The whole Sky belongs to You

The first question:

Question 1:

YOU can suffer in a dream, you can suffer in a nightmare. While it lasts, to all practical purposes, it appears real. But when you awake, then you know it was not real, and even then you know that you had suffered. You may still be perspiring, you may still be trembling because of the nightmare. Your heart may still be beating faster than usual. Awake, you know that it was just a dream, but still you suffered. Not only that, but even now when you are awake, there is a hang-over. The after-effects are still continuing.

You suffer from an ego which does not exist. In fact, you suffer because it does not exist and you go on believing that it exists. If you believe in something which is not, you are bound to suffer because you will try in every possible way to feel that it exists. But it cannot exist. Just watch: whenever you suffer, watch; where does it hurt? - you will always find that it is the'I', the ego that hurts.

You would like to live a life where there is no suffering, but that life is not possible if you continuously carry the ego with you. You cannot make a life around you so that suffering disappears. If you carry the ego, again and again you will bump into some reality which will hurt the unreal. Whenever there is an encounter between reality and unreality, the unreal causes suffering.

I have heard one anecdote about a very famous man, Oscar Wilde. At a function where the views of celebrities were being canvassed, Oscar Wilde was asked to compile his list of a hundred best books.'I fear,' said he,'that would be impossible.''Why?' he was asked. He said,'Because I have only written five.'

You go on looking at life just from one single point - you. Humanity used to believe that earth was the center of the universe; and man, of course, the center of the earth; and you, of course, the center of humanity.

I have heard about a professor of philosophy in the university of Paris. One day he declared,'I am the greatest man in the world!'

The disciples laughed: he was a poor philosopher. But whenever;he said something he must mean something, so they asked. And they asked,'You being a logician, please prove it.'

He brought a map of the world into the class, and said to the students,'Which is the greatest country in the world? Can you tell me, can you show me?'

They were all French, so of course France was the greatest country in the world.

So he said,'Now, the whole world is hot the-question. If I can prove that I am the greatest man in France, then I am proved.'

They said,'That looks right.' But now they started feeling a little uneasy.

He said,'And which is the greatest city in France?'

Of course, they were all Parisians, so it was Paris. Now they became even more afraid; he was bringing the truth home.

And then he said,'Which is the greatest and the holiest place in Paris?'

Of course, it was the university.

'And which is the greatest department in the university?'

Of course, it was the department of philosophy.

And he said,'I am the head of the department!'

When for the first time it was discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe, it damaged the human ego tremendously. The church fought it because it was not only a question of the earth. Deep down it was a question of the human ego: if the earth is not the center, then man cannot be the center; and if earth is just a far-off outer post, and not at the center of existence, then man may be, at the most, a coincidence. The so-called religious people struggled against the idea.

Galileo was called into the court, an old man, and was asked to confess his sin:

that he had committed a mistake, and to admit it. He had said and proved that it is not the sun that moves around the earth; On the contrary, it is the earth that moves around the sun. If the earth moves around the sun, then the sun is the center. He said,'I can admit that I have committed a mistake, and I confess, but there is one thing I must tell: whether I confess, whether I admit it or not, makes no difference. The earth moves around the sun. It will not change its course just because Galileo asks to be forgiven. You can kill me, and I am ready to ask to be forgiven. I am ready to admit that I have committed a mistake, but my admission is not going to help; the earth will go on moving around the sun, the earth is not at the center.'

Why was the church so adamant? There was reason in it, very, very significant reason in it: once earth is not at the center, man is not at the center. Then you disappear in a vast universe. In fact, religious people should have been in favor of it because they had been against ego. But then religious people, really religious people, are very rare and few.

The whole effort of religion is how to drop the ego. The whole effort is how to penetrate into the phenomenon of the ego and to SEE the unreality of it.

I It is unreal, and I know your suffering is real. The unreal can cause a real suffering; there is not a problem in it. Because the unreal becomes almost real when you believe in it - you believe in a ghost, then the ghost is there.

