The heart has no questions

The first question:

Question 1:

Yes, Somendra. It is a thankless job, but it has to be done. Man exists on three planes:

the head - the world of thoughts, the thinking process - the most superficial plane.

Below it is the heart - the world of feelings, emotions, sentiments - a little deeper than thought, but not the deepest. And the third is the realm of being - no thought, no feeling - you simply are.

My work starts by destroying the thinking process first - obviously, because that is where you are. I have to hammer your head mercilessly. Once your energy has moved from the head to the heart, I start breaking your heart too. First I use your heart as a temptation: I tell you to move from the head to the heart. It is just to give you a goal which is not very far away, because a too distant goal cannot appeal to you. If it is too far away it appears impossible; the goal has to be within your grasp.

Rooted in the mind, the world of being is very very far away; it looks almost nonexistential. Hence the heart is a midway place, a resting place; it is not the goal. One day you have to be ready to leave it too, but before that I use it as a temptation for you.

I talk about love and the beauty and the ecstasy of feeling... it is only a device so that you can move from the head to the heart. Once you have moved from the head to the heart, then I start hammering on your heart too. Then I have to help you to get rid of the feelings - because feelings are as stupid as thoughts.

Logic is stupid, love is not less stupid - sometimes even more! Logic is a game, love too is a game, and you have to be aware of all the games that you are capable of playing.

Logic deceives, love does too. One has to rise to the heights or dive to the depths where logic and love both disappear. They are two sides of the same coin: on the one side is your head, on the other side is your heart.

The philosopher deals with the head, the poet with the heart, but the mystic is beyond both. The mystic is transcendental; he is pure being, just consciousness, neither thought nor feeling.

Hence, Somendra, I have to break your heart. I have destroyed your mind - the first step has been taken. The second step is harder, because the heart is closer to being than the head. It is very easy to see the rubbish of the head; it is very difficult to see the rubbish of the heart. The head reflects nothing of the being; hence to disidentify yourself from the head is not such a great problem. It is easy to see that the thoughts are separate from you; it is very difficult to see that the feelings are different from you.

They are so close and they reflect something of your being. Feelings are more attuned with your being; hence the possibility of being deceived by them.

The greater work starts when you start disidentifying yourself from your heart. The heart is not your soul; certainly it is better than the head. And why is it better? It is better only because it is closer to the being, but even though it is closer there is still a distance. Closeness is also a distance. You have to fall still deeper. You have to come to a point, to a center, from where you can see thoughts and feelings all separate from you, where you become just a mirror.

That moment is the moment of enlightenment; you become a buddha. Less than that will not help, less than that is not worthwhile.

The second question:

Question 2:

Saguna, it is the same question put in a different way: mind is negative, heart is positive. The language of the mind is rooted in no; the mind immensely enjoys saying no. The more you can say no, the more you are thought to be a great thinker.

There is a beautiful story by Turgenev, THE FOOL.

Once in a town there was a man who was condemned by the whole crowd as the greatest idiot who had ever lived. Obviously he was continuously in difficulty.

Whatsoever he would say, people would start laughing, even if he was saying something beautiful, true. But because it was known that he was an idiot, people would think that whatsoever he did and said was idiotic. He might be quoting sages but still people would laugh at him.

He went to a wise old man and told him that he felt like committing suicide, that he could not live anymore. "This constant condemnation is too much - I cannot bear it any longer. Either help me out of it, or I am going to kill myself."

The old wise man laughed. He said, "There is not much of a problem, don't be worried.

Do only one thing, and come after seven days - start saying no to everything. Start questioning each and everything. If somebody says, 'Look - look at the sunset, how beautiful it is!' ask immediately, 'Where is there any beauty? I don't see any - prove it!

What is beauty? There is no beauty in the world, it is all nonsense!' Insist on proofs; say, 'Prove where beauty is. Let me see it, let me touch it! Give me a definition.' If somebody says, 'The music is ecstatic,' immediately jump into it and ask, 'What is ecstasy? What is music? Define your terms clearly. I don't believe in any ecstasy. It is all foolishness, all illusion. And music is nothing but noise.'

"Do this with everything, and after seven days come to me. Be negative, ask questions - questions which cannot be answered: What is beauty? What is love? What is ecstasy?

