The three initiations: Student, disciple, devotee

Question 1:

The word `initiation' is very significant and profound.

There are three initiations: first, when a student becomes a disciple; second, when a disciple becomes a devotee; and third, when the devotee disappears in the master.

To understand the whole process, all three steps have to be understood.

Everyone begins as a student, as an inquirer into what this life is all about, with a curiosity to know the mysteries that surround us. But the desire is for knowledge; hence, superficial. Because the desire is for knowledge, it is of the mind. And mind is the periphery of our being, the most superficial part of our individuality.

The student has questions, but he has no quest. His questions are easily answerable, he is easily satisfied -- just borrowed knowledge is enough for him. He does not yet need a master; he only needs a teacher. He accumulates answers, becomes an intellectual, but does not become intelligent. The accumulation of answers happens in the memory part of the mind, and the part that functions in accumulation is mechanical, it has nothing to do with intelligence.

It is possible to find very educated, cultured, sophisticated intellectuals behaving in life in a very unintelligent way. They are very efficient whenever some question is asked for which they are already prepared. But if life raises a new question for which they are not prepared, they are completely at a loss, they are as ignorant as one can be. And the problem is, life goes on posing new questions, new challenges.

Memory is good in the marketplace; memory is not good as a lifestyle.

And all your universities only teach you how to memorize.

It has been found that the people of very great memory are generally unintelligent people.

In the life of one of the British viceroys, Curzon, there is mention of a very significant incident -- and it is a historical fact.

Curzon had heard that there was a man in Rajputana whose memory was just unbelievable. The man knew only his local dialect, Rajasthani, a dialect of Hindi; he did not know any other language. But that did not prevent him from memorizing any statement in any language, and in such a way that it seemed almost superhuman.

He was called to the court of the Viceroy Curzon; a special meeting was arranged. Thirty scholars, knowing thirty languages, were to examine the man and his memory. Among those thirty scholars, there was not a single one who understood the man's mother tongue, and all those thirty languages were foreign languages for him.

And the arrangement was so strange -- it had never been made before and I don't think it will be ever made again.

The arrangement was such that each of those thirty scholars was to deliver one sentence in his own language to the poor villager from Rajasthan. But the sentence was not to be delivered to him in one piece. The villager would go to one person who would give him the first word of his sentence. Then a bell would be rung. Then the villager would move to the next person, who would give him his first word. In this way he would go round and round. After thirty persons, he would come again to the first person to get the second word of his sentence... and after each word a big bell would ring to confuse him.

The scholars were not certain that they would be able to remember their whole sentence for the whole time, because it was going to take so much time. They all had their sentences written in front of them, and they were marking off each word they had given.

And this man went on and on, round and round, taking their words, and accumulating in his memory system the sentences which were given to him in pieces.

After all the scholars had given their sentences, he repeated thirty statements in thirty languages, of which he knew nothing. He knew nothing about what they meant. He was so correct that all the intellectuals were puzzled. They could not remember their own sentences, they had had to write them down. They could not remember whether they had given the fifth word or the sixth -- they had had to mark it. And this man was uneducated -- he could not even write.

Curzon was amazed. He praised the man, and rewarded him.

But it was found by talking with his fellow villagers that he was an idiot. Just as far as his memory was concerned, he was simply great -- but any simple question in life, any simple situation in life, and he was not able to solve it, he was not able to answer it. They said, "He is known in our village as `the great intellectual idiot'."

It is a well-known fact that a student is interested in collecting knowledge. His questions are easily satisfied. His mind functions like a computer.

But once in a while, a student falls into the trap of a master. He is not in search of a master, he does not know any difference in the words `master' and `teacher'. In the dictionaries both words mean the same.

But in actual life, a teacher simply transfers knowledge from one generation to another generation -- it is not his own experience. The master does not transfer knowledge from one generation to another generation; what he gives out is his own realization.

But if the student is caught in the trap of a master, then it is very difficult to get out of it because soon it becomes clear that knowledge and knowing are two different things.