In my town, just near my house there was a very old tree. My window was just near the tree, and I didn't like people walking, coming and going, so I spread a rumor that there was a ghost. By and by, it became a reality. First people laughed, but even in their laughter there was fear.

I had an old servant, so I told him one day to just sit in the tree, and when people passed by, to just create noise. The whole town recognized the fact that this was the truth. My family knew that I wanted absolute silence near that tree so that nobody would pass. But by and by, they also became afraid - 'Who knows?' I told them,'You know that this is just a trick!' But they said,'When the whole town believes, and nobody walks on that path in the night, and even in the day people are afraid... who knows?'

Once you believe, the unreal thing becomes real. Your belief makes it real: then it hurts, then it hurts almost as if it were real. It is only a question of belief. Man is a believing animal. Whatsoever you believe, you make it real by your belief And you can come to know the reality only when you drop all beliefs.

Remember, you can face reality only when you drop all beliefs, all conceptions about it, and you come naked, nude and empty; carrying no philosophy, no belief, nothing - not even the belief that'I am'. That too is a belief. Just come empty, innocent, not knowing anything, and then the mystery will be revealed to you; not before it. And the ego is one of the most unreal things; but one wants to believe in it, one wants to be someone. To be nobody needs much courage. To be a nothingness needs infinite daring. Only a Buddha or a Jesus - rare human beings - come to realize that emptiness. And through that emptiness is realized the fullness of life.

The second question:

Question 2:

It is a very basic question. It has to be understood in many steps.

First: nobody can see you except yourself, because the others can see only. your periphery, not you. They can see your body: they can see your eyes, your face, but not you. You are hidden deep behind. These are all curtains; these are all like clouds. Your light, your flame of life, is hidden deep behind. Nobody can penetrate it, you are impenetrable.

Except you, nobody can see you. Except you, nobody can touch you. Except you, nobody can feel who you are.

People can move around and around you, just on the periphery; nobody can reach to the center. Neither can you reach to anybody else's center. The innermost core is absolutely private. Even lovers cannot penetrate it. Deep in love, still you cannot penetrate it.

That is the misery of lovers: they would like to penetrate each other, they would like to go as far as possible, they would like to meet and mingle and become one, and all efforts fail. Whatsoever they do, they find that it doesn't succeed.

Somewhere they remain two. Somewhere the separateness remains. They can forget that they are separate, but they cannot become one.

That is the misery of love, the suffering, the anguish, because love would like to become one. Love would like to lose all separateness, all boundaries. But again and again; one comes to the boundary, the limitation.

So, this is the first basic fact to understand: that except for yourself, nobody can penetrate your privacy. That is the difference between a rock and you. The rock can be penetrated to the very center; it has no privacy. That is the difference between matter and consciousness.

Matter has no privacy; consciousness has privacy. Matter can be understood from the outside because matter has no inside. There is nothing like inner in matter; everything is outer. And in consciousness, just the opposite is the case:

everything is inner and nothing is outer Consciousness is an infinite inwardness.

Consciousness is depth, matter is surface. Matter is like the waves on the ocean; you, consciousness, you are the depth of the ocean. And this inwardness can never be penetrated because once it is penetrated it becomes a public thing; it becomes an object. It is no more inward, it becomes outward. If somebody can see you, you are reduced to an object, to a thing. You are not a man then. Try to understand this. That's why whenever somebody looks at you, stares at you, you feel uneasy.

In Hindi we call that type of man LUCHA. The word means: one who stares at you. The word LUCHA comes from LOCHAN; LOCHAN means: the eye. One who goes on staring at you, goes on staring at you, is violating, is trespassing. He is not civilized. He is incivil, uncultured.