What is life? What is death? What is God?"

After seven days the idiot came to the wise man - followed by many many people. He was garlanded and beautifully dressed. The wise man asked, "What happened?"

And the idiot said, "It was magic! Now the whole city thinks that I am the wisest man in the world. Everybody thinks I am a great philosopher, a great thinker. And I have silenced everybody, people have become afraid of me. In my presence they remain silent, because whatsoever they say, I immediately turn it into a question and I become absolutely negative. Your trick worked!"

And the wise man asked, "Who are these people who are following you?"

He said, "These are my disciples - they want to learn from me what wisdom is!"

This is how it is: the mind lives in the no, it is a no-sayer; its nourishment comes from saying no to each and everything. The mind is basically atheistic, negative. There is nothing like a positive mind.

The heart is positive; just as mind says no, the heart says yes. Of course, it is better to say yes than to say no, because one cannot really live by saying no. The more you say no, the more you become shrunken, closed. The more you say no, the less alive you are.

People may think you are a great thinker, but you are shrinking and dying; slowly you are committing suicide.

If you say no to love, you are less than you were before; if you say no to beauty, you are less than you were before. And if you go on saying no to each and everything, chunk by chunk you are disappearing. Ultimately a very empty life is left - meaningless, with no significance, with no joy, with no dance, with no celebration.

That's what has happened to the modern mind, to the modern man. The modern man has said more no's than ever before. Hence the question: What is the meaning of life?

Why are we alive at all? Why go on living? We have said no to God, we have said no to the beyond, we have said no to all for which man has lived down the ages. We have proved to our heart's content that all the values man has lived for are worthless - but now we are in difficulty, in deep anguish. Life has become more and more impossible for us. We go on living only because we are cowards; otherwise we have destroyed all the reasons to live. We go on living because we cannot commit suicide; we are afraid of death, hence we go on living. We live out of fear, not out of love.

It is better to be positive, because the more positive you are, the more you are moving towards the heart. The heart knows no negative language. The heart never asks, "What is beauty?" It enjoys it, and in enjoying it, it knows what it is. It cannot define it, it cannot explain itself, because the experience is such that it is inexplicable, inexpressible.

Language is not adequate enough, no symbols help. The heart knows what love is, but don't ask. The mind knows only questions and the heart knows only answers. The mind goes on asking but it cannot answer.

Hence philosophy has no answers... questions and questions and questions. Each question becomes, slowly slowly, a thousand and one questions. The heart has no questions - it is one of the mysteries of life - it has all the answers. But the mind will not listen to the heart; there is no communion between the two, no communication, because the heart knows only the language of silence. No other language is known by the heart, no other language is understood by the heart - and the mind knows nothing of silence. The mind is all noise: a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing.

The heart knows what significance is. The heart knows the glory of life, the tremendous joy of sheer existence. The heart is capable of celebrating, but it never asks. Hence the mind thinks the heart is blind. The mind is full of doubts, the heart is full of trust; they are polar opposites.

That's why it is said that it is better to be positive than to be negative. But remember: the positive is joined with the negative, two sides of the same phenomenon.

I am not here to teach you the ways of the heart. Yes, I use them, but only as a device: to bring you out of your mind I use the heart as a vehicle; to take you to the other shore I use the heart as a boat. Once you have reached the other shore, the boat has to be left behind; you are not expected to carry the boat on your head.

The goal is to go beyond duality. The goal is to go beyond no and yes both, because your yes can have meaning only in the context of no; it cannot be free of the no. If it is free of the no, what meaning will it have? Your yes can exist only with the no, remember; and your no can also exist only with the yes. They are polar opposites, but they help each other in a subtle way. There is a conspiracy: they are holding hands, they are supporting each other, because they cannot exist separately. Yes has meaning only because of the no; no has meaning only because of the yes. And you have to go beyond this conspiracy, you have to go beyond this duality.

Saguna, it is the same question as Somendra's only asked in a different way, from a different angle. But it is not a new question, it is not a different question; it is the same question verbalized differently.

I am not teaching you the positive way of living, I am not teaching you the negative way of living: I am teaching you the way of transcendence. All dualities have to be dropped: the duality of mind and heart, the duality of matter and mind, the duality of thinking and emotion, the duality of the positive and the negative, the duality of male and female, yin and yang, the duality of day and night, summer and winter, life and death... all dualities. Duality as such has to be dropped, because you are beyond duality.

