The alchemy of celebration

The first question:

THIS happens; this is bound to happen. And remember that one should be happy that it has happened. It is a good indication. When one starts on the inner journey everything seems to be clear, rooted; because the ego is in control and the ego has all the guidelines, the ego has all the maps, the ego is the master.

When you move a little further into the journey, the ego starts evaporating, seems to be more and more false, seems to be more and more a deception, a hallucination. One starts awakening out of the dream, then guidelines are lost.

Now the old master is no more the master, and the new master has not yet arisen. There is a confusion, a chaos. This is a good indication. Half the journey is over, but there will be an uncomfortable feeling, an uneasiness, because you feel lost, a stranger to yourself, not knowing who you are. Before, you knew who you were: your name, your form, your address, your bank balance -- everything was certain, this was you. You had an identification with the ego. Now the ego is evaporating, the old house is falling and you don't know who you are, where you are. Everything is murky, cloudy, and the old certainty is lost.

This is good because the old certainty was a false certainty. It was not a certainty, in fact. Deep behind it there was uncertainty. That's why, when the ego evaporates, you feel uncertain. Now the deeper layers of your being are revealed to you -- you feel a stranger. You were always a stranger. Only the ego deceived you into feeling that you knew who you were. The dream was too much, it looked too real. In the morning when you are coming out of a dream, suddenly, you don't know who or where you are. Have you felt this feeling some times in the morning? -- when suddenly, out of a dream you are awakened, and for moments you don't know where you are, who you are and what is happenirg?

The same happens when one comes out of the dream of the ego. Discomfort, uneasiness, uprootedness will be felt, but one should be happy about it. If you become miserable about it, you will fall back to the old state of affairs where

things were certain, where everything was mapped, charted, where you knew, where guidelines were clear.

Drop uneasiness. Even if it is there, don't be too impressed by it. Let it be there, watch, and that too will go. Soon uneasiness will disappear. It is just there because of the old habit of certainty. You don't know how to live in an uncertain universe. You don't know how to live in insecurity. The uneasiness is there because of the old security. It is just because of the old habit, a hang over. It will go. One just has to wait, watch, relax, and feel happy that something has happened. And I tell you, it is a good indication. Many have returned back from that point just to feel comfortable again, at ease, at home. They have missed.

They were just coming nearer the goal, and they turned back. Don't do that; go ahead. Uncertainty is good, nothing is wrong with it. You have only to be tuned, that's all.

You are tuned with the certain universe of the ego, the secure universe of the ego. Howsoever false on the surface, everything seems to be perfectly as it should be. You need a little tuning with the uncertain existence.

Existence is uncertain, insecure, dangerous. It is flux -- things moving, changing.

It is a strange world; get acquainted with it. Have a little courage and don't look backwards, look forward; and soon the uncertainty itself will become beautiful, the in security itself will become beautiful.

In fact, only insecurity is beautiful, because insecurity is life. Security is ugly, It is a part of death -- that's why it is secure. To live without guidelines is the only way to live. When you live with guidelines, you live a false life. Ideal guidelines, disciplines -- you force something on your life, you mold your life. You don't allow it to be, you try to make something out of it. Guide, lines are violent and all ideals are ug]y. Through them you will miss yourself. You will never attain to your being.

Becoming is not being. All becoming, and all effort to become something, will force something on you. It is a violent effort. You may become a saint, but in your saintliness there will be ugliness. I tell you, and I emphasize it: to live life without any guidelines is the only saintliness possible. Even then, you may become a sinner; but in your sinner, in your being a sinner, there will be a holiness, a saintliness.

Life is holy; you need not force anything upon it, you need not mold it, you need not give it a pattern, a discipline and an order. Life has its own order, it has its own discipline. You simply move with it, you float with it, you don't try to push the river. The river is flowing -- you become one with it and the river takes you to the ocean. This is the life of a sannyasin: a life of happening, not of doing.

Then your being reaches, by and by, above the clouds, beyond the clouds and conflicts. Suddenly, you are free. In the disorder of life you find a new order. But the quality of the order is totally different now. It is nothing imposed by you, it is intimate to life itself.

Trees also have an order, rivers, mountains, but those are not orders imposed by moralists, puritans, priests. They don't go to somebody to find the guidelines.

