Mind: THE Stupidity

Question 1

Mind is stupid. Unless you go beyond mind you don't go beyond stupidity; mind, as such, is stupid.

And minds are of two types: knowledgeable and not knowledgeable. But both are stupid. The knowledgeable mind is thought to be intelligent. It is not. The less knowledgeable mind is thought to be stupid, but both are stupid.

In your stupidity you can know much -- you can gather much information; you can carry loads of scripture with you; you can train the mind, condition the mind; you can memorize; you can almost become an ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA -- but that doesn't make any difference in your stupidity. In fact if you come across a man who has no longer any mind, your stupidity will be more than the stupidity of those who have no information, who are simply ignorant.

To know more is not to become knowing, and to know less is not to be stupid.

Stupidity is a sort of sleep, a deep unawareness. You go on doing things not knowing why. You go on being involved in a thousand and one situations not knowing why. You move through life fast asleep. That sleepiness is stupidity.

Being identified with the mind is stupidity. If you remember, if you become aware and the identity is lost with the mind, if you are no longer mind, if you feel a transcendence to the mind; intelligence arises. Intelligence is a sort of awakening. Asleep, you are stupid. Awake, stupidity has disappeared: for the first time, intelligence enters in.

It is possible to know much without knowing yourself; then it is all stupidity.

Just the reverse is also possible: to know oneself -- and without knowing anything else. But to know oneself is enough to be intelligent; and a man who knows himself will behave intelligently in any and every situation. He will respond intelligently. His response will not be a reaction; he will not act out of the past. He will act in the present; he will be here-now.

Stupid mind always acts out of the past. Intelligence need not be concerned with the past. Intelligence is always in the present: I ask you a question -- your intelligence answers it, not your memory. Then you are not stupid. But if only the memory answers it, not intelligence -- then you don't look at the question. In fact you don't bother about the question; you simply carry a ready-made answer.

It is related about Mulla Nasrudin that the emperor was going to visit his town.

The villagers were very much afraid to face the emperor, so they all asked Nasrudin, "Please, represent us. We are foolish people, ignorant. You are the only wise one here, so please tackle the situation because we don't know the ways of the court, and the emperor is coming for the first time."

Nasrudin said, "Of course. I have seen many emperors and I have visited many courts. Don't be worried."

But the people of the court were themselves worried about the village, so they came just to prepare the whole situation. When they asked who is going to represent them, the villagers said, "Mulla Nasrudin is going to represent us. He is our leader, our guide, our philosopher."

So they trained Mulla Nasrudin, saying, "You need not be worried too much. The king is going to ask only three questions. The first question will be about your age. How old are you?"

Nasrudin said, "Seventy."

"So remember it. Don't be dazzled too much by the emperor and the court. When he asks how old you are, say, 'Seventy' -- not a single word more nor less; otherwise you can be in difficulty. Then he will ask how long you have been serving in the village mosque, how long you have been a religious teacher here.

So exactly tell the years. How long have you been serving?"

He said, "For thirty years."

Questions like this. Then the emperor came. The people who had trained Nasrudin, they had trained the emperor also, saying, "The people of this village are very simple, and their leader looks a little stupid, so please, be kind and don't ask anything else. These are the questions...."

But the king forgot. So before asking, "How old are you?" he asked, "How long have you been the spiritual guide of this town?"

Now, Nasrudin had fixed answers. He said, "Seventy years."

The king looked a little puzzled because the man looks not more than seventy, so has he been a religious teacher from his very birth? Then he said, "I am surprised.

Then how old are you?"

Nasrudin said, "Thirty years." Because this was the fixed thing: that first he has to say "seventy years," then he has to say "thirty years."

The king said, "Are you mad?"

Nasrudin said, "Sir, we both are mad -- in our own ways! You are asking wrong questions -- and I have to answer right answers! This is the problem. I cannot change, because those people are here, those who have trained me. They are looking at me. I cannot change, and you are asking wrong questions. We both are mad in our own ways. I am forced to answer the right answer -- that is my madness. Had there been no ready-made answers I would have answered you rightly, but now there is trouble. And you are asking a wrong question, in a wrong sequence."

This happens to the stupid mind. Continuously, watch in yourself: the Mulla Nasrudin is part of you. Whenever you answer a question because you have a ready-made answer, you are behaving stupidly. The situation may have changed, the reference may have changed, the context may have changed -- and you are acting out of the past.

Act out of the present. Act out of unpreparedness. Act out of the present's awareness; don't act out of the past. Then you are not stupid.

Now you can understand why I say mind is stupid: because mind is only past.

Mind is accumulated past, all that you have known in the past. Life is continuously changing. The mind remains the same -- it carries dead memories, dead information. The context changing every moment, the question changing every moment, the emperor changing every moment -- and you carry fixed answers. You will always be in trouble. A stupid mind is always in trouble, suffers. For nothing. Only for this reason: that he is too ready, too prepared.

Every moment remain unprepared. Then you remain innocent. Then you are not carrying something. Whenever you have a ready-made answer you don't listen to the question exactly as it is. Before you have listened to the question, the answer has already popped up in the mind; the answer is already standing between you and the question. Before you have looked around and watched the situation, you are already reacting.

Mind is the past, mind is the memory -- -that's why mind is stupid, all minds.

You may be a villager, not knowing much about the world. You may be a professor in the University of Poona, knowing much. That doesn't make any difference. In fact sometimes it happens that villagers are more intelligent -- because they know nothing. They have to rely on intelligence. They cannot rely on their information, they have none. If you are alert you can see the quality of innocence in a villager. He is like a child.

