I want to provoke your jealousy

Question 1:

It is part of my whole device to change the very structure of human consciousness.

The past has revered poverty, asceticism, masochistic attitudes. A man was respected if he was renouncing all that is pleasant, all that is comfortable. He was respected for torturing himself; the greater the torture, the greater the respect. The whole human past is masochistic, and all the religions have contributed to this insanity.

My effort is to change such a vast past and its influence. So it has been only a device. I have not been creating desires for materialistic things in people; they are there without anybody's creating them. Yes, they have been repressed so deeply that people have even forgotten that they had them. I am not creating them; I simply want to remove the cover- up, the repression, and to make the person realize that he wants a Rolls Royce more than enlightenment.

This realization will be a basic step towards enlightenment, because it will make him aware of his own reality, his greed.

There was no need for ninety-three Rolls Royces. I could not use ninety-three Rolls Royces simultaneously -- the same model, the same car. But I wanted to make it clear to you that you would be ready to drop all your desires for truth, for love, for spiritual growth to have a Rolls Royce. I was knowingly creating a situation in which you would feel jealous.

The function of a master is very strange. He has to help you come to an understanding of your inner structure of consciousness: it is full of jealousy.

All the traditions and the whole past have done just the opposite. The so-called saint, in all the traditions, lives in such a way that you will never feel jealous of him. Note that point.

You will feel sympathetic towards him, respectful towards him; but respectfulness is not your reality, sympathy is not your nature. The saint is torturing himself, that is not his nature either. He is being unnatural to gain respect, to fulfill his ego. He is not interested in spiritual growth; he is interested in respectability, in being worshipped like a god. And he is ready to do anything for it.

He is living in an illusion, and he is creating a great illusion in people who come to him.

He helps them to feel that they are religious, that they are spiritual, because they respect a saint, they worship a saint. They are not yet ready to do such ascetic disciplines for themselves, but they hope some day... this is their ideal. They are completely forgetting that they are jealous human beings. And the saint is helping them to forget their jealousy; he is helping them to repress it.

My work is bound to be totally different. I want to provoke your jealousy, because that is the only way to get rid of it. First you have to know that you have it; then you can drop it, because it is misery and hell. But you can repress it so deeply that the question of dropping it does not arise.

I have lived in abundance because to me there is no division between the material and the spiritual.

The teaching to live in poverty is dangerous: you will be materially poor, and you will be spiritually poor too, because there is no division. I teach you to live richly, in abundance, materially and spiritually -- both. It is not a question of whether you should live materially in abundance, or spiritually. The basic question is whether you should live in abundance, in richness -- which is natural and existential. It is your very basic urge to blossom in abundance, to know all the colors, to know all the songs, to know all the beauties of life.

But certainly I am bound to come in conflict with the old, because the whole human past has been praising poverty and making it equal to spirituality, which is absolute nonsense.

Spirituality is the greatest richness that can happen to a man, and it contains all other richnesses. It is not against any other richness; it is simply against all kinds of poverty. So what I have been trying is something so radical that it is bound to create antagonism all around the world from every corner. People have lived with certain values for so long that although those values have given them only misery, they don't see the connection.

Those values have not made them fulfilled, contented -- but they don't see the connection.

I want my people to become symbolic... to make the whole world aware that their misery is caused by their wrong values, that they are poor because they have respected poverty -- and their behavior is so insane. On the one hand they will respect poverty, and on the other hand they will say, "Serve the poor." Strange! If poverty is so spiritual then the most spiritual thing will be to make every rich man poor, to help the rich man to be poor, so he can become spiritual. Why help the poor? Do you want to destroy their spirituality?

But a deep unconsciousness, a great blindness exists, and I am fighting against a mountainous unconsciousness, darkness. Naturally they will be very much annoyed.

They would have loved me, they would have worshipped me. And it was so easy for me to do what they wanted, but then I would have been continuing the old misery, the old disease, the old stupidity. I decided to be unrespectable, but not to help any nonsensical value system.

It is a very simple thing to see why ascetics -- self-destructive people engaged in a kind of slow suicide -- have been respected; it is because it is unnatural, because you cannot do it. They are doing something which you cannot do. If somebody is standing on their head on the road, there will be a crowd immediately, but you are walking on your legs -- no crowd will be there!