There is a certain limit, a time limit: psychologists have come to discover that it is near about three seconds. If for three seconds you look at somebody there is no problem, it is just a casual look. Two strangers can look at each other passing on the road for three seconds. Up to that time, it is a casual look. If it is longer than that, then the look becomes not casual. Now you are trying to penetrate the other person. If you love the person it can be allowed, because lovers are open to each other. But if you don't love the person and the person doesn't love you, then you are offending. Then this is violence. Then you are trespassing on the privacy of the other person, and the other person will feel offended, will feel uneasy. He will retaliate. Why? - watch: you are sitting alone in your room; you are totally a different person. Then somebody comes in; you immediately change because two eyes have come. You are no more in private. You are taking your bath in the bathroom, humming, making faces in the mirror, and then suddenly you become aware that somebody is looking through the keyhole; you change. That gaze, that look penetrates you like a sharp sword. You are no more - the humming stops - your privacy has been violated.

Why do you feel offended if somebody is looking through the keyhole? - because you have been reduced to a thing. Your subjectivity has not been respected. You are not a thing. Your permission should be asked before somebody looks at you. Without your permission, somebody looking at you like a thief is offending you. He is creating a thing out of you. You are a consciousness, a subjectivity. You cannot be reduced to a thing.

Wherever you feel that you are reduced to a thing, you don't feel free, you don't feel good, you don't feel happy. You feel very, very suppressed. That's the misery in being a slave, or being a servant. You are reading a newspaper, sitting in your room; your servant passes by - you don't even look at him, you don't even recognize that a man has passed. It is as if a robot has passed, a mechanism, not a man. You don't say hello, you don't say good morning. Nothing is needed, he is a servant. You treat the man as if he had no inwardness, he is just outside, a servant. A servant is a role; it is not his being. He feels - it hurts that he has been taken as a thing.

You go to a prostitute: you pay because you will make love to her, she feels hurt because she is not a commodity-but you reduce her to a commodity. Life somehow has forced her to be a thing in the market. Even the ugliest woman is more beautiful than the most beautiful prostitute, because to be a woman and not to be a thing gives a grace, a dignity. Even the most beautiful prostitute is ugly. And people who go to her must be people who don't have any aesthetic sense. How can you make love to a woman if you have reduced her first to be a thing? You are making love to a dummy. You are making love to a dead body, a corpse. You are making love to your money. You are not making love to a person, because a person is an inwardness, and a person cannot be purchased.

Always watch around yourself, and you will see that the person is elusive. You can catch hold of the body, but not the soul. Nobody can do that.

The question is,'Sometimes I feel I don't exist. When I come into a room no one sees me' - no one CAN see you. Just because nobody can see you, don't think that you are not. In fact, the vice-versa would have been a curse: if people could see you, you would be a thing, a chair, a rock.

Feel blessed that nobody can see you, howsoever they try. Even if they brought magnifying glasses they could not see you. You are elusive - this is your subjectivity, this is your soul, this is your dignity. This is the beauty and the mystery of life: that nobody can see you except you. This is your privacy.

Beautiful is the world, because at least one thing is private - your own consciousness. Otherwise everything would be sold in the marketplace. It cannot be objectified. That's what the Upanishads say: The knower cannot be known; the seer cannot be seen. The knower can feel himself, the seer can see himself.

Secondly: because you cannot be seen by others, how can you ask that God should be seen by you? Even a human being has such a privacy deep within him that nobody can penetrate it, so what to say about God?

People come to me and they say,'Tell us how to see God' - foolish people. They think that they are very, very intelligent and they are asking a very intelligent question. Not even human consciousness has ever been seen; how can you see the consciousness of the whole? You can become one with it, but cannot see. You can dissolve in it, but you cannot see it.

l have heard an anecdote: When Yuri Gagarin came back from space, many questions were asked of him. One of those questions was,'Did you meet God in space?' Yuri Gagarin is reported to have said,'I have been out in space and didn't see God; therefore, there is no God.' Now these words are emblazoned on the walls of the anti-God museum in Leningrad. On the very gate; in gold letters, these words are emblazoned: I have been out in space and didn't see God; therefore, there is no God.