Children are more intelligent than adults, more intelligent than old people. That's why children can learn so easily. They are more intelligent. The mind is not yet there. They are mindless. They don't carry any past; they have none. They are moving, wondering, surprised at everything. They always look to the situation.

In fact they have nothing else to look to -- no ready-made answers. Sometimes children answer in such a beautiful and alive way as old people cannot. Old people always have the mind there to answer for them. They have a servant, a mechanism, a biocomputer; and they rely on it. The more you become old, the more you become stupid.

Of course, old people think they have become very wise, because they know many answers. If this is wisdom then computers will be the most wise people.

Then there is no need for you to think about Buddha and Jesus and Zarathustra, no. Computers will be wiser because they will know more. They can know all; they can be fed every information. And they will function better because they are mechanisms.

No, wisdom is not concerned at all with knowledge. It is concerned with awareness, intelligence, understanding. Be more alert. Then you are not in the grip of the mind. Then you can use the mind whenever needed but you are not used by the mind. Then the mind is no longer the master -- you are the master

and the mind is the servant. Whenever you need the servant you ask, but you are not ruled by, you are not manipulated by, the mind.

The ordinary situation of mind is such as if the car is manipulating the driver.

The car says, "Go this way," and the driver has to follow. Sometimes it happens: brakes fail, the wheel is not functioning well, you wanted to go to the south and the car moves to the north. The mechanism has failed; it is an accident. But that accident has become normal with human mind. Continuously you want to go somewhere and the mind wants to go somewhere else. You wanted to go to the temple and the mind was thinking to go to the theater, and you find yourself in the theater. Maybe you had come out of your house to go to the temple to pray...

you are sitting in a theater -- because the car wanted to move that way and you are incapable.

Intelligence is a mastery -- mastery of all the mechanisms within you. The body is a mechanism, the mind is a mechanism: you become the master. Nobody is manipulating you; the mind simply receives your orders. This is intelligence.

So if you ask, "Are some people more stupid than others?" -- it depends. As I see, people are knowledgeable stupids, not-knowledgeable stupids. These are the ordinary two categories, because the third category is so unique you cannot make it a category. Rarely, sometimes, a Buddha happens: a Buddha is intelligent. But then he looks rebellious because he does not give your pat answers, fixed answers. He moves away from the superhighway; he has his own path. He makes his own path. Intelligence always follows itself. It does not follow anybody. Intelligence makes its own path. Only stupid people follow.

If you are here with me you can be here in two ways. You can be intelligently here with me: then you will learn from me, but you will not follow. You will follow your own intelligence. But if you are stupid you don't bother about learning: you simply follow me. That looks simple, less risky, less dangerous, more secure, safe, because you can always throw the responsibility on me; but if you choose a secure safety-way, you have chosen death. You have not chosen life. Life is dangerous and risky. Intelligence will always choose life -- at any cost, whatsoever the risk -- because that's the only way to be alive.

Intelligence is a quality of awareness. Intelligent people are not stupid.

Question 2

A lot of difference. Introspection is thinking about yourself. Self-remembering is not thinking at all: it is becoming aware about yourself. The difference is subtle, but very great.

The Western psychology insists on introspection, and the Eastern psychology insists on self-remembering. When you introspect, what do you do? For example, you are angry: you start thinking about anger -- how it is caused. You start analyzing why it is caused. You start judging whether it is good or bad. You start rationalizing that you had been angry because the situation was such. You brood about anger, you analyze anger, but the focus of attention is on the anger, not on the self. Your whole consciousness is focused on the anger -- you are watching, analyzing, associating, thinking about it, trying to figure out how to avoid, how to get rid of it, how not to do it again. This is a thinking process. You will judge it "bad" because it is destructive. You will take a vow that "I will never commit the same mistake again." You will try to control this anger through will. That's why the Western psychology has become analytical... analysis, dissection.

The Eastern emphasis is not on the anger. The Eastern emphasis is on the self. To be aware when you are angry, to be so aware.... Not to think, because thinking is a sleeping thing. You can think while you are fast asleep; there is no need for awareness. In fact you continuously think without being at all aware. The thinking goes on and on and on. Even when you are fast asleep in the night, the thinking continues, the mind goes on continuing its inner chatter. It is a mechanical thing.

The Eastern psychology says, "Be aware. Don't try to analyze anger, there is no need. Just look at it, but look with awareness. Don't start thinking." In fact if you start thinking then thinking will become a barrier to looking at anger. Then thinking will garb it. Then thinking will be like a cloud surrounding it; the clarity will be lost. Don't think at all. Be in a state of no-thought, and look.

When there is not even a ripple of thinking between you and the anger, the anger is faced, encountered. You don't dissect it. You don't bother to go to its source, because the source is in the past. You don't judge it, because the moment you judge, thinking starts. You don't take any vow that "I will not do it," because that vow leads you into the future. In awareness you remain with the feeling of anger -- exactly here-now. You are not interested in changing it, you are not interested in thinking about it: you are interested to look at it directly, face to face, immediate. Then it is self-remembering.

And this is the beauty of it: that if you can look at anger it disappears. It not only disappears at this moment: the very disappearance of it by your deep look gives you the key that there is no need to use will, there is no need to make any decision for the future, and there is no need to go to the original source from where it comes. It is unnecessary. You have the key now: look at anger, and anger disappears. And this look is available forever. Whenever anger will be there you can look; then this look grows deeper.

There are three stages of the look. First, when the anger has already happened and gone. Almost, you look at the tail disappearing -- the elephant has gone, only the tail is there -- because when the anger was there, really, you were so deeply involved in it you could not be aware. When the anger has almost disappeared, ninety-nine per cent -- only one per cent, the last part of it is going, disappearing into the farther horizon -- then you become aware: this is the first state of awareness. Good, but not enough.

