Sannyas: the radical revolution

Question 1:

MY SANNYAS IS NOT A DISCIPLINE. My sannyas is freedom, freedom from all control - even from self-control. A controlled man is a dead man. Whether you are controlled by others or by yourself does not make much difference.

My sannyas is spontaneity, living moment to moment without any prefabricated discipline, living with the unknown, not exactly knowing where you are going. Because if you know already where you are going you are dead. Then life runs in a mechanical way. A life should be a flow from the known towards the unknown. One should be dying each moment to the known so the unknown can penetrate you. And only the unknown liberates.

Discipline can never be of the unknown. Discipline has to be of the mind. The mind is your past. All that you have learned, all that you have been conditioned for, all that you have experienced, all that you have thought about - this is your mind. Out of this mind comes a planning for the future. That planning for the future will be nothing but a repetition of the past. It comes out of the past; it cannot be anything else. Maybe a little modified here and there, decorated here and there, but there will be no radical revolution in it.

My sannyas is a radical revolution. By giving you sannyas, I give you freedom. I give you courage to live without any planning, to live without mind, to live without past. Of course it is dangerous, but life is dangerous. Only when you are dead, then there is no danger. Then you are safe - safe in your grave. Safety never exists before that. If you want to be safe and secure and perfectly protected, insured against all dangers, then don't enter into sannyas. Enter into your grave. Then don't breathe, because breathing is dangerous. One day breathing is going to bring death to you. Breathing iS dangerous.

Life exists in danger, pulsates in danger. Life exists in the ocean of death. It has to be dangerous; it cannot be safe and secure. You are not a rock. You are a flower, you are fragile - in the morning, laughing with the sun; by the evening, you are gone. How can life be secure? In its frailty, in its fragileness, how can you even conceive of insurance? No, there is no insurance, there cannot be.

And one should not live by the philosophy the insurance companies go on propagating. One should live with the danger, with death hand in hand. Then tremendous dimensions open before you. Then God is revealed.

God is very dangerous. There exists no other dangerous word comparable to God. God means to live a life of spontaneity, of nature. Don't try to corrupt your future. Let it be. Don't try to corrupt it, don't try to manage it. Don't give it a mold and a form and a pattern.

Of course, if you live the way I teach, many things will disappear from your life. The first thing will be the security - and it is a false thing. Only the false disappears with sannyas, not the real. The real starts appearing. The security will disappear. The marriage will disappear. Love will remain; love is real.

Let it be more clear: love can exist with sannyas, but not marriage, because marriage is an effort to give a pattern to love, to give a discipline to love, to give it a legal, social form. But what are you doing? How can you manage that which has not come yet? You can love a woman or a man, and you can feel in this moment that you will love her always and always, but this is just a feeling of this moment. How can you promise? An authentic man will never promise. How can you promise for the future? How can you say really you will be able to love tomorrow too? If love disappears what will you do? And it appeared on its own accord, you have not brought it in, so when it disappears what will-you do? It comes and goes; it happens and disappears. It is not within your power; it is bigger than you. So when you say, "I will love you tomorrow too," what are you going to do? If love disappears you will pretend, you will substitute. That's what happens in a marriage. Then two dead persons living in a dead relationship go on quarreling, fighting, nagging each other, trying to dominate, manipulate, exploit, destroy. Marriage is an ugly thing. Love is tremendously beautiful.

My sannyas is like love. The older sannyas was. more like marriage. My sannyas is simply a courage to face whatsoever is going to happen, without any rehearsal for it.

How can you prepare? The tomorrow is not known at all. Whatsoever you prepare is going to hinder; it will become a screen on your eyes and you will not be able to see what is. All preparation is dangerous. Remain unprepared. Then you will be excited, then each moment will be a joy and a wonder, and each moment will bring something new to you which has never happened, and you will never be bored.

