Innocence: Lost and Found Again

The first question

Question 1:

Prem Pramod,

There is no heaven anywhere, it is here. It is always here, it is never there. It is always now, it is never then. The very idea of heaven somewhere else - there, then - is a strategy of the mind to deceive you, to keep you ignorant of the heaven that surrounds you every moment.

Existence knows no past, no future. The only time existence knows is now, and the meditator has to enter this "nowness" of things. this is heaven. This very moment we are in it. You are of aware, I am aware of it. That's the only difference: you are sleep, I am awake. But we exist in the same space.

There is nowhere to go!

The biblical story says God became angry with Adam and Eve and threw them out of the Garden of Eden. That is impossible - yes, even for God it is impossible. They say God is omnipotent, but there are limits to omnipotence too. For example, he cannot make two plus two equal five. He cannot throw anybody out of paradise because only paradise exists; it is synonymous with existence itself.

So what must have happened is: Adam and Eve after eating the fruit of knowledge became minds.

When you eat the fruit of knowledge you become a mind, you lose your innocence, you become knowledgeable. And knowledge drives you out of the now to the then, to the there. Mind is always somewhere else Adam and Eve must have fallen asleep.

Metaphysically to fall asleep means to become a mind. And to become a Buddha, awakened, to become a Christ is to come out of the mind, to come out of knowledge and again become innocent.

That's the whole alchemy of meditation.

I am not identified with the mind anymore, so there is no question of any heaven anywhere else.

Religious scriptures are full of it. They even give you maps - where heaven is, how far away, how to reach there, what path to travel, which guide to listen to: Christ, Mohammed, Buddha. And they also make you very afraid that if you don't reach heaven you will fall into hell.

Neither heaven exists nor hell exists; they are just in your psychology. When you are psychically attuned with existence, when you are silent, you are in heaven. When you are disturbed, when you lose your silence, you are distracted and there are ripples and ripples in the lake of your consciousness and all the mirror-like quality of the consciousness is lost, you are in hell.

Hell simply means disharmony within you - within you and with existence too. The moment you are harmonious within yourself and with existence - and they are two sides of the same coin - immediately you are in heaven. Heaven and hell are not geographical.

So, Pramod, the first thing to remember is: there is no heaven, no hell for me. They disappeared the moment I became disidentified with the mind.

Secondly: one is never born and never dies; both are illusions. Certainly it appears so, but it appears so just like a snake appearing as a rope when you cannot see clearly. Maybe night is descending, the sun has set, and you are on a dark path, and suddenly you become afraid of the snake. But there is only a rope lying there. Bring some light - just a candle will do - and the snake is no longer found. It was never there in the first place.

Birth is as illusory as the snake seen in a rope; and if birth is illusory, of course death is illusory. You are never born and you never die. You certainly enter into a body - that is a birth - and one day you leave the body - that's what you call death - but as far as you are concerned, you were before your birth and you will be after your death.

Birth and death don't confine your life; there have been many births and many deaths. Births and deaths are just small episodes in the eternity of your life, and the moment you become aware of this eternity - another name for now, this timelessness - all fear, all anxiety about death immediately evaporates just as dewdrops evaporate in the early morning sun.

So the second thing, Pramod: I am not going to die. Certainly, one day I will leave the body - in fact I left it twenty-five years ago. There is no longer any connection with the body. I am just a guest, I don't own it. I am no longer part of it, it is no longer part of me. We are together, and on friendly terms - there is no antagonism, I respect it because it gives me shelter - but there is no bridge. The body is there, I am here, and between the two there is a gap.

But for the sake of your question I consulted the future Akashic records. They are continuously guarded by two persons. One is Master Kuthumi, son of Madame Bla-bla, better known as Madame Blavatsky. Master K. H., Master Kuthumi, is Madame Bla-bla's son; mother and son both guard the records. It is very easy to deceive the son, but it is very difficult to deceive Mom.

They say you can deceive a few people their whole lives, you can deceive the whole world for a few days, but you cannot deceive Mom - that's impossible.

But once in a while Madame Bla-bla goes shopping, and when she goes shopping the son immediately starts drinking - he is an old alcoholic. That is the moment when you can look in the Akashic records.

