Accept yourself as you are, and accept

Question 1:

The word "GUILT" should never be used. The very word has wrong associations; and once you use it you are caught in it. Guilt is not a natural phenomenon: it is created by the priests. Through guilt they have exploited humanity. The whole history of pseudo-religion is contained in the word guilt: it is the most poisoned word. Beware of it; never use it, because in your unconscious mind it also has deep roots. You cannot find guilt in any animal: the animal simply is. It has no ideals, it has no arts; it exists, and simply exists. It has no perfections to be attained and hence the animal is beautiful, innocent.

Ideals corrupt. Once you have an ideal to fulfil you will never be at ease, and you will never be at home, and you can never be contented. Dissatisfaction follows ideals like a shadow, and the more dissatisfied you are with yourself, the more it becomes impossible to reach the ideal: this is the vicious circle. If you are not dissatisfied with yourself, if you accept yourself as you are, the ideal can be fulfilled immediately. And I emphasise the word 'immediately': with no time gap, right this moment, here and now, you can realize that you are perfect; it is not something to be attained in the future, it is something that you have always been carrying within you. Perfection is your nature - perfect you are.

That is the difference between a pseudo-religion and an authentic religion. The pseudo-religion says you have to be perfect, and creates guilt because you are not perfect. It creates morality because you are not perfect, and creates a deep anguish, a continuous trembling and fear because you are not perfect; and it creates hell and heaven. If you become perfect you will be awarded by heaven; if you don't become perfect you are to be punished in hell.

Authentic religion says you are perfect, not that you have to be. You cannot be imperfect, because out of God imperfection is impossible. If God has created the world, how can it be imperfect? And if you come from God, how can you be imperfect? You are gods - that art thou, TATTVAMASI. And this is a realization, an understanding, not an achievement; it is not something to be worked out. If you are silent, this very moment it is realized: you are perfect. And once you realize it, that you are perfect, you live perfectly, because whatsoever you do comes from you, arises from you.

So please, never use the word guilt: that word is dangerous, that word has been misleading you for centuries. If you cannot receive me, if you cannot understand me, let it be so; it is perfect. It may not be needed, it may not be your need. You are thirsty; then you seek water. Maybe the water is seeking you, and you are not thirsty. So what is wrong in it?

This has to be remembered: if you cannot receive me, then that's how it has to be.

Then you are not at the stage where you need me. Don't create any guilt. When you need me, you will receive me, otherwise it is not possible. Every state is right; every stage is right - wherever you are is right; and whatsoever you need, you are capable of receiving it. When your needs grow, your receptivity will grow. Don't jump ahead; don't try to overtake yourself. Then you will be in a very stupid state of mind, and then you will create your own anguish, and you will feel guilty. There is nothing in the world for which one needs to feel guilty.

Accept yourself as you are, and accept totally, unconditionally. That is the way God wants you to be: the way you are, exactly, precisely. That's how you are needed here in this moment. Don't try to change. The very effort to change is foolish, because who is going to change? You will change. The very effort is foolish, because you are trying to pull yourself up by your shoelaces. You may jump a little, but back again you will be on the same earth - and in a worse condition, because guilt will come in - you couldn't succeed, you failed.

If you are here, at least learn one thing from me - total acceptance. And total acceptance brings transformation of its own accord: that's the beauty of it. When you accept yourself you start moving - not that you force; not that you push the river; not that you fight - you flow with life. Wherever it leads is the goal. I am not giving you any goal. I am not giving you any ideal.

All perfectionists are neurotic. The very effort to become perfect is obsessive - it creates neurosis, it creates a sort of madness. Then you will never be sane. The only sanity there is, is to accept yourself as you are. Don't condemn, and don't judge. Don't make standards to judge and don't make criteria to judge. Suddenly you see that you have started moving, that the river is flowing. And the river reaches to the ocean of its own accord; nobody needs to force it. The more you try to change yourself, the more you will be in a vicious circle. And then guilt is created; and when you feel guilty, you feel condemned, and when you feel condemned, in that condemnation life becomes a hell. The hell does not exist somewhere; it exists in a wrong attitude. Then you live in hell, then your whole being is surrounded by a nightmare.