Order is intrinsic; it is in life itself. Once the ego is not there to manipulate, to push and pull here and there -- 'Do this and that' -- when you are completely freed from the ego, a discipline comes to you, an inner discipline. It is unmotivated. It is not seeking something, it simply happens: as you breathe, as when you feel hungry and you eat, as when you feel sleepy and you go to bed. k is an inner order, an intrinsic order. That will come when you become tuned with insecurity? when you become tuned with your strangeness, when you become tuned with your unknown being.

In Zen they have a saying, one of the most beautiful: when a person lives in the world, mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. When a person moves into meditation, now mountains are no more mountains, rivers are no more rivers.

Everything is a confusion and a chaos. But when a man has attained to satori, to samadhi, again rivers are rivers and mountains are mountains. There are three stages: in the first, you are certain with the ego, in the third you are absolutely certain with the non ego, and just in between the two, the chaos, when the certainty of the ego disappears and the certainty of life has not come yet. This is a very, very potential moment, very pregnant. If you become afraid and turn back, you will miss the possibility.

Ahead is the real certainty. That real certainty is not against uncertainty. Ahead is the real security, but that security is not against insecurity. That security is so vast that it contains insecurity within itself. It is so vast that it is not afraid of insecurity. It absorbs insecurity into itself, it contains all contradictions. So somebody can call it insecurity and somebody can call it security. In fact it is neither, or both. If you feel that you have become a stranger to yourself, celebrate it, feel grateful. Rare is this moment; enjoy it. The more you enjoy, the more you will find that the certainty is coming nearer to you, coming faster and faster towards you. If you can celebrate your strangeness, your uprootedness, your homelessness, suddenly you are at home -- the third stage has come.

The second question

The world is a market, and nothing is wrong with it being a market. Why are you so against the market? The market is beautiful! You can go to the mountains for a rest, but eventually one has to come back to the market. The market is reality.

Mountains may be holidays, but holidays are not so real as the reality of the market.

You must have seen the ten ox-herding pictures of Zen. They are beautiful. In the first picture, the bull is lost. The bull is a symbol of self, and the owner of the bull is in search. He goes into the forest; he cannot see where the bull has escaped, where the bull is hiding, but he goes on searching. In the next picture he finds the footprints of the bull. In the third picture he sees, somewhere far away, just the back of the bull; he can see the tail. In the fourth picture he can see the whole bull and he catches hold of the tail. In the fifth he has tamed the bull. In the sixth he rides on the bull toward home. This is the way the story goes. In the seventh the bull is transcended, and in the eighth the bull and the owner of the bull have both disappeared. In the ninth picture, the world starts appearing again: trees, mountains, flowers, but you cannot see the bull or the bull-owner. In the tenth picture the bull-owner is back and is standing in the market-place. Not only is he standing in the market-place, but he is carrying a bottle of alcohol.

In the olden days only eight pictures existed. The eighth picture is empty; nothing is there. That is the highest peak of meditation, where everything disappears; the seeker and the sought, everything disappears -- just emptiness.

But then a great Zen Master felt that this was incomplete. The circle was not complete: one had to come back to the world. Mountains are good, but the circle was incomplete if you remained in the mountains. One had to come to the market place. Then he added two more pictures, and I feel that he did well. Now the circle is complete. You start from the market-place and you come back to the market-place. The market is the same, but you are not the same. The world remains the same, but you are not the same. One has to come back to it.

This is how it has always happened. Mahavir left -- for twelve years he remained;n silence in the mountains, in the forest. Then, suddenly, one day he was back in the market-place. Buddha left -- for six years he remained in isolation. Then one day, suddenly he was in the market place standing and gathering people to tell them what had happened to him. Jesus went to the mountains for forty days. But how can you live in the mountains forever? -- the circle will be incomplete. Whatsoever you attain in the mountains has to be given back to the market.

The first thing is: don't be antagonistic to the market. The whole world is a market. Antagonism is not good. And what is wrong with being a box of cornflakes? Cornflakes are wonderful! They have as much possibility of Buddhahood as you.

I must tell you a few anecdotes.