The moment you start moving away from both yes and no, you will have your first glimpses of the ultimate. Hence the ultimate remains absolutely inexpressible; you cannot say no, you cannot say yes.

Gautama the Buddha never said no to God, never said yes to God. He seems to be the only person in the whole history of man who is neither an atheist nor a theist. This is unique, something immensely valuable. He is a pioneer; he is breaking into a new dimension, he is a breakthrough.

People were continuously asking, as they have always asked, "Does God exist?" and they expected a categorical answer, yes or no. They were very puzzled by Buddha, because he would never answer clearly whether God exists or not. On the contrary, he would divert the question into something else; he might start talking about something else. And his impact and his magnetism were such that you would forget all about what you had come to ask him; you would remember only later on that he deceived you. You had asked about God and he didn't say a single word about it.

Many thought, "He does not believe in God and that's why he keeps silent about God, because he is afraid that if he says no then religious people will leave him." Many thought, "He knows God is, but he does not say so because he does not want the atheists to leave him." And many thought, "Because he knows nothing, he is utterly ignorant, that's why he remains silent about the most fundamental question." But they were all wrong.

He was silent because God means something which is transcendental; yes is irrelevant as much as no is irrelevant. Nothing can be said about God; to be silent about him is the only right answer. He was REALLY answering. Very few, rare people understood him.

Once a man came. He touched Buddha's feet and asked him, "Does God exist?" - the perennial question.

Buddha said - that was always his way, it will show you his method - he said, "When I was young I used to love horses very much." Now, the man is asking about God, and he starts talking about horses! But he was a sweet talker... the man became interested in horses, and Buddha said, "I came across four kinds of horses. One is the most stupid and stubborn kind: you beat the horse, still he would not budge. Many people are like that. The second kind is: you beat him and he would move, but he would move only if you beat him, if you whip him. Many people are like that. And the third kind you need not beat - you simply show him the whip and that's enough; if he knows you have the whip in your hand, that's enough. And I have also come across very rare horses: even the whip is not needed - just the shadow of the whip is enough."

And then he closed his eyes and sat silently. The man also closed his eyes and sat in silence with Buddha.

Buddha's chief disciple, Ananda, was present; he was watching the whole thing. He could see that the man had asked about God, and Ananda was also curious about what Buddha was going to say - and he started talking about horses! Ananda was not happy about it: "This is no way, this is devious, this is cheating the person. He is asking about God and you talk about horses!" He made it a point, "When this man is gone I am going to ask. This is too much! If he talks about God, at least you can talk about meditation, but not about horses! If you don't want to talk about God, talk about meditation, talk about silence, but something relevant. Talk about desirelessness, or at least you can say, 'God is indefinable. Nothing can be said about God, but I can show you the way so you can also experience it.' That would be right, compassionate. But what kind of a joke is this - you talk about horses?"

But more than that, he was puzzled when Buddha closed his eyes and the man also followed. And there was such great silence, so solid, so substantial, almost tangible; you could have touched it, you could have felt the texture of it. Ananda was not a very silent man, but even he was moved by these two men facing each other sitting in such a tremendous silence. He could see Buddha's face and he could see the face of the man becoming transformed just before his eyes. A grace descended, a great peace arose.

And then after an hour or so the man opened his eyes, touched Buddha's feet in deep gratitude, thanked him and went away.

Ananda asked Buddha, "It is incomprehensible to me: he asks about God and you talk about horses. But I know you, I have heard you doing this to many people - but more than that I am puzzled about what transpired between the two of you. I know you, so it was not a great puzzle for me that you closed your eyes and you became silent. I know that it is more difficult for you to talk than to be in silence - silence is natural to you, spontaneous to you - but what happened to the other man? I could see that he was becoming silent and after a few minutes he was in such a deep silence - as if he had lived with you for years. Even I have not known such silence! And then what happened in that silence? What communion happened? What communication happened? What transpired? For what was he grateful? Why did he thank you so much?"

