Me, Enlightened?

Question 1:

Deva Kanchha,

GREAT TRUTHS TAKE TIME TO SINK IN. And this is the greatest of all, that you all are potentially Buddhas. It is impossible for your mind to accept it. You can accept somebody far away, a Siddhartha Gautam, being a Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu. They are so far away, millions of light years away; they have become mythological. They are no more thought to be real persons. They have lost all substance, they have become pure shadows -- pure poetry with no words, pure silence with no sound. You can imagine them, but you cannot feel them.

Hence, although I go on repeating again and again that you can become a Buddha...in fact you ARE a Buddha, unaware of the fact. On the circumference maybe there is a great storm, just as on the surface the sea is stormy -- sometimes more, sometimes less, but there are always waves, bigger or smaller; there is always turbulence, disturbance. But at the depth there is not even a ripple: all is silence.

You are the center of the cyclone, but you are not aware of your center. And down the ages priests have condemned you so much that it has become almost impossible for you to conceive of yourself as a Buddha. The priests have condemned you according to your circumference; they know only your circumference. In fact they are interested only in condemning you, so whatsoever they can condemn they see very predominantly in you.

They choose that which can be condemned, because through condemnation you are reduced to slaves: slaves of religion -- Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist; and slaves of societies, cultures, civilizations, political ideologies -- communist, fascist, Gandhian.

The only way to reduce you to a slave is to condemn you so badly that you lose all self- respect. And it can be done because your circumference is there, and you also are aware only of the circumference. You are fast asleep snoring at the center. Only at the circumference are you a little bit awake, and that too because of the disturbance, noise.

In the marketplace you are a little bit more alert. When you sit silently in your meditation room you start falling asleep, because the only kind of alertness that you know is that which is created by the noise around you. You know only one kind of awareness, which is pathological because it is out of disturbance, not out of stillness.

That's why it is one of the basic experiences of all meditators that the moment they start meditating they start falling asleep. Hence the Zen Master has to walk amongst his disciples with a stick in his hand: whenever he sees somebody asleep, he hits him immediately. The hit you can understand, because it is on the circumference. Suddenly the energy rushes upwards in your spine, and you are awake, alert. The Zen tradition says that when the Master hits you, bow down to him in deep respect. He has obliged you; he has taken great trouble to hit you.

You know only one kind of alertness -- when you are hit, when you are in some danger, when you are in some accident. It is because of this that people go mountain climbing, because when they are climbing mountains and the danger is great they become a little alert. It is because of this that people compete in car races, because the speedier the car goes, the more danger is close by: death can happen any moment, you HAVE to become alert.

Danger has an attraction. The only attraction of danger is that you become a little alert, but this is a superficial kind of alertness. Real alertness has to happen at the center, otherwise you can remain alert on the circumference because of the noise, disturbance, but it is coming from others, it is not your own, and your center can go on sleeping.

I go on telling you this again and again. Why do r say it again and again? So that it can sink in and can reach your center. It takes time, and it takes a right moment.

My father's disappearance from the body may have been the right moment for you, Kanchha. Yes, he was a simple man, just like anybody else. So was Buddha and so was Mahavira and so was Jesus -- simple people, innocent people. He was not in any way extraordinary; that was his extraordinariness. I have known him from my very childhood -- so simple, so innocent, anybody could deceive him.

He used to believe anybody. I have seen many people cheating him, but his trust was immense; he never distrusted human beings although he was cheated many times. It was so simple to see that people were cheating him that even when I was a small child I used to say to him, "What are you doing? This man is simply cheating you!"

Once he built a house and a contractor was cheating him. I told him, "This house is not going to stand, it will fall, because the cement is not in the right proportion and the wood that is being used is too heavy." But he wouldn't listen; he said, "He is a good man, he cannot cheat us."

And that's what actually happened; the house could not stand the first rains. He was not there, he was in Bombay. I sent him a telegram telling him, "What I have been telling you has happened: the house has fallen." He did not even answer. He came when he was supposed to come, after seven days, and he said, "Why did you unnecessarily waste money on the telegram? The house had fallen, so it had fallen! Now what can I do? That contractor wasted ten thousand rupees and you wasted almost ten rupees unnecessarily -- those could have been saved.

And the first thing that he did was to celebrate that we had not moved -- because we had been going to move within two or three weeks. He celebrated: "God is gracious, he saved us. He made the house fall before we had moved into it." So he invited the whole village.

Everybody was just unable to understand: "Is this a moment to celebrate?" Even the contractor was called invited, because he had done a good job: before we moved, the house fell.

He was a simple man. And if you look deep down, everybody is simple. The society makes you complex, but you are born simple and innocent. Everybody is born a Buddha; the society corrupts you.