The second state is when the elephant is there, not the tail: when the situation is ripe, you are really angry to the peak -- boiling, burning -- then you become aware.

Then there is still a third stage: the anger has not come, is still coming -- not the tail but the head. It is just entering your area of consciousness and you become aware -- then the elephant never materializes. You killed the animal before it was born. That is birth control. The phenomenon has not happened; then it leaves no trace.

If you stop it in the middle, half the head has happened, it will leave something on you -- -a trace, a load, a small wound. You will feel scratched. Even if you don't allow it now to have its full sway, it has entered. If you look at the tail, the whole thing has already happened. You can at the most repent; and repentance is a thinking. Again you become a victim of the thinking mind.

A man of awareness never repents. There is no point in repenting because the more awareness goes deep, he can stop a process even before it has begun. Then what is the point of repenting? And not that he tries to stop it -- that's the beauty of it. He simply looks at it. When you look at a mood, at a situation, at an emotion, feeling, thought -- when you bring the quality of look -- the look is like light: darkness disappears.

There is a vast difference between introspection and self-remembering. I am not in favor of introspection. In fact, introspection is a little pathological: it is playing with your own wound. It won't help. It won't help the wound to heal. In fact it will do just the reverse: if you go on fingering your wound you will keep it fresh.

Introspection is not good. Introspective people are always morbid, ill. They think too much. Introspective people are closed. They just go on playing with their wounds and their anguish and their anxiety -- and the whole life seems then too much of a problem; it cannot be solved. Everything looks like a problem for an introspective man. Whatsoever happens becomes a problem.

And, then, he is inside too much; he cannot move out. The balance is lost.

Introspective people escape from life and go to the Himalayas. They are morbid, ill, pathological. A healthy person has a healthy swing: he can move in, he can move out. For him there is no problem for in and out. In fact he doesn't divide the inner life and the outer life. He has a free flow, a free swing. Whenever it is needed he simply moves in. Whenever it is needed he simply moves out. He is not against the outside world; he is not for the inside world. In and out should be just like in-breathing and out-breathing: both are needed.

Introspectives become too brooding, too inside. They become afraid to go out because whenever they go out, there are problems, so they close up. They become monads with no windows. And then problems and problems -- the mind goes on creating problems and they go on trying to solve.

An introspective person is more prone to become mad. Introverts become mad more than extroverts. If you go to the madhouses you will find ninety-nine per cent of the people there are introverts, introspective, and only one per cent, at the most, extroverts. They don't bother about the inner side of things. They go on living on the surface. They don't think that there are problems. They think there is only life to be enjoyed. Eat, drink, be merry is their whole religion, nothing else.

You will always find extroverts more healthy than introverts because at least they are in contact with the whole. The introvert loses all contact with the whole.

He lives in his dreams. He has no outgoing breath. Just think: if you don't allow the breath to go out, you will become ill because the breath that has gone in will not remain fresh always. Within seconds it will become stale, within seconds it will lose the oxygen, the life, within seconds it is finished -- and then you are living in stale air, dead. You have to go out to seek new sources of life, to seek fresh air. You have to be continuously moving.

To me, if you want to choose between the extrovert and introvert, I will say to you, "Choose the extrovert." He is less ill -- lives on the surface, can never come to know the truth, but at least never goes mad. The introvert can come to know the truth, but that is one possibility out of a hundred. Ninety-nine per cent is the possibility he will go mad.

I am in favor of a flowing life. Life should be a rhythm: you go out, you go in, and don't cling to anything. Just remain alert. Remember. Go on remembering: when you are in the world, then too remember; and when you are inside yourself, then too remember. Always keep awareness alert, burning, alive. The flame of awareness should not be lost, that's all. Then live in the market or live in the monastery -- you will never be a loser in life. You will attain to the profoundest depth that life can give. That profoundest depth is God. God is a swinger: out and in, introvert and extrovert both -- but aware.

Question 3

I must be becoming holier, godlier, because the more holy you are, the more you take life nonseriously. You chuckle, you laugh; then it is not a burden. Your whole life becomes a smile; it is not a serious affair then.

But religious people all over the world have been teaching people to be very serious -- long faces. This is illness, not health. Make laughter your prayer. Laugh more. Nothing releases your blocked energies as does laughter. Nothing makes you innocent as does laughter. Nothing makes you childlike as does laughter.

Children chuckle and laugh and smile. Of course they cry also, but their crying is beautiful.

Cry and weep and laugh, and let these be your prayers. Go to the temple -- don't verbalize. Go to the church -- don't bother about the authorized version of the prayer. There is none; no version is authorized. Create your own prayer. If you feel like weeping, weep. Tears are more meaningful than any words; they bring your heart. They are more prayerful, more beautiful, more significant. Words are

dead. Tears are alive, fresh -- coming from you, from your depth. Or laugh: have a good laugh with the god of the temple.

In the Talmud it is said.... And the Talmud is a rare book. The Geeta, the Bible, the Koran -- all look serious. The Talmud is simply unbelievably rare. In the Talmud it is said, "God loves those people who make others laugh." You cannot conceive a religious scripture saying this: "God loves those who make others laugh." Those are the real saints.

If you make people serious you are a sinner. The world is already much too burdened; please, don't burden it anymore. Give a little laughter. Create a ripple of laughter wherever you are. Smile a little more and help others to smile. If the whole world can laugh loudly, wars will disappear, because wars are managed by serious people. Courts will disappear, because courts are managed by serious people.

That's why if you laugh in any court it is a crime. No court allows it -- you are insulting the court. Everyone should be serious. Look at the judges sitting in the courts: how foolishly serious they look. A little laughter will help them to be more just, will help them to understand human beings more deeply. Their coldness cannot do justice, because coldness is inhuman. A little warmth....