Questions and quest are two different things.

Questions are simply curiosities.

Quest is a risk, is a pilgrimage, is a search.

A question is easily satisfied by any logical, rational answer. The quest is not satisfied by logical or rational answers; the quest is like thirst.

You can go on repeating that scientifically, H2O means water, but that is not going to quench the thirst. It is an answer, and a perfectly right answer. If somebody is asking what water is, as a question, it is very simple to answer it. But if somebody is asking about water because he is thirsty, then H2O is not going to help. Then, only real water will do.

Quest means thirst, hunger. No borrowed knowledge can satisfy it.

And the master slowly makes the student aware that if you are really a man, then just to be curious is childish. Maturity demands that you should go on a quest, that you should not ask only for knowledge, you should ask for ways and means and methods so that you can know -- not knowledge that has come from generation to generation. No one knows whether somebody invented it, whether it is fiction, whether somebody realized it or not, how much is lost in transferring it, how much is added, how much is edited out. Knowing means "I want a personal experience."

A genuine seeker has no questions, but a tremendous thirst.

This is the first initiation -- when the master changes the student's focus from knowledge towards knowing, from memory towards intelligence.

And it is not an ordinary phenomenon, it happens to only a very few fortunate ones.

Millions of people simply remain curious, childish, immature for their whole life.

Once the emphasis has moved from knowledge to knowing, your concern is no more with the past, your concern is with the present. Your concern is no more with the great philosophers, wise people; your concern is about your own consciousness. For the first time you become interested not in objects but in your subjectivity, not about other things but about the one who wants to know: Who is this who wants to know?

This is the first initiation: the student dies, and the disciple is born.

The second initiation is when the disciple also disappears, into a devotee.

A disciple is still interested in gaining methods, disciplines, ways to know himself. The master has to be used; hence, he is grateful. But he is the end, and the master is the means; he is using the master for his own ends.

As he comes closer to the master, the master takes him into the second initiation. And the second initiation is that unless you drop this obsession with yourself you will never know yourself.

It appears contradictory; it is not. Your very obsession is preventing you; it is egoistic.

You drop the ego, surrender the ego; you forget yourself, and in the very moment you forget yourself you will find yourself.

From knowledge to knowing, the student was never interested in himself. He was interested in things, objects, the whole world. The first initiation brought him into a new world of interest about himself.

The second initiation takes away the ego.

The second initiation teaches him love. Because knowing oneself is a byproduct -- if you can love, you will know yourself without any difficulty.

Only in loving light does the darkness within you disappear.

Love is light, and the flame of love has to be taught.

The master loves, his presence is love. His very presence is magnetic. Without saying a word... just to be close to him, you will feel a certain pull, a certain love, a trust.

And you don't know the man, you don't know whether he is trustworthy or not. But you are ready to risk. The presence of the master is so convincing that there is no need of any argument to prove it.

I have been a teacher in the university, and each year on Teacher's Day the university professors used to have an intimate meeting to discuss problems that they were facing.

And every year the basic and the most troublesome problem was that the students don't respect them. When I joined their meeting for the first time, it was my first year in the university. They were all condemning the students, they were condemning modern society, the Western world, because they have taken away all respect. One of the professors -- an old man, a very respected professor, he was the dean of the faculty of arts -- said, "It is so shameful, particularly in a country where there have been students like Ekalavya."

I will have to tell you the story so you can understand. It is an ancient Indian story.

There was a great master archer, Dronacharya. Princes, rich people, high caste Hindus, warriors used to come to him from faraway places to learn archery.

The Hindu society is divided into four classes. It is the ugliest division that exists in the whole world, and it has existed for five thousand years. One fourth of the Hindu society are not treated like human beings; they are called sudras, untouchables. They are not even worthy to be touched. If by accident you touch a sudra, you have to immediately take a shower to clean yourself. Not only the sudra, even the shadow of the sudra is untouchable. If a sudra passes by and his shadow touches you, you have to take a bath.