And the function of a Master is to take away all the corruption that the society has worked on you. the function of the Master is to undo that the society has done to you, and you will be a Buddha again.

The child when he is born functions from the center; we teach him how to function from the circumference. That is our whole educational system all over the world: teaching the child how to function from the circumference. We pull him away from his center, we make him more and more accustomed to the circumference, to living on the circumference... twenty-five years of conditioning, education: good names we have given to ugly things. We call it education -- it is not education, nothing can be a greater mis- education.

The very word 'education' means drawing something out, to draw something out. When you draw water out of the well it is education. Just like that, when something is drawn outwards from your center it is education. But this is not what is going on in the name of education; it is forcing things upon you. It is not bringing your center to function. It is not sharpening your center; it is dulling it, making it more and more sleepy, dozy.

The society succeeds the day your center goes into a coma and your circumference remains functioning. Then you are a robot, a machine, no more a man.

Because we function from the circumference Buddhas look so unreal -- of course, because they function from a totally different center. That's why I say that unless you are in contact with a living Buddha, you will never believe that YOU can become a Buddha.

But a living Buddha also, slowly slowly, appears far away. It is because of your mind working; it is a strategy of the mind to save itself from going through that revolution. So you create a distance -- it is imaginary.

There is no distance between me and you, not at all. I am just a neighbor to you; not even a fence divides me from you. But you cannot believe it, because that is too dangerous for you, for your established pattern of life. You can't allow me too close; you will create a distance.

Pradeepa has asked a question: "Osho, when-ever you quote Lao Tzu as saying, 'Everybody is clear, only I am muddleheaded,' I love it, because I am also muddleheaded.

But there must be some difference between my muddleheadedness and Lao Tzu's."

There is none, Pradeepa. But you cannot believe it. Lao Tzu is exactly as muddleheaded as Pradeepa. Lao Tzu will agree with me, Pradeepa will not agree. There is the problem:

how can Pradeepa agree that her muddleheadness...? Lao Tzu must be meaning something very mysterious, something of a totally different dimension.

No. Lao Tzu is simply saying there is no need to be a great genius to know God. God is available to all, unconditionally to all, categorically to all. You do not have to fulfill certain conditions, you do not have to rise to a certain level. God is available to you as you are, because God has BECOME you. There is nobody ELSE inside you. Just a look....

So it is beautiful in a commune, because when you live in a commune you live with people not knowing whether this man is going to become a Buddha; then one day suddenly the lotus opens: that man has become a Buddha. It gives you great courage. You know this man, he is just like you. You have been drinking tea with him, gossiping with him, reading the same newspaper, listening to the same radio, looking at the same TV, you have been to the same movie. You know him, inside and out; he was just like you. If HE can become a Buddha, then why not YOU? In fact, his becoming a Buddha becomes the greatest uplifting force in your life.

That is the beauty of a commune, because many many people with whom you were working will one day become Buddhas. Somebody was working under you ...for example, one day Deeksha finds that the man who has been washing the pots has become a Buddha! Then Deeksha can believe that "Although I am an Italian, and nobody has ever heard of any Italian becoming a Buddha, still I can become one."

Have you ever heard about any Italian...? At least have not heard of it. But it is going to happen here, because this commune is ninety percent Italian: you eat Italian food, you drink Italian water -- everybody is turning ninety percent Italian. My effort in creating a commune is simply to make you alert and aware that one day the cobbler of the ashram becomes enlightened, another day the guard becomes enlightened, and people go on blossoming. Each blossoming brings new courage, new inspiration, and in that courage and inspiration your spring comes closer to you. A great self-respect arises, and a trust:

"God has not forsaken us. If people like me are becoming Buddhas, then I am also on the way. Sooner or later...." And it is going to be sooner than later -- because if so many people start flowering, then the season has come and it is time not to resist. It is time not to fight any more, but to be in a let-go.

The second question

Question 2:

BE STILL AND KNOW is one of the most fundamental sutras of the inner alchemy. But by being still is not meant that you have to force stillness upon yourself. A forced stillness is not true stillness. One can sit like a Buddha, almost like a statue, absolutely still, and yet deep down there may be great turmoil, a thousand and one thoughts rushing.

There may be great traffic in the mind. The body can be forced to sit silently for hours, and you can also learn tricks to still the mind.

For example, if you chant any mantra for hours, any name of God, if you simply go on chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah," it functions like a tranquilizer. Repetition of a single word or a single mantra creates a certain melody in your mind soothing, very soothing, very calming. And a kind of stillness will be felt which is not the true kind -- because the sound of a certain mantra is simply changing the chemistry of your mind. The change is not alchemical, it is chemical.