The life of marriage, the life of all discipline, is the life of boredom - monotonous. Monogamy is monotony. You have to repeat the same. You are not free to explore new ways of being. You are not free to see new things. You are not free to experience new beauty, new truth. If you are disciplined, what does it mean? It simply means now you have a particular standpoint, your eyes are no longer open. You are a Christian; then you have a discipline. You are a Hindu; then you have a discipline - and a dogma, and your eyes are completely full of that dogma. Then you cannot see that which is.

I would like you to be totally uncontrolled. I would like you to be absolutely a chaos, with no order whatsoever.

And please don't misunderstand me. There is every possibility, because when I say something I have to use words, and words are very much corrupted - corrupted by you, corrupted by usage, for centuries. When I say "chaos," you become afraid. But you don't know the beauty of chaos, and you don't know the spontaneous order of a chaos. You don't know the order that comes out of freedom. Not enforced by your mind, not by your past, but just by your being aware, alert, free, responsive, an order arises. I don't call it order, because it goes on changing every moment. I don't call it a discipline, because it has nothing to do with you. In the chaos you are no more, the ego has disappeared.

Who is going to discipline? The ego. The ego says become a better man, improve yourself: you are a sinner, become a saint; you are violent, become nonviolent; you are angry, become more loving.

But who is going to do it, and who is this who is hankering for improvement? The ego wants a few more decorations, wants to become more respectable, wants to become more certain, wants to have a better grounding in the world, wants to feel more solid, wants to become somebody in particular, wants to become special.

No, my sannyas is not going to give you anything of this sort. I don't deal in dead things, that is not my business. My whole effort here is to give you a taste of freedom. Once you have known the taste, you will never settle for anything else. If it is a question of settling somewhere, you are wrong.

My sannyas is a wandering; it is not a settlement. In my sannyas you can rest, but in the morning you have to go. It is a constant flow, river-like - unless the ocean is achieved. But the ocean comes out of the flowing river, naturally. There is no planning for the ocean; the river does not know. I he maps don't exist for a river, of where the ocean is.

And the river has no discipline. Sometimes it goes to the south, and sometimes it starts moving to the north, and sometimes in one direction and sometimes in another direction. Have you ever seen the zigzag path of a river? It is not straight. It is not economical. It is not mathematical. It is not the shortcut at all - very zigzag, just goes on, not knowing where it is going, just goes on because the energy is there.to go. And one day the river reaches. If the river is planning, then it will find the shortest route, then it will move in a straight line, then it will never deviate, then it will be very consistent. But then it will not be a river. Maybe a canal, a man-made canal, but it will not be a river.

It won't have any freedom.

I don't want you to be canals. Canals are ugly. I want you to be rivers. And life is a hilly track.

Move in freedom, move in total freedom, and each moment remember to drop the past. It accumulates like dust. Each moment you have experienced something, and then it goes on accumulating. Don't accumulate it. Just go on ceasing as far as the past is concerned, dying as far as the past is concerned, so you are totally alive, throbbing, pulsating, streaming, and, whatsoever comes, you face it with awareness.

You must have a wrong notion about my sannyas.

You say, "What I mean by sannyas is a spiritual discipline...." Then your meaning is different from my meaning. No, it has nothing to do with discipline - and it has nothing to do with spirituality.

When Bodhidharma reached China and the emperor received him, the emperor asked one thing:

"I have done many meritorious acts. I have made many Buddhist monasteries, thousands of Buddhist monks are fed from my treasure, millions of Chinese have been converted to Buddhism, thousands of temples have been raised for Buddha. What is going to be my merit for all this doing?"

Bodhidharma was very ferocious and he looked into the emperor's eyes and said, "Your Majesty, there is no merit in it."

The emperor was very much shocked, because many Buddhists had come before - monks and missionaries - and they all said to him, "This will be your merit: you will reach to the seventh paradise. Do more virtuous acts, donate more, make more monasteries, temples, Buddha statues, convert the whole country to Buddhism. Your merit is going to be great, Your Majesty." And now here comes this Bodhidharma and he says no merit at all?