The first thing that Yuri Gagarin should ask is - can HE be seen? Has anybody ever seen Yuri Gagarin's privacy, his innermost soul? God is not in outer space, because God is not matter. God is in the inner space because God is absolute consciousness. Man is partial consciousness; even that cannot be seen, so what to say about the total, about the whole?

Just because you cannot be seen, don't think that you are not. You are, but you are not an object. You are subjectivity. You are the seer, not the seen. You see, but you cannot be seen. Your nature is to be a seer, a witness; your nature is not to be an object.

'When I speak, no one hears. When a friend touches me, I am not solid.'

Nobody can touch you. All that can be touched is not you. And I know - that which can be touched is not solid at all. The body is flowing, continuously flowing.

Ask the physiologists. They say that within seven years the body becomes completely new. Not even a single cell remains old. It is a river-like flow, continuously flowing. It looks solid, just the wall looks solid, but it is not. All the physicists say that the wall is in flux. The atoms are running at the same speed as light, moving continuously. The movement is so fast and the speed is so tremendous that you cannot see the movement. You cannot see the speed, and the wall appears to be solid.

Your body is a continuous flux - like a river it is flowing. But the flux is so fast that you cannot see. And you think that it is substantial, solid - it is not. Neither is your mind solid: thoughts are continuously moving. Like clouds, forms come and disappear.

But you? - you are not a flux, you are not a changing phenomenon. You are eternity. I am not saying that you are solid. You are neither solid nor liquid; you transcend all categories. You are just space, tremendous emptiness. And out of that emptiness all of these flowers flower.

You are flowers of emptiness, forms of nothingness.

That's what we mean when we say,'God has no form, but you are all His forms.

God has no names, but all names belong to Him.' The formless descends into millions of forms, and the nameless takes millions of names.

Nobody can touch you, nobody can see you, nobody can hear you; because all these hearings, seeings, touchings - they belong to the body, not to you. You are always the elusive, that which eludes; the mysterious, the unknown and the unknowable.

But because of this, don't start feeling that you are not. You are, but you are subjectivity, irreducible to an object. This is the whole effort of meditation: to bring you to the point where you can fall into your own subjectivity, where you can disappear into your own depth, where you can come to realize that which is abiding in you - unborn, undying, eternal.

'How can I lose myself if I am not here?' - just to understand this is to lose. The'I'

that you think you are is not you; and the you that you are, you have not even thought about. The'I' that you think you are is the'I' that is seen by others, touched by others, heard by others, loved by others, hated by others. The'I', the ego, is nothing but the opinions of others that you have gathered about yourself.

This'I' you are not, but you are identified with it. You are that'I' which has never been seen by anybody, which has never been touched by anybody. Uncorrupted, untouched, uncontaminated, virgin, absolutely pure, purity itself; that you are.

Drop that which you are not so that you can know that which you are. My whole teaching is: just to drop that which you are not. It looks paradoxical. I am telling you to renounce that which you don't have. Throw away that which you don't have so that which you are can become manifested to you, can be revealed to you.

The third question:

Question 3:

Yes. I say both, and I can understand your confusion.

Gurdjieff follows the path of will. He says,'Bring tremendous effort - to the very climax, so that you can become crystallized. Struggle hard, make all the efforts that you can.'

If you go to Zen Masters, Buddhists, they believe in effortlessness, they believe in surrender. They don't believe in struggle. They say,'Drop all efforts. Just sit silently, don't do anything: non-doing. Someday it will happen; because it cannot be done, it happens.'

Both are clear-cut. If you follow Gurdjieff, you are against Zen people. If you follow Zen, you are against Gurdjieff. Things are clear-cut, logical. With me, confusion is bound to be there, because I say both. I say work hard. I say bring your total energy into effort so that one day effort can be dropped and you can become effortless. To me, will brings you to Surrender, and effort brings you to effortlessness. Let me give you a few examples, then it will be possible for you to understand.