Pramod asked me this question a few days ago, but I had to wait. Only last night could I look into the future records. This is what is written there... You can see, the Akashic records are big, their pages are also very big - this is only a paragraph!

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had dropped his body. When he arrived at the entrance to Heaven, St Peter was waiting to usher him to a special tribunal which had been set up to indict him on charges of sacrilege, heresy, libel, slander, defamation of character and obstruction of saints and Masters in the performance of their work.

"Listen," whined Jesus in a nasal Jewish voice, "this goy told the whole world that I was a four-foot hunchback with a st... stut... stutt... stutter. And he made uu... uu... up di... dirty jokes about Mmm...

Mother and the Holy... Gggh... Ghost. And now nobody can take me seriously anymore!"

"That's nothing!" shouted Mahavira in his thick Bihar accent. "He said that I was squatting to shit when I became enlightened, and that I was a sado-masochist, covered in lice and dirt, and had the foulest breath in the whole of India!"

Buddha, remembering to stay upwind of the Jaina teerthankara, butted in quickly. "This... this... this crazy bloke had the impudence to say that he was putting my wheel of dharma in motion again. Just when it was gaining speed in America and Europe, this Rajneesh comes along and sticks a spoke in my wheel, stops it, puts it into reverse and then says that he is carrying on my work!"

Adi Shankara, speaking for endless rows of rishis, paramahansas and yogis, approached the witness stand next: "For countless ages the saffron robe of the sannyasin, his austerity and chastity, his poverty and his renunciation of the world were universally respected. Then this charlatan destroyed all that in seven years! Now they are driving around on motor bikes, smoking and drinking, womanizing and having fun! They call it meditation. And they call themselves by the most outrageous names: Swami Veet Pete, Ma Sachchakhanda, Swami Wolfgangananda. This Rajneesh has made a mockery of our religion!"

The Holy Ghost was called to the witness stand. Of course, since he was not a person, only a presence, he could not speak. But he made his presence felt by loud thunderclaps and earthquakes.

It was made clear from this, said St Peter, that the Holy Ghost was really pissed off with the accused.

Mother Teresa was the last witness to appear for the prosecution. "I have only this to say: I spent my life trying to help poor helpless cripples like that man there," she said, pointing to Jesus, whom she did not recognize. "This Rajneesh mocked my efforts. I say he must be given the Ignoble Prize for all his many sins. I speak on behalf of Jesus Christ and the Polack Pope!"

The judge, God himself, asked Bhagwan if he had anything to say in his own defence.

"Perhaps a few jokes..." said Bhagwan tentatively.

"I see you are beyond redemption," said God, a certain malicious glee now creeping into his face and his voice. "I hereby banish you from heaven for all eternity and cast you into the seventh hell!"

"Thank God!" cried Bhagwan joyfully. "For one dreadful moment I thought you were going to tell me to stay here! Now I can be with my people again!"

The second question

Question 2:

Anil Bharti,

There are many things to be remembered. The first thing is: never force anybody to come here. Even though you are doing it out of love, forcing anybody to come here will destroy the whole purpose.

Nobody likes to be forced. Even if you force people to enter into heaven they will be angry with you, because their freedom is far more valuable to them than anything else - and they are right.

A man may be happy even in hell if he has chosen it on his own; it is a question of freedom. Because you dragged them here - you forced them to wake up early these cold days and to take a bath and to skip their breakfast - you prepared the whole ground in such a way that they were bound to be angry with me. Although they cannot say a single word about why they were angry with me, they were really angry with you, Anil Bharti. I was just an excuse.

If you want to share your joy with somebody, first prepare him. He cannot be forced, he can only be seduced, persuaded. Let him become interested, let him force you to bring him here, only then is there a possibility of some communion. Otherwise this happens to many people: they drag their wives or their husbands or their children here.

Anil Bharti is a professor in Lucknow University. He is my sannyasin and he has experienced great joy, he has slowly entered into deeper layers of meditation. But those students were not even aware of what is happening here. First you should have introduced them through the books, through the tapes. You should have prepared them, and by preparation I mean: unless they ask you to bring them here, don't bring them, because once they come here through force they will never come again; they will become antagonistic forever. They have nothing to do with me, but because you forced them they will take revenge on me.