But the judge is afraid. If the thief standing in the court starts laughing, and the judge also joins him, and the whole court laughs -- then the judge is afraid. Then it will become too human; and it will be difficult to throw this laughing thief into jail for three or four or five years. For nothing much -- he has stolen a few rupees.

He has stolen a little maya, and the judge may be a Vedantin. He has stolen a little illusion -- rupees, diamonds -- and he has to be thrown: for dead diamonds an alive being is to be thrown for five years to rot. Or in deep anger, in a rage, in some mad moment he may have killed. Even the judges go on thinking sometimes to kill. It is difficult to find a human being who has not thought many times in his life to kill somebody. It seems human, the idea.

I'm not saying go and kill, and I'm not saying that judges should forgive those who are murderers, no. But a little laughter will help. One man has been murdered: if the judge can laugh a little and the court also can chuckle a little with the judge, it will be difficult for him to send this man to the gallows.

Because that is again another murder; and how can you put things right when for one murder the court decides for another murder? Maybe this man needs psychoanalytical treatment. Maybe this man needs to be sent to a monastery to meditate for two years. But not death -- because death.... If it is bad to commit murder, to commit murder in the name of justice is also bad; it cannot become good.

But judges are very serious people, politicians are very serious people -- the whole burden of the world on their shoulders. They always go on thinking all over the world: "What after Mao Tse-tung?" As if there was no world before Mao Tse-tung. The world has been happy. In fact it will be happier if all Mao Tse-tungs disappear.

I was just reading a book, a very rare book. The man says India would have become independent sooner if Gandhi had not been there. I was a little surprised, but then I looked into his argument and I felt he is right. Gandhi created much trouble -- stubborn, all politicians are. He created much trouble: he wouldn't compromise for anything. He had his own ways, Jinnah had his own ways. They wouldn't compromise. They both were stubborn, stonelike. It seems the man has an insight who says that India would have become independent sooner if there had been no Gandhi and no Jinnah.

And if there were no churches India would never have been dependent. If politicians disappear from the world, the world will be free. There will be no need to fight for it: it will be simply free. If priests disappear and serious churches, which look more like death than life, disappear and temples arise to dance, to enjoy, to be blissful, to be ecstatic; the world will be more religious.

So when you say, "Sometimes, now, you chuckle in the discourse," I hope I must be becoming holier. Otherwise. there seems to be no other reason.

Question 4

The first thing: Vijay Anand is not so foolish as to ask me such things. He never mentions anything about his business. He never asked anything about the film "Jaan Hazir Hai" and I never answered him. I don't even know that he has made a film named "Jaan Hazir Hai."

But these people, editors of STARDUST, must have dreamt something. They must have seen a dream, and maybe in their dream they heard me saying, "Your film, Vijay, will be a super success." Then they misunderstood the point. I must have told them in their dreams "super success" in Lao-tzian terms. Lao Tzu says, "Because few people understand me, I am dignified." So, if you translate it, super success means: if nobody goes to see the film. Because masses are so foolish they cannot understand it, it is dignified: it is a super success. When the masses go to see a film it is a failure, flopped. It must be stupid; otherwise how does it attract so many stupid people?

I have not said anything, but if they have heard something in their dreams, they have wrongly interpreted me. If it has flopped, it is a super success. It must be something which goes beyond ordinary mind. That's what a super success is. A Hitler is not a super success; masses worshipped him. That shows he belonged to the masses. He was an ordinary, stupid man. Lao Tzu is a super success: nobody knows, nobody heard about him -- not even a rumor. He comes and moves silently. He was a super success, and he knew it. He says in his TAO TE CHING, "I am dignified, because very few people can understand me. The whole world misunderstands me; that's why I am dignified." Rarer the understanding, rarer will it be understood, more possibility to be misunderstood.

I used to know a very rare man. He was a sannyasin. When I was a child he used to visit my village and he used to stay with my family. I loved that man for only one single cause: whenever he would give a lecture and people would clap, he would look at me and say, "Rajneesh, something must be wrong. Otherwise why are people clapping? They clap only when something is wrong, because they are wrong." When nobody would clap, and nobody would understand what he was saying, when everybody looked just as if they were wasting their time, he would come home and he would say, "Rajneesh, I must have said something. You saw?

Nobody could understand." With the masses, success is a failure.

Question 5

Just now I told you the difference between introspection and self-remembering.

Now, the difference between self-remembering and witnessing.

Yes, there is a lot of difference again: because in self-remembering the emphasis is on the self. Just as in introspection the emphasis is on the thought, the feeling, the emotion, the mood, anger, sexuality, or anything, and the self is forgotten; in self-remembering the self is remembered and the whole energy is centered on the self, and you just look at the mood, at the situation, at the feeling -- you don't think about it, because in the thinking the look is lost, the purity of the look is lost.

Witnessing is a step further ahead. In witnessing, even the self is dropped; only remembering remains. Not that I remember. The "I" is no longer part of witnessing. Just remembering.... Witnessing is a witnessing of the self. Self- remembering is the beginning; witnessing is the end. By self-remembering you start looking at anger, keeping yourself centered at the self, crystallized at the self, looking at the ripples around you in the mind. But when you look at the mind, by and by, the mind disappears. When the mind disappears and there is void, then a new step can be taken: now, you look at yourself. Now the very energy that was looking at anger, sex, jealousy is free -- because the jealousy, anger, and sex have disappeared. Now that same energy turns around to look at yourself.

When the same energy looks at the self, the self also disappears; then there is only remembering. That remembering is witnessing. In witnessing there is no self. You look at the anger, but when you look at yourself, you are no longer you: just a vast, infinite, unbound witnessing. Just consciousness -- infinite and vast, but with no crystallization. This has to be understood.