Buddha said, "There are four kinds of horses - you are the first kind, Ananda, and he is the fourth! Just the shadow of the whip is enough, he understood. And I was not talking about horses, I was talking about God; but God cannot be talked about directly. And I was not talking about horses, I was talking about meditation. But I knew the man - he is also a lover of horses. When I saw him coming on his horse I knew it immediately: he had such a rare kind of horse, only a lover of horses could choose such a horse. That's why I talked about horses - that was the language he could understand, and he understood it. And when I closed my eyes he saw the shadow of the whip. He closed his eyes - he understood that the ultimate cannot be talked about, but you can be silent about it, utterly silent about it, and in silence it is known. It is a transcendental experience: it is beyond mind and beyond heart, it is beyond yes and beyond no, it is beyond negative, beyond positive."

But if you are going to choose between the negative and the positive, then I will say:

choose the positive - because it is easier to slip out of the yes than to slip out of the no - because no does not have much space in it; it is a dark dark prison cell. Yes is wider; it is more open, more vulnerable. To move from no you will find it very difficult: you don't have much space, you are enclosed in it from every side, and all the doors and all the windows are closed. No is a closed space.

To live in the negative is the most stupid thing a man can do, but millions are living in the negative. Modern man particularly is living in the negative. He is repeating the story of Turgenev, THE FOOL, because living in the negative he feels great, his ego feels very satisfied. Ego is a prison cell created by the bricks of no's; negativity is its food.

So if you have to choose, Saguna, between the negative and the positive, choose the positive. At least you will have a little wider scope; a few windows and doors will be open, the wind and the sun and the rain will be available to you. You will have a few glimpses of the open sky outside and the stars and the moon. And sometimes the fragrance of flowers will start coming to you, and sometimes you will be thrilled by the joy of just being alive. And it is easier to move from the yes to the beyond.

From the no come to the yes, and from the yes go to the beyond. The beyond is neither positive nor negative - and the beyond is God, and the beyond is enlightenment.

The third question:

Question 3:

Deva Akal, the things that are causing you misery must be giving you some pleasure too; otherwise the question does not arise. If they were pure misery you would have dropped them. But in life, nothing is pure; everything is mixed with its opposite.

Everything carries its opposite in its womb.

What you call misery, analyze it, penetrate into it, and you will see that it has something which you would like to have. Maybe it is not yet real, maybe it is only a hope, maybe it is only a promise for tomorrow, but you will cling to the misery, you will cling to the pain, in the hope that tomorrow something that you have always desired and longed for is going to happen.

You suffer misery in the hope of pleasure. If it is pure misery it is impossible to cling to it. Just watch, be more alert about your misery. For example, you are feeling jealous. It creates misery. But look around - there must be something positive in it. It also gives you some ego, some sense of your being separate from others, some sense of superiority. Your jealousy at least pretends to be love. If you don't feel jealous you will think maybe you don't love anymore. And you are clinging to jealousy because you would like to cling to your love - at least your idea of love. If your woman or your man goes with somebody else and you don't feel jealous at all, you will immediately become conscious that you no longer love. Otherwise, for centuries you have been told that lovers are jealous. Jealousy has become an intrinsic part of your love: without jealousy your love dies; only with jealousy can your so-called love live. If you want your love you will have to accept your jealousy and the misery that is created by it.

And your mind is very cunning and very clever in finding rationalizations. It will say, "It is natural to feel jealous." And it appears natural because everybody else is doing the same. Your mind will say, "It is natural to feel hurt when your lover leaves you. Because you have loved so much, how can you avoid the hurt, the wound, when your lover leaves you?"

In fact, you are enjoying your wound too, in a very subtle and unconscious way. Your wound is giving you an idea that you are a great lover, that you loved so much, that you loved so deeply, that your love was so profound, that you are shattered because your lover has left you. Even if you are not shattered you will pretend to be shattered - you will believe in your own lie. You will behave as if you are in great misery, you will cry and weep, and your tears may not be true at all, but just to console yourself that you are a great lover, you have to cry and weep.

Just watch every kind of misery: either it has some pleasure in it which you are not ready to lose, or it has some hope in it which goes on dangling in front of you like a carrot. And it looks so close, just by the corner, and you have traveled so long and now the goal is so close, why drop it? You will find some rationalization in it, some hypocrisy in it.