One Zen Master, Lin Chi, was weighing flax. One seeker came while he was weighing flax and asked, 'I am in a hurry and I cannot wait, but I have a question to ask. What is Buddhahood?' The Master didn't even look at the seeker; he continued weighing and he said, 'One pound of flax.' It has become a code in Zen -- one pound of flax. Then why not one pound of cornflakes?

Even flax has the possibility, the potentiality of Buddhahood. Everything is holy and divine. When you condemn something, something is wrong with you.

Once, Lin Chi was sitting under a tree and a man asked, 'Is there any possibility for a dog to become a Buddha? Can a dog become a Buddha? Is a dog potentially a Buddha also?' What did Lin Chi do? -- he jumped on all fours and he barked, 'Woof, woof!' He became a dog and he said, 'Yes, nothing is wrong, nothing is wrong at all in being a dog.'

This is the attitude of a real religious man: that the whole life is divine, unconditionally. Nothing is wrong with being a box of Cornflakes on the market, so don't be afraid of telling people about me and don't be afraid of the market.

The market has always been there and will always be there. And in the market anything goes. Wrong things will also be sold; nobody can prevent that. But because of wrong things, people who have some thing right to sell in the market become afraid. They always become afraid, and they think, 'How to put such a thing on the market where everything that is wrong is going on?' But this is not helping in any way. Rather, on the contrary, you help the wrong thing to be sold.

In economics there is a law that says that false coins force real coins out of circulation. If you have a false coin and an authentic coin, the human tendency is to first try to circulate the false coin. You want to get rid of it; keep the authentic coin in your pocket and circulate the false coin in the market. That's why so many false coins are in circulation. Somebody has to bring the authentic coin to the market. And once you bring the authentic coin to the market, the very authenticity works.

Just look -- even if false things go on, why not the real thing? But people who have the real thing are always afraid of unnecessary problems. Many people I know are afraid even to tell people about me. They think, 'When the right moment comes -- then.' Who knows when it will come? They think, 'How can I say? I have not yet experienced much.' Then they think that if you talk about me it becomes like another advertisement. If you talk on the T.V. or on the radio, or you write articles in the newspaper, it looks like you are selling something. It looks cheap. But people who are selling bad and false things are not afraid of this, they are not bothered. They are not even bothered about whether any cornflakes are inside the box or not. They are simply selling beautiful boxes, but empty. They are not afraid.

This is how bad people put right people out of circulation. They are not bothered about whether something is cheap; they simply go on shouting loudly. And of course when somebody shouts loudly, people hear. When somebody shouts so loudly and with such confidence, people are caught in it.

Don't be afraid. Just by your being afraid you cannot take the wrong things off the market. The only way to put them out is to bring the right thing. And if you

have the right thing, then shout from the roof tops. Don't be bothered; shout as loudly as you can. That is the only way that things move in the world.

Jesus has said to his disciples, 'Go to the farthest corners of the earth. Convert people and cry from the house tops, so that everyone can hear. Then everybody can come to know what truth is.' Buddha has said to his disciples, 'Go, and don't be stopped for long periods in one place, because the earth is big.' The word of Buddha is, 'charaiveti, charaiveti' -- go on, go on! Many are still there to hear the word. Don't stop, don't rest -- charaiveti charaiveti! Go forward continuously, go on, because the whole earth is waiting for the message.

Don't be afraid. If you feel that you have the right Cornflakes for people, go to the market place. Don't hesitate, gather courage. Because just boxes are being sold, when you have cornflakes in the box that is the only way that those empty boxes can be put out of circulation. There is no other way. Nothing is wrong with it. The market place is just a free competition for everything. You have as much chance to win as everybody else.

These problems always bother people who have something; they always hesitate.

They hesitate because maybe if they say something, people may reject them. Who knows? And good people are always hesitant; bad people are always dogmatic, stubborn. That's why the world is won more by the bad people -- and good people are always standing outside the market, thinking, 'What to do and what not to do?' By the time they decide, the whole market is filled with false things.

In the West particularly this is so, because now in the West a man to man approach has become impossible. You have to use all the communication media.