This young man, Ekalavya, was born a sudra. But he wanted to become an archer, and he started learning archery on his own. He knew perfectly well -- his elders told him, "No teacher is going to accept you."

He said, "Before I go to any teacher, I will learn so much that it will be almost impossible for him to reject me." And he disciplined himself, and when he thought that now he knew enough, he went to the greatest archer of those days, Dronacharya.

Dronacharya was amazed, seeing that the young man had learned on his own tremendously well. But still, Dronacharya was a brahmin, the highest Hindu caste, and it was impossible to accept Ekalavya as a disciple. He rejected him.

But Ekalavya was made of a different kind of mettle than ordinary human beings are made of. He went into the forest and made a statue of Dronacharya. And just in front of the statue, he continued learning on his own. Soon the word started spreading all over the country that Ekalavya had become a master archer, just by the side of the statue of Dronacharya.

Dronacharya had an ambition, and that ambition was that one prince who was his disciple, Arjuna -- and he was a great archer -- should become the greatest archer in the history of man.

But this Ekalavya was disturbing everything, he was becoming more famous.

Dronacharya went into the forest....

And this is the point to be noted -- that's why the dean of the faculty of arts had quoted the name of Ekalavya.

He had been rejected by Dronacharya. Any ordinary human being would have felt insulted, humiliated. But on the contrary, he made a statue of Dronacharya -- because he has chosen him as his master. It does not matter whether Dronacharya accepts him as his disciple or not -- he will have to accept him. What matters is how deep his acceptance is of Dronacharya as his master.

And when Dronacharya came, he fell at his feet. And Dronacharya saw what he had learned. Certainly he was far ahead of Arjuna, and Arjuna was not going to be the greatest archer, which was the deep ambition of Dronacharya. This man had rejected Ekalavya, and now he said to him, "You have been learning here in front of my statue.

You have accepted me as your master."

Ekalavya said, "I have always thought of you as my master, even when you rejected me. I have not taken any note of your rejection."

Dronacharya said, "I accept you as my disciple, but then you will have to pay the fee.

Every disciple has to pay the fee to the master -- and you have not given even the entrance fee, and you have already become such a great archer."

Poor Ekalavya said, "Whatever you ask, if I have it I will give it to you. I can give my life. You are my master, you just say it. But I am a poor man, so just ask for that which I have."

Dronacharya said, "Yes, I will ask only that which you have. I want your right-hand thumb. You cut it, and give it to me."

This is an ugly story. The strategy is that once his right-hand thumb is cut, his archery would be finished, he would no longer be a competitor to Arjuna. Dronacharya accepted him as his disciple just to get his thumb.

And Ekalavya, without saying a word, simply took his sword and cut his thumb. He gave it to the master and said, "If you want anything more, you just tell me."

This story, you have to remember in the background.

The dean was saying: "This country, which has produced students like Ekalavya -- who respected a master like Dronacharya who rejected him, insulted him -- has fallen so low that students are not respecting teachers at all. Something has to be done."

I was very new. It was my first meeting with all the professors from all the departments. I had to stand up, and I said to the old man, "You have raised a few questions. One: this is certainly the country of students like Ekalavya, but this is also the country of teachers like Dronacharya -- ugly, cunning, inhuman. This man has behaved in the most inhuman way possible. Why do you go on forgetting about him?

"First, you are rejecting a poor young man because he is condemned by you as an untouchable. Secondly, when he achieves on his own, you are willing to accept him as your disciple -- in the forest, where nobody knows what is happening. And that too for a certain reason, so that you can cripple his right hand to destroy his archery, so that your ambition of making Arjuna the greatest archer in the world can be fulfilled."

I said, "You should not forget that it is because of teachers like Dronacharya that teachers in India have lost their respect. You represent Dronacharya -- on what grounds do you want students to respect you? And you are not even conscious of the fact you are mentioning Ekalavya. As far as I am concerned, I don't see... I also have students, and I am a new professor. I have not seen a single student being disrespectful towards me. I love them, I respect them. Love resonates love in the other, respect creates respect in the other -- these are resonances. If I had been in the place of Ekalavya, I would have cut off the head of Dronacharya! That's exactly what he deserved."