Drop that nightmare. Start living and flowing - a deep let-go, acceptance. And wherever you move, don't be worried, because God is everywhere. Wherever you reach, don't be worried: he is everywhere. You cannot miss him. How can you miss him? That is impossible. You can go on forgetting him, but you cannot miss him - he is in you, he is everywhere; only he is. But when you create the idea of guilt, for whatsoever reason, then you create a gap; then you are surrounded by your own darkness. Drop that word guilt, and always remember that words are very potential and powerful.

Just the other day I was reading about Rembrandt. He had become old, and he was working on one of his most famous paintings: The Anatomy Lesson. He was very tired the day it was completed, and he looked very exhausted. His disciple said, "Master, you look very exhausted, tired." Rembrandt, as if suddenly becoming alive, said, "Exhausted? No, never. Spent, yes. But exhausted, no." The disciple could not understand the difference. He said, "The dictionary says they both mean the same." Rembrandt said, "Forget about the dictionary, I say it through my experience: exhausted means wasted, empty, unfulfilled. Spent means flowered, completed, fulfilled." And what a difference!

Don't say you feel guilty; never use a wrong word. Drop guilt, and with the guilt you drop Christianity; with the guilt you drop Hinduism; with the guilt you drop Jainism; with the guilt you drop all nonsense that has been gathering around you. Immediately you become religious - not a Christian, not a Hindu, not a Mohammedan. Drop guilt and you become religious. Carry guilt, then guilt has many shapes - it is sold in the market in many forms and with many labels:

Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Jain, Buddhist. No guilt... and suddenly you accept existence, and existence accepts you. A deep covenant, a deep trust arises between you and the whole. If I am teaching anything here, if it can be called a teaching at all, a very simple teaching it is: to be yourself, and never try to become anything else. If you cannot understand me it's okay, you don't need.

Whenever you need, it happens. If you can understand something which you don't need now, it will be dangerous. Let everything happen when it is needed; let everything follow its natural course.

I am saying so many things, and I am saying them to so many people - you are not all at the same stage. Somebody is young, somebody is old; the young have not seen the life, the frustration of it - the old have seen the frustration of it.

When I say life is anguish, the old will understand, but the young will feel, somehow, that they can't receive it. But that's natural - how can you receive it? A child may be here, and I may be saying something tremendously serious, and the child cannot understand it - rather, he would like to play and jump around. But that's how it should be; nothing is wrong in it. Wherever you are, there is no other way to be anywhere else; you can only be there. Be there. If you try to be somewhere else, you cannot be somewhere else. On the contrary, you will miss that which you could have been. So be, wherever you are; whatsoever you can understand, understand, and whatsoever you can receive, receive, and move, and flow. Sometimes it will happen that you will hear me today, and you will understand me years afterwards. It will remain like a seed if you have heard it - it will wait for its right time, for its right season: it will wait for ripening. Don't be worried about it. And if you start feeling guilt, then you are creating such turmoil that even the seed may be lost.

I am not a priest. I don't want you to feel guilty, because the priest exists on your guilt. The more you feel guilty, the more the priest becomes powerful, because then he has the keys to help you, to bring you out of your guilt. First he creates guilt, then he gives you the keys to come out of it. First he creates the disease, then he sells the medicine.

I am cutting the root of the disease itself. I am not here to sell any medicine to you, but just to tell you how to cut the very root of the disease. So remember, each stage is right, each stage is necessary. Pass through each, and don't try to jump ahead.

Question 2:

A cultivated trust will not be trust; it will be false, it will be insincere. It will just be on the surface; it will never touch your centre. Whatsoever is cultivated remains superficial, because whatsoever is cultivated remains of the mind. Trust cannot be cultivated, just as love cannot be cultivated: you can't teach people how to love. Dangerous will be the days when people are taught how to love, because they will learn the lesson, they will repeat it accurately - it will be technological but it will not be of the heart.