Sound is chemistry. Hence music can help you to become still. And, moreover, when a certain word OR A mantra Is repeated constantly, you become hypnotized by it. That's the secret of all hypnosis. You look at a flame, a candle flame, constantly -- what are you doing? You are repeating the flame through the eyes, again and again and again. It is a repetition, it is a mantra -- through the eyes. Or you can repeat a mantra inside yourself; that is through the ear, through the sound. Any sense can be used. Perfume, incense can be used; the same incense can hypnotize you.

Hypnosis means going into deep sleep, artificial sleep. That's exactly the meaning of the word 'hypnosis': a sleep deliberately created. It can be through a tranquilizer, it can be through a soothing silence, sound, music, perfume, incense -- there can be a thousand and one ways, but you will become hypnotized. And, hypnotized, you will feel a kind of stillness which is not true.

And also, if you repeat a certain mantra again and again, you will feel bored. Boredom also brings sleep. That's why doctors suggest to people who cannot sleep that they count sheep from one to a hundred, and then backwards from a hundred -- ninety-nine, ninety- eight, back to one -- and then go up the ladder again...go on coming up and down. How long can you do it? Somewhere after going three or four times up and down the ladder you will fall asleep. It is the most ancient formula for falling asleep: count sheep from one to a hundred and then come back -- because it is such a boring job that you lose all interest in it. And the moment you lose all interest in it, there is nowhere to escape except in sleep.

Mothers know it perfectly well. Hence the lullaby: the mother goes on repeating a single note again and again and the child falls asleep. And children have their own mantras: they can suck on their thumbs -- that is a mantra. The child goes on sucking on the thumb; it is very consoling, soothing. He believes that it is the breast of the mother, and he-falls asleep. Children invent their own methods -- the teddy bear, or just the corner of the blanket, and the child holds it; if you take the blanket away from him he cannot sleep.

Even grownups are not really grownups; they have their own ritual of going into sleep.

For example, if every day you clean your teeth before going to sleep, try it one day without cleaning the teeth and you will be surprised: you cannot fall asleep. Something is missing. You have created a mantra. You change the dress, a different dress than you use in the daytime...you go into a subtle ritual.

A few people who are religious, so-called religious, they will do some prayer. That too is a ritual. Grownups are not really grownups; they have grown in age, but not psychologically, not spiritually. The world is full of children of many ages: one year, two years, up to seventy, eighty, ninety -- all children.

I am not talking about their stillness. When I say "Be still and know" I mean a stillness that comes out of understanding, not out of any kind of hypnosis. And out of understanding the first thing that happens is: "Seek the strength of no-desire." The more you look into your life, you will find your life is in a mess because of desiring.

Why are you in such a storm continuously? It is because of the desire -- not only one desire but a thousand and one desires. And no desire can ever be fulfilled, no desire has ever been fulfilled. Desire as such is incapable of being fulfilled, intrinsically it is unfulfillable. Hence each desire creates turmoil, expectation, hope, then frustration, hopelessness. And you have a thousand and one desires surrounding you, and you go on supporting your own enemies.

When you look in, when you watch, you become aware that desire is the cause of your whole misery. Seeing it, desiring disappears -- JUST BY SEEING IT, desiring disappears. Seeing that desire never leads anywhere, but that you go on moving in circles and desire goes on goading you in the same repetitive patterns, seeing this -- not because I am saying it, but seeing it on your own -- desire disappears. And the disappearance of desire is the stillness, the real stillness, I am talking about.

It brings two things to you: great strength, because all the energy that was involved in a thousand and one desires is released. Now energy no more leaks from you; you don't have any holes for it to leak from. You become a reservoir of great energy. And the second thing: because now there is no noise of desires clashing, conflicting with each other, there is no civil war going on...what to do? to be or not to be? to do this or to do that? When there is no conflict, no desire, when all the storm is gone, the silence that follows the storm, that is the stillness I am talking about.

Be still and know.

And I am not saying that by being still you will be ready to know -- no. Just by being still you will know. Being still and knowing are the same phenomenon, because when you are still like a mirror, a still lake, no ripples, then the whole firmament, the whole sky, is reflected in the lake. The stars come down, and the moon, and the clouds -- all are reflected in tremendous beauty in the lake. When your consciousness becomes a still mirror, a still lake, a silent reservoir of energy, God is reflected in it.

You will not attain to knowledge, remember. You will become wise, you will become a Buddha. You will not become a great scholar, a great pundit, a great theologian or a philosopher. You will be a Buddha. You will have an innocent kind of knowing: you will know how to live, you will know how to die, you will know how to love -- you will know the real art of life. And the real art of life consists only of three things: how to live, how to love, how to die. And these things you will not know from scriptures; these things you will know from your innermost core.