What is that man doing that attracts the crowd? He is doing something that the crowd cannot do. He is proving mind over body, he is proving spirit over nature. Torturing his body he is proving that he is not the body, it does not affect him. By fasting, not sleeping, or standing for days he is proving that what you cannot do he can do; he is superior to you. You also can do what he is doing, you just have to be a little stupid, you just have to be a little suicidal, destructive. All that you need is a certain pleasure in pain and you can become a great spiritual saint.

I have looked at the whole history and found not one single man revolting against this suicidal attitude towards life, this anti-life attitude. Perhaps they were afraid that nobody was going to listen to them, afraid that they would lose their respectability.

I decided in the very beginning days of my life that there is one thing I have to be aware of, and that is not to be bothered about respectability. Then things are very simple. Then I can do what is natural and what is healthy. And then I can manage a bridge between matter and spirit, between this world and that world.

And to me, to live in abundance is the only spiritual thing in the world.

Just look at existence and its abundance. What is the need of so many flowers in the world? Just roses would have been enough, but existence is abundant: millions and millions of flowers, millions of birds, millions of animals -- everything in abundance.

Nature is not ascetic; it is everywhere dancing -- in the ocean, in the trees. It is everywhere singing -- in the wind passing through the pine trees, in the birds...

What is the need of millions of solar systems, each solar system having millions of stars?

There seems to be no need, except that abundance is the very nature of existence, that richness is the very core, that existence does not believe in poverty. Look at nature, look at existence, and you will see that what man has done is against it.

My effort is to bring man back to his natural self.

I will be condemned, I will be criticized. Every religion, every tradition, every morality, every ethical code is going to condemn me. That does not surprise me! I expect it, because what I am saying and doing is changing the very course of human consciousness.

I don't think that by torturing yourself you can meditate more easily; on the contrary, if your body is pleasantly at ease you can meditate more easily. I don't think that when you are fasting you can meditate. You can only think of food and nothing else; you will dream of food and nothing else. But if you are well fed, well nourished, you don't think of food -- there is no need. The body is completely satisfied, it does not create any disturbance.

To live pleasurably, to live joyously is not against meditation. It is really the basic need of meditation. I know many kinds of ascetics but I have never seen any intelligence in them, I have never seen any creativity in them. I have never seen in their eyes a light of the beyond, or in their gestures some message that cannot be said through words. They don't have anything. They are simply starving -- and starving because it fulfills the ego, because the more they starve, the more they torture themselves, more and more people come to worship them.

Now this is to me just an insane chapter in the history of man; it has to be closed. It is time that we start a new chapter -- natural, existential, life-affirmative -- and create a bridge between the body and the soul... not a wall but a bridge.

There is no need for any conflict and war. Fighting with yourself, you are not going to get anything; you will be simply destroying yourself slowly. All your so-called saints are mostly mentally sick, and they have made the whole of humanity sick.

Your question is significant. I have been asked again and again, "Spiritual people are respected everywhere, why are you opposed everywhere?"

I said, "Only one thing is certain: either they are not spiritual, or I am not spiritual. We both cannot be spiritual, that is certain. And as far as I am concerned, I say that they are sick, not spiritual, and they are worshipped by a sick society."

It is a vicious circle: the society creates the sick saint, the sick saint creates the sick society -- and it goes on and on. I have no part in this sickness, the so-called spirituality. I am just a contented, fulfilled human being. What more do you want? And what more can spirituality be?

We want people to be fulfilled and contented, and this journey towards contentment, fulfillment, enlightenment should start with the body. You cannot begin from anywhere else. You can begin only from the beginning. You cannot ignore the roots and just go on praising the flowers. Your flowers will die, and you will have to replace them with plastic flowers if the roots are not taken care of. Is there any conflict between the roots and the blossoms? It is the same juice -- and you have to begin with the roots, because flowers will come only in the end.

But with humanity we have been almost mad. We have never bothered about the roots, and we have talked only about flowers. We talk about people being nonviolent, being compassionate, being loving -- so much that you can love your enemy, so much that you can even love your neighbor. We talk about flowers, but nobody is interested in the roots.

The question is: "Why are we not loving beings?"

It is not a question of being loving to this person, to that person, to the friend, to the enemy. The question is whether you are loving or not. Do you love your own body? Have you ever cared to touch your own body with a loving caress? Do you love yourself? No, all your religions teach you to hate yourself: you are the wrong person and you have to put yourself right; you are a sinner and you have to become a saint. How can you love yourself? -- you cannot even accept yourself. And these are the roots!

