This you call civilization?

ONCE, WHEN YAKUSAN WAS RECITING A SUTRA, A MONK ASKED HIM:

"YOU DON'T USUALLY ALLOW US TO RECITE SUTRAS. WHY DO YOU YOURSELF RECITE A SUTRA?"

"I JUST WANT TO ENTERTAIN MY EYES," REPLIED YAKUSAN.

THE MONK ASKED, "CAN I ALSO RECITE SUTRAS LIKE YOU?"

"IF YOU WANT TO RECITE SUTRAS LIKE ME," ANSWERED YAKUSAN, "YOU MUST PIERCE EVEN THROUGH THE HIDE OF A COW."

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, YAKUSAN WAS ASKED BY GOVERNOR RI, "WHAT ARE THE PRECEPTS, MEDITATION AND WISDOM?"

YAKUSAN ANSWERED, "THIS POOR MONK HASN'T SUCH USELESS FURNITURE."

RI SAID, "DON'T BE SO MYSTERIOUS!"

YAKUSAN SAID, "IF YOU WANT TO HAVE WHAT I HAVE, YOU MUST SIT ON THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN, GO DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE DEEPEST SEA.

"YOU DON'T THROW OFF YOUR BURDENS EVEN WHEN YOU GO TO BED; YOU ARE BUSY WITH ILLUSIONS."

Friends, The Christian monks who have visited the ashram have sent me their ideas of what religion has done for humanity, for civilization, for culture, and I have to discuss them point by point, to show that no religion, including Christianity, has done anything to humanity except harm.

I would like to begin from the very beginning, because Christianity believes obedience is a fundamental virtue, and disobedience is the original sin.

God created the world, and in every church you will hear that he created Adam and Eve after he had created everything else. That's a lie. He created first Adam and Lilith, but it is not being told to people. There are reasons for not telling it.

God created Adam and Lilith with the same mud. It is a myth, but it carries tremendous meaning. And this shows the utter stupidity of God, that he created a small single bed, only one bed, with the male chauvinist idea that Adam will sleep on the bed and Lilith will sleep on the floor. The woman cannot be equal to the man.

From that very point the whole of Christianity has been against equality. If even God is against it, then equality, equal opportunity for all, cannot be accepted. That's why Christianity is against communism, against anarchism.

And I say that God was utterly stupid, because when you create a couple, you should at least create a double bed.

The first night was the beginning of a struggle that continues even today. Lilith wanted to sleep on the bed, and Adam wanted to sleep on the bed, and the bed could not contain the two. So Adam threw Lilith down, then Lilith jumped on Adam and she threw Adam down -- just because of a stupid God who could not think that a double bed was needed!

The whole night the fight continued -- the fight for equality that continues even today in every bedroom. Even though now there are double beds available, the fight continues, the pillow fight!

Next day Adam asked God not the right question -- "Why don't you give us a bigger bed?" -- which would have been so simple, logical; he asked God, "I cannot tolerate this woman who wants to be equal to me." And God killed Lilith, his own daughter.

Neither was Adam asking for a bigger bed, nor did God suggest to him that "There is no problem. I have created the whole world, I can create a double bed. Just (THE MASTER SNAPS HIS FINGERS) like that ... a double bed!"

But God was also a male chauvinist. He favored Adam, although it was unjust to Lilith, and the injustice goes even to the point of murder -- murdering his own daughter because she was asking for equality.

To me, asking for equal opportunity is a fundamental religious principle. I don't say people are equal, I say people need equal opportunity to grow into their unequal uniquenesses.

But a double bed! -- that proves absolutely that God was a Jew, and it is not an accident that he has chosen the Jews as his own people. Rather than making a double bed, he chose to kill his own daughter. But it is not only killing Lilith, it is killing the very idea of equality. And these Christian monks say religion has done great service to humanity! And the Christians have followed it, and all the other religions have followed it also.

China does not believe that a woman has a soul. It is just as though she is furniture: since thousands of years in China, if a husband kills his wife, the husband is not committing a crime. The wife was his possession. You can destroy your chair, you can destroy anything that you possess, it is not a crime. Because the woman has no soul, nobody is murdered.

Thailand also believes there is no soul in the woman, and Christianity down the ages has been killing millions of women, burning them alive for a simple reason that was far more ancient than Christianity itself. They were called witches.

Christianity has turned the word 'witch' into an ugly thing. 'Witch' means a wise woman, not a woman who is having intercourse with the devil. That is a Christian invention. They could not tolerate wise women, because wise women mean ... then what about the priest, and the bishop, and the cardinal, and the pope? A woman can be wise? -- never! Only man can be wise. And because those women were certainly wiser than men -- it was a long heritage -- the only way to destroy them was to find an excuse.

Anybody could report to a special court, a grand jury, the pope had created; Anybody -- X,Y,Z -- could simply inform the court anonymously, "I suspect a certain woman in my neighborhood is a witch." That was enough. The woman would be caught, tortured for days on end, beaten, sexually abused, till she accepted that yes, she is having intercourse with the devil.

Naturally, you cannot suffer infinitely. There comes a point when your spine is broken.

And what is the point? These people will go on beating you, will go on torturing you, will go on not giving you food, not giving you water -- so what is the point? It is better to accept what they want. Death was better than to be in the prisons of the pope.

They chose death knowing well that once you accept in the court that you are having a love affair with the devil, it is a very summary trial. The woman confesses, the judge immediately orders that this woman should be burnt alive in the marketplace so everybody can see, and everybody can find out if there are other witches in the village, in the town, in the city.

Just the idea that a woman could be wise was unacceptable to man. And the root goes to God himself. God killed Lilith, and this time he did not make Eve from the same earth as he had made Adam, because that same earth had created the idea of equality.

So this time he put Adam in a coma and took out -- the first surgery in existence -- a rib bone, and out of the rib bone he created Eve. She will never claim to be equal to man; she is just a rib bone. She will serve man, surrender to man, obey man, worship man.

And every church goes on saying that God created Adam and Eve. Their own scriptures say something else, but that is not being told. Centuries of repetition that God created Adam and Eve in the beginning has made the lie appear, at least, as if it is the truth.

A God who has created the whole world could not create a woman without taking a rib from Adam? It is very strange, but the idea is that the woman is nothing but a bone, nothing but a body, and she is secondary to man, and she has to be a slave to man. This idea is found in all the religions in different ways.