The old man was in such a shock and so shattered, he was almost trembling.

I said, "You sit down because you are trembling, and if some heart attack or something happens I will be responsible for it. Please sit down. I am not going to cut your head -- although you also need to be treated in the same way. You want students to be Ekalavya's -- what about the teachers?"

The master is not a teacher. He loves; it will be better to say he is love. He respects; it will be better to say he is respectfulness.

Naturally he creates a gravitational field of love, respect, gratitude.

In this gravitational field, the second initiation happens.

The disciple is no longer interested in knowing about himself. His only interest is in how to be dissolved into the master, how to be in harmony with the master. And the day the harmony comes to its peak, the disciple disappears; the devotee is born.

The devotee is miles away from the student. The whole journey has taken such revolutionary changes. The devotee is on the verge... the life of the devotee is not long.

The longest life is that of the student. In the middle is the disciple. And the life span of the devotee is very small.

It is something like a dewdrop on a lotus petal in the early morning sun, slipping slowly, slowly towards the sun into the ocean. The dewdrop is just that small fragment of time that it takes to slip from the lotus leaf into the ocean.

The devotee's life is not long, it is very short -- because once you have tasted the harmony, you cannot wait to taste oneness. It is impossible to wait. The dewdrop runs fast, drops into the ocean, becomes one with the ocean.

There are two ways to say it.

Kabir, one of the great mystics of India, is the only one who has used both ways.

When for the first time he slipped into the ocean, he wrote a small statement in which he said, "I had been searching for myself, but, my friend, instead of finding myself, I have disappeared into the ocean. The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean."

After almost twenty years, when he was on his deathbed, he asked his son, Kamal, "Bring the notes you have been taking of my statements. Before I die, I have to correct one thing." He said, "I have said at one place that the dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean.

Change it. Write down, `The ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop.'" His own words are tremendously beautiful. The first words are, HERAT HERAT HEY SAKHI RAHYA KABIR HERAYI; BUNDA SAMANI SAMUNDA MEN SO KAT HERI JAYI. And the second: HERAT HERAT HEY SAKHI RAHYA KABIR HERAYI; SAMUNDA SAMANA BUNDA MEN SO KAT HERI JAYI. In the first, the dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean. In the second, the ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop.

Perhaps two sides of the same coin....

This is the third initiation, and only after the third initiation is there communion -- because there is union, there is no more separation, there is at-oneness.

The path of a mystic begins as a student, ends as a master... begins as a dewdrop, ends as an ocean.

Question 2:

That which should be happening is happening.

You are coming closer to my presence. You cannot keep your person intact.

You cannot have both my presence and your person. If you want your person, you will have to lose my presence; if you want my presence, you will have to lose your person -- they cannot coexist.

But what is your person? Have you ever thought about it? It consists of all your miseries, anxieties, despairs, nightmares; it is your hell.

Have you ever given thought to a simple phenomenon? Since the very beginnings of man, why have human beings been so much interested in intoxicating drugs?

In RIG VEDA, the oldest book in the world... even the so-called seers of the VEDAS are interested in a certain drug called somras.

One of the most intelligent persons of this century, Aldous Huxley -- who was very well acquainted with the East, particularly Eastern mystics -- finally ended up experimenting with LSD. He wrote that in the coming century, the finest form of LSD will be called `soma' in remembrance of the RIG VEDAS' somras.

He was absolutely convinced that LSD has come very close to somras. And perhaps he is right, because the rishis, the seers of the VEDAS, after drinking somrasa, the juice of a plant called som, have described their experiences and what happens to them... how much peace, how much serenity, how much joy. All their experiences are exactly the same as those Aldous Huxley described when he came out of his first LSD trip.