So one has to be very conscious. These experiences are very delicate; you should not behave in a gross way. If you had prepared your students, and you were coming in the morning and a few of them came, that would have been okay.

I was a professor in a Sanskrit university. The first day I reached the university I was not yet allotted a quarter so I had to stay in the hostel for a few days. Because it was a Sanskrit university...

And nobody wants to learn Sanskrit nowadays; it is a dead language - it serves no purpose, it will not help you to earn your bread and butter. So almost ninety percent of the students were on government scholarships; they were there only because of the scholarships. They had no desire to learn Sanskrit, they were not interested in it, but they were poor students and they could not get scholarships anywhere else, so it was better than nothing.

So they had come there unwillingly, reluctantly, and because they were almost all scholarship holders they were forced to pray every morning at four o"clock - so early!

When I reached the university it was winter-time, and by four o"clock they were shivering and they were taking cold baths. No hot water was provided - Sanskrit scholars are not supposed to have such luxuries as hot water; they are supposed to live like the ancient rishis and their disciples. And they used to get up early, at four o"clock, brahmamuhurta; this is one of the most divine moments according to the Hindu mythology. And they could be forced because otherwise they would lose their scholarships. So they had to go through these things but in a very angry mood.

They did not know that I was also a professor that first day. I loved to have a cold bath early in the morning, so I went to the well to take a bath. And the students were so angry: they were using all kinds of four-letter words about the Vice-Chancellor - not only about the Vice-Chancellor but about God also! Not knowing that I was also a professor, they continued their use of violent, ugly words.

I reported to the Vice-Chancellor: "This is not right. You are not teaching them prayer. And then after the cold bath they have to stand in a line and pray for hours in Sanskrit. Now, how can they be prayerful? They are angry with God. If they come across God they will kill him! And they are praying, so what kind of prayer can it be?"

But the Vice-Chancellor was an old Sanskrit scholar. He said, "No, that's not right. They are doing it on their own, we are not forcing anybody."

I said, "I know that they are doing it on their own, because if they don't do it their scholarships disappear. You are not forcing them in a direct but an indirect way. And if you want to argue with me, then give me only one day and I will put up a notice saying that whosoever wants to have a cold bath at four o"clock and pray can get up, and whosoever does not want to need not worry about the scholarship; it will be up to him."

Now the Vice-Chancellor was caught; he had to agree to only one day. And I went to the Vice- Chancellor at four o"clock - he himself was asleep. I dragged him out of bed. I said, "Come on!

What kind of Vice-Chancellor are you? Your students are praying, taking cold baths, and you are asleep!"

He was very angry at me. I said, "The same is happening to them. Come on!"

And there was not a single student there! The well was empty, the prayer hall was empty. I told him, "Now take a cold bath with me, and we will both pray!"

He said, "I cannot take a cold bath - I am an old man!"

I said, "Okay, then I will take the cold bath. You sit here and watch, and then we will go and pray."

He said, "But I am feeling tired and I want to go to sleep!"

"Then," I said, "I am the only person who will be praying - and I don't know Sanskrit at all! And God understands only Sanskrit! I was wrongly appointed to this university by the mistake of the Ministry of Education. They thought, looking at me, that I must know Sanskrit. I don't know Sanskrit at all. I am not interested in anything dead."

So he went to his room and I went to my room, and everybody slept. And that morning the students came to me and they were so happy, they were so thankful.

And I said to the Vice-Chancellor, "This is far more beautiful, this is far more prayerful - their coming to me and thanking me." I said to him, "Stop all this nonsense!"

But rather than stopping the nonsense he made the government transfer me to another university, saying, "This man is dangerous! He will destroy my students" morality, character, religion."

Anil Bharti, you did wrong. You should have come, and if somebody had been interested he would have followed you. Make them interested first, only then bring them here, otherwise they will come with a negative mind and they will search for some negativity. And you can always find negativity - particularly in my place you can find all kinds of negativities - because this is not a dead ashram:

people are alive, young, lively, dancing, singing, loving, laughing. They must have found many things which go against their prejudices.

And they, you say: ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE MOST CULTURED, WELL-BEHAVED AND INTELLIGENT IN THE WHOLE OF MY UNIVERSITY...