Just a few days ago a sannyasin wrote to me that her man has left her and she is not feeling miserable - what is wrong with her? "Why am I not feeling miserable? Am I too hard, rocklike? I don't feel any misery," she wrote to me. And she is miserable because she is not feeling misery! She was expecting to be shattered. "On the contrary," she wrote, "I can confess that I am feeling happy - and that makes me very sad. What kind of love is this? I am feeling happy, unburdened; a great load has disappeared from my being." She asked me, "Beloved Master, is it normal? Am I alright or is something basically wrong with me?"

Nothing is wrong with her, she is absolutely right. In fact, when lovers, after a long long togetherness and all the misery that is bound to happen when you are together, leave each other, it is a relief. But it is against the ego to confess it, that it is a relief. For a few days at least you will move with a long face, with tears flowing from your eyes - phony, but this is the idea that has prevailed in the world.

If somebody dies and you don't feel sad you will start feeling that something is certainly wrong with you. How can you avoid sadness when somebody has died? - because we have been told it is natural, it is normal, and everybody wants to be natural and normal.

It is not normal, it is only average. It is not natural, it is only a long long cultivated habit; otherwise there is nothing to weep and cry about.

Death destroys nothing. The body is dust and falls into dust, and the consciousness has two possibilities: if it still has desires then it will move into another womb, or if all the desires have disappeared then it will move into the womb of God, into eternity.

Nothing is destroyed. The body again becomes part of the earth, goes into rest, and the soul moves into the universal consciousness or moves into another body.

But you cry and weep and you carry your sadness for many days. It is just a formality, or if it is not a formality then there is every possibility that you never loved the man who has died and now you are feeling repentant; you never loved the man totally and now there is no more time. Now the man has disappeared, now he will never be available. Maybe you had quarreled with your husband and he died in the night in his sleep. Now you will say that you are crying because he has died, but really you are crying because you have not even been able to ask his forgiveness, you have not even been able to say a goodbye. The quarrel will hang over you like a cloud forever.

If a man lives moment to moment in totality, then there is never any repentance, no guilt. If you have loved totally, there is no question. One day if the lover leaves that simply means, "Now our ways are parting. We can say goodbye, we can be thankful to each other. We shared so much, we loved so much, we have enriched each other's lives so much - what is there to cry and weep about and why be miserable?"

But people are so entangled in their rationality that they can't see beyond their rationalizations. And they always rationalize everything; even things which are obviously simple become very complicated.

"I am in love with my horse," said Andrew to the psychiatrist.

"That's nothing," replied the shrink. "A lot of people love animals. My wife and I have a dog that we love very much."

"Ah, but doctor, it is a physical attraction that I feel towards my horse!"

"Hmm!" said the analyst. "What kind of horse is it? Male or female?"

"Female, of course!" said Andrew. "What do you think I am - queer?"

You ask me, Akal, "Why do I feel so much pain in letting go of the things that are causing me misery?"

You are not yet convinced that they are causing you misery. I am saying that they are causing you misery, you are not yet convinced. And it is not a question of MY saying it.

The basic thing is: YOU will have to understand, "These are the things which are causing me misery," and you will have to see that there are investments in your misery.

If you want those investments you will have to learn to live with the misery; if you want to drop the misery, you will have to drop those investments too.

Have you watched it, observed it? - if you talk about your misery to people, they give great sympathy to you. Everybody is sympathetic to the miserable man. Now, if you love getting sympathy from people you cannot drop your misery; that is your investment.

The miserable husband comes home, the wife is loving, sympathetic. The more miserable he is, the more his children are considerate of him; the more miserable he is, the more his friends are friendly towards him. Everybody takes care of him. The moment he starts becoming happy they withdraw their sympathy, of course - a happy person needs no sympathy. The more happy he is, the more he finds that nobody cares about him. It is as if everybody becomes suddenly hard, frozen. Now, how can you drop your misery?

You will have to drop this desire for attention, this desire for getting sympathy from people. In fact, it is very ugly to desire sympathy from people - it makes you a beggar.

And remember, sympathy is not love; they are obliging you, they are fulfilling a kind of duty - it is not love. They may not like you, but still they will sympathize with you.

This is etiquette, culture, civilization, formality - but you are living on false things.

Your misery is real and what you are getting in the bargain is false. Of course, if you become happy, if you drop your miseries, it will be a radical change in your life-style; things may start changing.