The woman cannot go to heaven from the body of a woman. First she has to be virtuous, chaste, dedicated to the husband absolutely; then she may be born as a man in the next life -- out of this virtuousness of being a slave. Slavery is virtue! Obedience is virtue!

The husband may be a drunkard, the husband may be a murderer, the husband may be a rapist, the husband may be doing all kinds of crimes, but the woman has to accept the husband as her god.

This you call civilization?

One of the monks has said that Christianity created civilization. Absolute nonsense and absurdity!

According to Christianity itself, God created the world six thousand years ago.

In India we have excavated Mohanjo Daro, a huge city just like Bombay, and Harappa, again another big city which even Christians ... The man in charge of the excavation was a Christian named Marshall. Even he had to accept that "We cannot date them at less than seven thousand years. That would be absolute nonsense, it would not fit with my conscience. Although as a Christian I should put them at less than six thousand years old, as a scientist I can only bring them at the least to seven thousand years old."

And those cities, I have to tell you, had as big roads as New York or San Francisco. That shows that those cities must have had vehicles with great speed, otherwise those roads would not have been needed. Just for people to walk on them, or bullock carts, such big roads were not needed.

Even today our biggest cities don't have roads that big, and on both sides, pavements for people to walk on. It is an indication that they must have had some kind of vehicles run by engines, some kind of petroleum, gas.

Not only did they have big roads, they had huge buildings. Now only ruins are there, but the ruins show great stories. Such huge bedrooms! They had public swimming pools, they had a water system, a very strange water system, to connect every house with pipelines. Every house had a bathroom, a toilet -- and you think Christianity has civilized the world?

Just one hundred years ago, in the American Supreme Court, there was a case against a man who had just come from Europe and had found that in Paris people had bathrooms attached to their bedrooms, so he had made the first bathroom attached to his bedroom.

The whole of Christianity was against him, and there were great protests: "This is absolutely dirty, to have a bathroom attached to the bedroom. Bathrooms, toilets, have to be far away, at the back of the house." And the man had to fight up to the Supreme Court to win the case, just one hundred years ago!

Seven thousand years ago in Harappa and Mohanjo Daro, they had attached bathrooms, toilets, to their bedrooms. They had a water system making water available to every house, every bathroom, making water available to public swimming pools. And there were private swimming pools also in very big houses, which were certainly of rich people, kings and queens.

And seven thousand years is the minimum. The likelihood is that they are more ancient than seven thousand years, because there is no mention in Hindu scriptures about Harappa and Mohanjo Daro. Such huge cities, and no mention of those cities? -- and the RIGVEDA, the most ancient book, is, with valid evidence, ninety thousand years old.

Even the RIGVEDA does not mention those cities. Perhaps those cities are more ancient than RIGVEDA, perhaps they disappeared in a catastrophe, natural or man-made, before the Aryans came to India!

Those cities did not belong to the Aryans, because not a single statue of Hindu gods has been found there. Yes, one statue has been found which proves that Jainism must have been prevalent in those cities. One statue only has been found of a naked Mahavira. But nobody can say whether it is Mahavira, or any one of the twenty-three other tirthankaras of the Jainas.

That statue proves that before the Aryans came to India, there was flourishing a great civilization. And that also proves that Jainism is far more ancient than Hinduism, because no Hindu temple has been found, no Hindu statue of Shiva, or Vishnu, or Brahma -- nothing.

And you will not believe it, but these two cities went through seven periods of destruction. It is now just guesswork what happened to these cities. When they first excavated, they thought that this was all, a great city. But Marshall was interested to dig more, because he suspected that such a big city could not have come into existence from nowhere; there must have been other big cities.

So he started digging outside Harappa and Mohanjo Daro, and he was surprised: there was another layer of thick mud -- perhaps from volcanic eruptions -- and under that mud another similar kind of city, with the same facilities.

Then he became interested to dig more, and now seven layers have been found. It seems for thousands of years Harappa and Mohanjo Daro were going into convulsions.

Destroyed, they were made again; destroyed, they were made again -- seven times.

It must have taken thousands of years for those cities ... And ultimately they were destroyed. It is just for us to guess whether it was nuclear weapons those people were accumulating -- because all their cities show scientific technology -- or it was nature. But nature cannot be so harsh that seven times it will destroy a city ....

Most probably it was man himself. Perhaps Harappa and Mohanjo Daro were at war, and they were destroying each other and building again -- whoever had survived -- another city on top of the old city which had been destroyed.

Now Christians have to answer: Were Harappa and Mohanjo Daro created before God created the world?

RIGVEDA was written ninety thousand years ago, and God created the world only six thousand years ago. The Christian eyes are very blind. They cannot look into existence because of their scriptures. The scriptures prevent them from seeing the reality.

Now it is absolutely certain that the RIGVEDA is ninety thousand years old, because in RIGVEDA a certain constellation of stars is described in absolute detail. That constellation has never happened again. It happened, according to astronomers, scientists, ninety thousand years ago. So the people who wrote RIGVEDA must have watched it; their description is in such exact detail that it cannot be that they were imagining it -- there is no possibility -- and that constellation has never happened again! Perhaps in the future sometime it may happen again. That is a scientific proof of RIGVEDA'S ancientness.

Those monks have written to me that "We brought culture to the world."

While the RIGVEDA was being written, where were you, and where was your God?

When Harappa and Mohanjo Daro were destroyed and built again and again seven times, where was your God, and where were Christians? While the UPANISHADS were being written, Europe was barbarious.

You will be surprised to know that arithmetic was born in India. Gunpowder, machine guns, were created by the Chinese, before the birth of Christ. The alphabet was born in India, astronomy was born in India.

But why did these people stop? They could have moved towards nuclear energy ....

The reason why China did not move -- knowing these secrets they did not create machine guns, although in their scriptures absolute details are given -- is that they were stopped by their sages, that "These things will lead to more destructive weapons. One thing leads to another. You just stop. Keep a record of it, but don't produce such dangerous weapons."

Why did arithmetic not reach to the point of Albert Einstein in India? It was stopped for the simple reason that our genius should not be wasted in objective things; our genius and our life is too small. It is enough to create a comfortable life outside, and then go inwards.

The ultimate journey is inwards. The same was true in China. These are the most ancient civilized countries.

And the original sin -- according to Christians -- was committed by Adam and Eve.

According to me, the original sin was committed by the Christian God.