In Buddha's time it was totally different -- Buddha would move and meet people face to face. No newspapers existed, no radio, no television. But now to meet people personally is impossible, particularly in the West, unless you use the mass media. And when you use the mass media, of course, it looks like meditation is also a commodity. You have to use the same terms, you have to use the same language, you have to persuade people in the same way as other people are persuading for other things. If you say that this meditation is the ultimate in meditations, it will look like a commercial because there are many who are saying this. They are saying about soaps that:'This is the ultimate in soaps, this is the ultimate in perfumes!' There are perfumes named 'ecstasy'. Sooner or later, someone is going to name a perfume 'satori', 'samadhi'. You have to use the same terms, the same language; there is no other way. You have to use the same methods, but nothing is wrong with that.

I have been in the mountains and I have come back to the market place. Can't you see the bottle of alcohol in my hands? I am in the market place now. You have to be bold. Go and use all the mediums that are available now. You cannot do it like a Buddha, you cannot do it like a Jesus -- those days are over. If you go on doing it like that, then it will take millions of years to spread the news. By the time the news reaches people, the thing will be already dead. So while the Cornflakes are fresh, hurry, reach the people.

The third question:

It is possible because celebration is an attitude. Even about misery you can take an attitude of celebration. For example: you are sad -- don't get identified with sadness. Become a witness and enjoy the moment of sadness, because sadness has its own beauties. You have never watched. You get so identified that you never penetrate the beauties of a sad moment. If you watch, you will be surprised at what treasures you have been missing. Look -- when you are happy you are never so deep as when you are sad. Sadness has a depth to it; happiness has shallowness about it. Go and watch happy people. The so-called happy people, the playboys and playgirls -- in clubs, in hotels you will find them, in theatres -- are always smiling and bubbling with happiness. You will always find them shallow, superficial. They don't have any depth. Happiness is like waves juSt on the surface; you live a shallow life. But sadness has a depth to it. When you are sad it is not like waves on the surface, it is like the very depth of the Pacific Ocean: miles and miles to it.

Move into the depth, watch it. Happiness is noisy; sadness has a silence to it.

Happiness may be like the day, sadness is like the night. Happiness may be like the light, sadness is like darkness. Light comes and goes; darkness remains -- it is eternal. Light happens sometimes; darkness is always there. If you move into sadness all these things will be felt. Suddenly you will become aware that sadness is there like an object, you are watching and witnessing, and suddenly you start feeling happy. Such a beautiful sadness! -- a flower of darkness, a flower of eternal depth. Like an abyss without any bottom, so silent, so musical; there is no noise at all, no disturbance. One can go on falling and falling into it endlessly, and one can come out of it absolutely rejuvenated. It is a rest.

It depends on the attitude. When you become sad you think that something bad has happened to you. It is an interpretation that something bad has happened to you, and then you start trying to escape from it. You never meditate on it. Then you want to go to somebody: to a party, to the club, or put the T.V. on or the radio, or start reading the newspaper -- something so that you can forget. This is a wrong attitude that has been given to you -- that sadness is wrong. Nothing is wrong with it. It is another polarity in life.

Happiness is one pole, sadness is another. Blissfulness is one pole, misery is another. Life consists of both, and life is a ritual because of both. A life only of blissfulness will have extension, but will not have depth. A life of only sadness will have depth, but will not have extension. A life of both sadness and blissfulness is multi dimensional; it moves in all dimensions together. Watch the

statue of Buddha or sometimes look into my eyes and you will find both together -- a blissfulness, a peace, a sad ness also. You will find a blissfulness which contains in it sad ness also, because that sadness gives it depth. Watch Buddha's statue -- blissful, but still sad. The very word 'sad' gives you wrong connotations -- that something is wrong. This is your interpretation.

To me, life in its totality is good. And when you understand life in its totality, only then can you celebrate; otherwise not. Celebration means: whatsoever happens is irrelevant -- I will celebrate. Celebration is not conditional on certain things:'When I am happy then I will celebrate,' or, 'When I am unhappy I will not celebrate.' Celebration is unconditional; I celebrate life. It brings unhappiness -- good, I celebrate it. It brings happiness -- good, I celebrate it. Celebration is my attitude, unconditional to what life brings.