All the cultures, all the religions have been condemning alcohol, opium, hashish, marijuana -- but their condemnation seems to have no effect. Humanity goes on taking drugs, and nobody bothers to ask, if so many wise people are against it, why are people taking these drugs? And the strange thing is that so many of these wise people who are against it are taking drugs themselves -- perhaps in different ways.

In one country, marijuana may be illegal, hashish may be illegal, LSD may be illegal, but alcohol is not. And alcohol is more dangerous than any of the other three. Why isn't alcohol illegal? -- because Jesus used to drink it. Christianity cannot make it illegal; otherwise Jesus would be proved a criminal -- and not an ordinary criminal, because he was even making water into alcohol.

And the countries who have tried.... For example, India, which is not a Christian country, has tried hard to prohibit alcohol, but has failed. Prohibition makes things even worse.

People start making alcohol on their own, in their own homes. And thousands of people have died from poisoning because they don't know what they are drinking. It is being sold underground, and they don't know how it is being prepared. And finally those prohibitions have to be withdrawn.

One thing that I want to make clear to you is that all the people who have been against the laws and governments and religions and who are still going for drugs have a certain argument. And that is that they want their personality to be forgotten. Their person is so painful, so ugly, that they are ready to commit any illegal act, just to forget it for a few hours.

The influence of intoxicating drugs proves only one thing: man, in his ordinary personality, is living in despair. He wants for a few hours at least to forget all about the worries and the problems and the anxieties, and there seems to be no other way.

What do you want to protect your person for? Your person is your problem.

And if you are intelligent enough, and you can find some presence where your person starts melting and disappearing -- without any intoxication, without any drugs -- then can you conceive of a greater blessing? Let the person disappear; it is simply a burden, a torture, a pain in the neck for which there is no medicine.

What do you think, Amrito -- is there any medicine for a pain in the neck? I have never heard of it. I am asking my physician -- and he is a knowledgeable physician; he is a member of the Royal Society of England.

Let the person disappear, evaporate.

The disappearance of your person is not your disappearance, remember; on the contrary, it is your appearance. As your person disappears, your personality falls away; your individuality, your individual arises.

To have a personality is hypocrisy.

To be an individual is your birthright.

And the function of the master is to take away everything that is not you, and leave only that which is essentially yours, given by existence itself.

I can understand, there arises a fear. You have lived with the person for so long, you have become identified with it. When it starts disappearing, a fear arises: "What is happening?

Am I going to disappear?"

Now, what is true is not going to disappear, and what is untrue needs to disappear. So be courageous.

And when your personality leaves you, say goodbye to it forever...

"Don't come back. Find somebody else; there are so many people all around." Because there are people who are not so poor as to have only one personality. They are rich people, they have many personalities -- when they are with their wife they have one personality, when they are with their girlfriend they have another personality -- the same personality won't do. They go on changing constantly. It becomes almost an autonomous process.

George Gurdjieff, one of the great masters of this age, used a few techniques. One of the techniques was to make you aware of your personalities. He himself was such an expert that you could be sitting on his left side and your friend could be sitting on his right side, and to one he would show an angry face and to the other his face would appear really blissful, peaceful, very loving.

And when you meet, one will say, "What a man! I was so afraid; he was so angry the whole time." And the other will say, "What are you saying? He was so loving, and smiling." And only later on would you discover that he has been playing a game. He learned the art of changing personalities to such an extent that he could use two personalities at the same time. Gurdjieff could show half of the personality to the wife, and half to the girlfriend! But a long training....

There is no need. Whether you have one personality or many, they are all junk. Just leave them, just be simply yourself. In the beginning it may feel a little awkward, as if you are naked -- in a certain way it is a kind of nakedness. But soon you will understand the beauty and innocence of simply being yourself.

My grandfather died. We were great friends; in my whole family we were the only friends. No one was at ease with me, and no one was at ease with him. He was very old, but a troublemaker. But with me he was perfectly happy.

We used to go together to the river, to the temple, to public meetings, and he would tell me, "Create trouble. Ask some question just to make that leader feel embarrassed."

He was a nice, beautiful man. He died. So the whole family was sad, people were crying.