Gurdjieff worked his whole life on the method of self-remembering because in the West to introduce witnessing would have been almost impossible, because the West has been living with introspection. All the Christian monasteries, they have been teaching introspection. Gurdjieff introduced something beyond introspection: he called it "self-remembering." He was always thinking to introduce witnessing, but he could not because witnessing can be introduced only when self-remembering is settled; before it, it cannot be introduced. To talk about it before the ripeness of self-remembering will not reach anywhere; it will be useless. He waited long, but he couldn't introduce it.

In the East we have used both. In fact we have used all the three: introspection was for very ordinary religious people, those who don't want to go deep; those who want to go deep, for them, self-remembering; and those who want to go so deep that they disappear in the depth, for them, witnessing. Witnessing is the last. Beyond that, nothing exists. You cannot be a witness to the witness -- because that too will be witnessing. So beyond witnessing there is no possibility to go: you have come to the very end. The end of the world is witnessing.

Move from introspection to self-remembering, and from self-remembering hope some day to move to witnessing. But keep it in mind that self-remembering is not the goal. It is good just as a bridge, but one has to cross, one has to go beyond it.

Question 6

No, it is not possible. But something like it happens: you have a glimpse of pure consciousness; you have not entered. It is just as if you look from hundreds of miles' distance towards the Himalayan peaks. You have not reached them, but you can look from a vast distance. You can look at the peaks; you can have a feeling. You can open a window and look at the moon far away, and the rays will touch you and you will be illumined, you will have a certain experience, but from this window-experience you will fall again and again.

When pure consciousness is achieved -- not a glimpse from a distance, but you have entered into it -- then you cannot lose it again. Once achieved it is achieved forever. You cannot fall out of it. Why? Because the moment you enter it you disappear. Who can fall out of it? To fall out at least you have to remain as yourself. But to enter pure consciousness, the ego disappears completely, the self disappears completely. Then who will come back?

In a glimpse you are not disappeared; you are there. You can have a glimpse and close the eyes. You can have a glimpse and close the window. It will become a memory; it will haunt you; it will become a nostalgia. It will come in your dreams. Sometimes, suddenly, you will feel again a deep urge to have that glimpse, but it cannot be a phenomenon forever and forever. Glimpses are only glimpses. Good, beautiful, but don't cling to them; because they are not permanent. You will fall out of them again and again -- because you are still there.

When there is a glimpse, move towards the peaks, move towards the moon...

become one with the moon. Unless you disappear completely you will fall. You will have to come back to the world because that ego will feel suffocated with the glimpse. The ego will feel deathlike panic. It will say, "Close the window!

Enough you have looked at the moon. Now don't be foolish. Don't be a lunatic."

The word "lunatic" means moonstruck. The word comes from "lunar" -- of the moon. All mad people are called lunatics, moonstruck -- thinking of distant dreams.

The mind, the ego, will say, "Don't be a lunatic. It is okay to have, sometimes, the window open and look at the moon, but don't be obsessed. The world is waiting for you. You have responsibilities to fulfill in the world." And the ego will bring you and persuade you, seduce you, towards the world; because the ego can exist only in the world. Whenever something of the other world penetrates into your mind, the ego becomes afraid, panicky, scared. It looks like death.

If that glimpse is to become a permanent life-style, your very being, then you have to bridge the distance, bridge the gap. You have to move. When you become pure consciousness then there is no falling out again. It is a point of no return. One only goes in; one never comes out. It has no exit, only one door... the entrance.

Question 7

Yes, Jesus is also selfish; otherwise it is not possible. Jesus, Krishna, Zarathustra, Buddha -- all selfish people: because so much compassion arises out of them.

That is not possible if they are not self-centered. That is not possible if they have not attained to their own bliss. First, one has to attain; only then can one share...

and they shared so much that even centuries have passed, but they go on sharing still.

If you love Jesus, suddenly you are filled with his compassion. His love still flows. The body has disappeared, but his love has not disappeared. It has become a permanent phenomenon in the world. It will always be there.

Whenever there will be somebody ready, receptive, his love will flow. But this is possible only because he attained to his original source: he must have been selfish.

Then what is the meaning?, because these words seem to be contradictory? "If any man come after me let him deny himself...." Yes, they look paradoxical: if I am true then they contradict me. I am true, and they don't contradict me. It is only appearance, because Jesus is saying, "If you want to attain to yourself you will have to lose yourself, that is the way." So when Jesus says, "If any man come after me let him deny himself..." it is because that is the only way to be himself.

You can attain to the self only when you deny your ego. You can attain to yourself when you completely disappear.

Jesus says, "If you cling to life, you will lose it. If you are ready to lose it, it will be forever and forever with you. You will attain to life abundant, infinite." When a water drop falls in the ocean, it loses itself -- denies itself -- and becomes the ocean. It pays nothing and attains to the ocean: it simply loses its own boundaries. When Jesus is saying, "If any man come after me let him deny himself..." it is the ocean saying to the drop, "Come, deny yourself! -- so that you can become the ocean also." And this is the most selfish thing: to become the ocean.

A drop is very altruistic, but he remains a drop -- finite, limited, miserable. Looks as if he is selfish; he is not. If you go and look at the selfish people in the world, you will not find them really selfish. They are simply foolish, not selfish.

Really selfish people become wise. Really selfish people are those who try to attain nirvana, who try to attain God, who try to attain moksha -- liberty, freedom. They are the really selfish people, not those people which are known as selfish in the world because they are trying to accumulate riches. They are simply foolish, not selfish. Don't use that beautiful word for them. They are simply foolish.