When he created Eve from the rib bone of Adam he told them both, "In the Garden of Eden, the garden of paradise" -- God's garden was huge, there were millions of trees, and God pointed to two trees -- "you should not eat from these two trees." One tree was of knowledge, the other was of life eternal.

What kind of father is this who prevents his own children from being wise, intelligent?

and prevents them from being eternal, from going beyond the circle of life and death?

What kind of God is this?

Even the Christian God is not civilized. He does not deserve to be called a father. No father will deprive his children. Every father, even the poorest father, is trying for his children to become educated, to become more intelligent, to become more wise. And every father is trying to pray for his children to have a longer life.

God, as far as Christianity is concerned, is absolutely barbarious. And the devil was right, not God, when he persuaded Eve and told her the reason why God had prohibited them:

"These are the most precious trees. If you eat the fruit of knowledge, and if you eat the fruit of eternal life, you will become exactly equal to the gods. That is his fear, because what more has he? He is afraid and jealous of you, and he does not want you to become gods in your own right. He wants you to remain buffalos chewing grass -- real grass."

I want to tell the Christians of the whole world: If the devil had not inspired Eve, you, your popes, your cardinals, your bishops, archbishops, your Jesus, your Moses -- all would be chewing grass in the Garden of Eden, just like buffalos, utterly content. Only grass was left for them to chew, not even chewing gum!

And it is a strange fact, but the mythology has some truth in it, a shadow of truth. God caught them red-handed, eating the fruit of the tree of wisdom -- and it was nothing but an apple. Avoid apples! -- that is original sin.

For three years I remained only eating apples, just to see. Because they had eaten only one apple -- half was eaten by Eve, and half was eaten by Adam -- so I said, "Let us see!"

For three years my family was mad at me: "What are you doing?"

But I said, "I have to complete three years at least, to see how I become a sinner" -- and nothing happened! In three years I must have eaten as many apples as any man in the whole of history! Just apples and nothing else ...

This is called the original sin, that they did not obey God. And because they committed the original sin of disobedience, you are all original sinners, because you all have come from their blood. They were the original founders of humanity.

God caught them red-handed and did not let them remain in the garden, because soon they would eat the other tree's fruit: eternal life. He just threw them out of the Garden of Eden and closed the door. He wanted them to remain ignorant, and he wanted them to suffer the pangs of birth, life and death, eternally.

Who is committing the sin, God or the devil? or Adam and Eve?

Being without any prejudice, you can see that God is the criminal. And God does not know even the abc of psychology. If he had not prevented them from eating from these two trees -- he had pointed out the trees -- the garden was so huge, we may not have discovered even up to now which were the trees. We had no idea. He gave them the provocation.

Just tell a child, "Don't look inside the room!" -- and even the retarded child will look inside the room, to say nothing about the intelligent one. He will find ways to look in the room. "What is the matter? Why not look in the room?"

In one family -- of course a Christian family -- a boy was coming of age and needed some sex education. The mother felt embarrassed to tell him, so she said, "You go to your father and ask him about the birds and bees."

He said, "But I don't want to know about the birds and bees."

That is a metaphor for sex: birds and bees.

So the boy went to the father and said, "My mother has sent me, and she wants me to ask -- although I am not interested at all what the birds and bees are doing, but just because of her I am asking you."

The father was also embarrassed. It is such a strange situation, created by religions, that we cannot talk of natural things!

The father said, "Why are you not interested in the birds and bees?"

He said, "I know exactly what they are doing, and I know exactly what you and mother are doing! The same: birds and bees!"

The father said, "You know what we are doing? How did you come to know?"

He said, "From the keyhole I see everything that goes on inside the bedroom. First I used to think that my father seems to be very barbarious, holding my mother under himself, huffing, puffing. What is going on here? Is he going to murder my mother? Then later on I asked older boys in the school. They laughed. They said, 'He is not murdering your mother, he is loving your mother!'

"So I know everything. You don't have to waste your time teaching me about the birds and the bees."

Every intelligent child looks through the keyhole to see what is going on, for the simple reason because he is prevented.

Prevent anybody and you create a provocation. This is the simplest psychology! No Sigmund Freud is needed, just a little intelligence. Just tell people not to do a certain thing and they will become interested. There must be something, or else why are they prevented? And they will try. They would not have tried, perhaps, if you had not prevented them.

So God is not only an idiot, but he does not know even a small portion of psychology -- and he is a male chauvinist. He killed his own daughter, he is a murderer. And he threw Adam and Eve out from the garden out of the fear that they might eat the fruits of life eternal.

I consider the devil to be the first revolutionary in the world. I consider Eve to be the first to be convinced of the revolution. I consider Adam as the third, for being persuaded by the wife.

Obedience has been the fundamental virtue. Why? To perpetuate the past, to keep the status quo of the society as it is, with no change, to keep millions of people in spiritual slavery: that is obedience.

Get exploited, but don't disobey. Behave like a sheep, not like a lion; that has been the teaching of Christianity and other religions.

Jesus insults humanity so much that I had to burn the whole Bible. When I was very young I burned it, and my father asked me, "What are you burning?"

I said, "It is none of your concern."

But he said, "At least I can inquire."

I said, "Yes, you can inquire. It is the Bible -- and the same is going to be the fate of your religion's books. Whenever I find something ugly, I don't miss the opportunity to destroy it."

Jesus says to people, "You should behave like sheep, and I am your shepherd. You should obey me, and you should be loyal to me, and you should believe in me. That's all that you need, and I will save you. At the last day of judgment I will choose my sheep and tell God that 'These people belong to me, let them in! And the others have to be thrown into hellfire.'" What is the value of obedience? Yes, every politician wants obedience, every priest wants obedience, every general wants obedience; every rich man wants obedience from the servants; every husband wants obedience from the wife, from the children. All vested interests are based on obedience.

I teach you awareness, and if your awareness feels things are right, obedience follows. If your awareness feels things are not right, disobedience follows. I don't teach you obedience or disobedience. I teach you simply awareness, clarity of your vision, so you can see for yourself.

Obedience has done much more harm to humanity than disobedience would have done. If all the armies disobey, there will be no war. Five thousand wars ... humanity has been fighting continuously somewhere or other. There is not a peaceful moment on the whole earth. Somewhere or other killing goes on, continues as if this is our whole purpose for being here. On what are all these armies based? Obedience.

One of my friends was a colonel in the army, and his wife was my student in the university. She introduced me to the colonel, and after Jabalpur, where I was a teacher, they were transferred to Poona, so I used to come here and always used to have at least one meal in their house.