I will teach you to love yourself. And if you can love yourself, if you can rejoice in being yourself, naturally your love will go on spreading. It will become an aura around you; you will love your friends, and in a certain way you will love your enemies too -- because just the way the friend defines you, your enemy also defines you.

I am reminded of a recent incident. In India, before freedom came to that country, there was great struggle between Hindus and Mohammedans because Hindus wanted the country to remain one, undivided. It was favorable to them because they were the majority religion. If India was undivided, then Mohammedans had no possibility of ever being in power; they were the second majority religion.

The Mohammedans wanted a separate country and they had their reasons: "We have a different language, we have a different religion, we are a different race, we cannot live together." But the basic reason was not language, not culture, not race, because they had lived together for two thousand years, so there was no problem about that. The real thing was, if they had a separate country of their own they would have power.

The leader for an undivided India was Mahatma Gandhi, and the leader for the division of India and for a new land, Pakistan, for Mohammedans was Mohammed Ali Jinnah. They were archenemies their whole life.

In 1948 Gandhi was shot dead. Mohammed Ali Jinnah was now governor general of Pakistan. He was sitting on the lawn as the news reached him that Gandhi had been shot.

The person who had brought this news thought that he would be happy to hear it -- that his long, long enemy is dead. But he was surprised: Jinnah became sad, and he went into the house and told his secretary that he should not be disturbed. "If Gandhi is dead, much of me is dead too, because we defined each other."

A great insight -- the enemy also defines you, in the same way as the friend defines you.

Jinnah lived only one year longer, and he was never again seen so happy as he used to be; this last year was just sadness. Without Gandhi a gap, a great gap... A life-long enmity is a relationship, a deep relationship. So the man of understanding will love the enemy too - - not for any spiritual reason, but for the simple reason that he is defining him, he is part of his existence. Without him there will be a gap which nobody else can fill.

The question is not "love your enemies" the way Jesus says it. That is simply egoistic:

love your enemies because you are a superior spiritual being, and he is just an ordinary human being; so love him, show him the true path of spirituality. But it is just fulfilling your own ego.

I will also say, "Love him," but not for the same reasons. I will say, "Love him," because he defines you; he is part of you, just as you are part of him -- not only the friend, but the enemy too. It does not make you "holier than thou." It is a simple understanding of how psychology functions.

Love yourself. But you can love yourself only if you drop the idea of being a sinner. You can drop the idea of being a sinner if you drop the idea that there is a god.

If there is a god, you are a sinner; you cannot be anything else. If there is a god, then you are a sinner. You have been expelled from the kingdom of god, and you will be accepted back only if you become obedient -- so obedient that you lose your individuality to a hypothetical god whom you have never ever seen and whom you will never see.

Your religions don't allow you to love yourself, but then they talk all this bullshit of loving your enemies and loving your neighbors. But you can see the point. If you cannot love yourself, you cannot love anybody else in the world. That loving energy has to come from your heart, and there, there is sitting a sinner, condemned, waiting to be thrown into hellfire.

I have heard... In the middle ages when people, particularly women, were more naive, more simple, there were Christian preachers who would go on threatening them with hellfire, describing in minute details how they will be tortured. And it used to happen that many women would faint in the churches listening to the sermons, because the hellfire and the minute details would drive them nuts. Now these women, can they accept themselves as they are? -- No!

All the religions stand upon one single word, and that is how you should be. That word is `should' -- that word is not `is'. The `is' is condemned, and the `should' is praised; and the `should' is opposed to your `is'.

You cannot love yourself, your wife cannot love herself -- and you both are supposed to love each other. I don't understand how it is possible. You can pretend, but basically you will hate, because the wife knows you are dragging her farther into hell, you know that she is dragging you farther into hell -- how can you love? Jesus is clever. He talks about loving your enemies but he does not say anything about loving your wives. Strange, that should have been the first thing to be reminded of -- "Love your husbands." But no, these things are not mentioned.

The religions have been talking about flowers; I am working with the roots. And I am against plastic flowers. Real flowers have many differences; plastic flowers are permanent -- plastic love will be permanent. The real flower is not permanent, it is changing moment to moment. Today it is there dancing in the wind and in the sun and in the rain. Tomorrow you will not be able to find it -- it has disappeared just as mysteriously as it had appeared.

Real love is like a real flower.