Lin Chi, a great Zen Master, worked with his own Master for years. The Master taught him painting; through painting he was teaching him meditation. For twelve years, Lin Chi worked. Then he became perfect, he became the greatest painter. Then the Master said,'Now, your effort is complete. Now throw these brushes, these colors, these paintings, and forget all about painting.'

Twelve years' effort, day and night; and this Master was a hard taskmaster. After such effort, arduous hardship, something had been attained; and then the Master said,'Throw it away.' The Master has to be followed; Lin Chi threw the brushes, the ink, the paintings, and forgot all about it.

Six years passed and then the Master said,'Now you can start painting.'

Lin Chi asked,'What is the meaning of it?'

The Master said,'Now you have attained to effortless effort.'

First, one has to learn effort. Then one has to learn effortlessness. If in your art your art is present, then it is not great art. If you paint and effort is present, you are not a great master yet because the very effort shows that you are not one when you are painting. If you sing and in singing effort is present, then you are not a great singer. You are still trying hard to prove something. When you have really become a great singer, effort drops; you sing spontaneously. Your singing becomes like the singing of the birds; your singing becomes spontaneous.

The great musician is one who can touch, who can play on his organ not knowing what he is going to do. He himself is surprised when something happens. Not only is the audience the audience, he himself is part of the audience. The great master becomes a vehicle, surrendered. But to attain to that surrender, you have to purify yourself.

Tremendous effort is needed before you can become capable of dropping it. If you want to offer your will to God - that is what surrender is - first make it worthy. With ugly egos, stinking, you go to God and you want to offer it. Go with flowers. Let yourself become a flower, a fragrance first, and then.... If you just go and sit what do you think - that something is going to happen? Nothing will happen; the market will go on moving in the mind. You can -go on sitting like a statue, dead.

When Bokuju reached his Master, the Master asked,'For what have you come?'

He said,'Get out! We have one thousand dead Buddhas already here.' Because he used to live in a temple which had one thousand stone Buddhas. He said,'Get out immediately! The place is already much too crowded with Buddhas. We don't need any more.'

What was he saying? He was saying,'You will be a stone Buddha if you just sit.'

You can learn the posture, you can learn the trick of sitting for hours, but what will happen to your mind? You may be sitting in a temple but you will not be there, you will be somewhere else. You are always there where your desire is.

To drop effort, you will have to learn what effort is. Gurdjieff is the beginning; Zen is the end. Gurdjieff is the ABCD; Zen is the XYZ. You can reach to Zen only if you have passed Gurdjieff. If you try to reach directly to Zen, you will never reach.

This is what is happening in the West now. Zen has been absolutely misunderstood. Go to Japan and see the Japanese monasteries: a Zen monk has to work hard for twenty years, twenty-four years, even thirty years. He has to meditate six hours, eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours, even eighteen hours per day. Then comes a moment when the Master says,'Now relax.' Only at the peak is relaxation allowed.

In the West, Zen has been very, very misunderstood. It is very easy to misunderstand Zen because the language is so poetic. The language is so paradoxical that in the West, a hippie-type Zen has come into existence.'There is nothing to do,' Zen people say. There is nowhere to go,' Zen people say. It fits perfectly with your laziness.

You sit, you be lazy; not doing anything, not going anywhere - you will not become a Buddha. Buddha himself worked hard for six years in his last life. If you count his past lives, then for millions of lives he had been working hard. But in his last life, when he became enlightened, he also worked very hard. Then one day he dropped - he became enlightened. When people asked,'How did you attain?' he said,'By dropping all effort.' He's true, but he can be misunderstood.

First, you need effort to drop it one day. You don't have effort yet; how can you drop it? If you want to sit silently, you will have to run for miles and miles, and only then can you sit silently. To drop thinking you will have to think for miles and miles and miles; only then can you understand the futility of it all. In that understanding, thinking stops.