Anything that belongs to the depth has to come out of its own accord. So what is to be done? I understand the question you are asking. Then what to do? The only thing that can be done is to remove hindrances. Trust cannot be brought out; hindrances can be removed. When there is no hindrance, it comes, it flows. Trust cannot be cultivated; doubts can be dropped.

So one has to understand the doubting mind, the very mechanism of doubt, why you doubt. One has to see through and through why one doubts, because doubt is the hindrance. When doubt disappears, suddenly trust is there. It has always been there. Only a rock was hindering the path, and the fountain could not flow.

You come with trust. Every child is born with trust, every child is trusting, so trust need not be cultivated. That's how everybody is born: it is in-built. You are trust.

But by and by, the child learns how to doubt. We teach, in fact - the society, the family, the school, the university, they all teach how to doubt. Because unless you doubt, you cannot be very clever and cunning; unless you doubt, you cannot be left in this great world of competition: you will be destroyed. So doubt has to be learned; and once you learn it, by and by, trust is forgotten. It remains deep within you, but you cannot reach to it - too many obstacles. You cannot cultivate it; it cannot be taught. The only thing is, you have to reverse the process - you have learned doubt, now unlearn it.

Trust was there, trust is there, trust will be there. All that has to be done is to be done with doubt; nothing is to be done with trust. Why do you doubt? Why are you so afraid? - because doubt means fear. Whenever you love somebody, you don't doubt, because fear disappears. Whenever there is love, fear is not. But when you don't love, you doubt; when you don't know a person, you doubt more - a stranger, then you doubt even more; unfamiliar, unknown, then you doubt more. Whenever there is fear, there is doubt. Deep down, doubt is fear. If you go still deeper, doubt is death, because you are afraid of death. And it seems that everybody is trying to kill you; fighting - everybody competitive - everybody trying to push you aside, dethrone you. Doubt is death.

The whole mechanism has to be understood. Then what to do? Why is one afraid of death.? You have never known death. You may have seen somebody else dying, but you have never seen death. When somebody is dying, do you really know that he is dying - or simply disappearing into some other world? Doubt is without base; fear is without base - it is just an assumption of the mind. When somebody dies, do you think he is dying, or simply disappearing into another world, moving to another plane of life, or to another body? You will have to know it in deep meditation. When thinking stops, suddenly you see that you are separate from the body.

So I don't say trust first; I say meditate first. That is the difference between meditation and prayer. People who teach prayer, they say, "Trust first, otherwise how can you pray?" Trust is needed as a basic condition, otherwise how can you pray? If you don't trust God, how can you pray? I teach meditation, because meditation doesn't require trust as a basic necessity. Meditation is a science, not a superstition. Meditation says you experiment with your mind - it is too full of thoughts; thoughts can be dispersed, the clouds can be dispersed, and you can attain to an empty sky of your inner being. And it needs no trust - just a little courage, a little effort, a little daring, a little persistence and perseverance, a little patience, yes, but no trust. You don't believe in God? That is not a hindrance to meditation. You don't believe in soul? That is not a hindrance in meditation. You don't believe at all? That is not an obstacle. You can meditate, because meditation simply says how to go withinwards: whether there is a soul or not doesn't matter; whether there is a God or not doesn't matter.

One thing is certain: that you are. Whether you will be after death, or not, does not matter. Only one thing matters: right this moment, you are. Who are you? To enter into it is meditation: to go deeper into your own being. Maybe it is just momentary; maybe you are not eternal; maybe death finishes everything: we don't make any condition that you have to believe. We say only that you have to experiment. Just try. One day it happens: thoughts are not there, and suddenly when thoughts disappear, the body and you are separate, because thoughts are the bridge. Through thoughts you are joined with the body; it is the link.

Suddenly the link disappears -you are there, the body is there, and there is an infinite abyss between the two. Then you know that the body will die, but you cannot die.