The colonel was very much influenced by me, and he had a big regiment in Jabalpur, so he invited me one day.

His wife said, "Do you understand what you are doing?"

He said, "He is a nice fellow."

The wife said, "That's true, he is a nice fellow, but he will teach disobedience to your regiment."

He said, "Are you going to teach my regiment disobedience?"

I said, "Certainly!"

He said, "Then the program is canceled. My God! If my wife had not told me ..."

I said, "I want to teach all the armies of the world disobedience. If they disobey, then let the presidents and prime ministers have wrestling matches, boxing matches. They can enjoy, and we will enjoy on television -- but there is no need for millions of people to be killed continuously."

Big wars you know: you know the first great world war, you know the second great world war, and you are waiting for the third. Since the second world war, up to now there have been one hundred and twenty-five small wars. But even small wars kill millions of people. You don't call them world wars just because they are located in a small area and nobody cares about them. Nobody counts how many people are killed daily because of obedience.

Obedience teaches you blindness.

Obedience teaches you unintelligence.

Obedience teaches you that "You don't have any responsibility on your own, just follow the order!" -- but the order is to kill people.

The man who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- the pilot of the plane -- killed within ten minutes more than two hundred thousand people, and he slept perfectly well in the night, with not even a little prick of conscience, that "What have I done?"

No, the army is prepared just to follow. You are not responsible for what action is going to take place and what the consequences are going to be. The next morning the pilot was asked by the journalists, "How do you feel?"

He said, "There is no question, I am feeling perfectly good that I followed the order."

Truman was the president of America who had ordered that Nagasaki and Hiroshima should be destroyed -- without any reason or rhyme, because Germany had surrendered and Japan too was going .... The papers were being got ready, just the signature was needed of the emperor of Japan. Within two or three days, or at the most seven days, agreements would have been completed and Japan would have surrendered.

Seeing that Japan was going to surrender, Truman was very quick. Before Japan surrendered -- because then he would not be able to test his atom bombs -- he gave the order. Even his military experts said to him, "This is absolute wastage. It is unnecessary murder -- and not of one man, but more than two hundred thousand people!" Hiroshima and Nagasaki were big cities.

But Truman did not listen to his military experts. He said, "You don't know politics, you keep quiet. An order is an order. You send the order that immediately, tonight, the bombs have to be dropped, before the agreement is signed." And when the order comes from the president, the commander-in-chief immediately gives the order to the lower -- to the people trained just to follow, because obedience is the greatest virtue.

Truman was also asked the next morning, "It was your order, how do you feel about killing so many people unnecessarily?" The whole world could see that Japan was going to surrender, there was no need at all. The war had almost stopped; the commanders from both the sides were having discussions and making arrangements how to surrender.

Truman said, "I had to test the atom bombs. We have wasted so much money in creating atom bombs .... I am perfectly happy that the bombs worked, and now we will be growing more into atomic technology."

And Truman was blessed by the pope. Churchill was blessed by the pope, and Eisenhower was blessed by the pope, and MacArthur was blessed by the pope -- and these were the killers.

But on the other side also, you will be surprised: God is one, and the archbishop of Germany blessed Adolf Hitler in the name of the same God. The archbishop in Japan blessed the emperor in the name of the same God.

Mussolini was a partner with Adolf Hitler and Emperor Hirohito of Japan, and the pope's Vatican is a small thing -- eight square miles inside Italy -- and Benito Mussolini was Italy's dictator; the pope had to bless him!

It is such that one does not know whether to weep or to laugh.

Before the war, the pope blessed Benito Mussolini, his counterpart in Germany blessed Adolf Hitler, and his counterpart in Japan blessed Emperor Hirohito for victory. And when they saw that these people were drowning after five years, the pope blessed Churchill, Truman, Eisenhower, MacArthur -- the other party. He blessed both, and he asked God to help both!

Great! There seems to be no logic at all.

Obedience is not a virtue. In the name of obedience more people have been killed, burned alive ....

But I don't want you to react and become disobedient. I want you to grow beyond the dualities of obedience and disobedience. You should have a bird's-eye view of the whole situation, and according to your awareness, consciousness, your meditation, you should respond. Whether it is obedience or disobedience does not matter.

They have said in their questions that Christianity has given the world faith, hope and charity.

What is faith? It is always blind.

A man who knows does not need faith.

I don't ask you to have faith in me.

Jesus asks, Krishna asks, "Have faith in me."

You are utterly ignorant. In your ignorance, whatever you believe in, whatever is your faith, is a by-product of ignorance, of fear, of society, of respectability.

Faith is not a virtue, and it is not a great contribution to humanity's evolution. Faith is the greatest hindrance in people's search for truth. Before you go in search you have already been handed a secondhand dirty faith, and you are told that just this much is enough; you don't have to search, Jesus has done it for you, Buddha has done it for you.

But Buddha has been drinking water, and my thirst does not get quenched. Jesus has been drinking wine, and I don't get drunk. How can Jesus help you by just having faith in him?

Faith simply means hiding ignorance, and it is very cheap. Truth needs great energy, great urgency, and a total involvement in the search.

Truth is within you, faith comes from outside. Anything that comes from outside is not going to help you. You cannot take it in. Truth is already alive in you, you don't need any faith. It is faith which has kept humanity ignorant. It is not a contribution to evolution, it is a contribution to INvolution. Involution means going backwards, not forwards.

Faith is always in the other -- in Jesus, in God, in heaven, in hell. It is always outside you, and truth is within you. Having faith, you are moving outside, farther away from the truth.

I am absolutely against faith, against all belief systems, because they have been preventing humanity from discovering their own buddhahood, their own godliness. But no priest wants you to discover that you are divine. Every priest of every religion wants you to go away, far away from yourself so he can exploit you.

The moment you know that you are yourself part of this existence -- and not only part but the whole of this existence -- that you are in your own right a buddha, no priest can exploit you. Faith is needed for exploitation.

Religions teach faith because they cannot help you to find the truth. They themselves don't know where truth is.

The commander-in-chiefs of the world want their armies to have faith. Faith in whom?

Every Christian army carries, even to the battlefield, a small Bible. Just one time it worked -- in the whole of history -- and that was just a coincidence, but it has been quoted again and again by Christian missionaries around the world.

One soldier was keeping his small Bible in his pocket in the first world war, and a bullet hit the Bible and missed his heart. They said, "This is God's miracle!" But it only happened to one man, and since that time all soldiers have been carrying a small Bible in their pocket. It does not work.