I call this education. "Be still and know, seek the strength of no-desire." It is desire that is making you weak, it is no-desire that will make you strong. It is desire that is creating continuous storms in you, it is no-desire that will bring stillness -- and a stillness that comes on its own is authentic; it is not a kind of hypnosis. It is not through mantra, it is not through any device, it is not through any trick. You are not trying to pretend to be still: you are simply still. This will give you a new birth, you will be reborn.

Jesus says: "Unless you are born again, you shall not enter into my kingdom of God." I say the same to you -- but the rebirth is a state of no-desire, a state of no-mind, a state of total stillness.

The third question

Question 3:

Prashant,

I AM REMINDED OF A BEAUTIFUL ANECDOTE:

The minister, who got himself a little mixed up now and again, was standing over the open casket of the dearly departed, Joe Hall.

"Our friend Joe Hall is not dead," he orated. "Only the shell is here to be buried; the nut has departed."

Why should you think of suicide? Are you a nut or something? If you have become a sannyasin you have already committed suicide. Sannyas is a suicide -- the real one. It is not destroying the body, because destroying the body is not going to help; you will be immediately born again somewhere in some other womb. It will only be renewing the body; it is not real suicide.

Sannyas is real suicide, because it destroys the mind, it takes you beyond the mind. And if you are beyond the mind you will not be born again. Why be born again and again?

Why go on in this vicious circle?

I know you are bored with life. If you are really bored, then meditation is the way, not suicide -- because suicide will bring you to the SAME life, maybe an uglier life than you have right now, because suicide will create its own ugliness in you. To commit suicide is such an ungrateful act towards God. He gives you life as an opportunity to grow, and you throw away the opportunity.

And unless you grow, unless you grow and become a Buddha, you will be thrown back into life again and again. Millions of times it has happened before: it is time now you should become aware. Don't miss this opportunity.

Being here with me, learn the real art of suicide. The real art consists not in destroying the body...the body is beautiful, the body has not done any wrong. It is the ugly mind.

The body is beautiful, the soul is beautiful, but between the body and the soul there is something which is neither body nor soul. This in-between phenomenon is the mind.

It is mind that goes on dragging you back into the womb. When you die, if you commit suicide you will be thinking of life. Committing suicide means you are thinking of life.

You are bored, fed up with life; you would like a totally different kind of life, that's why you are committing suicide -- not that you are really against life. THIS life you are against. Maybe you don't want to be the way you are: you would like to be an Alexander, a Napoleon, an Adolph Hitler; maybe you want to be the richest man in the world, and you are not. This life has failed, and you would like to be famous, successful -- destroy it!

People commit suicide not because they are really finished with life but because life is not fulfilling their demands. But no life ever fulfills anybody's demands. You will always go on missing something or other: if you have money, you may not be beautiful; if you are beautiful, you may not be intelligent; if you are intelligent, you may not have money.

Once a man stopped Andrew Carnegie, who had gone for a morning walk in the garden.

Andrew Carnegie was the richest man in America; the man who stopped him was looking like the very incarnation of a beggar. And the man said, "Please don't be deceived by my appearance. I am an author, I have also written a book."

Andrew Carnegie asked, "What kind of book have you written?" The man said, "I have written a book entitled ONE HUNDRED WAYS TO BECOME RICH."

Andrew Carnegie could not stop himself laughing. He said, "ONE HUNDRED WAYS TO BECOME RICH? And you are a beggar! What kind of book is this?"

The beggar started laughing, and he said, "This is the hundredth way of becoming rich -- it is included in my book."

The beggar also thinks of becoming rich, writes books about how to become rich -- even thinks that by begging he will become rich. But Andrew Carnegie is not happy either; he was one of the most unhappy men ever born on the earth. He lived in unhappiness, he died in unhappiness. The day he died somebody asked, "You must be dying fully contented -- because you are leaving such a lot of money behind you. You are the richest man in the world."

Andrew Carnegie opened his eyes and said, very sadly said, "I am not fulfilled in my desires. My target was far higher -- I have not been able to reach it. I could accumulate only ten percent of my target."

But even if you achieve one hundred percent of your target, how is it going to help? One is going to remain unfulfilled. Each life you will find the same thing repeated; forms change, but the discontent remains.

People think that those who commit suicide are against life -- they are not. They are too lusty for life, they have great lust for life; and because life is not fulfilling their lust, in anger, in despair, they destroy themselves.

Prashant, I will teach you the right way to commit suicide. Not the destruction of the body; the body is a beautiful gift from God. The mind is not a gift from God; the mind is a conditioning by the society. The soul is a gift, the body is a gift, and sandwiched between the two, the society has played tricks with you: it has created your mind. It gives you ambition, it gives you jealousy, competition, violence, it gives you all kinds of ugly diseases. But this mind can be transcended, this mind can be put aside. This mind is not a must.