Then it is not something like a dogma; it is not a creed, it is an experience - self- evident. On that day, death disappears; on that day, doubt disappears, because now you are not always to be defending yourself. Nobody can destroy you; you are indestructible. Then trust arises, overflows. And to be in trust is to be in ecstasy; to be in trust is to be in God; to be in trust is to be fulfilled.

So I don't say cultivate trust. I say experiment with meditation. From another angle try to understand it. Doubt means thinking. The more you doubt, the more you can think. All great thinkers are sceptical - have to be. Scepticism creates thinking. When you say no, then thinking arises; if you say yes, finished - there is no need to think. When you say no, then you have to think. Thinking is negative. Doubt is a basic necessity for thinking. People who cannot doubt, cannot think; they cannot become great thinkers. So, more doubt means more thinking, more thinking means more doubt. Meditation is a way to come out of thinking. Once the clouds of thoughts are not there, and the process of thinking ceases, even for a single moment, you have a glimpse of your being.

One of the greatest thinkers in the West, Descartes, has said, "I think, therefore I am." COGITO ERGO SUM. And Descartes is the father of modern Western philosophy.'I think, therefore I am.'Just the opposite has been the experience in the East. Buddha, Nagarjuna, Sankara, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, they will laugh, they will laugh tremendously when they hear Descartes' dictum,'I think, therefore I am'; because they say, "I don't think, therefore I am."

Because when thinking ceases, only then does one know who one is. In a non- thinking state of consciousness one realizes one's being, not by thinking, but by non-thinking. Meditation is non-thinking; it is an effort to create a state of no- mind. Doubt is mind. In fact, to say 'doubting mind' is wrong; it is repetitive - mind is doubt; doubt is mind. When doubt ceases, mind ceases; or when mind ceases, doubt ceases. And then self-evident truth arises within, a pinnacle of light, eternity, timelessness; and then there is trust.

Right now how can you trust? Right now you don't know who you are - how can you trust? And you ask, "Can trust be cultivated?" Never. Never try to cultivate it. Many have done that foolishness. Then they become false, inauthentic, pseudo. It is better to be a no-sayer, but sincere, because there is at least a possibility, through sincerity, that some day you may become an authentic yea-sayer. But never say yes until it arises from within and overwhelms you.

The whole world is full of pseudo-religious people: churches, temples, gurudwaras, mosques, full of religious people. And can't you see the world is absolutely irreligious? With so many religious people, and the world is so irreligious, how is this miracle happening? Everybody is religious, and the total is irreligiousness. The religion is false. People have cultivated trust. Trust has become a belief, not an experience. They have been taught to believe; they have not been taught to know - that's where humanity has missed. Never believe. If you cannot trust, it is better to doubt, because through doubt, some day or other, the possibility will arise; because you cannot live with doubt eternally. Doubt is disease; it is an illness. In doubt you can never feel fulfilled; in doubt you will always tremble, in doubt you will always remain in anguish and divided and indecisive. In doubt you will remain in a nightmare; so one day or other you will start seeking how to go beyond it. So I say it is good to be an atheist rather than a theist, a pseudo-theist.

You have been taught to believe - from the very childhood, everybody's mind has been conditioned to believe: believe in God, believe in soul, believe in this and believe in that. Now that belief has entered into your bones and your blood, but it remains a belief: you have not known. And unless you know, you cannot be liberated. Knowledge liberates; only knowing liberates. All beliefs are borrowed; others have given them to you. They are not your flowerings. And how can a borrowed thing lead you towards the real, the absolutely real? Drop all that you have taken from others. It is better to be a beggar than to be rich; rich not by your own earning, but rich through stolen goods, rich through borrowed things, rich through tradition, rich through heritage. No, it is better to be a beggar, but to be on one's own. That poverty has a richness in it because it is true, and your richness of belief is very poor. Those beliefs can never go very deep; they remain skin-deep at the most. Scratch a little, and the disbelief comes out.