But the emperor was a very cultured man. He changed the subject; he dropped the subject before so many people. And this man looked dangerous. He said, "Then tell me something about the holy truth of Buddha." And Bodhidharma said, "Nothing can be said about it because it is vast, and, remember, there is nothing holy in it. Holy, unholy, is part of a dual mind. There is nothing holy, nothing unholy; it simply is."

Now this was too much. The emperor was very much offended. He is denying even Buddha's truth and saying nothing is holy in it. He became angry. He forgot for a moment all his courteous manner, courtly manner and politeness, and he said, "Then who is this fellow who is standing before me?"

And Bodhidharma bowed down and said, "Your Majesty, I don't know."

My sannyas is not spiritual, because I don't divide the world into the material and the spiritual. It is nothing holy, because I don't divide the world into the unholy and the holy. By becoming a sannyasin you have not become a saint, because I don't divide people into sinners and saints. People are people. All are beautiful - sinners and saints and all.

In fact, if there are only saints in the world and no sinners, the world would not be worth living in.

Just think of a world which consists only of holy saints. Can you conceive of any worse world than that? No, it cannot be of much value. The sinner and the saint, they are the warp and woof, they are together, they are one - the dark and the light. Death and life are meeting every moment.

So I don't call it spiritual, because I have no condemnation for matter. In the very word "spiritual"

you have denied something, you have condemned something, you have judged; you have already declared that "The material is wrong and I want to be spiritual."

Can't you see a simple fact that you exist in the body as the body? Have you ever seen any soul without a body, unembodied? Or have you seen any body alive without a soul? The bifurcation is stupid. The soul is nothing but the dynamism of your body and the body is nothing but the materialization of your soul. The body is your visible soul and the soul is your invisible body.

And I would like you to be as much a materialist as a spiritualist. I don't make the division. I don't want to create any split in you. You are already split. Your so-called religions have already done much damage to you. They have created a schizophrenic world in which everybody is split. And of course then there is tension, anxiety, anguish, because you become two. By just calling yourself a spiritual being, you are condemning your body and you are creating a rift between the body and the soul, between God and the world.

You say God created the world? You state it in a very wrong way. I say God IS the world. God has not created it, because he has never been able to become separate from it. It is not like a painter, that he paints something and then he is free of the painting and the painting becomes separate - the painter can die but the painting will live. No, God is not like that. God is more like a dancer. Hence my very great love for dance. God is more like a dancer. You cannot separate the dancer from the dance. He is Nataraj: the dancer of all the dancers, the master of all the dancers. He is dancing in the leaf, in the flower, in the raindrops, in the river, in the peacock. All over is his dance.

He has not created the world; he IS the world. The world is his dance, and the separation does not exist. If the world is not there, he will not be a dancer at all. If the dancer is not there, the world cannot exist. They are not separate; they are inseparably together. In fact to say "together" is not right, because they are not two; how can they be together? They are one.

And I would like you to remember this unity always and always because you are prone to forget it.

Your minds have been conditioned by dualists - matter and mind, body and soul, God and the world, SAMSAR and nirvana.

My sannyasin is the unity, is the bridge between all duality. That's why I have not told you to renounce the world, because it is God's dance. Where are you going to renounce it? Have you gone mad? It is his market, it is his world. The noise is his. Once you recognize it, the noise turns into a beautiful music. In all these relationships only he is there. In your wife he is, in you he is, in your children too.

In your friends he is, in your enemies too. Only he is.

So don't go anywhere, don't renounce. Live it as totally as possible - and live it as an integrated being. My emphasis is for an integrated being. You are not in the body: you ARE the body. Drop that nonsense of "I am in the body." Hmm? from the very beginning that nonsense makes a distinction, and then you are very far away from the body and a conflict arises. You start manipulating your body, you start controlling your body, you start doing things to your body. You become destructive, you become violent.