But a problem arises because whenever I use words, those words have connotations in your mind. When I say 'Celebrate', you think one has to be happy. How can one celebrate when one is sad? I am not saying that one has to be happy to celebrate. Celebration is gratefulness for whatsoever life gives to you. Whatsoever God gives to you, celebration is a gratitude; it is a gratefulness.

I have told you and I will tell you again....

A Sufi mystic was very poor, hungry, rejected, tired of the journey. He went to a village in the night and the village wouldn't accept him. The village belonged to the orthodox people, and when orthodox Mohammedans are there it is very difficult to persuade them. They wouldn't even give him shelter in the town. The night was cold and he was hungry, tired, shivering with not enough clothes. He was sitting outside the town under a tree. His disciples were sitting there with great sadness, depression, even anger. And then he started praying and he said to God, 'You are wonderful! You always give me whatsoever I need.' This was too much. A disciple said, 'Wait, now you are going too far, particularly on this night. These words are false. We are hungry, tired, with no clothes, and a cold night is descending. There are wild animals all around and we are rejected by the town, we are without shelter. For what are you giving your thankfulness to God?

What do you mean when you say, "You always give me whatsoever I need?"' The mystic said, 'Yes, I repeat it again: God gives me whatsoever I need. Tonight I need poverty, tonight I need being rejected, tonight I need to be hungry, in danger. Otherwise, why should He give it to me? It must be a need. It is needed and I have to be grateful. He looks after my needs so beautifully. He is really wonderful!' This is an attitude that is unconcerned with the situation. The situation is not relevant.

Celebrate, whatsoever the case. If you are sad, then celebrate because you are sad. Try it. Just give it a try and you will be surprised -- it happens. You are sad?

-- start dancing because sadness is so beautiful, such a silent flower of being.

Dance, enjoy, and suddenly you will feel that the sadness is disappear ing, a distance is created. By and by, you will forget sadness and you will be celebrating. You have transformed the energy.

This is what alchemy is: to transform the baser metal into higher gold. Sadness, anger, jealousy -- baser metals can be transformed into gold because they are constituted of the same elements as gold. There is no difference between gold and iron because they have the same constituents, the same electrons. Have you ever thought about it, that a piece of coal and the greatest diamond in the world are just the same? They don't have any difference. In fact coal pressed by the earth for millions of years becomes a diamond. Just a difference of pressure, but they are both carbon dioxide, both constituted of the same elements.

The baser can be changed into the higher. Nothing is lacking in the baser. Only a rearrangement, a recomposition is needed. That is the whole of what alchemy means. When you are sad, celebrate, and you are giving a new composition to sadness. You are bringing something to sadness which will transform it. You are bringing celebration to it. Angry? -- have a beautiful dance. In the beginning it will be angry. You will start dancing and the dance will be angry, aggressive, violent. By and by, it will become softer and softer and softer, when suddenly, you will have forgotten anger. The energy has changed into dancing.

But when you are angry, you can't think of dancing. When you are sad, you can't think of singing. Why not make your sadness a song? Sing, play on your flute. In the beginning the notes will be sad, but nothing is wrong with a sad note. Have you heard, in the afternoon sometimes, when everything is hot, burning hot, fire all around, and suddenly from a mango grove you can hear a cuckoo start singing? In the beginning, the note is sad. She is calling her lover, her beloved, on a hot afternoon. Everything is fiery all around, and she is hankering for love. A very sad note, but beautiful. By and by, the sad note changes into a happy note.

The lover starts responding from another grove. Now it is no more a hot afternoon; everything is cooling down in the heart. Now the note is different.

When the lover responds, everything has changed. It is an alchemical change.

You are sad? -- start singing, praying, dancing. Whatsoever you can do, do, and by and by, the baser metal is changed into a higher metal -- gold. Once you know the key, your life will never be the same again. You can unlock any door. And this is the master key: to celebrate everything.

I have heard about three Chinese mystics. Nobody knows their names. They were known only as the 'Three Laughing Saints', because they never did anything else; they simply laughed. They moved from one town to another, laughing. They would stand in the market place and have a good belly laugh.