That's the trouble: if they are well-cultured, that means they are well-repressed! What is culture? - a device of repression. If they had been a little less cultured they would have been more innocent.

If they had been a little less cultured they would have seen things more clearly. The cultured person cannot see things as they are; he has his ideas of how things should be, and if they do not go according to his ideas then they are wrong.

And you say they are well-behaved. They must be being forced to be well-behaved. And my own experience is that the well-behaved children, the obedient children, are not really alive people.

The alive children are bound to be rebellious, they will be disobedient. Out of disobedience, intelligence becomes sharper. Out of disobedience one starts being an individual. One has to learn to say no, only then does saying yes have any meaning. The yes of the person who cannot say no and says yes is impotent. Well-behaved people are impotent as far as intelligence is concerned, well-cultured people are phony, pseudo; they are not authentic.

And you say they are the most intelligent. You don't seem to understand the difference between the intellect and intelligence; you are mixing them both up. They may be the most intellectual, but to be intelligent is a totally different phenomenon than being intellectual. Intellect is of the mind; intelligence comes only through meditation, there is no other way. Intellect collects information: it is a memory system. Intelligence needs no information: it goes through a transformation. Intellect goes through ready-made answers, answers which are provided by others - parents, teachers, schools, colleges, universities, priests, leaders. Ready-made answers are collected by the intellectual people. Intellectuals are parrots; they are mechanical, they are "His Master's Voice" - HMV records, gramophone records - they don't have their own understanding.

The intelligent person lives moment-to-moment, not through borrowed answers; he has no ready- made answer. He sees the challenge of the situation and responds accordingly. He is not a photograph, he is a mirror. The intellectual is a photograph: he already has an imprint on him.

The intelligent person is just a mirror: he reflects reality as it is. He simply reflects it and responds to it. The intelligent person is spontaneous and the intellectual person is never spontaneous.

But our schools, colleges and universities are not places where intelligence is helped; it is hindered.

Our whole educational system is part of the establishment: it does not work for the well-being of the person being taught, it works for the vested interests of the politicians, of the priests, of the churches, of the state, of all kinds of other things. It has nothing to do with the person being taught, its whole work is to create efficient slaves.

And whatsoever you call I.Q., the intelligence quotient, has nothing to do with intelligence. It is memory quotient - it is M.Q.! One who can memorize things well and can reproduce them exactly as he has been taught is thought to be intelligent. But he is not intelligent, he just has a good memory, and memory is nothing much to brag about - a computer can have a memory and it has a better memory.

I was in continuous trouble during my university days. My professors were concerned about me.

A few were very much against me because I was not obedient, and a few - those who had some idea what intelligence was - loved me, but their concern was that I might not be able to pass the examinations, because examinations require you to just reproduce ready-made answers.

One of my professors, the head of the department at Sagar University, Dr S. K. Saxena, was so concerned - he loved me very much - that he again and again told me, "You need not answer anything according to you, remember it, you have to answer according to the textbook and whatsoever is written there. Don't bother about whether it is right or wrong - nobody is asking you whether it is right or wrong - we are simply asking you what is written in the textbook."

He reminded me even when I was entering for my final examinations for the M.A. He took me to the university hall where the examination was going to be held and whispered in my ear, "Remember, you are not supposed to give spontaneous answers! "

I told him, "I will see."

He said, "Look, can't you even say yes?"

And when my oral examination was being held a Mohammedan professor from Aligarh University came to preside over it. Dr Saxena, my head of department, was present; he told me, "He is a Mohammedan - very fanatic! Don't annoy him, don't irritate him! Just give exact answers point by point - and you need not tell any jokes! And remember one thing: I will be there, and if you go astray I will kick your feet underneath the table to remind you not to go astray and to come to the point, to be exact. And you are not supposed to ask questions of that old man, simply answer!"

And on the first question everything went wrong. That Mohammedan professor asked me, "What is Indian philosophy? How do you define it?"

I said, "There is no question of Indian philosophy or non-Indian philosophy. Philosophy is simply philosophy! First you tell me, why do you call it Indian philosophy? If physics is physics, chemistry is chemistry - no Indian chemistry, no Indian physics - then why should philosophy be Indian? Tell me first!"

And my professor kicked me. I said, "Keep yourself out of it! You are not to interfere - you are not supposed to interfere!"