Even an ordinary person can understand that exceptions are not rules. The exception is an accident, it was just by chance. If he had been carrying a PLAYBOY magazine, it would have done the same work. And I wonder whether his Bible did not have a PLAYBOY magazine inside! All soldiers are interested more in PLAYBOY than in the Bible, because they are deprived of women. That too has a reason, why they are deprived of women.

As sexual energy accumulates, one becomes irritated. If your sexual energy is satisfied, you don't feel like fighting. But when your sexual energy is repressed, you are ready to destroy anything. You are in anger, in rage; you are blind, you don't know why you are killing the other person. The other person also has a wife, a child, a mother, an old father to look after, and he has not done anything bad to you. You have not even been introduced. You are killing a person just because your commander has ordered it.

Better to kill the commander. Millions of people at least will be saved by killing one man.

Just kill all the commander-in-chiefs of the world -- maybe one hundred, two hundred; that does not matter in a world where Adolf Hitler kills thirty million people in a war.

And he does not even go to the war ....

It is the commander-in-chiefs who don't go to the war; it is the lower officers who go to the war. It is a hierarchy. The poorest soldier at the bottom end of the hierarchy goes to the war. He receives orders, and he does not know from where those orders are coming.

President Truman is in Washington, in the White House, and the order comes to MacArthur, who is in a warship outside the area of Japan. Then the order goes to a pilot, and the pilot does not know from where it is coming.

And Truman is a religious man; he goes every Sunday to the church. The White House has a special church for the presidents. What kind of religious people are these? Even his name should be changed! Tru-man -- he is not even man, and you are calling him "true man"!

He is the greatest murderer in history. Nobody has killed so many people simultaneously.

Within three minutes Hiroshima was finished, and within three more minutes, Nagasaki was finished. Within four minutes the pilot was back. In ten minutes the whole massacre was complete.

I say absolutely, no faith is needed.

I teach you trust, not faith, not belief, because faith and belief are in others; trust is in yourself. I want you to trust in yourself. The existence has brought you here, you are still connected with existence; otherwise you will die. Have faith in you, and search your roots with deep trust. But it is not in somebody else -- not in some scripture, not in some shepherd, not in some messiah, not in some prophet. No, absolutely no.

This faith has been the greatest obstacle for seekers and searchers of truth.

Hope is another danger .... And these monks have sent me these words: they don't know me at all.

Hope is called by Karl Marx, in other words, the opium of the people. And he is right.

Who needs hope? The rich man does not bother; it is the poor, it is the sick, it is the dying, it is the starving, the beggars who need hope -- hope in a future life where they will be rewarded immensely. For what? -- for being poor and beggars. For producing dozens of children and creating more poverty in the world, they will be rewarded in heaven.

It seems God wants this world to be turned into slums, then he will be very happy.

Everybody will have faith, everybody will be obedient, everybody will go to the church, and God will be immensely happy.

But if people are having trust in themselves, who cares about God? You are coming closer and closer to your own godliness. You have found your own shrine inside. The outside God becomes a fiction.

Hope is always for the future, and the reality is always in the present. Hope deprives you of the present, and the present is the only moment you can explore your reality, your beauty, your truth, your divineness. Hope is a very cunning strategy.

Once I was going to the university, and a beautiful young woman waved to me to stop my car. I thought perhaps she wanted a ride, so I stopped the car. I opened the window and asked her, "What is the matter? What do you want?"

She said, "I don't want anything, I simply want to give you this pamphlet. Just read it.

And it has the phone number, so if you want more of this kind of literature I will send it to you, or I will come myself to deliver it."

As I was moving off, I started looking at it, because just on the outside cover there was a beautiful bungalow made of pure Italian marble, and by the side and behind the bungalow, a huge mountain capped with snow. From the mountain a great waterfall came down by the side of the bungalow, becoming a river just in front of the bungalow lawn.

The gate opened on a bridge -- because the waterfall had become a river, and around the river were huge trees, lush and green. And in the bungalow's garden were so many roses, such a beautiful lawn, such a beautiful fountain ....

I said, "I have never seen this house here or anywhere in India." I turned the page, and there it was written: "If you believe in the only begotten son of God, Jesus Christ, you will have such bungalows available for you in paradise." So cheap!

This is all business. This is giving people hope. Now, a man who has no house and lives on the street will treasure this pamphlet in case he reaches paradise -- and perhaps he will reach, because Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor. They shall inherit the kingdom of God."

The man will think, "Who can be more poor than me? So I will keep it, because paradise will be vast -- so many millions of saints of the past -- and I would love to find this bungalow."

What is hope? To whom do you give the hope? To the hopeless one who has lost all hope, seeing the life and the competition and the continuous struggle for survival -- to the one who has become hopeless.

Karl Marx says also, "Religion is the hope of the hopeless." It gives a certain consolation that, if not in this life ... And this life is not much; most of it is already gone, maybe a few years more. Just a little patience and prayer and faith, and you will receive such beautiful bungalows -- without any cost. Only faith is needed.

Again, hope is not a contribution to humanity's progress. It prevents progress. It makes people believe in dreams. They don't start creating reality, transforming reality, changing the social structure, changing all institutions which create only misery and nothing else.

Hope prevents them! Why bother?

Revolution may come, but you will be gone. And in revolution, getting involved, you will not be able to pray, you will not be able to go to the church, you will not be able to have enough faith. If you have enough faith, then this society, this structure, is made by God; you have to be patient, it is a fire test for you -- your poverty, your sickness, your death, everything. Just be quiet and have faith in God.

Just today I have received such an ugly story, you will not believe it.

In Pennsylvania, U.S.A., a former Seventh Day Adventist priest, who had been out of work for months, chose to starve himself and his family to death rather than spend money which he had put aside for God. He had four thousand dollars with him, but he had put it aside for God.

So, rather than feeding his children, his wife -- they were starving ... How can he touch the money once he has committed it to God? That will be betrayal, that will be not being faithful.

His only son died of starvation. Then he was caught by the police, and asked how the son had died. Now he is in jail. The police went into the house -- a beautiful house, with good furniture, everything perfect, only no food -- and found the wife was almost dying, the daughter was almost dying, and the priest himself was on the verge of death after three weeks of starvation.

All those people of the house were taken into the hospital, and the priest was asked, "You had money in the house -- because the police found those four thousand dollars."