I am sitting before you and I say it through my own experience, I say it on my own authority: that mind can be put aside. It is so simple, you just have to know the knack of it.

And remember, whenever I say that I say it on my own authority I am not saying that I am saying it AUTHORITATIVELY. Those two expressions are totally different. When something is said AUTHORITATIVELY it is a commandment; you have to believe in it.

If you don't believe in it you will suffer, here or hereafter. The priest speaks with authoritativeness, the politician speaks with authoritativeness.

A realized man speaks not with authoritativeness but on his own authority -- because he KNOWS it. I am not saying follow me, I am not saying believe in me. I am simply stating a fact: that I have KNOWN it this way, it has happened to me...it can happen to you.

Life is very precious and the greatest treasure is hidden in it -- and that treasure is of becoming a witness.

A real story for you, Prashant:

One day in 1928 Bucky Fuller stood on the shore of Lake Michigan and planned to throw himself in. He was ready to give up because he was a failure financially, by the standards of the upper middle class which he had been born into.

As a construction engineer he had not succeeded. And because his daughter had just died of polio, the whole universe did not make any sense to him and he was ready to throw himself in. He stopped himself and said, "Wait, I can't be sure. Maybe there is something I can do in this universe that is important." He said, "Well, what can I do? Let us see what a man of average intelligence can do if he starts questioning everything that is taken for granted and starts looking for alternatives."

I don't know if he ever was a man of only average intelligence -- IN FACT NO ONE EVER IS -- but by questioning everything he came to realize, as he said, that when you don't accept anything except that which can be experimentally verified, you are overwhelmed by the inherent integrity and rationality of the universe. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible, as Einstein said.

And that gives you faith in the sane, sound center of the universe we mentioned earlier.

As Ezra Pound wrote in the death-cells at Pisa, looking at the stars, out of all this beauty something must come."

Now Bucky Fuller is one of the most wise men in the West -- not yet a Buddha, but on the way, very close. And the art that has brought him so close to becoming a Buddha is the art of questioning everything that is accepted by the society: it is the art of becoming an inquirer.

Transform your life, Prashant, into a quest. Question the values that you have accepted.

Question all that you have been brought up to believe in. Question the way you have lived up to now. Question your mechanicalness, question your robotlike existence.

Yes, something drastic has to be done, but it is not suicide. It won't help, it won't change you; you will be back again in another womb somewhere. Millions of stupid couples are making love every moment. Beware! You will be caught in some net somewhere. And you will get only what you deserve, remember; you can't get more than you deserve. You get the womb that is right for you.

And dying in suicide is dying in such anguish, because it is one of the most unnatural things to do, most abnormal things to do. No animal commits suicide, no tree ever commits suicide -- only man. Only man can go that insane. Nature knows nothing of suicide; it is man's invention. It is the most ugly act. And when you do something ugly to yourself you cannot hope that you will get a better life. You will die in an ugly state of mind and you will enter an uglier womb.

But what is the need to commit suicide? Just question: you must have lived in a wrong way, that's why life has not become a song. You must have lived foolishly, stupidly, unintelligently; that's why life has not attained to celebration. You cannot dance with joy with the stars and with the flowers and with the wind and with the rain, because you have lived with wrong kinds of ideas imposed on you by the same kind of people as you are.

It is a perpetual phenomenon; stupidity goes on perpetuating itself. Parents go on giving stupidity to their children and the children in their turn will hand over their stupidity to THEIR children. This is the heritage. This is called tradition, heritage, culture... great names!

Question all that you have lived without questioning up to now, and your life will have a new intelligence arising in it. Your life will become more sharp Sheela has asked a question: "Osho, you say 'Drop the mind.' The more I drop the mind, the sharper and sharper my brain is becoming." She is puzzled There is no need to be puzzled: the brain is a totally different thing from the mind. The mind is given by the society, the brain is part of your body. The brain is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian; the mind is a Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. The brain is simply a beautiful biocomputer. The more you drop the mind, the sharper your brain will be, the more intelligent. It is the mind that is creating your mediocrity.

Sheela, you need not be puzzled by it: this is how it is going to happen. The more and more people drop their minds, the more and more they will be able to function intelligently, because the brain will be unburdened. The brain will not be expected to carry unnecessary luggage.

Right now your brain is carrying so much rubbish! That it functions at all is a miracle.

Just look how much rubbish you are carrying: of being a Hindu, of being an Indian, of being a Japanese, of being a Buddhist, of being this, of being that, a fascist, a communist...religious ideologies, philosophical ideologies, political ideologies. They are heaped upon you, layer upon layer. Your brain has lost all its functioning. Once the mind is dropped, the brain will come to its total functioning.