Why do you call them selfish? They go on accumulating riches and go on selling their self for them. They make a big house and they themselves become hollow, empty. They have a big car and no soul within. And you call them selfish? They are the most unselfish people. They have given their self -- for nothing, actually.

It happened: One man came to Ramkrishna with many gold coins, and he wanted to give them to him. Ramkrishna said, "I don't touch gold. Take them away."

The man was very impressed. He said, "How unselfish you are."

Ramkrishna laughed and he said, "Unselfish and me? I am a selfish man. That's why I don't touch this gold. I am not so foolish. Unselfish you are: you have sold yourself for gold coins."

Who is unselfish? One who gives his soul for gold coins is unselfish?... or one who leaves everything of the world to attain to his soul, he is selfish? In the world people lose themselves and attain to nothing, and you call them selfish.

They are unselfish people, foolish. Buddha, Jesus, Krishna -- they attained to the utmost glory, to the utter blissfulness. Buddha has said: "I have attained to the unexcelled SAMADHI." And you call them unselfish? Those who live in perfect bliss, you call them unselfish? You have destroyed a beautiful word.

Jesus is right, "If any man come after me let him deny himself..." because that is the only way to attain to oneself. He is teaching selfishness.

"... and take up his cross and follow me," because that is the only way to be resurrected. If you want a new life you will have to die. If you want to be

resurrected you will have to carry your own cross. Be crucified in the material world and you will be resurrected in the spiritual. Die moment to moment to the past so that you are resurrected every moment into the present. Dying is an art, one of the most basic. And those who know how to die, only they know how to live. People who are afraid of dying become afraid of living. People who are too afraid of death and dying become incapable of living, because life has death as part of it.

When Jesus says, "Pick up your cross and follow me," he is saying, "Be ready to die if you really want to attain to the eternal life." This is selfishness.

And when people like Jesus say, "Follow me," you will misunderstand them.

When Krishna says in the Geeta to Arjuna, "Drop everything -- all your religions.

Surrender to me. Come, and follow me," what is he saying exactly? Are these people very egoistic? They say, "Come, follow me." In fact, when Jesus says, "Come, follow me," he is saying: "I am your innermost soul." When Krishna says, "Surrender to me," he is not saying surrender to this outer Krishna. He is saying: "Deep down, I am hidden in you. When you surrender to me, I am just an excuse to surrender. You will reach to your innermost core of being. Follow me so that you can follow your innermost core of being. I have attained to that innermost core."

They are not saying to follow Jesus or Krishna. They are saying, "Surrender," because in surrender you will become a Krishna, a Jesus yourself. And this is utterly selfish.

But the very word has taken a quality of condemnation. When somebody says, "Don't be selfish," immediately, he has condemned. I am trying to purify that beautiful word again. I am trying to bring it to its real stature. That word has fallen into the mud, but that word is like a diamond. It may be in the mud: it can be cleaned and washed. And if you understand me you will see that if you are really selfish, only then can you be unselfish. I teach you selfishness because I would like you to be unselfish.

Question 8

You are not responsible for these things. If somebody dies you are not responsible for his death, but the way you interpret the death, for that you are responsible. When somebody betrays you, you are not responsible for his betrayal. How can you be? But you call it a betrayal; it may not be. It is your interpretation. and for the interpretation you are responsible.

You call it death: if your mother dies, you call it death and you suffer. You don't suffer because the mother has died. You suffer because you think it is death. If you understand life you will know that there is no death. Then the mother will die -- mothers will always die -- but you will not be suffering. She has simply changed an old body. In fact it is a moment to rejoice. Hmm?... she was having a cancer or tuberculosis, old age, and a thousand and one illnesses, and she was dragging. You call it death? I call it just dropping the old body to enter into a new. Why should I be suffering over it? I should be happy and rejoice in it. It depends on the interpretation, and the interpretation is your responsibility.

Somebody betrays you: but who is saying that it is a betrayal? For instance, your lover, your husband, your wife, moves away from you. You say it is a betrayal?

It is your interpretation. It may be that you were too possessive. He has not betrayed you; he is simply trying to save himself. You were too possessive. You were too clinging. You were suffocating his being. You were killing his freedom.

He has simply tried to save his life -- not betrayed you. He may have moved to some other woman in search that, maybe, somewhere else the flower of love can bloom. But you forced him; and now you say it is a betrayal. You managed the whole thing so that it happens, and now you call it a betrayal?

Just watch, become alert, look what has happened. If you were not so nagging he may not have gone. Your nagging was driving him mad. Or, your nagging was driving him insensitive.

There are only two ways to live with a nagging wife or a nagging husband. One, which almost all husbands do, is to become insensitive. You enter the house; you make your skin hard. She goes on nagging, you don't bother. You go on reading your newspaper. You don't listen to what she says. But then you are betraying your own self, because the more insensitive you become, the less loving you will be. The more insensitive you become, the less possibility for prayer, the less possibility of life happening to you. You are already a dead thing. You are betraying your own life. It is better to escape from the woman to save yourself and give her also an opportunity to understand -- the other way is to escape.

If the husband goes on betraying his own life, then the wife says he is very faithful. He betrays his own life -- and nobody is responsible for anybody else's life. You are here for your own self; I am here for myself. Nobody is here to fulfill anybody else's expectations. I have to live my life; you have to live your life. If it is good, that I grow with you; if it is good, if you grow with me -- beautiful, we can be together. But if you start killing me and I start poisoning you, it is better we should separate, because separation will save two lives, will make two prisoners free. It is not a betrayal.