But all religions teach you plastic love. And then they destroy the very possibility of ever coming to know a real flower. The real flower will have fragrance; the plastic flower has nothing to contribute to your life. It only looks like a flower, it is not a flower. The plastic flower is easy. You do not need to water it, you do not need to take care of the roots. Real flowers need some creativity on your part. Every real value needs creativity.

And just look at your saints: none of them are creative. All their qualities are just hilarious -- somebody can lie down in a grave for seven days, and then you dig him up and he is still alive; and he becomes a great saint. But I don't see that there is any contribution, any creativity in it. He may lie for seven hundred years in a grave; that does not matter. How can he become a saint by lying in a grave for seven days, by learning a certain technique of holding the breath in?

Paul Brunton, a great seeker going from one country to another country all over the East, came across many people who were worshipped as saints in the beginning of this century.

In Ajmer in India he came across a Mohammedan saint who used to put both his eyes down, hanging out of their sockets -- that was his only quality. And he was worshipped far and wide, because he was doing really the impossible!

He came across a Hindu yogi who was able to drink any kind of poison. He had exhibited his great achievement at many universities -- in Oxford, in Cambridge, in Varanasi, in Calcutta. But in Calcutta an accident happened. He was capable of keeping the poison in his body, without getting it into his bloodstream, only for half an hour: more than that he was incapable of. He had learned his whole life how to do it, but in Calcutta the traffic defeated him.

In India, you know the traffic is great; all the centuries are moving on the road -- a bullock cart, a horse-driven vehicle, a donkey, a camel-driven cart, cars, buses, trams.

Particularly in Calcutta you will find all the centuries together on the street. From the very beginning when man first invented a vehicle to the latest car -- everything is available. You just stand by the side of the road and watch.

So he was stuck somewhere in a traffic jam and could not reach the place where he was going to vomit; that was the whole art. For half an hour he could keep it; and then he would vomit -- not to let it go into his bloodstream. But he was late; it reached to his bloodstream and he died. But he was a world famous saint. What is his contribution?

I cannot conceive why these people should be called saints. Perhaps they should be called certain kinds of experts; they have a certain expertise, but it has nothing to do with spirituality. In the name of spirituality you have been worshipping utter nonsense. And behind this nonsense is the real man -- suffering, uncared for, unlooked at. Nobody bothers about him and his problems; nobody answers his real need.

My whole effort is to make a fresh beginning. It is bound to create condemnation of me from all over the world. But it doesn't matter -- who cares!

I care only for those who are ready to change the very course of human consciousness. I will offend others, I will annoy others, I will irritate others, I will create jealousy in others. These are part of my devices. I am really exposing them. If they have any intelligence they will understand it.

Ninety-three Rolls Royces... but I have not looked back at them, at what happened. They were not mine, and I am as happy without them as I was with them. I never went to see those Rolls Royces in the garage. The director of my garage, Avesh, is here. I went on saying to him, "One day I am coming," but that day never came. I have never seen those cars together. It was he who would bring a car for a one-hour drive, it was his choice.

And I have not looked back.

Those cars fulfilled their purpose. They created jealousy in the whole of America, in all the super-rich people. If they were intelligent enough, then rather than being my enemies they would have come to me to find a way to get rid of their jealousy, because it is their problem. Jealousy is a fire that burns you, and burns you badly. You are in the hands of somebody else.

I was just a tourist there, and I made the whole of America disturbed. They had enough money; they could have purchased more Rolls Royces if they wanted. But they had no guts for that either. They were condemning me, saying that I am a materialist. And you will be surprised; one bishop who was continuously condemning me as a materialist, wrote me a letter, privately, saying, "It would be very compassionate of you if you could donate a Rolls Royce to my church. It won't make any difference to you -- ninety-three or ninety-two -- but it will make much difference to us." And every Sunday he was condemning me. His condemnation was not about my materialism; his condemnation was to hide his jealousy.

The politicians, the rich, could have managed it for themselves -- why were they worried?

But the worry was that a tourist, who has not even a valid visa, has defeated all the super- rich; it hurts! If they were intelligent enough, they could have understood that there must be a purpose behind these Rolls Royces. It cannot be just the one-hour ride. For that, one Rolls Royce would have been enough.

Everything that I have done in my life has a purpose. It is a device to bring out something in you of which you are not aware.