So I may appear confusing to you; that is your misunderstanding. I am simply making it a whole. Gurdjieff is half - just technique, just work. Zen is also misunderstood and has become half because of the misunderstanding - doing nothing. I teach you to do, to do much, so that one day you can attain to the flower of non-doing. You can simply sit not doing anything, not even meditating.

There is the reality - when you are not doing anything and all the ripples of the mind have subsided, and your whole being is simply silent. This is not laziness.

This is tremendous energy; unmotivated, not going anywhere. It is a reservoir of energy, not laziness. You are full of energy, tremendously at the peak of energy, but not going anywhere because there is no goal to reach, nothing to achieve, no desire left. Not even is God a desire now. Not even is MOKSHA, NIRVANA, the final attainment, a desire now. All desires have left; one is sitting at home.

In that moment, the whole comes to you. The whole existence caves in upon you from every direction and every dimension. You are accepted. You become a.lotus flower. Without any effort, you just float on the water. The water does not touch you, cannot touch you. You remain in the world and not of the world.

I teach you both effort and effortlessness, because unless you attain to effortless- effort, unless you attain to active passivity, unless you attain to a singing-silence - - they look paradoxical - unless you attain to an unmoving dance, you have not attained.

So please don't misinterpret it as confusion. What I am saying to you is a mystery. If you look at it logically, it will look like confusion. If you look at it through love, it will look a mystery. It is a mystery; you only need to have a look through love. Then you will immediately understand, and then you will connect the polarity, and you will see that much activity is needed to attain to passivity.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

This is how a sannyasin is always expected to feel. Once you feel that you have arrived, you have already gone astray. The very feeling that one has arrived is.

egoistic. One goes on learning and learning and learning, and it never becomes knowledge. One goes on moving and moving, one comes closer and closer to the goal, but the goal is never achieved because the goal is infinite - it cannot be achieved, you cannot grab it.

If you are a real sannyasin, you will always be aware that much has to be done yet. You will never be satisfied. Life is so vast; only mediocre minds become satisfied. Life is so big; only small minds can think that they have attained. The more you understand, the more you will see that you don't understand. The more you know, the more you will know that you don't know. The ultimate of knowledge is to become as ignorant as a small child, not knowing anything. In that innocence is the goal.

Remain always discontented; then you grow. Then growth knows no limits. To become a God is to go on growing. God is not a thing, it is an on-going process. It is infinite movement. To become a God means: to realize that the existence goes on and on. It is a continuous discovery of new continents of being. And being is infinite, so it is not going to end any day. It is never going to end.

The journey starts, but never ends.

The sixth question:

Question 5:

That's how it should be. If you can like your sadness also, then the sadness is no longer sad. The sadness is sad because you dislike it. The sadness is sad because you would not like to be in it. The sadness is sad because you reject it. Even sadness becomes a flowering of tremendous beauty, of silence, of depth, if you like it. Nothing is wrong; that's what I want you to be: to like everything that happens, even sadness. Even death has to be loved; only then will you transcend death. If you can accept death, love and welcome it, now death cannot kill you; you have transcended it.

When sadness comes, accept it. Listen to its song. It has something to give to you.

It has a gift which no happiness can give to you, only sadness can give it.

Happiness is always shallow; sadness, always deep. Happiness is like a wave, sadness is like the innermost depth of an ocean. In sadness you remain with yourself, left alone. In happiness you start moving with people, you start sharing In sadness you close your eyes; you delve deep within yourself. Sadness has a song - a very deep phenomenon is sadness. Accept it. Enjoy it. Taste it without any rejection, and you will see that it brings many gifts to you which no happiness can ever bring.

And if you can accept sadness, it is no more sadness. You have brought a new quality to it. You will grow through it. Now it will not be a stone, a rock on the path blocking the way; it will become a step.