You believe in God. Then your business fails, and suddenly, the disbelief is there.

You say, "I don't believe, I cannot believe in God." You believe in God, and your beloved dies, and the disbelief comes up. You believe in God, and just by the death of your beloved the belief is destroyed? It is not worth much. Trust can never be destroyed - once it is there, nothing can destroy it; nothing, absolutely nothing can destroy it.

So remember, there is a great difference between trust and belief. Trust is personal; belief is social. Trust you have to grow in; belief you can remain in, whatsoever you are, and belief can be imposed on you. Drop beliefs. The fear will be there; because if you drop belief, doubt arises. Each belief is forcing doubt somewhere, repressing doubt. Don't be worried about it; let the doubt come.

Everybody has to pass through a dark night before he reaches the sunrise.

Everybody has to pass through doubt. Long is the journey, dark is the night. But when after the long journey and the dark night the morning arises, then you know it was all worthwhile. Trust cannot be cultivated. And never try to cultivate it - that is what has been done by the whole of humanity. Cultivated trust becomes belief. Discover it within yourself, don't cultivate it. Go deeper into your being, to the very source of your being, and discover it.

When Jawaharlal Nehru died, a small slip of paper was found on his pillow. In his own handwriting he had noted a few lines of Robert Frost:

THE WOODS ARE LOVELY, DARK AND DEEP.

BUT I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP,

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP.

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP.

He must have written it just before he died. 'The woods are lovely...' Everybody has to go alone; you cannot keep company. Because you have to go inwards you can only go alone. 'The woods are lovely...' because the woods are of your inner being. If you go for an outer pilgrimage, you can have company; somebody can be with you: a beloved, a friend, a relative, a fellow-traveller. But the woods are lovely because the woods are of your inner being - you have to go alone.

'Dark and deep...' and there is much darkness within. You have always heard that if you go inwards, you will find infinite light. That is only half of the truth.

You will find infinite light at the very centre, but before that centre is reached, much darkness has to be passed through. It is not that you just close your eyes and there is infinite light; no, there will be infinite darkness first because that is the price one has to pay. The dark night is the price one has to pay for the morning. And remember, until you pay for it, it won't be worthwhile - unless you pay for it you cannot value it. If a morning is given to you, and you have not travelled and struggled for it, you will not be able to see it.

Somewhere, Vincent van Gogh, one of the greatest Dutch painters, has written that he was in some part of France where sunsets are tremendously beautiful.

One day when he was painting... a woman used to help him - she asked van Gogh, "Can I run home and show my people: my father, my mother, my sisters and my brothers, this beautiful sunset?" Van Gogh said, "There is no need. The sunset is there; they will see it by themselves." The woman laughed, and she said, "I am thirty. I have lived on this seashore for thirty years, but until you came, we had never seen the sunset."

Just because a thing is there it is not necessary that you will see it: one has to learn, one has to grow. One needs a Van Gogh to show you, to make you sensitive, to make you aware. I love that story. This is how it has been happening - God is there, but a Van Gogh, a Buddha, is needed to show you. And then you will see; you will be surprised, amazed, that this has been always there. Why did you miss? One needs growth. When you go in, infinite light is there. The Upanishads are true. When Jesus says, "The kingdom of God is within," he is absolutely true. But when you go in, first you will enter the kingdom of the devil, not of God.

Dark night of the soul....

If you pass through it, if you dare to pass through it, if you are courageous to go alone in it, only then you will be capable, you will have earned; then you will have a right to claim the morning.

THE WOODS ARE LOVELY, DARK AND DEEP.

BUT I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP, AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP.

Before you can rest in your innermost core, in your innermost shrine of being, miles to go, miles to grow, miles to flow....

'But I have promises to keep...' To whom have you given promises? - every seed has promised to be a tree - not to anybody: to one's own destiny, to one's own self. Every seed has given a promise to be a tree, and to flower, and to blossom, and to spread into millions of seeds. It is not a promise given verbally to anybody; it is a deep existential promise given to one's own being, to one's destiny. Call it God, or call it whatsoever you like, but everybody is a traveller on a great pilgrimage.

