Christ: the last Christian

The first question:

Question 1:

Anand Bhavo, the dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean... now forget the dewdrop and look at the ocean. If you go on searching for the dewdrop, you will miss the ocean; you will remain preoccupied with the dewdrop, you will not be able to see the vastness that has happened. The dewdrop disappearing into the ocean in a sense is no more, but in another sense it is for the first time - now it has become the ocean.

Looking into my eyes, don't try to search for a person; you will not find any person there. The person has disappeared; now there is a presence. Presence is infinite; a person has a definition - a boundary, a certain name, form, a label. Presence is simply presence. The flower is no more, it has become the fragrance. You can hold the flower in your hand, but you cannot hold fragrance in your hand. To experience fragrance hands are not needed at all. That's how you should come close to me: you should be more sensitive towards the presence, synchronize with my presence.

And the only way to synchronize with my presence is for you also to dissolve your person and become a presence. Only two presences can meet and mingle and merge. If you are a person then there is no possibility of melting and merging with me. You remain a rock and I am a river - how are you going to melt and merge with me?

You also become a presence - that's my whole teaching, my whole message. Let the person die, let the flower disappear, because the person is nothing but a mask. The presence is your essence. The presence is what is meant by godliness. There is no God, only godliness; but because we are persons we imagine God also as a person.

Our attitude towards ourselves is bound to reflect in our other attitudes too; our attitude towards existence is bound to be part of our attitude towards ourselves.

You are still searching in my eyes for a person - certainly there is none. Hence you can become afraid, scared, because you will see emptiness, nothingness.

There are three stages of being with me. One stage is that of a student who thinks about me as a person. He never looks into my eyes, he never tries to penetrate my being, he remains concerned with the superficial, the formal, my body, my words. He remains an outsider, curious, desirous to know more about me, longing for more and more knowledge, information. But there is an infinite distance between me and him. He will gather a little information about the mysteries of life and will leave. He will become more knowledgeable, more egoistic; in fact he will leave more sick than he had come, more burdened than he had come - burdened by knowledge.

He will not have any taste of my wisdom. He can't understand wisdom; he understands only knowledge, he understands only that which can be expressed through words, theories, logic. He will be unable to see the beyond. He has to be pitied. He comes and goes empty-handed. He comes to the river and goes back home thirsty. He thinks he has gained much, but all that he has gathered are crumbs fallen from the table while he could have been my guest - he remained a beggar.

The second stage is that of a disciple - who comes a little bit closer, becomes aware of something mysterious, starts feeling, moves from the world of thinking to the world of feeling, slips from the head to the heart. He will be able to hear not only the words but the poetry hidden behind them. He will be able to hear not only the words, but the silence contained in those words.

Of course he will see the superficial too, but he will be able to understand that that's not all - something more is there. He will not be exactly conscious of it, but an unconscious intuitive feeling is bound to be there. If he lingers here a little longer then that feeling will become more solid, more substantial. First it will be only a shadow, a glimpse, a vision that happens once in a while and then is lost, as when clouds disappear and for a moment you see the sun, and again there are clouds and the sun is no more.

The student never sees the sun, he only sees the clouds. The disciple, once in a while, is touched by the beyond, moved by the beyond. The student lives in the head, the disciple lives in the heart. But just to remain a disciple is not enough either - better than being a student, far better, far superior, but not enough. One step more - and that is the step of being a devotee.

A devotee is one who neither thinks about the master, nor feels about the master, but starts synchronizing with his being; neither from the head nor from the heart, but from the very core of his existence. He starts pulsating, he starts living in the same rhythm, he breathes the way the master breathes. His heart dances with the beat of the master's heart. He loses himself, he is no longer an outsider.

The student is absolutely an outsider, the devotee absolutely an insider, and the disciple is in between. The disciple is in the middle, on the way. If he is courageous he will become a devotee, if he is a coward he will fall back and become a student. The student is at ease, because he is not aware at all of the real; the devotee is at ease because he is in tune with the real. The greatest difficulty is that of the disciple; he is in between, pulled apart in two directions. He will have to decide sooner or later either to be a student or to be a devotee; one cannot prolong the state of being a disciple for long, because it is a state of anguish, it is a state of tension.

The student is relaxed because he is unconscious, the devotee is relaxed because he is conscious, but the disciple is vague - vaguely conscious, vaguely unconscious, the disciple lives in the world of twilight, neither day nor night, neither here nor there, in a kind of limbo.

Anand Bhavo, you are in the state of being a disciple. Yes, glimpses have started showering on you - now be courageous, move a little closer. Don't only look into my eyes, but be my eyes. Don't be a spectator, become a participant, get involved, committed. Don't look at me as somebody separate from you. The time has come:

become inseparable, so attuned that you don't have any identity of your own. I don't have any identity of my own. And when you also lose your identity we are two zeros coming closer and closer and closer, and in a sudden flash of thunder the two zeros are no more two, they have become one.