And remember always: a person who has not known deep sadness is a poor person. He will never have an inner richness. A person who has lived always happy, smiling, shallow, has not entered into the innermost temple of his being.

He has missed the innermost shrine.

Remain capable of moving with all the polarities. When sadness comes, be REALLY sad. Don't try to escape from it - allow it, cooperate with it. Let it dissolve in you and you be dissolved in it. Become one with it. Be really sad: no resistance, no conflict, no struggle. When happiness comes, be happy: dance, be ecstatic. When happiness comes, don't try to cling to it. Don't say that it should remain always and always; that is the way to miss it. When sadness comes, don't say,'Don't come to me,' or,'If you have come, please go soon.' That is the way to miss it.

Don't reject sadness and don't cling to happiness. and soon you will understand that happiness and sadness are two aspects of the same coin. Then you will see that happiness also has a sadness in it, and sadness also has a happiness in it.

Then your inner being is enriched. Then you can enjoy everything: the morning and the evening also, the sunlight and the dark night also, the day and the night, the summer and the winter, life and death - you can enjoy all.

When you don't have a choice, you are already transcendental. You have transcended. Then the duality doesn't divide you. You remain undivided. And this is ADWAIT; this is what Shankara means when he says 'non-dualism'; this is what the Upanishads teach: to be non-dual, to be one.

To be one means not to choose, because once you choose your choice divides you. You say,'I would like to be happy, and I don't want to be unhappy'; you are divided. You simply say,'Whatsoever happens, everything is welcome. My doors are open. Sadness comes; come be my guest. Happiness comes; come be my guest. I will be a host to everything, with no rejection, with no choice, with no like, no dislike.'

Suddenly, nobody can divide you. You have attained to an inner unity, to an inner melody, to an inner music, an inner harmony.

The seventh question:

Question 6:

Exactly, that's what I am. And you are facing a gun; you are facing death.

To face love is to face death, because one who is not ready to die, to die to the ego, will not be capable of love. And you are not imprisoned by anybody else; it is your own ego, a false notion of yourself which is imprisoning you. Drop it! - and the whole existence with all its beauty becomes available to you.

I will tell you one story. It happened: A man fell heir to some property near the seashore. He wandered for a while in quiet enjoyment of his land, then decided to stroll down to the ocean. With the pleasant anticipation of sighting waves and - sand, he followed the downward path, but he came to a sudden halt as a tall wall blocked his; path. With disappointment, he reflected to himself, - 'Someone does not want me to trespass on his property. Well, it is his wall. There is nothing I can do.'

Over the days, he felt a mounting urge to have direct access to the sea. He made up his mind to locate the owner of the frustrating wall. Checking land records, he identified the wall's owner. He then knew who blocked his path, and who could therefore open the way. The wall was on his own property; it was his own.

We block our own path; we can unblock ourselves.

Nobody is barring your path. You are heir to infinite possibilities. You are walling your own path blocking your own path. So whenever I talk about love, of course, you immediately become aware of the wall that surrounds you.

Whenever I talk about love, you become aware of your imprisonment, naturally.

Whenever I talk about freedom, if you are a prisoner you become aware of your prison. And you don't like that, because every time freedom is talked about you become aware that you are a prisoner. That you don't like. People in the prison don't like to talk about freedom. That hurts.

Love is absolute freedom; it is freedom of consciousness. Love knows no bounds, no boundaries. And unless you drop all boundaries, you will not be able to know love. Love is another name for God, and a better name, because the name'God'

has been corrupted by the religious people. It has already become a commodity in the marketplace. Love is another name for God, and I say, a better one.

And your feeling is right: that whenever I talk about it, you feel as if you are facing a gun. You are facing it; don't try to escape. Accept the death in love, accept surrender, trust. Because as you are, you 're just a beggar. I would like you to be emperors. Only lovers are emperors, nobody else.

But for that, you will have to pay a price. It is nothing in fact: the price is to drop the ego.