If you are intelligent you would like to get rid of it because it is a poison which is killing you. A jealous mind is incapable of love; a jealous mind is incapable of rejoicing... and not only incapable of rejoicing, he is incapable of seeing anybody else rejoice. This kind of people fill the whole earth. And your so-called saints have not been a help to them.

Your so-called saints have exploited them.

It is hilarious! Your saints are exploiting you by being poor, torturing themselves; they are helping you not to feel jealous, not to feel hurt. They are protecting your ego. And it is not one-sided. That's why I say it is hilarious. The game is strange: they are helping you to remain in your misery, in your insanity, and you are helping them to remain in their suicidal, torturous life -- a mutual conspiracy of the whole of humanity to remain in hell.

The commune in America was also a device. It did its work. It made people aware that to be joyous, to be loving is possible on this earth; you do not have to wait for heaven. And I can't see, I can't understand... a person who has never been dancing and singing here, when he enters heaven and a harp is provided for him -- what is he going to do with the harp? He will be at a loss! He will ask, what is it, and what am I supposed to do with it?

Only my people will be immediately able to do something, whichever instrument is provided. It is not only a question of rejoicing... all other things too. If here for your whole life you learn only torture, what are you going to do in heaven? That self-torture has become a second nature to you.

I am reminded of a story... There was a very beautiful man, Eknath, who was going on a pilgrimage with his disciples. One well-known thief approached him, and asked the master, "Although I am a sinner -- you know me, everybody knows, I am a thief -- a great desire has arisen in me to go on a pilgrimage with you, if you allow me in your company.

Thirty people are going; it won't make much difference, one person more..."

Eknath said, "There is no harm, but one condition: while you are with me, and it is going to take nine months" -- because they were going to be traveling by foot all around the country, covering all the holy places, singing and dancing -- "you will not steal anything from the group or from somebody else where we are staying in a village. You will have to stop your art for nine months. If you promise me you are allowed."

The man said, "I promise absolutely that I will not steal anything for the coming nine months." But just within two, three days there was trouble. A strange kind of thing started happening, and that was that your money bag was found in somebody else's luggage, somebody else's coat was found in somebody else's bag! Strange... things were missing from here, but they were found there.

Finally Eknath one night had to remain awake to see what was going on, because it was very disturbing. Every morning you would have to find out where your things were; they were always found, but it was an unnecessary nuisance. Eknath had a suspicion that that man may be the cause of it -- and he was. In the middle of the night he started changing things around, and Eknath caught him redhanded. He said, "You had promised me that you would not steal."

He said, "I am completely following my promise; I am not stealing. But I never promised you that I would not change things from one bag to another -- that is not stealing. I am not putting anybody's things into my bag. But just to practice... otherwise in nine months I may forget my whole art. And moreover, I cannot sleep unless I do something. It is a lifelong habit."

Eknath said, "I understand your problem, but you must understand my problem too: every morning everybody is disturbed and upset -- money has gone, somebody's shirt is missing, somebody's blanket is missing. And unnecessarily every morning, for one hour, we have to sort it out."

But he said, "This much you will have to tolerate. This I have never promised. And I am not doing too much -- just one hour in the night then I can sleep at ease."

A man who has tortured himself for his whole life -- do you think he will be able to rejoice in heaven? He will have forgotten how to smile, he will have forgotten what joy means. No, I say to you the whole human past has been ugly, insane; it has created a kind of spirituality which is another name for schizophrenia. I have to fight against it, whatsoever the cost.

Somebody has to raise his hand and say to the people, "You have been misled. Your misery is a proof; no other proof is needed."

Question 2:

I am sure this question must be from Milarepa!

It is true: if you love one woman you will lose your mind; if you love two you will lose your soul. But if you go on loving more and more, you have nothing else to lose -- with the second you are finished!

When Milarepa came I asked Vivek, "Has he brought his guitar? And what else does he do?"

She said, "He does nothing else -- just plays on his guitar and chases women."

I said, "Enquire if he has got his guitar. Then he should start playing guitar; otherwise chasing women the whole time will not be good for his health. So once in a while, just to get some rest, he can play guitar."

But he has not brought his guitar. I think you should provide him with a guitar, because he has lost everything. Now he has nothing to be worried about losing; he can go on chasing...

That's why the saying stops at two women, because for the third you have nothing to lose.

And it is good to go beyond the second, because then you really become humble -- you have nothing.

To me that is spirituality.