Your so-called saints are all violent. Howsoever much they talk about nonviolence, howsoever much, it makes no difference. They are violent people.

There are two types of violent people. The first type is violent with others; the other type is violent with himself. There are sadists and masochists. The sadists torture others; they become Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao. Then there are masochists, they torture themselves; they become Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, Lanza del Vasto, and so on, so forth. But both are violent people.

One tortures himself; another tortures others.

My sannyasin has to drop torturing.

So it is not a discipline and it has nothing to do with spirituality. Yes, Your Majesty, there is nothing holy in it.

And don't get angry with me and don't ask who is this fellow sitting here and talking with you. I don't know.

You say, "What I mean by sannyas is a spiritual discipline, and through this discipline one becomes a religious man." If you become a religious man by discipline, you will be a bogus religious man.

What does discipline have to do with religion? If you practice religion you will be false. Ordinarily it has been told to you, whatsoever you preach, practice it. And I say to you, if you practice it, you will become false, because practice means you are creating a character armor around you. Now you will be living according to a certain ideology, and that ideology will function as a barrier. It will become your prejudice. And a religious man is absolutely unprejudiced. He has no outlook, he has no philosophy, he has no ideology. He is very, very natural. He is more like animals, more like small babies, more like trees and rocks... and yet, very, very different from them. But the difference comes from his awareness.

You say if we practice a certain discipline we will become religious. As if religiousness is something like a goal in the future: you have to practice today so tomorrow you become religious. No, religiousness is your nature. You are already that. No practice is needed for it.

The Indian term for religion is very, very beautiful; the Indian term is DHARMA. DHARMA means your intrinsic nature. Whatsoever you want to become, in fact, you are already; it is already the case. It is not a question that you have to practice something and then as a result, as a reward, you become religious. No, you become religious if you just become aware. This very moment you become religious.

Sometimes even without knowing it you become religious. Whenever you are alert, silent, peaceful, you are religious. Whenever you are unalert, tense, worried, you are irreligious. Religion and irreligion continuously change. Sometimes sitting with your friends, listening to music, and you are so quiet and so happy - for no reason at all, just feeling joyful - you are religious. You are in tune with your nature. You may not even be conscious of the fact that in this moment you are religious.

You have gone for a morning walk, the sun is rising, and it is beautiful all around and the air is cool and fragrant and the birds have started singing and there are a few white clouds floating in the sky, and suddenly you are no longer the ordinary, miserable person. You feel good. Suddenly you feel turned on. The vast sky and the clouds and the birds and the morning breeze and the sun rising slowly: something rises in you too, something becomes alert. You have a dance to your feet and a song arises. You would like to sit under a tree and sing a song. You are religious.

When you are in love you are religious. Holding the hand of your friend or your woman or your man, not doing anything, just sitting silently, looking at the stars, you are religious.

Religion is not a result of something that you practice. Religion enters in you any moment you relax.

Religion is a flowering of relaxation, not a result of practicing. Remember the difference because when you practice you become more tense.

You can see the people who practice. They are very tense because every moment they are fighting.

How can they relax? Have you seen a saint relaxing? Impossible. A saint cannot relax, because if he relaxes he is afraid of becoming a sinner. He has to be constantly on guard. He sits upright - because deep inside he is uptight. You can go and see these saints in India. They are on exhibition everywhere. Upright they sit, with their backbone straight, in a dead yoga posture. Like statues.

They can't relax.

Saints cannot laugh, because if they laugh there is danger. If you laugh you become ordinary, just an ordinary human being. They have to remain serious! And they have to be continuously on guard.

You don't understand their misery. They are imprisoned, and their imprisonment is such that they are the prisoner and they are the jailer too. So a prisoner can escape from the prison, there is a possibility, because the jailer is a different person; you can deceive. But a saint cannot, because he himself is the jailer. He goes on whipping himself, torturing, starving. He is very nasty with his body.