And every being is born intelligent. It is society that creates unintelligence. No child is born unintelligent. Have you ever seen a bird which is unintelligent or a bird which is wise, intelligent? All birds are alike. Have you seen a rosebush which is foolish or a rosebush which is a genius? All rosebushes are alike. So are all human beings: they come with the same potential but fall into different gangs.

These are all gangs: Indians, Chinese, British, American. These are all gangs, and politicians are the criminals. Then there are religious gangs.... And their whole effort is not to allow your intelligence to function, because an intelligent person is bound to become rebellious.

Prashant, question your values. If you have been a Catholic, question it; if you have been a Protestant, question it; if you have been a Hindu, question it. Question all that you have lived up to now; something is basically wrong somewhere.

Ezra Pound is right. And do you know from where he is writing this? From his death- cell! "Out of all this beauty something must come." Ezra Pound in a dark cell, just waiting for death to come, can write such a tremendously important sutra: "Out of all this beauty something must come."

The birds singing, and the trees, and the flowers...this infinite universe -- is it the place to commit suicide? It is the place to dance, to sing, to celebrate, to love and to be loved.

And if you can love this existence, if you can feel blessed with this existence, I promise you that when you die you will not be coming back again...because you will have learnt the lesson. God never sends anybody back to the school if once they have learnt their lesson.

If you can learn to rejoice, you will be accepted. Doors of higher mysteries will be opened to you. You will be welcomed into the innermost mysteries of life. That's what I call the true art of committing suicide: my name for it is sannyas.

The fourth question

Question 4:

Somendra,

IT IS NOT GONE, and it will never go. Things like this come, and come for ever. They are not momentary glimpses. Your heart opened suddenly; it needed such a situation for the opening. I immediately felt something happening in your heart -- a great cry arose in your heart, you exploded into a totally different plane.

It is not gone, it can't go. It is there. It will come now in different situations, appear in different situations. You are just keeping your back towards the door; the door is open.

But more and more often you will encounter the door. Once it happens you know it is there, you cannot avoid it. The mind will say it is gone; the mind would like to persuade you that it is gone. And the mind will ask questions about it so that the whole thing can become intellectual.

It is the mind which is asking "What was it?" The heart knows; the mind asks and knows nothing. The heart has known what it was, but the heart and its knowing is so deep that it cannot be conveyed to the mind. And mind feels a little puzzled.

And it has not happened only to you, it has happened to many people. It was such a situation. Many people had suddenly cried -- not out of sadness, no. There was celebration in their tears; they could not contain it. It was a spiritual experience for many of the sannyasins.

And it will remain with you -- don't ask what it was. There are things one should not ask questions about, because questions drag them to the level of the mind. There are things which should be left as they are: mysterious, miraculous. With wonder, with awe, accept The moment the question mark is put, the plane of experience changes. The question mark brings them to the mind. The heart knows no questioning, it knows only how to trust. In that moment, Somendra, you loved, you trusted. In that moment, you were so blissful you could have died laughing.

But to die laughing is one thing; it is easier. To live laughing is far more difficult. Now that is the task, now that should be your SADHANA. Live with that vision. Yes, many times you will forget about it -- but it is there. Just a little groping and you will find the door again.

Don't let it become just a memory in the mind. Let it remain a reality. It IS a reality, but mind will try to make it a memory. Once something is made a memory, the mind can put it in the safe deposit, in the biocomputer, and you can forget all about it. Once in a while you can remember, and later on you will start feeling, "Maybe it happened -- or did I just imagine it? Maybe it was just because of the whole situation and the impact of it that I felt something which was not really happening in my heart." These things mind goes on doing.

Somendra, be careful about the mind. Mind will drag you many times from the very door of God. Mind is your basic enemy. Listen to the heart, because the heart is the friend.

The fifth question

Question 5:

Hilke Schmitz,

FIRST, THERE IS NOTHING that can ever offend me. There is no way to offend me; it is impossible because only the ego can be offended. If the wound of the ego is there then small things offend. But there is no wound any more; I am absolutely healed and whole.

The ego is very touchy because it is a wound. Once the ego is not there you cannot offend that person -- impossible.

So the first thing for you to remember: you can make any kind of statement you like, but you cannot offend me. Try, and try again!

Secondly, you say:

Roses bloom everywhere, and unless you know that they can even bloom ON the guidepost, let alone by the side, roses can bloom even on the guidepost -- unless you know it, you know nothing.

A Zen story:

A disciple came to the Master. He had gone to see a polo game. The Master asked him, "Tell me a few things. Were the riders on the horses tired?"

The disciple said, "Yes, at the end of the game they looked tired."

Secondly the Master said, "Were the horses tired ?"

The disciple said, "Yes, a little bit, not as much as the riders, but even the horses were tired."