Once a woman came to me, the woman of one of the richest men in India, and she told me, "I want to meditate, but my husband is against it."

I asked her, "Why is your husband against meditation?"

She said, "He says, 'The way you are, I love you. I don't know what will happen after meditation. If you start meditating you are bound to change; then I don't know whether I will be able to love you or not, because you will be another person.'" I said to the woman, "Your husband has a point there - certainly things will be different. You will be more free, more independent. You will be more joyous, and your husband will have to learn to live with a new woman. He may not like you that way, he may start feeling inferior. Right now he is superior to you."

That's why down the ages man has not allowed women to meditate, to participate in deep religious experiences. Man has not allowed women to read the Vedas, the Upanishads, the great scriptures of the world. In many religions the women are not allowed to enter into the mosque or the synagogue. In Jainism it is said that you cannot be liberated from the body of a woman; first you will have to be born as a man, then only can you be liberated. From the body of a woman there is no way to God.

Why? Why this fear? The reason is very psychological: man has always been afraid of women becoming happier than him, more peaceful than him, more attuned, more integrated than him - because once they are more integrated, more attuned to their beings and to the being of the whole, more in harmony with existence, more in accord....

And women can attain to harmony more easily than men, remember. For certain biological reasons, a woman is more capable of going into meditation than a man is. The male energy is aggressive, violent, outgoing, extrovert, and the female energy is introvert, passive, ingoing.

Hence what Jainism says is absolutely wrong - not only absolutely wrong: just the opposite may be the truth. It is easier to enter into God through the body of a woman than through the body of a man. The woman's body is more harmonious, the man's body is not so harmonious. The woman's body is more balanced, more rounded; that's why she looks so beautiful. Her body is less tense, more relaxed.

Mothers become aware after a few months' pregnancy whether it is a male child or a female child in their womb, because the male child starts parading and doing things inside the womb, kicking... he cannot be at rest. You can watch small girls - they are perfectly happy sitting in a corner with their dolls. And the boys? - they can't sit.

Just a few days ago a little boy took sannyas. I had to ask him, "Can you be silent for one minute so I can explain your name to your mother?" But he was not even able to be silent for one minute. Small girls come for sannyas; when I say to them, "Close your eyes and sit silently," they sit so beautifully; they can sit for hours. When small boys come and I say to them, "Close your eyes," they have to clench their eyes! They are afraid that if they don't do too much they will open. They are so curious about what is happening, what is going on outside.

When small girls take sannyas they look at me. And the boys? - they look at Krishna Bharti and his camera! They are all over the place! I am putting a mala on them and they are looking at people to see what the response is. "Are people laughing, enjoying, watching?" They are great performers! And a great curiosity keeps them constantly tense.

While on their honeymoon, Kit and Netty bought a talkative parrot and took it back to their hotel room. As they made love the bird kept up a running commentary. Finally Kit flung a bath towel over the cage and said, "If you don't shut up I am sending you to the zoo!"

Getting ready to leave the following morning, they could not close a bulging suitcase and decided one of them would stand on it while the other attempted to fasten it.

"Darling," said Kit, "you get on top and I will try."

That didn't work. So he said, "Now I will get on top and you try."

That didn't work either.

"Look," said Kit, "let us both get on top and try."

The parrot yanked away the towel and said, "Zoo or no zoo, this I've gotta see!"

The parrot must have been a male!

I told the woman, "Your husband is right: before you enter on the path of meditation you have to consider it, because there are dangers ahead."

She didn't listen to me; she started meditating. Now she is divorced. She came to see me after a few years and said, "You were right. The more silent I became, the more my husband became furious at me. He was never so violent - something strange started happening," she told me. "The more silent and quiet I was becoming, the more aggressive he was becoming." His whole male chauvinist mind was at stake. He wanted to destroy the peace and the silence that was happening to the woman so he could still remain superior. And because it could not happen the way he wanted, he divorced the woman.

It is a very strange world! If you become peaceful your relationship with people will change, because you are a different person. If your relationship was because of your misery it may disappear.