There is only one betrayal: and that is to betray one's own life. There is no other betrayal. If you continue to live with a nagging, possessive wife, a husband, without any love, you are destroying your own opportunity. In the Talmud, again, there is a saying that "God will ask you. 'I had given you so many opportunities to be happy. Why did you miss?' " He will not ask, "What sins have you committed?" He will ask, "What opportunities for happiness have you missed? You will be responsible for those." This is really tremendously beautiful: "You will be responsible only for those opportunities that were available to you and you missed." Remain faithful to yourself -- that is the only faith that is needed -- and everything will be good.

If you are faithful to yourself you will always find a partner, a life-partner, with whom you grow. Otherwise change. There is nothing wrong in it. And it is good for the partner also, because if you are not growing you will take revenge. That's what every husband and every wife is doing.

If you are not growing and you feel confined, imprisoned, then you start taking revenge on the other -- because it is because of the other that the prison exists. It is because of the other that you are caught. Then you will be angry, continuously angry. Anger will become your whole life. And you cannot love in such a situation. How can one love one's own imprisonment? Maybe that imprisonment is your wife, your husband, your father, mother, your guru -- it makes no difference.

If you are here and you feel imprisoned, escape -- as soon as you can -- with all my blessings. Because that way it is dangerous to be here. You are not to be faithful towards me. The first faithfulness is towards yourself; everything comes next. If you feel confined, crippled -- escape! Don't wait a single moment, and never look back. Seek somewhere else. Life is infinite. You may have somebody else who suits you better and who doesn't become an imprisonment to you, who becomes a freedom. Go there. Seek. Always be in search.

Otherwise, if you are here hanging around, thinking you are imprisoned, you will start taking revenge on me. You will become angry with me. You will pose as if you are a disciple, but you will become an enemy. And some day or other you are going to explode.

In all relationships it should be remembered that in this life you are to learn and grow, become more intelligent and aware. If something cripples, it is a sin to remain in that situation. Move away. You will create a more loving world that way. But just the opposite has been taught: even if you don't love your wife, love her. And nobody asks, "How can one love somebody if one is not in love?"

Maybe the love was there in the beginning, then it disappeared. Then, you have been taught that love never disappears. That too is absolutely stupid. Everything that comes can disappear. Everything that is born can die. Everything that starts can stop. Remain true and alert.

If the love has disappeared then to live with that woman is sin. Then if you sleep with that woman you are a sinner. Then it is a sort of prostitution. The woman goes on living with you because she has nowhere to go. She goes on living with you now because financially she is dependent on you. But then what is prostitution? It is a financial arrangement. Now there is no more love. If you go to a prostitute and she falls in love with you and refuses to take money, she is no longer a prostitute. Prostitution comes only with the money. When instead of love money bridges two persons, it is prostitution.

If you live with a woman with no love and the woman lives with you with no love, only a financial arrangement -- now it will be difficult, where to go, what to do, it seems too insecure so you have to cling and be angry and nag and continuously fight but be together, it is your duty to be together -- you are very dangerous... and out of these prostitutions, what type of children will be born?

You are not only destroying yourself, you are destroying future generations.

Those children will be brought up by you -- two persons continuously fighting, continuously in conflict. And those children which will be born to you will always be in conflict. A part of them will belong to the mother, a part to the father, and deep inside there will be a civil war, continuously. They will always be confused.

When you come to me and say, "I am confused".... Just a few days before, one sannyasin came and he said, "I want to surrender, but I don't want to surrender also." Now what to do with this man? And he says, "Help me." He wants to surrender. He does not want to surrender also. A part says, "Surrender"; a part says, "No." This is schizophrenia, split personality, but this is how almost everybody is. From where does this split come? This split comes from a father and mother always in conflict.

The child sometimes feels for the mother because he feels for both. He has been brought into the world by both. Half of his body cells belong to the father; half of his body cells belong to the mother. Now they are in conflict. He will be constantly in civil war; he will never be at ease, relaxed. Whatsoever he will do, one part will go on saying, "Nonsense. Don't do it." If the mother part says, "Do," the father part will say, "No." May not say very loudly, fathers never say very loudly, but the father part will nod no. If the father part says, "Yes," then the mother part goes on saying, of course very loudly, "No!"

Mulla Nasrudin's son fell in love with a girl. He came home. He asked Nasrudin, confided in him, what to do. The father whispered in his ear, "If you really want the girl, go and say to your mother that 'Father prohibits,' that 'My father is against it.' And before your mother I will say, 'I will never allow you!' Then it is certain your marriage will happen."

A great politics goes on. And every sensitive child learns the tricks of the trade, and then he will relay them all his life. He will remain divided, and whenever he will bring a woman home, he will start playing the role of the father and the woman will start playing the role of her mother. And the whole story continues...

and the world goes on moving deeper and deeper into madness.

This whole nonsense has happened because you have been wrongly taught. I teach you only one fidelity: that is fidelity to your own life. It will look very dangerous. It will look as if I am trying to create a chaos, anarchy. I am not.

Anarchy you have already created -- it cannot be improved upon. I am trying to create order, but order out of freedom; order as an inner discipline, not as a forced thing from the outside.

Question 9

Yes, but only up to the time when they start talking. When a baby starts talking everything disappears. By talking a child becomes part of the society. When the baby is silent, nontalking, then the baby sees the same things that a saint sees, that an enlightened man sees exactly the same thing. The baby is almost a saint.

But it remains only up to a point. If the baby is silent for six months, nine months, one year -- then up to that time, the baby will see the auras, will feel deeply. Once the baby starts talking, the baby is no longer there. The baby has entered into the world, the world of language, reason, mind. Then, by and by, those qualities disappear.