Then the Master said, "The last and the final question: were the posts, the wooden posts which are needed in the game, were they tired too?"

Now this was too much! The disciple hesitated a little.

The Master said, "Go into your room and meditate over it. Tomorrow morning you can answer."

The whole night he could not sleep; he tossed and turned. "The wooden posts -- how can they be tired? What a stupid question to ask! But when the Master asks, it can't be stupid; there must be something in it." The whole night he tried hard. Early in the morning as the sun was rising he rushed to the Master, fell at his feet, and he said, "Yes, Master, they were tired."

The Master said, "I am happy. Your going to the polo game has not been useless." Others who were present, they could not understand what was going on. Wooden posts tired?!

Somebody asked the Master, "What nonsense is this? How can wooden posts be tired?"

And the Master said, "If wooden posts cannot be tired then nobody can be tired, because this whole existence is one."

If man gets tired, if horses get tired, then wooden posts also get tired. The whole existence is a manifestation of one energy.

I know why Krishnamurti has made that statement. But my own suggestion is unless you come to know that roses can bloom not only next to a guidepost, they can even bloom ON the guidepost, you have not known anything.

And thirdly you say:

I LOVE ROSES, BUT ALSO OTHER FLOWERS.

Why only roses and why only flowers? Love should be unaddressed. Love need not be oriented towards the other. Love oriented towards the other is not true love, love as relationship is not true love. Love as a state of being is true love. One can love a woman, one can love a man, one can love one's children, one can love one's parents, one can love roses, one can love other flowers, one can love a thousand and one things -- but these are all relationships.

Learn how to be love! So it is not a question of to whom your love is addressed, it is simply a question of your being loving. Sitting alone, still love goes on flowing.

Absolutely alone, still, what can you do? Just as you breathe...you don't breathe for your wife; it is not a relationship. You don't breathe for your children; it is not a relationship.

You simply breathe! -- it is life. Just as breathing is life for the body, love is the life of the soul -- one is simply love! And then only does one know that love is God.

Jesus says: "God is love." I say to you: "Love is God." The words are the same, but the significance is very different. Jesus says: "God is love." Then love becomes only one of the qualities of God. He is wise also, powerful also, a judge also, and many things more.

Amidst all those qualities he is love too. Jesus' statement was very revolutionary in those days, but not any more.

I say: "Love is God." Then it is not a question of God having many other qualities. In fact God disappears -- love itself becomes God. Love is the real thing. God is the name given by the theologians to something they know nothing about. There is no God; the whole existence is made of the stuff called love.

But if you love the word 'God' it's perfectly okay, you can call it God. But remember always it is LOVE, and you will know this love only when love has become a state of your being, a simple state of your being.

The sixth question

Question 6:

Sargam,

DEEP DOWN YOU MUST BE A HOMOSEXUAL, otherwise why should you hate them? Hate is love upside-down, hate is love doing SIRSHASAN -- headstand. Hate knows yoga postures. And do you think you are a different person just by standing on your head? Many fools think that way: standing on their heads they think they are yogis; otherwise they were just ordinary people. Now, standing on their heads they are special people; distorting their bodies they think they are coming closer to God. They may be useful in a circus, but it has nothing to do with spirituality -- otherwise the people in circuses would be the most enlightened people in the world. You have seen girls in circuses doing such postures -- almost unbelievable, as if they are not made of blood and bone and flesh but of rubber. Do you think they become enlightened?

Hate is a trick: you hate because you want to repress. And hate is not good, because it does not harm the other, it simply harms you.

There are millions of people who hate homosexuals. That simply means millions of people have the capacity of becoming homosexuals if the opportunity is given to them.

They have a deep longing for the forbidden fruit. Just to keep themselves in control, they create a great wall of hatred.

Sargam, that may be the case; or it may be a simple, ordinary phenomenon of life that we don't like people who are not like us. People who are unlike us we hate. Why? -- because they create suspicion in us. Hindus hate Mohammedans -- not that there is anything specific to hate in Mohammedans. Mohammedans hate Hindus -- not that there is anything special in Hindus which has to be hated. But whosoever is not like us has to be hated because he is a stranger, an outsider, and the outsider creates fear. And who knows?

-- maybe he is right. To protect yourself from this doubt you create a safety measure; that hate functions as safety, a shelter.

It is not a question of homosexuality. If you don't dress like other people, as they dress, they hate you, they don't like you.

Now my sannyasins are in great trouble all over the world. Just a few days ago many letters have come that in Australia, the school, college, university authorities are very much disturbed by my orange-people, because many teachers, many professors, have become sannyasins. And a problem is being created by the parents and their leagues. The problem is being created that these orange people and their presence may corrupt their children, so the parents are against them. The Catholic priest comes in his robe; he is accepted, he does not corrupt. But my sannyasins, just because they are coming in orange robes, can be a dangerous influence.