The whole market-place would surround them. All the people would come, shops would close and customers would forget for what they had come. These three people were really beautiful -- laughing and their bellies waving. And then it would become an infection and others would start laughing. Then the whole market-place would laugh. They had changed the quality of the market. And if somebody would say, 'Say some thing to us,' they would say, 'We have nothing to say. We simply laugh and change the quality.' When just a few moments before, it was an ugly place where people were thinking only of money -- hankering for money, greedy, money the only milieu around -- suddenly these three mad people came and they laughed, and changed the quality of the whole market-place. Now nobody was a customer. Now they had forgotten that they had come to purchase and sell. Nobody bothered about greed. They were laughing and they were dancing around these three mad people. For a few seconds a new world opened.

They moved all over China, from place to place, from village to village, just helping people to laugh. Sad people, angry people, greedy people, jealous people: they all started laughing with them. And many felt the key -- you can transform.

Then, in one village it happened that one of the three died. Village people gathered and they said, 'Now there will be trouble. Now we have to see how they laugh. Their friend has died; they must weep.' But when they came, the two were dancing, laughing and celebrating the death. The village people said, 'Now this is too much. This is unmannerly. When a man is dead it is profane to laugh and dance.' They said, 'You don't know what has happened! All three of us were always thinking of who was going to die first. This man has won; we are defeated. The whole life we laughed with him. How can we give him the last send off with anything else? -- we have to laugh, we have to enjoy, we have to celebrate. This is the only farewell that is possible for the man who has laughed his whole life. And if we don't laugh, he will laugh at us and he will think, "You fools! So you have fallen again into the trap?" We don't see that he is dead. How can laughter die, how can life die?' Laughter is eternal, life is eternal, celebration continues. Actors change but the drama continues. Waves change but the ocean continues. You laugh, you change and somebody else laughs, but laughter continues. You celebrate, somebody else celebrates, but celebration continues. Existence is continuous, it is a container.

There is not a single moment's gap in it. But the village people could not understand and they could not participate in the laughter this day.

Then the body was to be burned, and the village people said, 'We will give him a bath as the ritual prescribes.' But those two friends said, 'No, our friend has said, "Don't perform any ritual and don't change my clothes and don't give me a bath.

You just put me as I am on the burning pyre." So we have to follow his instructions.'

And then, suddenly, there was a great happening. When the body was put on the fire, that old man had played the last trick. He had hidden many fireworks under his clothes, and suddenly there was diwali! Then the whole village started laughing. These two mad friends were dancing, then the whole village started dancing. It was not a death, it was a new life.

No death is death, because every death opens a new door -- it is a beginning.

There is no end to life, there is always a new beginning, a resurrection.

If you change your sadness to celebration, then you will also be capable of changing your death into resurrection. So learn the art while there is still time.

Don't let death come before you have learned the secret alchemy of changing baser metals into higher metals. Because if you can change sadness, you can change death. If you can be celebrating unconditionally, when death comes you will be able to laugh, you will be able to celebrate, you will go happy. And when you can go celebrating, death cannot kill you. Rather, on the contrary you have killed death. But start it, give it a try. There is nothing to lose. But people are so foolish that even when there is nothing to lose, they won't give it a try. What is there to lose?

If you are sad, then I say celebrate, dance, sing. What are you to lose? At the most, sadness will be lost, nothing else. But you think it is impossible. And the very idea that it is impossible will not allow you to give it a try. And I say it is one of the most easy things in the world, because energy is neutral. The same energy becomes sadness; the same energy becomes anger; the same energy becomes sexuality; the same energy becomes com passion; the same energy becomes meditation. Energy is one. You don't have many types of energies. You don't have many separate pockets of energy where this energy is labelled 'sadness' and this energy is labelled 'happiness'. Energies are not pigeon-holed, they are not separated. There exists no watertight compartment in you. You are simply one. This one energy becomes sadness, this one energy becomes anger. It is up to you.

One has to learn the secret, the art of how to transform energies. You simply give a direction and the same energy starts moving. And when there is a possibility of transforming anger into bliss, greed into compassion, jealousy into love... you don't know what you are losing. You don't know what you are missing. You are missing the whole point of being here in this universe. Give it a try.

The fourth question:

Yes, I contradict every single statement, every single word that I utter. I have not a philosophy to teach, rather, I have an existence to indicate. No doctrine is being taught to you here. No dogma is being given to you here. I am not a philosopher.