That orgasmic experience of oneness is the first experience of godliness. The first experience of godliness happens in being utterly one with the master.

The master is only a device, remember, he is only a window to the divine. Come closer and closer to the window and the window disappears and the frame of the window disappears and the whole sky opens up with all its stars.

And then you will be able to see me in the eyes of my sannyasins and in the song of the birds and in the green and red and gold of the trees and in the stars and in the rivers - you will be able to see me everywhere.

Ramakrishna was dying, one of the greatest modern masters. He was suffering from cancer of the throat. It had become impossible for him to eat anything, even to drink water was impossible. For the last three days of his life he could not eat or drink anything.

Vivekananda fell at his feet and said, "If you ask God, just for the asking - the miracle is bound to happen. Why don't you ask him to take this cancer away? At least you can say, 'Allow me to eat and drink.'" Ramakrishna said, "If you say so, I will do it. I never thought of it. Your idea is good. I will try."

He closed his eyes. Tears started flowing from his closed eyes, his face became full of light. All the anguish of the cancer, all the pain - intolerable was the pain - suddenly disappeared. He opened his eyes. Vivekananda was very happy, the other disciples were very happy, that something had happened, something miraculous. But they were not aware of what it was, they thought God had taken the cancer away, or at least had allowed Ramakrishna to eat and drink. But that was not the real miracle.

Ramakrishna opened his eyes, he was ecstatic; for a few moments he could not utter a single word. Then he said, "Vivekananda, you are a fool! You suggest such stupid things to me, and you know that I am a simple man, a villager, so I accept. I said to God, 'I can't eat, can't drink - why can't you allow me at least to eat and drink?'

"And he said, 'Ramakrishna, have you gone crazy? Now you can eat from the mouths of your disciples, now you can drink from others' throats - why do you cling to your own throat?' And that released me from my body. That's why I cried in joy. Yes, that's true! - all throats are mine. I can eat, I can drink from others' throats."

When he was dying, his wife Sharda asked him, "What am I to do when you die?"

because death was so imminent and so certain. In India when the husband dies, the wife has to drop all her ornaments. In Bengal particularly, the wife has never to use any colored clothes, she can only use white, no ornaments. Sharda asked, "What am I to do?

Should I wear white and no ornaments when you are gone?"

Ramakrishna said, "But I am not going anywhere! I will be here! You will be able to see me in the eyes of those who love me. You will be able to feel me in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. A bird on the wing and suddenly you will remember me, and I am there! A beautiful sunset and you will remember me and I am there! You are not going to become a widow; you are married to me forever and forever. This marriage is not of time, it is of eternity."

He is talking about the marriage between a devotee and a master. Sharda was a devotee, not only his wife - that was secondary. And that's how it happened.

Ramakrishna died, Sharda never even wept; she continued her way of life as if Ramakrishna was still alive.

Every night she would prepare the bed for Ramakrishna, as she used to prepare it before. She would put up the mosquito net and she would tell Ramakrishna, "Now you go to sleep, it is already too late." She would prepare the food that he used to like, she would bring the THALI, would sit by his side and tell Ramakrishna, "Look what I have prepared for you."

People used to think that she had gone mad. No, she was not mad. People were mad.

She had understood the point. When she was dying, her last words were... she told all the disciples that had started loving her as their master, in the absence of Ramakrishna - - they started crying and weeping - she said, "Wait, what are you doing? Have you forgotten what Ramakrishna told me? That he was not going anywhere? I am not going anywhere either. Feel blissful, feel happy that I am also getting free of the body. Rejoice because now I can melt into Ramakrishna, into his universality."

This is the state of the devotee. But to be a disciple is no mean achievement. It is a necessary step towards being a devotee.

Anand Bhavo, one step more - then you will not say, "I am looking into your eyes," you will say, "I am looking through your eyes." Then you become my eyes, then you are not standing outside, you stand inside me and you start looking at existence as I look at it.

And then a great transformation, a great transcendence, a great revelation....

The second question:

Question 2:

Anand Nur, wonder and awe are the greatest spiritual qualities. Wonder means you function from a state of not knowing. The knowledgeable person never feels wonder; he is incapable of feeling wonder because he thinks he already knows. He knows all the stupid answers, he may know the whole ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA; hence every question is already answered in his mind. When a question is such that there is no answer to it, that it is unanswerable; not only today, but forever; not that it is unknown, but it is unknowable - when one encounters the unknowable, unanswerable, one experiences wonder. One is in a state of awe, as if the heart stops beating, as if you don't breathe for a moment.