Anybody who is not behaving like you, not living like you, is hated. This is your experience in Poona too. The people are not really in any way HARMED by you -- my sannyasins are the most harmless people you can find anywhere -- but people are against you just because you look different.

The homosexual has a very different lifestyle, and you are heterosexual. He belongs to another religion, he has another politics, he is not a man like you. The moment somebody says that he is gay, a gap arises, a great gap. Now how can you communicate?

But all these fears have to be dropped; these are all defense measures. They simply show that you are not yet settled in your being -- afraid any outside influence may take you away, off your ground.

A little Hollywood fruit was following a husky, good-looking man down the street murmuring, "My, what a pretty man!" Unable to resist temptation, he went up and felt his ass.

The man swung round. "What the hell is coming off here? Beat it, will you?"

Sadly the queer retired, but kept following, and unable to control himself, felt his ass again.

"I thought I told you to beat it," the man snarled.

A third time, however, the queer could not resist, and lovingly felt the attractive can. The man swung round and knocked him to the ground.

The injured fruit looked up at the big brute and said sarcastically, "Tourist!"

It is not only that YOU hate the homosexual, the homosexual also hates the heterosexual; he also thinks that he does not belong to him.

We have created unnecessary labels. We have put labels on every man, and not one label -- a thousand and one labels on every man. Remove all the labels! Man is simply man -- homosexual, heterosexual, autosexual, doesn't matter -- man is simply man.

Respect man, love man. Respect his individuality, respect his differences. And that is possible only if you respect your individuality. That is possible only if you are grounded in your own being and you are unafraid.

I would like a world utterly fearless, where all labels can be removed.

Once it happened:

I entered an air-conditioned train compartment in Bombay. The only passenger in my cabin immediately fell on the floor and touched my feet -- -a traditional Hindu SASHTANG when your whole body touches the floor. I told him, "Wait, wait! I am not a Hindu!

But he had already touched my feet. He was shaken; he said, "Then who are you?"

I told him, "Can't you see my beard? I am a Mohammedan! " He said, "My God! And I have touched your feet! Why didn't you say so before?"

I said, "But you didn't give me any time. The moment I entered you jumped in such a hurry. Excuse me, but I am a Mohammedan. You can go to the Ganges and take a dip and you will be purified."

But now the thing was that we had to live in the same compartment for twenty-four hours. And he was very much worried about what he had done -- such a sin, never heard of before. And he said, "Do you know? I am the highest brahmin caste, and I thought that you were a mahatma."

I said, "Just a little difference between a mahatma and a Mohammed. My name is Mohammed."

But he would look at me again and again -- pretending to read his newspaper but he would look again and again. He was making sure -- I didn't look like a Mohammedan.

Finally he said, "You are joking! You don't look like a Mohammedan."

I said, "So you have got it!"

He jumped again, touched my feet, and said, "I was watching you -- you don't look like a Mohammedan. The very vibe is that of the purest saint."

I said, "If it satisfies you, perfectly good, but if you ask MY opinion, now you will have to take two dips! In fact, I AM a Mohammedan! I was just trying to help you, to console you; I was not hoping that you would touch my feet again."

The man was angry. He called the conductor immediately and he said, "Change my compartment! I cannot sleep in this compartment -- twenty-four hours with this man will be a torture, a hell. I don't know what kind of man he is. Sometimes he says he is Hindu, sometimes he says he is Mohammedan."

I told him, "The fact is, I am simply crazy" He said, "That's right! So you are not Mohammedan? It is better to be crazy than to be a Mohammedan. Just crazy but Hindu?"

I said, "Of course! I am a Hindu of the highest brahmin caste, but a little crazy. Once in a while this idea comes to me that I am Mohammed -- but I am not! " A third time he touched my feet!

People live by labels.... Drop all labels from your being and drop labels from others'

beings. Look at people as they are, don't bring labels. Then we will have a better humanity, a more human humanity.

The last question

Question 7:

Prem Akal,

JUST A CRAZY JOKE FOR YOU:

Karpinsky went to Rabbi Roth for advice. "Rabbi," he said, "I am ruined. I am a salesman, a respectable married man, but my life is ruined."

"What happened?" asked the Rabbi.

"I was in Mobile, Alabama, coming home from dinner in a restaurant, and this big black man dragged me by the neck and said to me, 'You are gonna suck me off, you mocky son-of-a-bitch, or I am gonna bust your head!' Rabbi, I am ruined!"

"No, no," said the Rabbi. "The Talmud rules that a man can do anything but spit on the Bible to save his life."

"No, Rabbi, I am ruined," moaned Karpinsky. "I liked it!"