I used to have a friend. He was a professor in the same university where I was a professor; he was a great social worker. In India, what to do with the widows is still a problem. Nobody wants to marry them, and widows are not in favor of marrying either; that seems like a sin. And this professor was determined to marry a widow. He was not concerned whether he was in love with the woman or not - that was secondary, irrelevant - his only interest was that she should be a widow. And he persuaded her slowly slowly, and she was ready.

I told the man, "Before you take the plunge, consider it for at least three days - go into isolation. Are you in love with the woman, or is it just a great social service that you are doing?" Marrying a widow in India is thought to be something very revolutionary, something radical. "Are you just trying to prove that you are a revolutionary? If you are trying to prove that you are a revolutionary, then you are bound for trouble - because the moment you are married she will no longer be a widow and your whole interest will be gone."

He didn't listen to me. He got married... and after six months he told me, "You were right." He cried. He said, "I could not see the point: I was in love with her widowhood, not with her for herself, and now certainly she is no longer a widow."

So I said, "You do one thing - commit suicide! Make her a widow again and give somebody else a chance to be a revolutionary! What else can you do?"

Man's mind is so stupid, so unconscious. Buddha says it is in deep sleep, slumber, snoring.

Akal, you cannot let go of things that are causing you misery because you have not yet seen the investments, you have not yet looked deeply into them. You have not seen that there is some pleasure you are deriving out of your misery. You will have to drop both - - and then there is no problem. In fact, misery and pleasure can only be dropped together. And then arises bliss.

Bliss is not pleasure, bliss is not even happiness. Happiness is always bound together with unhappiness and pleasure is always bound together with pain. Dropping both....

You want to drop misery so that you can be happy - that is an absolutely wrong approach. You will have to drop both. Seeing that they are together, one drops them; you cannot choose one part.

In life, everything has an organic unity. Pain and pleasure are not two things. Really, if we make a more scientific language, we will drop these words: pain and pleasure. We will make one word: painpleasure, happinessunhappiness, daynight, lifedeath. These are one word because they are NEVER separable.

And you want to choose one part: you want to have only the roses and not the thorns, you want only the day and not the night, you want only love and not hate. This is not going to happen - this is not the way things are. You will have to drop both, and then arises a totally different world: the world of bliss.

Bliss is absolute peace, undisturbedness, neither disturbed by pain nor disturbed by pleasure.

To celebrate their fortieth anniversary, Seymour and Rose went back to the same second-floor hotel room where they had spent their honeymoon.

"Now," said Seymour, "just like that first night, let us undress, get in opposite corners of the room, turn off the lights, then run to each other and embrace."

They undressed, went to opposite corners, switched off the lights and ran towards each other. But their sense of direction was dulled by forty years, so Seymour missed Rose and he went right through the window. He landed on the lawn in a daze.

Seymour tapped on the lobby window to get the clerk's attention. "I fell down from upstairs," he said. "I am naked and I gotta get back to my room."

"It's okay," said the clerk. "Nobody will see you."

"Are you crazy? I gotta walk through the lobby and I am all naked!"

"Nobody can see you," repeated the clerk. "Everybody is upstairs trying to get some old lady off a doorknob!"

People are so foolish! Not only the younger ones - the older you get, the more foolish you become. The more experienced you are, it seems the more stupidity you accumulate through life. It really rarely happens that a person starts watching, observing his own life and his own life patterns.

See what your misery is, what desires are causing it, and why you are clinging to those desires. And it is not for the first time that you are clinging to those desires; this has been the pattern of your whole life and you have not arrived anywhere. You go on in circles, you never come to any real growth. You remain childish, stupid. And you are born with the intelligence that can make you a buddha, but it is lost in unnecessary things.

A farmer who had only two impotent old bulls bought a new, young, vigorous bull.

Immediately the stud began mounting one cow after another in the pasture. After watching this for an hour, one of the ancient bulls started pawing the ground and snorting.

"What's the matter?" asked the other. "You getting young ideas?"

"No," said the first bull, "but I don't want that young fellow to think I am one of the cows."

So even in their old age people go on carrying their egos. They have to pretend, they have to pose, and their whole life is nothing but a long long story of misery. Still they defend it. Rather than being ready to change it, they are very defensive.

Akal, drop all defensiveness, drop all armors. Start watching how you live your day-to- day life, moment to moment. And whatsoever you are doing, go into its details. You need not go to a psychoanalyst, you can analyze each pattern of your life yourself - it is such a simple process! Just watch and you will be able to see what is happening, what has been happening. You have been choosing - and that has been the problem - you have been choosing one part against the other, and they are both together.