The experience of wonder is such that everything stops. The whole world stops; time stops, mind stops, the ego stops. For a moment you are again a child, wondering about the butterflies and the flowers and the trees and the pebbles on the shore, and the seashells - wondering about each and everything, you are a child again.

And when you can wonder and can feel the immense beauty of existence which can only be felt in awe, when suddenly you are possessed by existence, overwhelmed, you can dance, you can celebrate that moment, you can say "Aha!" and you don't know anything else to say, no word, just an exclamation point...!

The knowledgeable person lives with a question mark and the man of awe and wonder lives with an exclamation mark. Everything is so tremendously deep and profound that it is impossible to know it. Knowledge is impossible. When this is experienced then your whole energy takes a jump, a quantum leap, from the mind to the heart, from knowing to feeling. When there is no possibility of knowing, your energy does not move in that direction anymore.

When you have realized that there is no possibility of knowing, that the mystery is going to remain a mystery, that it cannot be demystified, your energy starts moving in a new direction - the direction of the heart. That's why I say love is related to wonder and awe, to childlike innocence. When you are not obsessed with knowledge you become loving. Knowledgeable people are not loving, heady people are not loving; even if they love, they only think that they love. Their love also comes via their heads.

And passing through the head, love loses all its beauty, it becomes ugly. The heady people are calculating; arithmetic is their way.

Love is jumping into a dangerously alive existence with no calculation. The head says, "Think before you jump," and the heart says, "Jump before you think." Their ways are diametrically opposite.

The knowledgeable person becomes less and less loving. He may talk about love, he may write treatises about love, he may be conferred Ph.D.s, D.Litt.s for his theses on love, but he knows nothing of love. He has not experienced it! It is a subject that he has been studying, it is not an affair that he is living.

You ask me, Nur, "Beloved Master, you talk so often of wonder and of love...."

Yes, I always talk about wonder and love together, because they are two sides of the same coin. And you will have to learn to start from wonder because the society has already made you knowledgeable. The school, the college, the university - the society has created a great mechanism to make you knowledgeable. And the more you are stuffed with knowledge, the less and less your love energy flows. There are so many blocks created by knowledge, so many rocks in the path of love, and there exists no institution in the world where you are helped to be loving, where your love is nourished.

That's my idea of a real university, that's what I want to create here. Of course it will remain unrecognized by the government, it will be unrecognized by other universities.

And I can understand - if they recognize it, that will be a surprise to me. Their not recognizing it is really recognizing it - recognizing that it is a totally different kind of institution, where people are not made knowledgeable but loving.

Humanity has lived with knowledge for centuries, and has lived in a very ugly way.

D.H. Lawrence once proposed that if for one hundred years all the universities and colleges and schools were closed, humanity would be benefited immensely.

I agree with him totally. These two persons, Friedrich Nietzsche and D.H. Lawrence, are beautiful people. It was unfortunate that they were born in the West; hence they were not aware of Lao Tzu, of Chuang Tzu, of Buddha, of Bodhidharma, of Rinzai, of Basho, of Kabir, of Meera. It is unfortunate that they knew only the Jewish and the Christian tradition. And they were very much offended by the whole Jewish and Christian approach towards life. It is very superficial.

Friedrich Nietzsche used to sign himself, "Anti-Christ, Friedrich Nietzsche." First he would write "Anti-Christ." He was not really anti-Christ - anti-Christian of course, because in one of his saner moments he said that the first and the last Christian was crucified - he was Jesus Christ, the first and the last.

But in his name something absolutely false is existing, and the day Christ was denied by the Jews they became false. Since that ugly day they have not lived truly. How can you live beautifully if you reject your own climaxes? What Moses had started, a beautiful phenomenon, came to a climax in Jesus Christ, and the Jews rejected Jesus Christ. That very day they rejected their own flowering, their own fragrance. Since that day they have not been living rightly.

And the people who followed Jesus have created something absolutely against Jesus. If he comes back he will be nauseated, disgusted, seeing the Vatican and the pope and all that goes on in the name of Christ. My own feeling is... somebody was asking me, "Jesus promised to come back again - will he come back?"

I told him, "If he comes back this time, you will not need to crucify him - he will commit suicide himself! Just seeing the Christians will be enough - enough to commit suicide. Hence my feeling is that he is not going to come. Once is enough, twice will be too much."

But these two men, Nietzsche and Lawrence, were immensely misunderstood in the West. They also provided reasons for being misunderstood; they were helpless, they were groping in the dark. Of course their direction was right; had they been in the East they would have become buddhas. They had the potential - great potential, great insight. I agree with them on many points.

D.H. Lawrence was very much against your so-called education - it is not education, it is mis-education. Real education can only be based on love, not on knowledge. Real education cannot be utilitarian, real education cannot be of the marketplace. Not that real education will not give you knowledge; first, real education will prepare your heart, your love, and then whatever knowledge is needed to pass through life will be given to you, but that will be secondary. And it will never be overpowering; it will not be more valuable than love.