I went to a nearby sweet shop, and I asked the owner, "You give me all the beautiful sweets that you have prepared today -- the whole lot."

He said, "Are you mad? Your grandfather has died. Haven't you heard?"

I said, "That's why! In death -- celebration! We were great friends, you know?"

He said, "I know, but your father, your uncle and the others will kill me. They will say, `HE is a rascal, but YOU... why did you give him sweets? Is this a time for celebration?'" I said, "Are you going to give them to me, or should I create some trouble?"

He said, "No, I don't want any trouble. You can take them, but it is your responsibility."

I said, "I always do everything on my own responsibility."

By that time a few people had gathered. I said, "All these people are witnesses; I am taking these sweets on my responsibility. This man is absolutely innocent. In fact, he has been trying to prevent me because he does not understand at all that my grandfather has gone to heaven and this is the time to celebrate."

And I sat in front of my house distributing sweets. My whole family gathered and they said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "Simply celebrating."

They said, "Is this a time for celebration?"

I said, "To be sincere, you are all feeling good that that old fellow is dead. Except me, nobody is sad. But you are all hypocrites."

My father said to them, "Don't talk so loudly, you will gather a crowd; and if you gather a crowd, he is always the winner." He told me, "You do whatsoever you want to do. He was your grandfather, and if you want to celebrate, celebrate."

But whoever I gave the sweets to would say, "But this is not the time."

I said, "This is the time, because my whole family is celebrating except me -- and they are all sitting sad, with crocodile tears. That is all nonsense. I know them, and because they have to hold on to their hypocrisy they cannot celebrate. So I have to do this job -- although I am the only person who is sad, because he was my friend. And everybody is saying that he has gone to heaven -- then why not make it a celebration? If he had gone to hell, then it would be perfectly okay. Sit with long faces and tears, and don't eat for two or three days, and make as much fuss as you can. But if he has gone to heaven, then why are you feeling jealous? Just celebrate, enjoy."

Late in the night my father told me, "The whole day I have been thinking that perhaps you are right. We were not sincere. We all were feeling relieved because he was always a trouble -- in everything he created trouble."

In the shop they avoided him. He would come into the shop, and they would send him somewhere else because he will tell the customers, "He is cheating you" -- his own son -- "He is cheating you. That cloth is not worth twelve rupees, it is just worth eight rupees. If you wait a little, I will give it to you for eight rupees. Otherwise, it is... if you have too much money to throw away, throw it."

So in the shop, all my uncles, my father, everybody tried to get rid of him -- "Customers are coming, send him away -- anywhere, whatever he wants to do. But if he stands here, he will tell the truth."

And if I was there, I would tell the customers, "Just wait a little, my grandfather is coming. Then you will get the same thing for four or five rupees less."

So not only were they getting rid of him, as I would enter the shop they would tell me, "Just go to the post office."

I said, "You harass me unnecessarily. Collect all your post in the evening and I will go every day. But I cannot do this the whole day long. Whenever I come: `Go to the post office, just one postcard... drop it at the post office.' And this is just a trick, nothing else. I will go only when my grandfather is in the shop. At least one of us has to be here; otherwise the customers are going to be cheated, exploited."

So my father said, "You were right. We were all feeling relieved, and all our tears were false. But you made it too open a secret, distributing sweets to the whole town and telling people that `My whole family is celebrating.'" I said, "If I was right, then you should drop these masks. Even at the death of your own father, you cannot drop your false faces. When are you going to be true?"

All your personalities are absolute cover-ups, hiding your individuality.

So it is perfectly good if it is happening that you are coming closer and you feel a magnetic pull. Don't resist; help it. Let those personalities die. Their death is going to become your new life, a life which will be a joy, an innocence, a luminosity, a constant dance of the heart. Just a little courage....

Don't ask what is happening. Let it happen, and see. What I am saying is nothing; what will happen will be a thousandfold more.