In India we have a myth, and a very true thing is hidden in it. In India it is said that up to the sixth month the baby remembers his past life. It is true, because up to the sixth month the baby is so silent and the clarity is so penetrating. Then, every day, the more and more the world is there with him, the more and more we teach, condition, and the baby becomes more a part of the society and less a part of existence -- the baby is lost. This is the fall of Adam: the tree of knowledge has been tasted. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is tasted when the baby starts talking.

Then again if you want to regain it, recover it, you will have to learn silence -- that's why so much insistence for silence, meditation. You will have to drop language again. All inner chatter has to stop; the inner talk has to be stopped.

You have to become innocent again, without language, no verbalization within, just a pure being: a baby again. Remember, Jesus goes on saying again and again, "Only those who are like children will enter my kingdom of God."

Question 10

The basic reason is that man is an expert in bragging; women are not. Many women have attained to enlightenment. The number is exactly the same as men - - cannot be otherwise, because existence goes on balancing itself -- but women are not braggards. They don't brag much. If they attain they enjoy it. They don't make much fuss about it.

Men are totally different. If they attain to something they create much noise about it; they fuss about it. And the society is controlled by man. When a man becomes enlightened, all other men advertise the whole thing. When a woman becomes enlightened nobody bothers, because the society doesn't belong to women. They are not the rulers.

A man is basically more social than a woman. The woman is confined to herself, or at the most, her family. She does not bother about Vietnam, she doesn't bother about Richard Nixon -- so far off... doesn't matter. She does not bother about coming generations, this and that. She is happy in her home, a small world of her own. In fact she doesn't want anybody to interfere. She wants to keep to herself.

When a woman becomes enlightened, then again the same thing remains: she does not go preaching all over the world. That is not in her elements. She does not go out making disciples, creating organized religions. That is not in her elements. She enjoys it; she is happy with it. She can dance. She can sing. In her home, sitting silently, she will not bother. A woman does not become a Master.

As many women become enlightened as men, but a woman has no qualities to become a Master. This has to be understood.

A woman has perfect qualities to become a disciple. Surrender is easy for her. It is natural, part of the feminine being. Surrender is easy; surrender comes easily.

A woman becomes a good disciple. And you will always find: wherever you will find four disciples, three will be women. This will be the proportion all over the world. Mahavir had forty thousand sannyasins -- thirty thousand were women.

The same proportion with Buddha. You go in any church, any temple and just count -- you will always find the proportion three to one. In fact all the religions are supported, fed, by women; but they are disciples.

Surrender is easy to them because surrendering is passive. If you go and surrender to a woman she will feel embarrassed and awkward. If a man comes and falls at her feet, she will never be able to love this man. He is not manly. Go and chase a woman: the more you chase and the more you pray and the more you fall at her feet, the more it will be impossible for her to surrender to you. A woman needs somebody to whom she can surrender, somebody manly enough.

A woman has a passive being, man has an active being: yin and yang. They are complementary.

To woman, surrender is very easy. It is absolutely to her way of being. But to accept surrender is very difficult -- and a Master has to accept surrender. A few women have become Masters, very rarely, but I always suspect those women must have more male hormones. They must not be really women.

In Indian history there is a case: in the twenty-four teerthankeras of the Jains there was one woman, Mallibai was her name. But one of the orthodoxmost sects of Jains, Digamberas, they don't call her a woman. They don't write her name "Mallibai"; they write her name "Mallinatha." It becomes a male name; it is no longer female. I have pondered over it much, why. Then I felt Digamberas are right: the woman may have been a woman only in name's sake; otherwise she was a man. To become a teerthanker, it is so unwomanly. To accept millions of people and their surrender is so unwomanly that the woman was only bodily a woman. Her inner being was of a man.

So Digamberas are right. Swethamberas go on saying that she was a woman: they are more realistic but not right, more factual but not more right. They relayed just a fact, and sometimes facts are not real. Sometimes facts are very fictitious; and sometimes facts can lie so much that fictions will feel ashamed.

This is a fact -- that this Mallibai was a woman -- but this is not reality.

Digamberas have the right source. They have forgotten about the fact that she was a woman; they have taken her as man. Her whole being must have been manly.

Rarely it happens. In politics, in religion, whenever a woman succeeds she is more manly than feminine. A Lakshmibai or a Joan of Arc, they don't look feminine. Just the body, the outer garb is feminine. Inside is a man.

That's why they are not known much, because unless you become a Master, how will you be known? Your enlightenment remains your inner light. You don't guide others; others never come to know about it. But this is my feeling: that nature always has a deep balance.

In the world the same number of women exists as men. Biologists even wonder how it happens, how nature manages it, how nature knows that the same proportion is needed -- almost the same. Man and woman are always in equal numbers. To somebody only girls are born. To somebody else only boys are born.

But if you look at the whole earth, the total number of women is almost the same as the number of men.

When children are born, for a hundred girls there are a hundred fifteen boys.

Because nature knows boys are weaker; more will die. So by the time they come of age for marriage, the number will be equal. Girls are more stubborn. Girls are stronger; they fall ill less. They have more tolerance of many things; they can tolerate hardships. It is just male ego which Goes on saying, "We are stronger."

Muscular power may be Greater in man, but strength is not greater -- because fifteen boys per hundred fifteen die, and by the age of fourteen the number is equal: a hundred girls to a hundred boys.

Nature somehow manages. When there is a war: after the war more boys are born, less girls, because in war more men die. It seems really a tremendous phenomenon, unbelievable. How does it happen? In war -- the Second World War, the First World War -- both the wars have been watched, analyzed: more men are born after the war, the number increases, and less girls are born. Because in war more men have died and the number has to be replaced.

The same is in the spiritual enlightenment also: the same number of women become enlightened as men. There is a balance, but women are not known so much because they never become Masters; or if sometimes they become, then only rarely it happens.