And whenever there is a possibility of any conflict between love and knowledge, real education will help you to be ready to drop your knowledge and move with your love; it will give you courage, it will give you adventure. It will give you space to live, accepting all risks, insecurities; it will help you to be ready to sacrifice yourself if love demands it. It will put love not only above knowledge but even above life, because life is meaningless without love. Love without life is still meaningful; even if your body dies it makes no difference to your love energy. It continues, it is eternal, it is not a time phenomenon.

To have a loving heart, you need a little less calculating head. To be capable of loving you need to be capable of wondering. That's why, Nur, I always say that awe and childlike innocence are deeply related with the energy called love. In fact they are different names for the same thing.

The third question:

Question 3:

Prem Murti, hitherto right and wrong have been decided by all the religions as if they were fixed entities; do this, don't do that, this is sin, that is virtue. That is not a right approach to reality, because what is right today may be wrong tomorrow, what was wrong yesterday may be right today.

Life is a flux, it is constant movement, it is change. Except change, everything else changes. So I cannot give you fixed ideas about what is right and what is wrong. I cannot do that harm to you. All the old religions have done that; maybe it was needed because humanity was in a very immature state. But now man has come of age. Small children have to be told don't do this....

A small boy was asked by the teacher in school - it was his first day - "What is your name?"

He said, "Don't Johnny."

The teacher was puzzled, he said, "Don't Johnny? Never heard such a name before."

He said, "This is my name, because whatever I do my mother says, 'Don't Johnny!' This MUST be my name."

He had been told so many times, "Don't, Johnny! Don't, Johnny!" that he thinks it is his name.

But it can be forgiven as far as children are concerned because you cannot go into deep explanations; you cannot explain to them the reasons, the motives. You have to give them simple instructions, clear-cut; otherwise they will not be able to follow.

Humanity was also in such a state for centuries, but now all those commandments look very stupid. They were relevant one day, they are no longer relevant; they are corpses we are carrying. They don't work anymore, they don't help anybody - they hinder everybody.

So don't ask me, Prem Murti, what is right and what is wrong - it depends. All I can say to you, all I would like you to be aware of is: any act done in awareness is right and any act done in unawareness is wrong. The act does not matter as far as I am concerned, my approach is concerned, my philosophy of life is concerned; the act does not matter, what matters is your consciousness. Are you acting unconsciously or consciously?

So the real question is something within you, not what you do but who you are. I change the whole emphasis from the objective to the subjective, from the outer to the inner. If you are doing it consciously you are right - and that has always been the approach of the enlightened ones.

A great master, Nagarjuna, was asked by a great thief.... The thief was well known over the whole kingdom and he was so clever, so intelligent that he had never been caught.

Everybody knew - he had even stolen from the king's treasury, many times - but they were unable to catch him. He was very elusive, a master artist.

He asked Nagarjuna, "Can you help me? Can I get rid of my stealing? Can I also become as silent and blissful as you are?" It happened in a certain context.

Nagarjuna was the greatest alchemist that the East has given birth to. He used to live naked, with just a begging bowl, a wooden begging bowl, but kings worshipped him, queens worshipped him. He came to the capital and the queen touched his feet and said, "I feel very much offended by your wooden bowl. You are a master of masters; hundreds of kings and queens are your followers. I have prepared a golden bowl for you, studded with beautiful diamonds, emeralds. Please don't reject it - it will wound me very much, it will hurt me very much. For three years great artists have been working on it, now it is ready."

She was afraid that Nagarjuna might say, "I cannot touch gold, I have renounced the world." But Nagarjuna did not say anything like that; he said, "Okay! You can keep my begging bowl, give me the golden one."

Even the queen was a little shocked. She was thinking that Nagarjuna would say, "I cannot accept it." She wanted him to accept it, but still, deep in her unconscious somewhere was the old Indian tradition that the awakened one has to live in poverty, in discomfort, as if discomfort and poverty have something spiritual in them. There is nothing spiritual in them.

Nagarjuna said okay. He didn't even look at the golden bowl. He went away. The thief saw Nagarjuna moving outside the capital, because he was staying in a ruined temple on the other bank of the river. The thief said, "Such a precious thing I have never seen - so many diamonds, so many emeralds, so much gold. I have seen many beautiful things in my life but never such a thing, and how did this naked man get hold of it, and how is he going to protect it? Anybody will be able to take it away from him, so why not me?"

The thief followed Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna heard his footsteps, he knew somebody was coming behind him. Nagarjuna reached the temple. The temple was an absolute ruin, no roof, no doors; just a few walls were left. He went inside a room without a roof, without a door, without windows.

