if you ask me, a Buddha is more sensual than anybody else. He has to be because he is so alive. When Buddha looks at the trees, he must be seeing more colors than you can see; his eyes are more sensitive, sensual. When a Buddha eats, he must be enjoying more than you can enjoy because everything within him is functioning perfectly. You can hear, if you pass near a Buddha, the humming of a perfectly functioning mechanism, like the humming of a perfectly functioning car. Everything is going absolutely as it should go. He is sensitive, he is sensual, but there is no indulgence. How can indulgence be? -- indulgence is a

disease, indulgence is an imbalance. But to you I don't say this; I say, 'Indulge and be finished with it. Don't carry it in your head. That's worse than doing it.'

Indulge! If you want to indulge in food, indulge. Maybe through indulgence you will come to your right senses. Maybe through indulgence you will come to a ripeness, a maturity that says that it is foolish.

I remember Gurdjieff reporting that he had a liking for a certain berry type fruit.

It is found in the Caucasus, and it had always been bad for him. Whenever he would take it, his stomach would be disturbed: pains and aches and nausea and everything. But he liked the fruit so much that it was impossible not to eat it.

After a few days he would eat it, again and again. He reports, 'My father went to the market one day, took me with him and bought a large quantity of the fruit. I was very happy and surprised -- why is he buying them? He has always been against it. He had always told me never to eat it. What has happened? What a good father!' When Gurdjieff was only nine years old, his father took a stick in his hand and he said, 'You eat the whole lot. Otherwise, I will beat you to death.'

And he was a dangerous man. Tears were flowing and Gurdjieff was eating, and he had to eat the whole lot. He vomited, but his father was a very, very hard man. He vomited, and for three weeks he was ill with dysentery, vomiting and fever. Then the fruit finished. He said, 'Even now that I am sixty years of age, if I come across the fruit my whole body shakes. I cannot even look at the fruit!' The indulgence created such a deep understanding, to the very roots of the body.

I say to you, 'Go and indulge.' Nothing is wrong with indulgence. If you really indulge and don't withhold yourself, you will come out of it more mature.

Otherwise, the indulgence, the idea, will always persist -- it will haunt you, it will become a ghost. People who take the vow of celibacy are always haunted by the ghost of sex. People who try to be in any type of control are always haunted by the idea of indulgence, of breaking all bounds, disciplines and controls and running headlong into it.

Just allow life to take you wheresoever it leads you and don't be afraid. Fear is the only thing one should be afraid of, nothing else. Move! Be courageous and daring, and I tell you that, by and by, the very experience of indulgence, sensuality, will calm you down. You will become centered.

But I am for sensitivity. Even if it brings indulgence, even if it brings sensuality, it's okay. I am not afraid of indulgence and sensuality. I am afraid of only one thing: that the fear of indulgence and sensuality may kill your sensitivity. If it is killed, you have committed suicide. Sensitive, you are alive, aware; the more sensitive, the more alive and aware. And when your sensitivity becomes total, you have entered the Divine.