I am just as contradictory as existence itself. I don't have any choice. Existence is contradictory: it contains night and day, summer and winter, devil and divine -- it contains all. And I am no more. At the most, I am just a window to existence. I have to be contradictory. And if you go on thinking of what I say, you will be in a greater and greater confusion every day. Don't pay much attention to what I say, give your attention to what I am.

My statements may be contradictory -- they are. If you don't see the contradiction it is because you love me. They are contradictory, but I am not contradictory.

They both exist in me, but there is no disharmony in me. That's what you have to pay attention to, that's what you have to see. There exists a deep harmony in me; I am not in a conflict. If there were a conflict then I would have gone absolutely mad. With so many contradictions, how can a person carry on, how can a person live, breathe?

They don't create any discord in me. Everything is in accord. Rather, on the contrary, they help the harmony, they make it richer. If I were a man of a single note, just repeating the same note again and again, I would be consistent. If you want to have a consistent man, absolutely consistent, go to J. Krishnamurti. He is absolutely consistent. For forty years he has not contradicted himself even once.

But I see that's why much richness is lost, much richness that life has, is lost. He is logical; I am illogical. He is like a garden: everything is consistent, planted, logical, rational. I am like a wild forest: nothing is planted. If you are after logic too much, then it is better to choose Krishnamurti than me. But if you have any feeling for the wilderness, for the wild forest, only then will you be able to get attuned with me. I open you to all that life is. I don't choose what to say, I don't choose what has to be taught -- I have no choice. I simply say whatsoever happens in that moment. I don't know what is going to be the next sentence.

Whatsoever, I will assert it. I don't have a pre-formulated pattern. I am as inconsistent as life is. And the whole point of being inconsistent is so that you don't cling to any dogma. If I am consistent, you will cling.

There are Krishnamurti followers; they cling to his word as dogma. I have seen very intelligent people, very, very intelligent people who have been listening to him for thirty or forty years. They come to me and they say, 'Nothing has happened. We have listened to Krishnamurti, and whatsoever he says feels true, appears to be right, exactly the right thing, but then nothing happens.

Intellectually we understand him, but nothing happens.' I tell them, 'If you have been listening to him for forty years and intellectually you feel he is right but nothing happens, then drop that intellectuality and come to me. Be with an absolutely irrational man. If through reason nothing has happened, maybe it can happen through 'irreason'. Immediately they say, 'But you are contradictory!

Sometimes you say this, sometimes you say that, and we don't know what to do.'

I don't really want you to do something, I want you to be. I don't want to make you intellectuals. They are too many; the world is full of them and they live a very miserable life. You cannot find more miserable people than intellectuals.

They commit suicide even while they live. They live a suicidal life, meaningless.

Meaning is irrational, the very poetry of life is contradictory. Nothing can be done about it. It is the nature of life, the way existence is.

I am not here to indoctrinate you to a certain standpoint. That's why I can talk about Krishnamurti to you. He is also right, but with only one standpoint of being right. I talk to you about Gurdjieff: he is also right, but with only one

standpoint of being right. And they are contradictory: Gurdjieff believes in method, in a group, a school, techniques, training, discipline, very hard discipline; Krishnamurti believes in no method, no meditation, no group, no Master, no disciplehood. I say to you that both are right, but both are only partly right. Together they become whole.

Life is so vast that neither Krishnamurti nor Gurdjieff can adjust it. Life is so vast that nobody can exhaust it. All standpoints can be in it, even opposite standpoints, and they are also true. There are people who have attained through methods, Masters; and there are people who have attained without Masters, without methods. There are people who are hindered by Masters and methods, and there are people who are hindered by the teaching that there is no need for a Master and no need for meditation, no need for a methodology. There are so many types of people, and it is good. There is variety. So no single doctrine can be true. It may be true for a few people, but for other people it will be untrue.

That's why so many doctrines exist in the world. Buddha exists, Jesus exists, Mohammed exists: such totally different people, and all true.