The thief said, "How is he going to protect such a precious thing? It is only a question of hours." He sat outside the window, hiding behind a wall.

Nagarjuna threw the bowl outside the window. The thief was very much puzzled. The bowl fell just near his feet. He was puzzled: "What has this man done?" He could not believe his eyes, he was also shocked. He stood up - even though he was a thief, he was a master thief and he had some dignity. He thanked Nagarjuna. He said, "Sir, I have to show my gratitude. But you are a rare man - throwing out such a precious thing as if it is nothing. Can I come inside and touch your feet?"

Nagarjuna said, "Come in! In fact I have thrown the bowl out so that you could come in."

The thief could not understand what he was saying; he came in, he looked at Nagarjuna - his silence, his peace, his bliss - he was overwhelmed. He said, "I feel jealous of you. I have never come across a man like you. Compared to you, all others are subhuman beings. How integrated you are! How gone beyond the world! Is there any possibility for me too one day to attain such integration, such individuality, such compassion and such nonattachment to things?"

Nagarjuna said, "It is possible. It is everybody's potential."

But the thief said, "Wait! Let me tell you one thing. I have been many times to many saints and they all know me and they say, 'First you stop stealing, then anything else is possible. Without stopping stealing you cannot grow spiritually.' So please don't make that condition because that I cannot do. It is impossible. I have tried and I have failed many times. It seems that is my nature - I have to go on stealing, so don't mention that.

Let me tell you first so you don't make it a condition."

Nagarjuna said, "That simply shows you have never seen a saint before. Those must have all been ex-thieves; otherwise why should they be worried about your stealing?

Go on stealing and do everything as skillfully as possible. It is good to be a master of any art."

The thief was shocked even more: "What kind of man is this?" And he said, "Then what do you suggest? What is right, what is wrong?"

He said, "I don't say anything is right or anything is wrong. Do one thing: if you want to steal, steal - but steal consciously. Go tonight, enter into the house very alert, open the doors, the locks, but very consciously. And then if you can steal, steal, but remain conscious. And report to me after seven days."

After seven days the thief came, bowed down, touched Nagarjuna's feet and said, "Now initiate me into sannyas."

Nagarjuna said, "Why? What about your stealing?"

He said, "You are a cunning fellow! I tried my best: if I am conscious, I cannot steal; if I steal I am unconscious. I can steal only when I am unconscious. When I am conscious the whole thing seems so stupid, so meaningless. What am I doing? For what?

Tomorrow I may die. And why do I go on accumulating wealth? I have more than I need; even for generations it is enough. It looks so meaningless that I stop immediately.

For seven days I have entered into houses and come out empty-handed. And to be conscious is so beautiful. I have tasted it for the first time, and it is just a small taste - now I can conceive how much you must be enjoying, how much you must be celebrating. Now I know that you are the real king - naked, but you are the real king.

Now I know that you have real gold and we are playing with false gold."

The thief became a disciple of Nagarjuna and attained to buddhahood.

I cannot say to you what is right or wrong. I can say only one thing to you: be conscious - that is right. Don't be unconscious because that is wrong. And then whatsoever you do in consciousness is right.

But people are living in unconsciousness. And let me tell you: in unconsciousness you may think you are doing something right, but it can't be right. Out of unconsciousness, virtue cannot flower; it may appear virtuous but it can't be. Deep down it will still be something wrong. If you are unconscious and you give money to a poor man, watch:

your ego is strengthened. This is sin.

You are unconscious and you go on serving poor people, ill people; you open a hospital or a school - but whatsoever you do gives you a very subtle ego, a pious ego. And a pious ego means pious poison - but poison is poison! And pure pious poison is far more dangerous because it is unadulterated; it is pure poison. Hence ordinary people suffer from a very gross ego, it is adulterated.

I have heard:

Mulla Nasruddin wanted to commit suicide. He went to the druggist, purchased a big quantity of poison, drank it, and waited in his bed the whole night: "Now I am going to die, now I am going to die." He opened his eyes again and looked at the clock:

"Twelve... two... four... six.... And the children are getting ready, and the wife is preparing the breakfast - and I have not died yet? Or have I died and become just a ghost? What is the matter?" He pinched himself and he felt the pain; he said, "No, I am still in my body."

He ran to the druggist; he said, "What kind of poison have you given me? Such a quantity should have killed at least ten people, and I drank it all and I'm still alive."

The druggist said, "What can I do - in India you cannot find anything pure. Everything is adulterated, from milk to poison. What can I do?"

The ordinary ego is adulterated with many other things. But the religious ego, the ego of a saint, of a mahatma, of a sage, is unadulterated - it is pure poison. Just a drop of it is enough.