But you say, "He is a great ascetic" - these nasty people. Horrible and hideous. Then, also, they are waiting: in some future there is going to be a result.

No, I don't teach you the result-oriented life at all. I teach you the relaxed way of life. Here and now you can be religious. You are, this moment, if you are relaxing with me.

Those who have come to feel me, understand me, those who have come to have a taste of my presence, they relax. They are not here for any gain, they are not here for any greed, they are not here to attain something in future life. They are just here to be with me - to laugh a little with me, to have a little fun, to joke a little. And then you are religious. In that moment, if you allow a little relaxation, you are religious. Because religion is your innermost nature. Whenever you are not tense, it is there. When you become tense, you lose contact with it.

And now you ask, "... but it is not happening to me. What to do?' If it had happened it would have surprised me. That's what I am saying: it cannot happen that way. If you want to become a pseudo- religious person, then it is okay, that's your choice. But never blame me. That is your responsibility.

If you want to be a pseudo-religious person, you can become one - you can practice.

Truth cannot be practiced. You have to dissolve yourself into it. Truth can never become something that you can hold in your hand. It is vast. How can you hold it in your hand? It can never become your property. You have to relax into it, dissolve into it.

When you dissolve into it, it is there, and it takes and possesses your whole being. And then it lives through you. And that is what I call a religious life: when truth starts living through you, when God starts dancing through you and you don't create any barrier for him and you don't say no. You become a yea-sayer and you say yes, and your yes is total and your yes is unconditional; then God is very happy in you. And when God is happy in you, suddenly you will find he is happy all around you. Then you are blessed... and then you can bless the whole of existence.

Question 2:

Good idea - but don't do it. Because even then you will not be able to say what you want to say, even with a hug. You will be able to show your helplessness, but nothing will be said.

When something overwhelming is happening, it cannot be expressed. It is inexpressible by its very nature. It is intrinsically inexpressible, ineffable. So whenever it happens a very deep helplessness arises. Words seem to be futile, meaningless, trivial, and then one would like to say it in some other way - one would like to hug or kiss or hold the hand - but even then nothing is said. Only your helplessness is shown. One would like to cry or weep, but then too nothing is said. Only your helplessness is expressed.

Rather than trying to express it, my suggestion is, when this happens, remain with it. Don't make any effort to express or not to express. Because if you become occupied with expression, you will miss it. You are already diverted, distracted. That's why I say the idea is good but don't try to do it.

If you feel the benediction around you, the greater, the vaster surrounding you, the infinite just around you, rather than trying to express it, get lost in it. Because now the ego is trying another way: now the ego wants to express it. And if you become too interested in expressing it.... You may become a painter, because the painter is trying to express the inexpressible through colors on the canvas, but who has been able to express it? Or you may become a poet. The poet is trying to express the inexpressible in words, but who has ever been able to express it?

This is the difference between art and religion. When the vast surrounds you, the artist starts making efforts to express it, and the mystic simply gets lost in it. And the mystic comes to know it. The artist misses at the very last moment.

It will be happening to more and more people around here. This is a very crazy place to be. It is really far out. To more and more people it is going to happen, so keep it as a deep remembrance that whenever you feel that something unknown has knocked on your doors, don't be worried about expression, don't start thinking how to say it or how to write it. Let it be. Go into it. Be drowned in it.

Be drunk with it. Don't make any effort.

These are the two efforts. First, people try to find how to achieve it; they miss. I don't teach you any "how." Then when it happens they start thinking how to express it; again the "how" comes from the back door. Again I would like to remind you, don't bring the "how." It is good as it is. Unexpressed, what is wrong in it? Let it be so. Amen, let it be so.

"Sometimes listening to you, an overwhelming feeling comes over me of how absurd and ridiculous we all are and yet at the same time how incredibly beautiful life is." There is no contradiction in the absurd and the beautiful. In fact the absurd is the beautiful and the beautiful is always absurd. Don't see any contradiction.