He said, "I would rather die, and I would rather my wife and my children die, but I cannot betray my faith." And even in this situation -- he is in jail, in the jail's hospital, he is being charged with murder -- he says ... Certainly he had murdered the son, and he was going to murder his wife and his daughter, and he was going to commit suicide himself. Even in this situation, the priest says, his faith in God was not shaken.

Faith is blind, utterly blind.

Hope is blind. And I have talked about charity to you, but I will tell a small anecdote.

A Christian mother was telling her small son, "It is your duty, being a faithful Christian, to share whatever you have with others. Charity is the foundation of our religion."

The little boy said, "That's perfectly good. I will give whatever I have to others. What will they do?"

The mother said, "What will they do?"

He said, "I am asking that am I the only faithful Christian in the world? Is not somebody else going to give his toys to me when I have given my toys to somebody else in charity?"

The mother said, "God will take care."

He said, "This seems to be very unmathematical." He was learning mathematics.

The mother said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "It is so simple that there is no need for me to explain. It is an absurd idea: I give to others, they give to me, somebody else gives to somebody else, he gives to somebody else. What is the point? I have my toys, they have their toys. I take care of myself, they take care of themselves. Why make a clumsy and messy affair of the whole thing? What is the point?"

And that is what charity is -- absolutely meaningless. Give to the poor, but first you have to create the poor, otherwise to whom will you give? So first create the poor, then give to the poor; then God will be very happy with you.

In a small school, a Christian teacher was giving the students a one-hour-long sermon on "How to get to heaven." Finally she asked a boy, a little older, "Stand up and tell me how to reach heaven."

He said, "First you have to commit sin."

She said, "What?!"

He said, "Yes. According to your sermon I have concluded that first you commit sin, then God forgives you; otherwise, whom will he forgive? He will feel very miserable if he has nobody to forgive. Make him happy, commit as many sins you can. God is kind, God is love, God is compassion, so he will forgive. And he is sitting there since eternity just for one purpose: to forgive people. Have mercy on God, commit sin! That is the way to heaven." A clear-cut arithmetic.

But the teacher was shocked. She could not believe that boys, small boys, can come to such conclusions. But it is not only small boys ....

Omar Khayyam, a great Persian poet, has written in his RUBAIYAT, which FitzGerald has made world famous by translating it into English ... RUBAIYAT means poetries. It is a very special kind of poetry, rubaiya; just like haiku is in Zen, rubaiya is in Sufism. In one of his rubaiyas he says, "Don't be worried, enjoy women, enjoy wine. God is compassionate."

GUNAH KYON NA KIYE? KYA KHUDA RAHIM NA THA?

Why did you not commit the sins? Were you not sure that God is compassionate?

Commit as many sins as you can. Give God a good opportunity to show his compassion, love, forgiveness.

So it is not only a small child, but a very great poet also has the same idea.

All these ideas -- original sin, faith, hope, charity -- have not made the world better. They have prevented the world from growing in consciousness, growing in its experience of the real existence, and transcending all poverty, all birth, all death, and becoming part of, one with, the eternal life.

We are searching for the same tree that Adam and Eve missed: eternal life.

Christianity has no meditation, because meditation will take you in. It has prayer; prayer takes you out. Prayer is towards a fictitious God. Meditation is deep into your own existence, it is not fiction.

You are a reality.

God is only invention.

I will take one by one their other questions.

They have come into the clutches of a lion.

The sutra:

The question seems to be relevant. Yakusan prevents monks from reciting sutras, and a monk found him ... he himself was reciting a sutra. Obviously, it is contradictory to his own teachings.

Yakusan said, "I JUST WANT TO ENTERTAIN MY EYES. These beautiful sutras ... I relish their beauty, their composition, their music, their truth; I feel fresh in their immense implications. My eyes become sharper. It is just an entertainment for my eyes."

THE MONK ASKED,

Again you will feel the question seems to be relevant, but now it is no more so.

When the master recites the sutra, he already knows the truth, hence he finds the truth in the sutra. A man who does not know the truth will be simply wasting time. He will not find any truth in the sutra. He will become knowledgeable, but he will not become enlightened.

It is strange ... but I also insist on the fact. Don't read scriptures now, but when you have become a buddha, then enjoy the scriptures. There are many diamonds here and there, and many rubies and many emeralds, much treasure -- but first you should find yourself.

First you should find your clarity of vision.

An ignorant man, an unconscious man, will stuff sutras into his mind, borrowed, meaningless. But a man who has realized, who has come to his very center, a man who does not need to read the sutras -- he knows the truth -- can entertain himself.

It is almost like a bank, the same principle. If you have money the bank is ready to give you a loan. If you don't have money, no bank is ready to give you a loan. Strange! The ordinary logic will be: the man who has no money, give him the loan; and the man who has money, there is no need to give him a loan. But that is not how banks work.

The same is true on a higher level. A man who has the truth has no need to read the sutra, and can enjoy it. It is a beauty. He can find nuances which you will never find, he can find diamonds which you will pass by because you don't know what a diamond is. You have known only stones, colored stones.

I am reminded of a story.

A poor man, a potter ... In India, potters use the donkey to carry their pots to the marketplace to sell -- mud pots. He was coming back after selling all the pots, himself sitting on the donkey, and then he saw by the side of the road a huge stone, shining, radiating.

He said, "Great! My donkey will enjoy it. I have never given him anything." So he got down and he picked up the stone. It was not a stone, it was an unpolished diamond.

But he was very happy sitting on the donkey. He told the donkey, "When we reach home I will make a hole in it and hang it around your neck. I have never given you anything -- I am poor, you are poor -- but this is a beautiful thing, it radiates. You will be the only donkey in the whole world with such a beautiful stone hanging around you."

Just then a jeweler passed by in his chariot. He stopped the chariot, and he could not believe his eyes. A man was sitting on a donkey, holding such a huge diamond -- many times bigger than the Kohinoor, which is now in the British Museum, given by the queen as a gift. It was a gift from the Nizam of Hyderabad.

Hyderabad has the greatest quarry of diamonds; all the big diamonds have come from Hyderabad. The name of the village is Golconda. The Nizam presented that diamond, Kohinoor, to Queen Victoria. Then it was polished and cut, and now it is one third of its weight, but a thousand times more valuable, because the more it is polished and cut, the more it shines, radiates. It is the purest diamond in the world. You can see through and through, there is no flaw in it. India has been asking for it back, because it was a present, and the British Museum has no right to keep it.