So if you do good things unconsciously, they are going to create more ego in you. And only on the surface will they appear good; they will be harmful to the people to whom you are being good. Never be a do-gooder, avoid it. More mischief has been done by your public servants, missionaries, social reformers, than by anybody else.

The most fundamental thing is to be conscious and then act, and then whatsoever you do is going to be right. But people are unconscious.

"No, I will not go to the movies with you!" said Jackie. "I know your kind! As soon as we are seated, you will start fiddling with my blouse buttons with one hand and tugging at my skirt with the other, getting ready to take liberties!"

"No, I would not," protested Patrick. "The people sitting behind us could see what I was up to."

"Yes, that's true," said Jackie, "so maybe we had better get there early and find seats in the last row."

What you want to do, and what you say, and what you really do, are totally different things. You may be doing something which you never wanted to do, you may not be doing something which you always wanted to do. You live a schizophrenic life, divided into the unconscious and the conscious. And out of this schizophrenia whatsoever happens is wrong.

Biff was the strong, silent type. He walked into the school cafeteria, ordered coffee, and winked at the waitress, a sensuous blue-eyed senior. She smiled.

"Want to go riding?" he asked.

"Sure, I will be ready in five minutes."

So they got in the car and he drove out on the highway. He took off down a road, then he drove down a lane. The lane came to a dead end and he stopped the car and cut the motor off.

Turning to her, he uttered his first speech, "Well, how about it?"

The waitress nodded.

"Okay," she said, "you have out-talked me!"

Just watch what you are doing, why you are doing it, what you are saying, why you are saying it. Just go on watching your acts, your thoughts, and slowly slowly, a great consciousness arises in you. And then you can see all the games that you have been playing with others, and not only with others but with yourself too.

The patient, whose history card a doctor was filling out, said she was a spinster. So, when he came to the space for listing number of children, he automatically put down "none."

"But, Doctor," she said, "I have a thirteen-year-old daughter!"

"I thought you told me you were an old maid?"

"I am," she replied. "But I am not a stubborn old maid."

Whatsoever the conscious goes on pretending, the unconscious is the real source of your acts, and unless the unconscious disappears totally from your being, you can't do right. Only one tenth of your being is conscious, nine tenths are unconscious. The unconscious is almost a continent underneath a shallow layer of water you call consciousness. The unconscious motivates you. The conscious only finds rationalizations for doing what the unconscious wants to do. The conscious is at the service of the unconscious; this is a wrong situation. Let the unconscious be at the service of the conscious - and you become a sannyasin.

That is what sannyas is all about: making consciousness more and more the center of your being, and transforming more and more chunks of unconsciousness into consciousness, bringing more and more light into the inner darkness.

A day comes when you are full of light; your whole being is conscious. Not even a corner of your being has any darkness about it - all is known and experienced through and through. You are well acquainted with yourself, totally acquainted with yourself; then whatsoever you do, Prem Murti, is right. Right is the flowering of consciousness, and wrong the flowering of unconsciousness.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Sandesh, they have a long past, a very long past, longer than any other country, longer than any other race. And the longer the past, the more prejudiced you are. The American is the least prejudiced in the world because he does not have a long past, only three hundred years old. It is nothing compared to the past of India.

Ten thousand years are absolutely certain historically, but India existed before that. In fact those who have gone deep into research, they say Indian culture has existed for at least ninety thousand years or more. Such a long past makes a country very old, utterly old. Its mind becomes settled and stagnant, it cannot accept anything new, it is very difficult.

What is easy for the American is very difficult for the Indian. The Indian thinks he knows already; he is so well informed, at least about spirituality, that he does not feel that he has to come to me. He never comes here, but without coming here he goes on expressing his opinions about me. It is natural in an ancient, old, dead culture. And it is a very repressive past that India has gone through; it does not allow freedom.

Freedom has never been the goal of Indian culture but obedience: obedience to the society, obedience to religion, obedience to the scriptures. And India has this idea that all that was beautiful has already happened, the golden age has already happened.

Now man is not evolving, progressing - but declining. This is something to be understood.

In the West the idea is that man is evolving higher and higher, evolution is happening, there is great progress happening. The golden age is in the future for the West.

For the East, particularly for India, the golden age has already passed thousands of years ago; we are on a decline. We are not moving towards the peak, we are moving towards the valley. More and more darkness will surround us, more and more death; man will become more and more ugly.

Hence when I speak of a new humanity the West can understand me; the Indian mind simply feels at a loss - what am I talking about? "A new humanity, a golden age in the future? It has already passed, it is history. We are not going to attain any golden age in the future; there is only death, man is doomed."

India has accepted this idea that the future is nothing but death, the future holds no hope. And I bring a new hope to you. I give you a new promise, I herald a new humanity. Hence it falls on deaf ears; it is so much against their conditioning, they cannot bridge the gap, and it is a very very repressive conditioning.