BUT I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP,

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP.

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP.

There is a dark night to be crossed, to be gone through. Only then will you be able, will your eyes be capable, to see light.

Remember, don't deceive yourself by beliefs. Beliefs can be given to you free; you need not earn them. Trust is a growth, a ripening of your being. It is painful, remember. Beliefs are very convenient - to become a Mohammedan, to become a Christian, to become a Hindu - nothing is needed, just the accident of birth is enough. That you are born into a family and you become a Hindu or a Mohammedan, is just an accident. If a child is born into a Hindu family and brought up by a Mohammedan family, he will become a Mohammedan. He will never know he was ever a Hindu - just an accident.

No, life cannot be that cheap. Trust cannot be that cheap. Love cannot be that cheap; one has to stake one's whole soul for it. Never try to cultivate trust; never try to make trust function, because that will be belief. Drop doubt. Enter into doubt; realize the futility of doubt; realize the futility of thinking and try to come to a state of no-mind; and then trust arises. You simply remove the hindrances.

Nothing positive is needed to be done, only something negative: something has to be removed. When the passage is clear, trust flows. You melt and you start flowing.

It happened that when Alexander came to India he met a sannyasin, a great sage.

The sage's name was Dandamis; that is how Greek historians have pronounced it. Alexander asked him, "Do you believe in God?" The sage remained silent.

Alexander said, "I cannot see, so how can I believe? How do you believe without seeing him?" The naked sage laughed. He took Alexander by his hand towards the marketplace. Alexander followed - maybe he was taking him somewhere where he could show him God. A small boy was flying a kite, and the kite had gone so far away that it was impossible to see it. The sage stopped there, and asked that boy, "Where is the kite? Because we cannot see it, and without seeing how can we believe? Where is the kite? How do you still believe that the kite exists?" The boy said, "I can feel the pull of it." And the sage said to Alexander, "I can also feel the pull of it."

Trust is nothing but the feel of the pull. You don't see - one has never seen God; only the pull is felt. But that is enough, that is more than enough. But then you have to be in a certain state where the pull can be felt. It cannot be learned from scriptures; it is not a doctrine. Nobody can explain it: you have to feel the pull.

The old sage laughed. Alexander also realized that it had been a revelation. But the sage said, "Wait; no need to believe in me. You take the thread in your hand and feel the pull, because who knows? This boy may be deceiving. Never believe.

Feel the pull."

If Alexander had gone away just listening to the boy, it would have been a belief But he felt the pull: the kite was there on the other end, the pull was here on this end. He could feel the force. He thanked the old sage.

Meditation is a state where you allow yourself to feel the pull of existence. That pull has been called by many names. In the Upanishads they say. EKAM SAD VIPARAH BAHUDHA VADANTI: that one is one. But sages have called it many names.

Question 3:

Let me share one anecdote with you. Henry David Thoreau was dying - on his deathbed. An old friend asked him, "Thoreau, do you believe in the other world, the hereafter?" Thoreau was just going to die, almost on the verge. He opened his eyes and said, "One world at a time brother, one world at a time."

If love is happening, forget all about me. One world at a time sister, one world at a time.

Sooner or later, what you are understanding as love now, will disappear. But don't believe what I am saying - go through it. It always disappears; it is just like the dewdrops in the morning. They look so beautiful, and while they last they are - pearls. But as the sun rises, they evaporate and disappear without even a trace behind. Love is beautiful while it lasts. I am not against love; I am all for it.

But it is like dewdrops. What can I do? I am helpless.

So while it lasts, enjoy it. At your stage of mind it must be a need: it will fulfil something. Never drop out of it unless you have ripened, unless it disappears of its own accord; and then, don't complain; and then, don't feel frustrated. When love, love that you call love disappears, then a different kind of love arises. Only that love can bring you near me.