Question 3:

Latifa, one thing to be constantly remembered is not to judge what is dark and what is light, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil -- because the moment you judge, you start repressing. You don't want to show anything that you judge as dark, as evil, as bad. Then you have chosen only half of yourself; it is as if you have chosen only the day and you have denied the night.

But the night has its own beauties. Its darkness is also a beauty -- it has a depth, a silence, a serenity, the stars. If the day has its beauty, the night has its own beauty; they are both unique -- and they are complementary.

What you have been doing is to ask questions which look good -- and you repress those questions which you feel and judge to be bad. Naturally, your so-called good side is exhausted by and by, and only the side which, according to you is bad, remains inside.

Then you are boiling with all that is black. Days are finished; only nights remain, and now you feel very much afraid to open yourself because anybody will see simply darkness and nothing else. And at the same time, you feel that it is absolutely sincere, it is part of you.

It is not something insincere, but the whole problem begins in your judgment.

Judgment is one of the crimes.

We go on judging other people, and we do the same with ourselves. We go on judging our thoughts, our actions, what is good, what is bad, what should have been done, what should not have been done; and we are constantly creating conflict and duality.

Here with me you have to create a oneness, a beautiful harmony between day and night, between life and death. Between any things that seem to be polar opposites you have to create a wholeness. And then you will not feel, bringing out anything, that it will expose you; it will simply show your wholeness.

Just think of a rosebush. If the rosebush starts worrying about the thorns and starts suppressing them, the whole energy of the rosebush will be involved in suppressing the thorns. It may not be able to bring roses -- or even if it does they may not be worth bringing; they may be crippled, almost dying from the very beginning.

But once you accept that thorns are part of the rosebush, as roses are...

From my very childhood I have seen thorns in the rosebushes as the bodyguards of the roses. And they are bodyguards -- they protect them. They are coming from the same roots; they are part of the same bush, they live on the same juice. They are brothers and sisters; they live in deep harmony, there is no conflict. Have you seen the thorns and roses fighting with each other? Have you seen any rosebush being embarrassed that it has thorns?

Thorns have their own beauty.

The mind that continuously goes on judging creates anguish in you.

But we are taught to judge.

Even those with whom we have no concern, we go on judging: this man is good, that man is bad. What business is this, what concern is it of yours? And if you knew the whole story of the man, perhaps you would have said that this act you had thought was bad was absolutely inevitable. Without this act there would have remained something incomplete in the whole story.

You know only parts -- as if you take out a page from a novel, and you judge the whole novel from the page. It is sheer stupidity. First, go through the whole novel.

And as far as human life is concerned, nobody can go through the whole of a single human life. It is so vast, compressed in such a small time... seventy or eighty years, with so many complexities, complications that if you could see it as a whole you would not say that something was bad; it fits perfectly in the whole pattern of the person's life.

And anyway, who are we? Who has made us judges?

Once the mind learns the trick of judging, it goes on. Then you are continuously judging inside: This is good, this is bad. Then show the good side always, and keep the bad side to yourself. Slowly slowly, the good side is shown so much, everybody is bored with it.

You are bored with it. And you cannot show the bad side, because it is bad.

Show your wholeness.

Just your good side is bound to be boring, too flat.

With your black parts, it becomes juicy, it becomes more interesting.

It is said that "a good man has no life" -- and I agree with this statement, whoever made it. What can a good man have? A bad man has a life!

If you are whole, you will have more alive expressions... not flat, not boring, but always full of surprises. Not only surprising others but even surprising yourself -- "My God, I was able to do this too?"

Life should be lived with as much wholeness as possible.

That's the only way to live, to love, and to have a good laugh in the end.

And don't be worried about what is right and what is wrong.

Just for example, God created the world. Of course, if there was no devil, there would have been nothing at all in the world. Although the whole credit goes to God, it should go to the devil who persuaded Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. He is the first revolutionary, the first rebel, the first man to bring some aliveness into the world; otherwise, Adam and Eve would be chewing grass, still. In the Garden of Eden what else will you do? God has said not to eat from the tree of knowledge, not to eat from the tree of eternal life -- what is left? Knowing is prohibited, living is prohibited -- just sit silently like buffaloes and chew grass.