I am trying an absolutely new experiment: to bring you all together. This in itself is going to be a discipline for you -- it is. If you have been listening to me for years, it is a discipline already. It has been a meditation. I give you one standpoint: I will talk on Patanjali. I will give you one standpoint and I will create a structure in you. The next day I will start talking on Tilopa and I will demolish the structure. It is painful for you because you start clinging. When you make a structure, you start clinging to it. The moment I see that you have started clinging to theories, immediately I have to bring the opposite in to demolish them. Many times you will build a house, and many times I will abolish it. Many times you will feel that an order has happened, and I will again create the disorder. What is the point? The point is that one day you will become aware; you will listen to me but you will not create an order, you will not create a structure. Because what is the point if I am going to destroy it the next day? You will simply listen to me without any clinging to words, theories, or dogmas. The day that you can listen to me without creating a structure within yourself and I see that you have listened to me and there is emptiness, I have done the thing.

Listening to me for years will bring you finally to it. You will have to come to it, because what is the point? You start bringing an order, a discipline; by the time it is ready, I come and demolish it.

There is a Tibetan story about Marpa. His Master told him to make a house, alone, with nobody's help. It was difficult to bring the stones and bricks from the village to the monastery. It was four or five miles distant. Marpa carried everything alone; it had to be done. And it was to be a three storey house, the biggest that was possible in Tibet in those days. He worked hard, day and night.

Alone he had to do everything. Years passed, the house was ready, and Marpa came back happy. He bowed down to the Master's feet and said, 'The house is ready.' The Master said, 'Now set it on fire.' Marpa went and burned the house.

The whole night and the whole next day the house burned. By the evening there was nothing left. Marpa went, bowed down and said, 'As you ordered, the house has been burned.' The Master looked at him and said, 'Start tomorrow morning again. A new house has to be built.' And it is said that it happened seven times.

Marpa became old, just doing the same thing again and again. He would build the house -- and he became very, very efficient, by and by. He started building the house sooner, in less time. Every time the house was ready, the Master would say, 'Burn it!' When the house was burned the seventh time, the Master said, 'Now there is no need.'

This is a parable. It may not have happened, but this is what I am doing to you.

The moment you listen to me you start creating a house inside: a structure of theories, a consistent whole, a philosophy to live by, a dogma to follow, a blueprint. The moment I see that the house is ready I start demolishing it. And this I will do seven times, and if it is needed, seventy times. I am waiting for the moment when you will listen and you will not gather words. You will listen, but you will listen to me, not what I say. You will listen to the content, not the container; not the words but the wordless message. By and by, this is going to happen. How long can you carry on building a house knowing well that it is going to be demolished? That's the mean ing of all my contradictions. Even Krishnamurti, who says that no theory is needed, has created a theory in people, because he is not contradictory. He has created such a deep rooted theory in people. I have seen many types of people, but nothing like Krishnamurti followers. They cling, absolutely they cling, because the man is so consistent. For forty years he has been say ing the same, again and again. The followers have made sky scrapers. In forty years, continuously, on and on, their building goes on and on and on.

I won't allow you to do this. I want you to be absolutely empty of words. This is the whole purpose of my talking to you. One day you will realize that I am talking and you are not creating a structure. Knowing well that I am going to deny whatsoever I am saying, you don't cling. If you don't cling, if you remain empty, you will be able to listen to me, not to what I say. And it is totally different to listen to the being that I am, to listen to the existence that is happening right now, in this moment.

I am just a window: you can look through me and the beyond opens. Don't look at the window, look through it. Don't look at the frame of the window. All my words are frames: just look through them. Forget the words and the frame... and the beyond, the sky is there. If you cling to the frame, how, how are you going to take wing? That's why I go on demolishing the words, so that you don't cling to the frame. You have to take wing; you have to go through me, but you have to go away from me. You have to go through me but you have to forget me completely. You have to go through me, but you need not look back. A vast sky is there. I give you just a taste of that vastness when I contradict. It would have

been very much easier for you if I were a consistent man saying the same thing again and again, conditioning you to the same theory again and again. You would be vastly happier, but that happiness would be stupid because then you would never be ready to take wing in the sky.

I won't allow you to cling to the frame; I will go on demolishing the frame. This is how I push you towards the unknown. All words are from the known and all theories are from the known. The truth is unknown, and the truth cannot be said.

And whatsoever can be said cannot be true.