Buddha says: Attain to choiceless awareness - don't choose at all. Just watch and be aware without choosing, and you will attain to bliss, you will attain to the lotus paradise.

The last question:

Question 4:

Narayano, it is a question to be made a meditation. It is not a question to be asked, it is a question to be contemplated - because nobody can answer it for you and nobody's answer can become your answer. This is one of those questions which is not really a question but a mystery.

Yes, you can go on asking the scholars, and some stupid scholar will say, "You are God, you are soul, you are this and you are that, you are eternal consciousness, immortal being." But do you think those words are going to have any meaning for you? They will be empty words. This is not a question to be asked, this is a question to be entered into.

Raman Maharshi made it his only meditation; that is the only meditation that he gave to his disciples - a very potent method. Just sitting silently, first ask verbally, "Who am I?"

And then slowly slowly, let the words disappear and only a feeling remain, "Who am I?" - just a feeling. And finally let the feeling also disappear... a nonverbalized, nonemotionalized question mark. Not that you are asking, "Who am I?" but you have become the question mark itself. Sitting silently, remaining this question mark, you will enter into your being, you will know.

Knowing does not happen through scriptures, it cannot be taught. I know the answer, but my answer is MY answer; it cannot become your answer. You can repeat it like a parrot, you can believe in it, but it will not transform you. No information ever brings any transformation.

To ask this question is wrong: to contemplate this question is right. I cannot answer who you are, but I can say only this: start asking you own being, "Who am I?" and your mind will start supplying you with many answers. If you are a Christian it will give Christian answers, if you are a Hindu it will give Hindu answers, if you are a Buddhist it will give Buddhist answers. All those answers are false. So go on saying, "NETI, NETI - neither this nor that." Go on saying, "This is not the answer." Whatever answer is supplied by the mind is deceptive - beware!

When you have destroyed all the answers given by the mind and the mind is empty and has no answers to give anymore, the answer will arise in you. When the mind ceases, the answer arises. It will not be in words, it will be an experience.

Don't ask me, Narayano, ask yourself. Sit silently whenever you can find time.

But you must be asking others this question. People go on, from one master to another master, asking the same questions, receiving the same answers. The question remains in its place; the answers make no difference. You must have asked this question of many people - your search is long. You have been to all the ashrams and they have all supplied you with answers, and still you are not satisfied. When are you going to see the point, that no answer given by the outside can ever be satisfactory, it cannot give you contentment?

Drop this question. Don't ask it, because if you ask somebody, there are people who are going to answer. There are people who live on your questions - the pundits, the priests, the scholars, the professors - their whole business is to go on supplying answers to your questions. And can't you see the point, that no answer ever becomes your answer?

It is time, start asking yourself. At least this question, "Who am I?" has to be asked in the deepest recesses of your being. You have to resound with this question. It has to vibrate in you, pulsate in your blood, in your cells. It has to become a question mark in your very soul.

And when the mind is silent, you will know. Not that some answer will be received by you in words, not that you will be able to write it down in your notebook that "This is the answer," not that you will be able to tell anybody that "This is the answer." If you can tell anybody, it is not the answer. If you can write it down in a notebook, it is not the answer. When the real answer happens, it is so existential that it is inexpressible.

To ask others is stupid. To ask oneself is wise.

The circus had finished its final performance in the country town when one of its zebras took sick. The local veterinarian suggested rest for the beast, so the circus owner made arrangements to board it at a nearby farm.

The zebra took to the new life by meeting all the animals of the barnyard. He came across a chicken and asked, "I am a zebra, who are you?"

"I am a chicken," said the chicken.

"What do you do?" asked the zebra.

"I scratch around and lay eggs."

The zebra walked up to a cow. "I am a zebra. Who are you?"

"I am a cow," said the cow.

"What do you do?" asked the zebra.

"I graze in the field and give milk."

The zebra met a bull next. "I am a zebra," he said. "Who are you?"

"I am a bull."

"And what do you do?" asked the zebra.

"What do I do!" snorted the bull. "Why, you silly looking ass - take off your pajamas and I will show you!"

Enough for today.