The eighth question:

Question 7:

The final enlightenment can never be forced by anybody on you. It is your freedom to choose it or reject it. At the most, I can give you an invitation; nothing more can be done. And the whole problem is that you are not surrendering. On the contrary, you are trying to use me; and these two things are totally different.

When you surrender, you surrender. Then you don't bother about the final enlightenment. Then you say,'Whatsoever happens is good' If you want to use me, then you are always worried:'The enlightenment is not happening, the SAMADHI is not happening'; this is not happening, that is not happening. And then, by and by, you start feeling a certain grudge, a complaint against me, as if I am not pulling you out. Nobody can pull you out; only you can jump out of it. In the first place, nobody has forced and placed you there. You have entered into it, and you will have to come out of it. I can give you a hand, but you will have to hold my hand. In fact, my hand will not bring you out; that will be just an excuse.

I will tell you one story.

A Quaker put a sign on a vacant piece of ground next to his home.'I will give this to anyone who is really satisfied.' A wealthy farmer read it as he rode by.

Stopping, he said,'Since my Quaker friend is going to give that lot away, I may as well have it as anyone else. I am rich, I have all I need, so I am able to qualify.' He went up to the door and explained why he had come.'And is thee really satisfied?' asked the Quaker.'Yes, I have all I need and am well satisfied.''Friend,'

rejoined the Quaker,'if thee is satisfied, what does thee want with my lot?'

If something is really happening to you, if you feel that through SHAKTIPAT something is happening to you by being near me, then you will forget all about final enlightenment. Because, even that much is too much. You will feel grateful for it. You will not ask more. You will say,'I was not worthy even of this. I am grateful.' And if you can feel that, more will become possible; because one who feels grateful becomes capable of achieving more, attracting more.

Through gratefulness you attract grace. Gratefulness is the magnetic force that brings grace to you, but you don't seem to be satisfied with it. In fact, the same questioner has been asking many questions about final enlightenment again and again. I have not been answering, because those questions are meaningless.

Be here and now in this moment with me, and forget about the future. If you can be here and now, totally with me, happy, grateful, the future is bound to come of its own accord. Enlightenment comes; nobody can bring it. You just be ready.

Open your doors, windows; the wind will blow and the wind will bring many fragrances; the sun will come and the sunrays will enter into the darkest corner of your house. Nobody can bring those winds, nobody can bring the sunrays.

You can simply remain open, that's all.

Being open is all.

And remember the human tendency, the tendency of the human mind, that first it clings to worldly things: money, power, prestige; then it leaves them, frustrated. Then it starts clinging to God, SAMADHI, enlightenment, MOKSHA; but the mind is the same.

All clinging must go. All desire must disappear. Only in a desireless moment, that for which you are asking. happens - but only in a desireless moment.

People come to me and they say,'Teach us how to be desireless.' Now they are desiring desirelessness, which is foolish, which is not possible. You cannot desire desirelessness. You can simply understand the futility of desire - that it leads nowhere. Understanding it, it drops. Suddenly you are desireless.

Let me tell you a story, a very famous and very old story.

BHAGAWAT PUBRANA tells the story of a crow who was flying with a piece of meat in its beak. Twenty crows were pressing it, pursuing it, fighting with it, trying to grab the meat. Flying high to escape them, it became tired, wounded.

Suddenly, it dropped the meat, and the twenty crows flew down shrieking, fighting for it. Then the crow, flying high, thought,'How good it is to carry nothing. The whole sky belongs to me.'

He was just carrying a piece of meat in his mouth, and that piece of meat was creating the whole trouble: twenty crows were fighting, hurting him, trying to grab the piece of meat. Once the piece dropped, those fighters all went away. The crow was left alone. And beautiful is the sentence: The whole sky belongs to me.

Once desires disappear, the meat of desire is dropped, the whole sky belongs to you. That is the meaning of enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a thing, it is the infinite space, without desire....

The whole sky belongs to you.