I told the Mohammedan, "My professor is kicking my feet and he is not supposed to do that! He is just here to supervise the whole thing - what is going on. He has to leave it to me and you. Now we have to encounter each other. First you define it! And he told me beforehand that you are a Mohammedan and a fanatic and that I am not to annoy you, so I am not trying to annoy you at all."

The old Mohammedan loved it so much that he said, "Forget all about the examination!" He gave me ninety-nine out of a hundred.

I said, "Why ninety-nine? Why not a hundred? Why be so miserly? I have not answered anything wrong - I have not answered at all!"

So he made it a hundred. He said, "Okay, be finished with it! I have never examined such a student before. It seems you are the examiner and I am the examinee!"

And he started perspiring. I gave him my handkerchief: "You just..."

These so-called cultured, obedient, well-behaved students must be stupid people. Don't bring such stupid people here! First make them a little intelligent, help them to meditate a little, then you can bring them here. But otherwise this is bound to happen.

This is not an old, traditional place, it is revolution - and not a dead revolution - with a heartbeat, alive. Only those who are ready to be revolutionaries can become participants in what is happening here.

You brought those dumb, stupid students here - well-behaved, highly-cultured... That simply means they have no intelligence, otherwise they would not be well-behaved, they would not be so ready to be given culture by others; they would retain their authenticity, their individuality; they would live according to their own light and they would be ready to risk.

And when I am saying things, the people who come for the first time cannot even understand what I am saying, because they come with expectations. And in India when you go to a religious discourse you are not supposed to laugh, you are not even supposed to be awake.

In fact, doctors suggest going to religious discourses to people who are suffering from insomnia, and if they cannot fall asleep in religious discourses then they go to the mental hospital; then there is no other help possible. But it almost always happens - even mad people fall asleep in religious discourses .

Here it is a totally different phenomenon. I am not talking about your scriptures, I am not supporting your rotten ideas - I am not carrying corpses, I am pouring out my heart! I am communicating from my very being, from my own experience. If your scriptures support it, it is good for those scriptures.

If they don't support it, they are doomed; then they don't have any future. I am not here to support your scriptures - I have my own experience to share.

Now if a Jaina comes here, he comes to hear me supporting Mahavira, if a Hindu comes he thinks I must talk about the Gita, if a Mohammedan comes he thinks I must say something about the Koran, and the Christian comes with his own ideas. I am not in any way interested in forcing these ideas upon you; on the contrary, I am here to uncondition you, to help you to get rid of all that is past and dead and is heavy on you. It is a mountainous weight, and you cannot open your wings unless you become weightless.

I am burning scriptures here, destroying ideologies, uprooting traditions, orthodoxies! Naturally, when a new person comes not knowing what is going to happen here, he is in such shock that he cannot understand. And people are so egoistic that if they are in shock they are angry at me.

Rather than trying to see that they are shocked because they are believers, they become angry at me. That's why they started saying, "The government should ban this place! This man should be shot!"

I take these statements as great compliments, because unless I am shot I will not be proved right.

Once they shoot me, I will be proved right. Then the same people will start feeling guilty and will start worshipping me. That's how it has always happened. Now they cannot forget Socrates because they poisoned him, they cannot forget Jesus because they killed him, they cannot forget Al-Hillaj because they murdered him.

The best way for me to die will be for me to be shot, because then it will become absolutely necessary for people to remember me. I would not like to die on a bed - that doesn't look very great!

The last question

Question 3:

The innocence of the children is ignorance, it is not true innocence. The true innocence happens only after the second birth. The true innocence happens only after you have reached your very core through awareness; that is the second birth, that is resurrection - you are born anew.

The first innocence of a child when it is born is only ignorance, but that ignorance is far more valuable than the knowledge that your so-called learned people are burdened with.

So these things have to be remembered. Real innocence belongs to the Buddhas. They have lost their first childhood in knowledge and then they become aware of what they have lost. They have lost the precious, the essential for the non-essential, so they drop their knowledge. Dropping their knowledge they become innocent again. This is second innocence, second birth. In India we call such a person dwija, twice-born. He is a real brahmin because he has known the Brahma, the absolute. The absolute can be known only in innocence.