Right now, the love that you feel can be of two types. Either it can be just a biological attraction of two bodies, feminine and male, yin and yang, positive and negative; of two energies - because they are opposite they attract each other.

That is the lowest type of love. Nothing wrong in it, remember, because the lowest love is also very beautiful. And there are people who are lower than the lowest love; there are people, millions of them, who have not even known the lowest love. That is the lowest rung of the ladder.

There are people who are after money; they have not known even the biological attraction. There are people who are after power, politics, and have not known even the biological attraction. It is the lowest rung, but it is still a rung of a ladder which is of love; so, good. It has been called sex; the word has become very degraded, because religions have condemned it too much. I have no condemnation for anything. I am all for using everything, and going beyond.

Step over everything and go beyond: every obstacle can become a stepping- stone. Use it.

So either it can be the physical, the biological attraction of the body - then it is sexual. Good, but much more is possible; don't cling there. Remember:...

PROMISES TO KEEP, MILES TO GO BEFORE YOU SLEEP.

Then there is a second rung of the ladder: the attraction of two minds. That is what is called love; the attraction of two minds, the feminine and the male. As bodies are feminine and male, minds are also feminine and male. The male mind is aggressive; the feminine mind is receptive and passive - they fit together. It is higher than the first. The first is almost of the animal kingdom; the second is human. In the first, there can be an oblivion, a forgetfulness, a deep intoxication for a few seconds. In the second, there is much more of poetry, much more of romance, much more of aesthetic sensitivity. Very few people reach to the second - where the beloved becomes the friend; where the lover becomes the friend. In the first, possessiveness and jealousy spoil the whole game. Possessiveness has to disappear otherwise the second will not be possible. Then you are two fellow- travellers. In the first you face each other; in the second, you both face something else.

For example, if two persons who are attracted to each other's body are sitting in a full-moon night, they will be looking at each other, holding hands, looking at each other. In the second stage, they may be holding hands, or they may not be holding hands, but they will not be looking at each other; they will both be looking at the moon - a tremendous difference. Now they are being held together by something else higher than both, deeper than both. This second type of love is very beautiful, but still, like dewdrops, it disappears.

If you are frustrated in the first and don't become hopeless, you then enter the second. If you are frustrated in the first, get so much caught in the frustration, and become hopeless, you never enter the second. Then you remain a body; you never come to know that you are also a mind. In the second, if you are frustrated, as you will be - it has to be so, because the second is not the goal, not the end - if you are frustrated and you become hopeless, then you are caught in the second.

But if you are frustrated and don't become hopeless, and your search and enquiry goes higher and higher, and you try to see why this love failed... the first love failed because it was only bodily - it could not satisfy the mind; the second failed because it was only of the mind - it could not satisfy the soul: and when the third type of love arises, then you will be near me.

Question 4:

No. To be with me, you have to be in silence. If you talk, you miss the chance, because words become barriers. Words are not means of communication, they are means of avoiding communication. Whenever you want to be with someone, you want to be silent: only in silence there is communion. Only in deep silence there is a merger and a meeting and the boundaries dissolve. Something of me enters you, and something of you enters me.

If you come to me and talk, and talk, and talk, you don't allow me to enter. And you don't allow yourself to be vulnerable. But it is natural when you come to see me for the first time and suddenly you feel that you cannot talk, that you cannot communicate through words. You feel as if you are not communicating at all, because all your life you have been communicating through words and you don't know that there is another dimension of communion, there is another way. With me words are useless.

To be with me, the only way is to be in deep silence, deep receptivity, in a deep opening so that I can pour myself into you. If you are too full of words and talking too many things, you will miss me. Silence is the language with me.

So don't be worried about it. It is exactly as it should be. Whenever people come to me, there are two types. The foolish ones are those who talk too much; the wiser ones are those who keep quiet, who remain silent. But you cannot deceive me just by being quiet because inside you go on chattering. It won't help. The question is not whether you utter, or not; the question is whether there are words, or not.