But that diamond the potter was holding in his hand was far bigger than the Kohinoor.

The charioteer stopped, the jeweler got down. He asked, "How much will you take for this stone?" He did not say diamond; he knew perfectly well that this fellow did not understand that it was a diamond.

The poor man said, "Four annas will do. I will purchase something for my poor donkey."

Four annas? -- the jeweler became greedy. He said, "Just for a stone ... I will give you two annas."

At that moment a king had come by on his horse for hunting. He stopped his horse, and he looked at the diamond. Because the king had come, the jeweler moved his chariot, just slowly, thinking that the potter would understand who was going to give him two annas.

"If he does not come back to me I will raise the price to three annas. Or if the worst comes to the worst I will give him four annas."

But when he came back, the king was there, and the king said, "How much has that jeweler offered for this diamond?"

The potter said, "Diamond? I thought it was a stone, so I asked him for four annas, and he offered me two annas."

The king said, "Its worth is one million rupees at least. I will give you one million rupees."

At that time the jeweler came running, because he knew it was worth almost ten million rupees. He said to the potter, "I am the first customer, and you have offered it to me for four annas. I am ready to give it."

The potter said, "Now it is too late. I was an ignorant potter, I had no idea that it was a diamond. But you are a jeweler, and your greed is infinite. You could not give even four annas. The king has given me the order to take it to the palace for one million rupees."

The question is of recognition. A master like Yakusan can read the sutras because he can recognize what is true and what is not true. He can enjoy the ancient buddhas and their statements, their articulateness, and how they expressed such mysterious phenomena in simple words.

But the monk's asking, "CAN I ALSO RECITE SUTRAS LIKE YOU?" is absolutely wrong, because unless you are like the master, you cannot read the sutras like the master.

From where will you get the eyes? From where will you get the consciousness to find the diamonds?

Yakusan said, "IF YOU WANT TO RECITE SUTRAS LIKE ME, YOU MUST PIERCE EVEN THROUGH THE HIDE OF A COW." First have that much clarity of eyes that your eyes become almost X-rays, they go through and through the hide of a cow. First get that eye, and then you can read the sutras, not before that.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, YAKUSAN WAS ASKED BY GOVERNOR RI, "WHAT ARE THE PRECEPTS, MEDITATION AND WISDOM?"

YAKUSAN ANSWERED, "THIS POOR MONK HAS NOT SUCH USELESS FURNITURE." He is calling the great precepts, meditation and wisdom, just useless furniture.

RI SAID, "DON'T BE SO MYSTERIOUS!"

YAKUSAN SAID, "IF YOU WANT TO HAVE WHAT I HAVE, YOU MUST SIT ON THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN, GO DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE DEEPEST SEA.

"YOU DON'T THROW OFF YOUR BURDENS EVEN WHEN YOU GO TO BED; YOU ARE BUSY WITH YOUR ILLUSIONS.

"This is not the right time for you to ask about meditation and wisdom. That's why I have called it 'useless furniture.' It will not be of any use, it will be just another weight on your head. You have already enough weight -- so many illusions, so many desires, so many ambitions, so much greed. What will you do with meditation and wisdom? They will become an unnecessary load on your head. You cannot even go to bed without all kinds of tensions, anxieties, anguish, angst.

"Wisdom and meditation are a totally different world. That's why I said, 'THIS POOR MONK HAS NOT SUCH USELESS FURNITURE.'

"I cannot give you wisdom and meditation. If you want them, then you will have to sit on the highest mountain" -- the highest mountain is your consciousness. "YOU MUST SIT ON THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN, GO DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE DEEPEST SEA."

Your consciousness is both: it is the highest mountain and it is the deepest sea. Its roots go to the deepest being of your existence, and its branches reach to the stars. Unless you have both, you should not ask about meditation and wisdom.

Meditation takes you to the roots of your being, to the very bottom of the sea, and then suddenly sprouts a tremendous flowering tree which reaches to the stars. You can have both together. Meditation takes you deeper, and wisdom takes you higher.

This is the vertical dimension I have talked to you about, the whole expanse of the vertical dimension: as deep as the bottom of the deepest sea ... For example, the Pacific Ocean is five miles deep; that is nothing, you are going to be deeper. You are going to be higher than Everest in the Himalayas.

And this is your possibility, which Christianity and other religions have been preventing you from. They are calling you to the church; I am calling you to your own potential.

I am persuading you to reach to the highest consciousness and the deepest meditation, and you will have all the splendor of existence in your hands.

Santoka wrote a small, very small haiku:

I HAVE NO HOME; AUTUMN DEEPENS.

Just visualize a homeless wanderer -- that's what a seeker is, a homeless wanderer -- in search of the home. He has not reached yet.

But a homeless wanderer has no attachment, has no possession, has no burden, has no tension, has no anxiety. The homeless wanderer slowly slowly relaxes in a deep let-go.

Sitting under a tree, perhaps, near a river or a mountain, he says, "I HAVE NO HOME; AUTUMN DEEPENS" -- but it does not matter. The autumn is so beautiful, and it is deepening every moment.

"I have no possessions, no home, no barriers, no blindfold on my eyes. I can see the autumn is deepening. I am so clean and clear ... that autumn deepens."

That reminds me of one of the questions of those Christian monks. They were very much concerned with the marble of this Buddha Hall. They are not at all concerned with all the marble in the Vatican; they are not concerned about the great cathedrals around the world with all their architecture and marble and statues. They are concerned with this small amount of marble in the Buddha Auditorium.

That's what I call blindness.

If you can see this marble, how can you not see the Vatican? All the churches of the Vatican, all the statues of Jesus, are made of purest Italian marble. Great sculptors for centuries have been working at creating cathedrals, churches.

And as far as this commune is concerned, I have to remind them ... They must have heard from their childhood that cleanliness is second to God. Here, there is no God. Cleanliness comes first! And there is nothing more clean than marble; it has a tremendous beauty, cleanliness, purity. It symbolizes beauty, architecturally.

We are putting marble on the commune roads. We have put marble in the public toilet -- I don't know, I just imagine, but my imaginings come true!

Question 1:

Maneesha has asked a question:

Maneesha, the explanation is very simple. I have never felt my age. I still feel like a child. As I close my eyes I don't see any difference in my innocence, in my mischievousness. I am the only rascal saint in the whole world.