So the first, the most important thing is the innocence of the sage. It is like the innocence of the children but only like. The innocence of the children is bound to be corrupted, but the innocence of the sage cannot be corrupted anymore - he has passed through that stage. His innocence has maturity, his innocence has integrity; his innocence is earned - he deserves it.

Small children are innocent; but they have not earned it, it is natural. They are ignorant really, but their ignorance is better than the so-called learning, because the learned person is simply covering his ignorance with words, theories, ideologies, philosophies, dogmas, creeds. He is trying to cover up his ignorance, but just scratch him a little bit and you will find inside nothing but darkness, nothing but ignorance.

A child, Maria, is in a far better state than the learned person. But one thing is absolutely bound to happen: he will have to go through learning; this is part of life's experience. Unless you lose something, unless something is lost, you don't recognize its value. It happens every day: whenever something is available to you, you start taking it for granted, you forget all about it.

A woman loves you and you don't take much notice of it, you are not even thankful to her. The day she dies or goes away from you, then suddenly you feel something inside is missing. It is like the fish: if you take it out of the ocean, then it knows that the ocean was a blessing. Unless you take the fish out of the ocean it will never know - it will never know that it exists in the ocean, that it is a great gift that she or he is in the ocean. The fish has to be thrown on the bank, on the hot sand in the burning sun, then only will understanding dawn. And if the fish can reach the ocean again it is going to be tremendously thankful to the ocean.

This is what happens. Learning is bound to happen - it is part of growth; you have to lose your innocence. But if you remain just a learned man your whole life and you never lose your learning, then you are stupid, then you have behaved in an idiotic way.

Children are in a far better space because they can see things. Even though they are ignorant they are spontaneous, even though they are ignorant they have insights of tremendous value.

A little boy, seized with hiccups, cried, "Mommy, I am coughing backwards!"

A small boy was brought to a psychiatrist's office for an examination by the mother who was a chatterbox. The psychiatrist examined the little fellow and was surprised that he hardly paid any attention to the questions.

"Do you have trouble hearing?" the psychiatrist asked him.

"No," replied the lad. "I have trouble listening."

You see the insight? Hearing and listening are tremendously different. The child said, "I have no difficulty in hearing, but I am tired of listening. One has to hear - the chatterbox mother is there - but I have trouble listening. I cannot pay attention." The mother and her being a chatterbox have destroyed something valuable in the child: his attentiveness. He is utterly bored.

The second grade teacher had sent the children to the board to work out arithmetic problems. One little fellow said, "I ain't got no chalk."

"That's not right," the teacher said. "The right way to say it is, "I don't have any chalk, you don't have any chalk, we don't have any chalk, they don't have any chalk." Now do you understand?"

"No," said the little boy. "What happened to all the chalk?"

The clock had just struck 3 a.m. when the minister's teenage daughter returned from a dance. The minister and his wife had been waiting up for the girl, and as she came in the front door he said to her rather scornfully, "Good morning, child of the devil."

Speaking sweetly, as any child should, she said, "Good morning, father."

The teacher was trying to teach subtraction. "Now, Hugh," she said, "if your father earned if he gave your mother half, what would she have?"

"A heart attack!" the kid said.

Supper was over. The father of the house and his nine-year-old son were in the living room watching television. Mother and daughter were in the kitchen, washing up the supper dishes. Suddenly the father and son heard a terrible crashing sound of something being broken in the kitchen. They waited for a moment in shock but did not hear a sound.

"It was Mom who broke the dish," said the boy.

"How do you know?" his father asked.

"Because," replied his son, "she's not saying anything!"

From the kitchen came the sound of the crash of either broken glass or broken china.

"Willy," cried his mother from the living room. "What on earth are you doing in the kitchen?"

"Nothing," Willy said, "it's already done!"

A salesman who had been working in the New England area was being transferred to California.

The move had been the principal topic of conversation around the house for weeks.

Then the night before the big move, when his five-year-old daughter was saying her prayers, she said, "And now, God, I will have to say goodbye forever because tomorrow we are moving to California!"

"Mama, do people go to heaven feet first?"

"No, why do you ask?"

"Well, the maid was lying on the bed with her feet up, hollering, "Oh, God, I'm coming!" And she would have, too, if Daddy hadn't held her down!"