The mind is always tempted very much to see contradictions because the mind has been trained in a certain logic which does not allow contradictions to be together. The mind has been trained by Aristotelean philosophy, all over the world. Aristotle says A is A and never not A. This is the whole logic of the mind: A is A and never not A; A is A and never B. How can A be B? But in reality A is B and C and D - and the whole alphabet. In reality things have multidimensional qualities.

You see a man is loving. When the man is loving you think, "Yes, how beautiful a man." But the next moment he is angry; then there is a contradiction. You say, "This man deceived. This man has not heard of Aristotle yet? A is A and never B! You are a loving man! Don't be angry!" But man is man.

He is angry and loving and jealous and possessive, and sometimes so sharing, and sometimes so mean. Have you not watched it? Sometimes your friend is so sharing and sometimes so mean. This is how reality is. Reality contains all contradictions.

You say, "... how absurd and ridiculous we all are AND YET how incredibly beautiful life is." Nothing is contradictory in it. If you were all very, very consistent, life would not be so rich. It would be stale and gray. Life is rich because it is a rainbow, it is psychedelic. It has so many colors and so many changing colors. And it is so unpredictable - that's why it is absurd.

Why do you call it absurd? Because you cannot contain it in your logic. Your logic falls short; it is bigger than your logic. It destroys your logic. Somehow you make a small part of your mind clear, and life comes and destroys everything.

Have you not seen somebody who for forty years has been absolutely logical and has never allowed anything in his life which is illogical, has said God does not exist because he is not visible, has said prayer is foolish and love is not possible, then one day he comes across a beautiful woman and falls in love? Forty years' training and logic - and all gone to the dogs! within a single moment. Life is absurd.

But by "absurd" you simply say one thing: that it is not logical. But why should it be logical? It has no obligation to be logical. It has never pretended to be logical. It is man's mediocre mind that has been trying to fix it somehow so you can be secure about it. No, it cannot be fixed. It is a constant flux.

And it is ridiculous, yes, because it is not serious. It is ridiculous because it is a play. In India we call it LEELA; it is a play.

God loves children. Can't you see it? Every day old people are taken away, and he goes on sending babies. How absurd. A person has been trained his whole life, for seventy years. He has become a great philosopher, a professor, a scholar - so many PhD's and DLits and the DD - and now suddenly this mad God takes him away. What type of economics is this? And instead sends a baby, crying and howling. Again train him. Send him to the school and the college and the university. And by the time he is ready and looks of any use, here comes God and takes him away! It is absurd.

God loves the absurdity. God is not a utilitarian. He does not believe in utility; he believes in play.

At the moment you become too serious, he says, "Now it is time. You please come back home. I will dismantle you and send you again. Now you need a mind wash: you have become too trained, too disciplined, too much of a commodity. You are no longer a freedom." That's why old people are taken away. He destroys them, again creates small babies, and sends them; and again they are there with all the nonsense. And again we are after them to teach them.

Neither we learn anything nor God learns anything. It goes on.

It is ridiculous, but that's why it is so beautiful. If God was a mathematician - as Vinoba Bhave says.... He says that God is a mathematician. Now this seems to be the most sacrilegious statement ever made. God a mathematician? No, he is not, not at all. The mathematician is an ugly thing.

The mathematician is a computer. The mathematician is clever and cunning, but mechanical.

Mathematics has no poetry in it. Mathematics is the only absolutely fictitious science created by man. In the room you say there are six chairs. There are chairs - but not "six." "Six" is man's concept. If you go out of the room, chairs will be there, but "six" has disappeared. Mathematical concepts are human creations. God is not a mathematician. Otherwise such beautiful play will become impossible.

Don't you see sometimes there are many things man is destroying, thinking that by destroying them the world will be better? God has never destroyed them. The trees have existed. Sometimes you think what is the point of a tree. Make furniture, cut it; make doors and furniture and then it is useful.