It is by the mercy of the devil that you see this whole world.

God has not created it. God created a world which consisted of Adam and Eve just like animals. This whole humanity, these great people -- Gautam the Buddha, Jesus Christ and Moses, Mohammed and Mahavira -- you would never have heard of them; they're all because of the devil.

It is significant to remember: `devil' comes from a Sanskrit root which means divine. It comes from dev -- from the same root comes `divine,' from the same root comes `devil.'

The devil has done such a divine work. This whole creation is a deep partnership between God and the devil. Neither can God do it alone -- because he can only create flat things -- nor can the devil do it alone, because he can only revolt, he is a revolutionary. First something has to be there to be revolutionary against. God is needed for the devil to revolt against, and then the dynamics start turning, and the wheel of life and death, day and night, good and bad.

But life consists of opposites, remember.

And don't try to judge; just live the whole, whatever it is.

I teach you wholeness, and you go on judging parts. Parts are not of any use. It is the whole, where parts lose their personalities and function in the way an orchestra functions.

I myself have never thought that anything is good or anything is bad. Not for a single moment have I thought that anything is bad or good; they are both together and they can exist only together. If you want to live, live them in their togetherness.

The people who are afraid of their togetherness started teaching, "Renounce life, escape from life, because here you cannot avoid the bad. Whatever you do, even if you do good, you cannot avoid the bad."

You will be surprised to know that in India, Jainism has a sect called terapanth. Bombay has many followers of the Terapanth. It is a very logical but very strange ideology.

It says that if somebody falls into a well you should not take him out. He may be shouting and you are by the side of the well and there is nobody else there -- you simply go on as you are, unconcerned. It seems strange. A philosophy of non-violence... and a man is dying and they are saying that you go on, unconcerned. But their reasoning is worth noting: they say you can save the man but if tomorrow he murders somebody, then you will be responsible too. And what is the guarantee about his tomorrow? -- it is better not to get involved.

In the first place he has fallen in the well. It must be because of some evil act in his past life; otherwise why should he fall into the well? Now, he is receiving the punishment for his action, and you interfere in it; you interfere in the great law of action. Secondly, if he murders somebody tomorrow, then you will share the evil act. It is better to move on silently, not to bother about what is happening to him.

These are the people who have been judging. Now, judgment has gone to the extreme.

Somebody is thirsty; don't give him water. Somebody is hungry; don't give him food -- because you don't know what he is going to do. You get involved in his life by giving him water; otherwise he may have died. By giving him water you keep him alive. Now whatever he does, you are going to share in it. You have not done a bad act, but life is not so simple -- it may turn into a bad act.

It looks very logical, but very inhuman; it looks very rational but very uncompassionate, without any love. But this is the logical end of judging things.

I want you to drop judgment and live a life without judgment, in its wholeness. And you will be surprised that wholeness is neither good nor bad.

Wholeness is transcendental; it is beyond good and evil.

There is only one man in the whole history of humanity, Friedrich Nietzsche, who has written a book, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL. And my insight and understanding is that he is the only man who has seen judgment to its logical end.

An authentic person should live beyond good and evil.

He does not care what is good, what is bad.

He lives with intensity and totality, and whatever the moment allows him and he feels to do, he does it.

But all the religions and all the theologians and all the saints are sitting and thinking about whether this is right or wrong. And if you listen to them, you will find it impossible to live; everything seems to be wrong.

I have looked into all the scriptures of the world just trying to find out -- perhaps there may be one thing which is not condemed by somebody. But there is not, somebody or other is against everything. And there are things that somebody or other is for. There is no ultimate criterion to decide what is right and what is wrong.

As far as I am concerned and my people are concerned, they should live wholeheartedly - - live the day and live the night too. Don't miss anything.

Make your life such a complementary whole that everything fits together and makes it a piece of art, a beautiful phenomenon.

Beyond Enlightenment