India has repressed all that is natural; it has gone into its unconscious, it is there boiling within. And I am talking about expressing, and India believes in repression. India believes in repression - sex, love, body, all that is natural. And I believe in expression, creativity. I am speaking a non-Indian language.

Hence this strange phenomenon that I am living in India but I am not part of India at all. This small community of my sannyasins is a world community - it is not an Indian ashram, it is a world commune. This small commune represents the whole of humanity, not of the past but of the future.

So I am bound to be misunderstood, misinterpreted, condemned, hindered in every possible way . There are twenty-five cases against me in the courts. The government goes on inventing any kind of case against me - a man who never leaves his room....

What crimes can I commit? Twenty-five cases against a man who never leaves his room!

Just think - if I were moving outside, they would have invented at least one thousand cases against me.

They have to be forgiven for the simple reason that they cannot understand; in their own minds they are doing something very right. They think of me as a destructive force, and in a way they are right: I am here to destroy the whole conditioning whether it is Indian or German or Jewish, whether it is Christian or Mohammedan or Buddhist.

My work consists of destroying the conditioning and making man free of all conditioning. This happens every day - not only to Indians, to others too.

A new sannyasin, Jacob, has written a letter to me. He is a Jew, so he is very much offended by the Jewish jokes. Now you cannot even understand humor, you become serious even about that, so what to say about serious matters? He has become a sannyasin but deep down the Jew is there, ready to be offended. I am going to offend EVERYBODY.

I offend Germans as much as I can, I offend Jews, I offend Indians, I offend Mohammedans.... I will offend everybody, because that's my whole work - to clean you of all the shit that you have been carrying all along. And it hurts because you think it is something very valuable that you are carrying.

Now the Indian mind is the most sexual in the world, the most sexual because the most repressed. The Indian goes on seeing things which are not there; he projects or he invents or he tries hard to find something.

The woman phoned down to the hotel manager. "I'm up here in room 5110," she shouted angrily, "and I want you to know there is a man walking around in the room across the way with not one stitch of clothes on and his shades are up."

"I will send the house detective up right away, madam," said the manager.

The detective entered the woman's room, peered across the way, and said, "You're right, madam, the man hasn't any clothes on, but his window sill covers him from the waist down no matter where he is in his room."

"Indeed?" yelped the lady. "Stand on the bed! Stand on the bed!"

The lady must have been Indian. But Indians are everywhere; they are not only in India, they are not confined to India, remember. Wherever repressive people are, there are Indians. They can be in England, they can be in Italy, they can be in Spain, they can be anywhere. The Indian mind represents the repressive mind.

The woman was calling collect.

"Would you repeat the name, please?" said the telephone operator.

"Yes, Alice. A-L-I-C-E. A as in 'adultery', L as in 'lust', I as in 'incest', C as in 'copulation', E as in 'erotic'...."

Now, what to say about this woman? She must be carrying a monster within herself.

And that is the situation in India: everybody has repressed so much, there is so much pus inside the soul, that when they hear or read about me they feel hurt. The hurt comes because they are carrying wounds within themselves. And it always hurts if you go to the surgeon: he has to squeeze the pus out of your wounds, only then can the wounds heal. And I am a surgeon, my compassion does not allow me to leave you as you are. Whatsoever the cost to me, whatsoever the risk to me, I am determined to expose your wounds to you - because once you know your wounds, once your wounds are exposed, brought to the surface, they immediately start healing. And India carries great wounds: it is not only physically poor today, it is spiritually poor too. And when I say this it hurts the most, because that is the only shelter for the Indian ego that, "We are spiritual people." And my own experience is that there is no spirituality left.

Yes, once in a while a buddha has happened in India - and more buddhas have happened in India than anywhere else, it is true - but the Indian masses, the crowd, is not spiritual, not at all. In fact because of this phenomenon of the buddhas, the Indian masses have become hypocrites. They have heard great teachings - they cannot follow those teachings, because to follow them needs great effort. They cannot follow but they can pretend; that is cheap and easy. So Indians have become pseudo.

Larson took Charlotte for a drive way out in the country and parked the car in a desolate stretch.

"If you try to molest me," said Charlotte, "I will scream!"

"What good would that do?" asked Larson. "There isn't a soul around for miles."

"I know," said Charlotte, "but I want to satisfy my conscience before I start having a good time."

Indians also want to have a good time, but first they want to satisfy their conscience, so they are screaming at me. But slowly slowly, the sensitive, the intelligent Indians are coming closer to me. It takes time, but the most sensitive people are bound to become part of my buddhafield.

And Indians suffer from an inferiority complex because for one thousand years they have been slaves.

Rabindranath was never praised in India - condemned, criticized as much as possible because he was a very life-affirmative person. He even had the courage to criticize Buddha in his own way. He was against the whole negative tradition of India.