I sometimes wonder whether I am aging or not. My beard has become white, but it is not because of my age. It is due to the courtesy of President Ronald Reagan's poison. One of the symptoms of the poison thallium that he has given to me is that it turns your hair white. It would have turned ten years later, but he helped me, he saved ten years. He has given me a beautiful beard. The whole credit goes to him!

When I look into the mirror, into my eyes, I see the same eyes I have always seen from my very childhood. I close my eyes, I look inside, and I am the same -- just ageless.

That's why I go on forgetting how long I have been speaking to you. Last night, it was really too much! I have a watch, but I don't want to offend you so I don't look at it.

Looking at a watch means I am tired of you. I am never tired.

On the way back, Anando and Avesh said that "This was the record!"

I said to myself, "Just wait! Someday it will be the record!"

It is true, Maneesha, it is an ageless campus. Here the old are just as innocent as the children, or even more so -- because your inner being is ageless. Once you come in touch with it, it is timeless, it never grows old or young or anything. It is just the same from eternity to eternity. Once you start coming closer and closer to your eternity, a certain agelessness starts radiating from your eyes, from your faces.

And the person who observed this must have a very clear vision.

I can see it happening: you are becoming every day younger. Sometimes I wonder, if everybody becomes too young, it will be very difficult to explain to them the sutras!

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh ....

Pope the Polack gets an invitation from the Chinese government to spend twenty million dollars on a ten-day tour of China. He is the first pope ever to make the trip to China, and is amazed to find that nobody there knows anything about Christianity. The Polack pope makes a great effort to explain to Prime Minister Wu, his host -- who speaks little English -- something of the basics of Christianity.

"You know," says Pope the Polack, spreading his arms wide, and rolling his eyes, "you must have heard about it -- man-die-on-cross!"

"Ah! Velly good!" replies Wu. "Yes, me see the movie!"

Jose, the Peruvian farmer, has a donkey called Pedro. One day he lends Pedro to his mother-in-law, Mama Enchilada. That evening, when Jose goes to collect Pedro, he finds that the donkey has managed to kick his mother-in-law down the village well. The next day, at Mama Enchilada's funeral, the entire male population of the village flocks to the church. After the ceremonies, Father Gonzalez approaches Jose and says, "Your mother- in-law must have been liked very much. I have never seen so many people in my church."

"Ah!" says Jose, "they did not come to bury Mama Enchilada -- they came to borrow Pedro!"

Unsuspected by the American public, President George Bush has a grave problem. He has secretly been going to see Doctor Mindbender, the White House psychiatrist, for some intense therapy. One morning, George Bush is lying on the shrink's couch, just babbling away.

"I am a nice man, really I am," says George, in his best TV voice. "I am the ex-director of the CIA. I have a college degree; I am a respectable, quiet family man. I lead an unblemished life. I always contribute to Mother Teresa's charity fund, and I often visit Father Fungus to have a heart-to-heart chat. I have nothing to reproach myself with, yet I keep having this disturbing delusion, this nagging feeling, that I am a violent mass murderer."

"Hmmmm," says Doctor Mindbender, as he quietly locks the door, and pulls down the blinds. "You must not worry, George. This is quite common among many mild- mannered, quiet people like yourself. But before we proceed, would you mind putting down your sub-machine gun?"

Do you get it? -- you will get it in the middle of the night!

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat) (gibberish) Nivedano ...

(drumbeat) Be silent ...

Keep your eyes closed.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to enter in.

Gather your whole life force. Collect your total consciousness, with an immense urgency as if this moment is going to be your last moment, then rush towards the center as fast as possible.

As you go deeper a great silence descends over you. A little deeper and fountains of peace start bringing your whole inner space to a coolness you have never known before.

Deeper still, and you will see for the first time your real nature -- the buddha, the awakened one -- and around the awakened one, all is ecstasy, all is joy, all is blissfulness.

Just remember one thing, just the one thing that is the only quality of the buddha -- witnessing.

Witness that you are not the body.

Witness that you are not the mind.

Witness that you are not the other subtle bodies, layer upon layer. You are only a witness, nothing else.

The moment you are simply a witness, you are a buddha.

This buddha has been hiding deep within you for millions of lives. He has to be brought out. He has to change your whole life. He has to bring his grace to your gestures, beauty to your eyes, agelessness to your being, to your feeling. But first make sure that you are simply a witness.

Being simply a witness you are at the highest peak of consciousness, and when you are at the highest peak of consciousness, from there you can look at the deepest depth of your being -- the very abysmal depth. You have moved from a horizontal into a vertical being.

To me the vertical being is the superman, the new man which is going to come into the world if the world is to survive. The horizontal man is going out of date; it has lived long enough. Now comes the age -- the new age -- for the vertical man to appear on the horizon.

I want my people to be the first vertical people -- the highest and deepest together.

To make your witnessing more clear, Nivedano ...

(drumbeat) Relax ... Let go ... But only remember you are a witness.

Slowly slowly, by and by, your consciousness starts melting like ice into the ocean.

I can see around me ten thousand buddhas melting into an ocean. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium has become an ocean without any ripples -- such peace, such silence, such isness transforms you.

Only this isness creates wisdom in you.

Wisdom is a shadow of meditation. In fact, all so-called virtues, without meditation, are fake. With meditation, authentic virtues start arising all over your inner space.

You have to face a tremendous revolution.

You become a garden, and all kinds of flowers, strange unworldly fragrances, fill your inner space. To me, to know this space is to know godliness. I call godliness, the buddha.

Now, before Nivedano calls you back, collect as much experience of the center, as much juice ... drink of it. Collect all the wildflowers of the beyond. You have to bring them back. They have to become slowly slowly your blood, your bones, your very marrow.

And persuade the buddha. He is coming every day, inch by inch, closer to you. It is your nature. He has to come to the surface just like a lotus flower comes from the dirty mud, rises above the mud, above the water, and opens its petals to a new sunrise.

You are all facing a great dawn, very close. You are the most blessed people at this moment on the earth. The whole of humanity is entangled with trivia, useless furniture.

To me, according to my experience, this is the only religiousness there is.

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat) Come back ... But come back with the joy, with the silence, with the serenity. Sit down for a few moments just to recollect the golden path you have traveled -- and look just behind you: the buddha has come closer to you.

First he will be a shadow behind you, and then you will be a shadow behind him. That will be the greatest blissful day in your life.

Yakusan says, "Isness is my business."

That is my business also. That has been the business of all the buddhas -- a single business, bringing people to isness, to here and now, and the doors are flung open to all the mysteries and all the miracles of existence.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.