Learn more and more to be in a state of non-chattering - the inner talk has to stop. Then your mind is not hindering; then you are available; then your deepest shrine of being is available to me. But by and by, you will learn. In the beginning, it happens so. You have always been talking, and if you are very articulate in talking, then of course you feel crippled. If you are very articulate and you can talk beautifully, artistically, if you can play perfectly with language and then suddenly you come to me and your throat does not allow you to speak... and something goes wrong and the mechanism doesn't function: you feel that you are crippled. But you are not crippled - the impact of my presence has simply given a shock to the mechanism of your mind. And it is good. Don't try to bring it back.

Let it go. Be quiet, still, silent and waiting. Be feminine.

A disciple needs to know how to be feminine, that is, how to be like a womb so that he can receive and he can become pregnant. Unless you become pregnant, nothing will happen to you. You can learn so many things here with me, but that learning will be more and more a burden to you, not a freedom; it will create more chains for you. Then you may not be chained by Christianity; you will be chained by my words. Then you may not believe in the Vedas, but then my words will become the Vedas.

No, I am here to make you utterly liberated, including from myself You are my disciple only if you remember this: that one day or other you have to become liberated from me also. Only then have you obeyed me; only then will I be happy with you. But if you cling to my words.... What I say is not very meaningful, what I say is not significant: what I am not saying, what I cannot say - nobody can say - only that is significant. Listen to that which is not said.

Listen to the gaps in the intervals. Read between the words and between the lines. If you forget the words, nothing is lost; but if you forget that which is between the words, much is lost.

Your gestalt has to change. That is the difference between a student and a disciple: a change of gestalt, a change of attention, of focusing, a shift. The student listens to the word; the disciple listens to the gap between two words.

The student reads the lines; the disciple, between the lines. If to a student I give an empty book, he will not be able to understand it. But if to a disciple I give an empty book, THE NOTHING BOOK, he will preserve it as a treasure.

In the Sufi tradition there is a book called THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS. Nothing is written in it; empty pages, almost three hundred empty pages. You go on reading, but you can never finish it. It has been passed from one generation of masters to another. It has been lovingly preserved, worshipped, because it says nothing, but it shows much. It says nothing, but it indicates much. If all the Vedas and the Bibles and the Gitas and the Korans disappear, nothing will be lost. But if this BOOK OF THE BOOKS is lost, everything is lost. Because if you can read this book of nothing, THE BOOK OF THE BOOKS, Vedas can be rediscovered, Bibles can be written again; because all the blueprints are there.

Out of the empty mind the Gita can be produced again, because that is how it was produced in the first place. A man, Krishna, became empty, and answered Arjuna's questions from his emptiness - responded. Out of that emptiness, out of that BOOK OF THE BOOKS, the book Gita was born.

That's how it happened in Mohammed's life. He was sitting on a mountain, meditating, fasting; absolutely empty. Suddenly he heard deep somewhere within himself - which was also beyond himself.... From his own soul, but as if from some beyond, came an order: "Write." But he said, "My God, but I don't how to write. I am illiterate." And the voice said, "That's why you have been chosen. Write!" - because those who are literate are corrupted, those who know are corrupted; those who are innocent, in their ignorance, only they can hear the voice of the beyond.

Please, don't get caught with my words. Always remember that what I am trying to convey is always in the gaps. Don't be caught by the banks that the river is flowing between. And THAT you can hear only when you are silent; that you can hear only when the inner talk has stopped, when your mind is not clouded.

Question 5:

I have always been - and not figuratively, not symbolically. I am a drunkard, literally, absolutely, actually; because religion is the ultimate drug. Once you have tasted of it, you are gone for ever and ever. It is the ultimate high - you never come down again. With other drugs you reach a high, but again you are thrown back. With religion, once you reach the high you never come back: it is a point of no return.

I am drunk. Look into my eyes; come close to me and smell my breath. But beware, because such people are dangerous - even their breath can make you drunk.