In one of his poems he says:

After twelve years Buddha comes back home - he has become enlightened. He has thousands of followers; naturally he remembers his wife, his child, his old father, and he wants to help them. He wants to share what he has attained, so he comes back to his palace. Yashodhara, his wife, whom he had deserted twelve years before, is naturally very angry.

For twelve years she has been accumulating anger, but an Indian wife, even if she is angry, cannot show her anger to her husband, at least not in those days. But in a very vicarious way... she asks one question of Buddha. It is not an historical thing, it is a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, his own invention but it shows his attitude and approach.

Yashodhara asks Buddha, "Just one question I have to ask you: for twelve years I have waited to ask you this question. You have become enlightened: was it impossible to become enlightened living in the world, in the house with me? Just one question I want to ask you: was it absolutely necessary to escape from the world, was it not possible here in the house? Am I more powerful than your consciousness? Was the temptation more than the search for truth?"

And Rabindranath says Buddha bows down his head and stands silently, says nothing.

But that says everything - now Buddha knows it could have happened in the house too. There was no need to desert the wife and the child and the old father and the family and the people; there was no need. Now he knows! Now he knows that enlightenment has nothing to do with the mountains and the forests; it can happen anywhere.

Rabindranath in another of his poems says, "I don't want NOT to be born again. I pray to God: Give me your world again and again and again! It is so beautiful, it is such a gift - I am grateful!"

Now these are very anti-Indian attitudes, the whole hankering of India has been how to get rid of life; it is life-negative. Rabindranath is very life-affirmative; he loves life and loves it tremendously. He was condemned very much.

But when he got the Nobel Prize, then the whole country was just full of praise. But he refused to go to the gatherings, to the meetings, which were arranged to praise him. He said, "This is not praise for me - you are praising the Nobel Prize. You can take the certificate and the medal and garland it and do whatsoever you want - I am not going to come!"

He got the Nobel Prize for the book GITANJALI - offering of songs - which he had written twenty years before. In India nobody praised it because it is very life- affirmative, but once the Nobel Prize was given for GITANJALI, GITANJALI was the greatest thing that had happened to India. Then the same people started praising it.

India suffers from a great inferiority complex; for one thousand years it has been a slave. So don't be worried, I know how things are going to happen.

First, more and more intelligent, sensitive, alert Western people are bound to come to me. Once they are here, more and more, in thousands, Indians are going to follow suit - that is because of an historical accident one thousand years old.

Whatsoever is done by the West, India becomes suspicious that it must be right. First it reacts: "How can it be right?" because it goes against its tradition. Then, slowly slowly, it HAS to compromise. So I am not worried about it, not at all. Let the seekers come from every nook and corner of the earth and sooner or later you will find India also coming closer and closer to me.

But they are always late in everything. They have been missing the train for five thousand years - that has become their habit. They can't be pioneers, they have forgotten how to be pioneers. They can only be followers.

And this work is pioneer work, something immensely new is being tried here. India WILL listen to it, at least I hope so. But you need not be worried about it.

The last question:

Question 5:

Anand Vibhu, nothing is wrong with standing on your head - you will just become more stupid AND more respectable, more unintelligent and more holy. There are advantages and there are disadvantages. If you want to be intelligent, then please stand on your feet. If God had intended that man should stand on his head, he would have made you in a different way.

I also tried it once in my childhood, but I looked so silly standing on my head - and, moreover, I fell asleep and because of sleeping, I fell down and had my neck strained for at least two weeks - so I decided that this couldn't be what God wants me to do.

But, Vibhu, if you have been trying it long enough, now it cannot do any more harm.

And some time it may come in handy too.

I have heard:

Sigmund Freud died and was sent to hell - where else? When he arrived the Devil greeted him - obviously.

"Welcome," said the Devil. "Here you will have one of three irrevocable choices about where you will spend eternity. Come on!"

The first room was filled with people who were carrying large stones up a steep hill only to see them fall back to the bottom - to where they had to return and start the whole process again.

Freud was then shown the second room. It was filled with typewriters. Thousands of people were clattering away, each with a Devil's assistant behind him. Whenever a mistake was made, the assistant would slap the person on the back.

Freud was becoming extremely apprehensive.

The final room was filled with human feces, up to the necks of the thousands of people there. Each person had a cup of coffee which he or she was sipping, just above the dung.

"Well," said the Devil, "which room do you choose?"

Freud thought for a second, realizing that in the third room, at least there was no physical work, and he enjoyed coffee too.

"Okay, I will take the third room."

He waded into the feces and waited for someone to bring him his cup. Just as he heard the large door slam behind him he heard an assistant shout, "Alright, everybody! Coffee break is over! Everyone back standing on their heads!"

Enough for today.