Hills are there, the Himalayas are there, and the virgin snow on their tops, nobody has walked on it.

For what? What is the point of it? Why are the Himalayas needed? Make it a plain so people can live there and townships can grow. That's how man has destroyed the whole of nature.

God is very playful. Many absurd things are there. So many stars, for what? They go on moving. It is not a mathematical arrangement. God is very luxurious. He does not believe in necessity. He is a spendthrift; he is not a miser. He goes on throwing his energy. It is playful energy it is just like a child splashing in water. Don't ask why. He will not be able to answer. But he is enjoying it. It has no economical value, but life is not economics, nor is it politics. It is a poetry, and the poetry is by its very nature, by its very definition, illogical. The poetry is beautiful because there are sudden leaps and jumps. The prose is not so beautiful, because there are no sudden jumps and leaps. The prose moves on plain ground, in a logical sequence.

Sooner or later, when you are ready, I am going to drop talking in a sequential way. Sooner or later, when my sannyasins are ready, my talks will be more like a collage. You will have to find out what he means. You will have to find out your own meaning. I will say a few things, but I will go on jumping and I will not connect as I connect right now. Once you are ready - more attentive, more aware, more alert - I will not connect with logic, I will drop the logic. The unity will be there, but not on the surface. The unity will be there because they will all be my statements - the unity will consist in ME.

And the unity will be there because they are to be understood by your awareness - the unity will come in your awareness. But taken directly, if a visitor comes, he will think this man is mad. Right now I connect. I connect because I know you will not be able to understand the absurd yet. I am waiting for the day you are ready, so I can be as absurd as God is.

Have you seen anywhere any symmetry in nature? It is not there. Man makes things in a symmetrical way. If he makes a house he makes it symmetrical. But in nature there is no symmetry.

A great pine tree, and just by the side a small rosebush. And you cannot ask what is the connection between the rosebush and the pine tree. God will laugh; he will say, "Who said that there is any need for any connection? The rosebush is a rosebush and the pine is a pine - and both are happy.

There is no need to bridge them."

Sooner or later I am going to become just like God. I will say something and then I will forget about it and I will tell a joke which is completely unrelated. Then it is for you to work it out. Then it will be more beautiful, certainly more beautiful, because it will be more playful. That is the meaning of a collage, so many fragments from so many dimensions together. On the surface, no unity; but if you look deep there is an organic unity. That unity exists in the painter, not in the painting.

If you really want to know the meaning of the poetry, you will have to go deep into the heart of the poet. For prose you need not go into the heart. Prose is plain, prose is worldly, prose is of the marketplace, prose is human. Poetry is divine. That's why all the great scriptures of the world are in poetry - the Upanishads, the Vedas, the Koran, DHAMMA PADA. They are all poetry, beautiful poetry, outpourings of a singing heart. Logic, there is none; love, there iS much.

Question 3:

There are a few things, you have to do them if you want to know them. There is no way to tell anything about them. And surrender is one of those things. It is a dimension of love, let-go.

If you ask me what is surrender and what is the meaning of surrender, yes, something can be told to you, but that won't carry any meaning. You have to taste it. It is a taste. If you taste it you know it. If you don't taste it, I can talk about it, but you will not know it. Without your own experience, whatsoever I say will be a tautology. You ask what is surrender. I say surrender is a let-go. But what am I saying? You will ask what is a let-go. It is a tautology; I have not answered you. I say a let-go is falling in love. It is a tautology again; I am not saying anything. You will say,'What is falling in love then?" The question remains the same, and all answers will go round and round and round.

I have heard about a prudish, tight-lipped old maid who would not even allow her pet cat out of the house after dark. Headed for New York on one of her infrequent outings, she paused to remind the maid about locking up that cat each evening.

This time in New York, however, the old maid encountered a handsome old rogue who swept her off her feet. After four nights of blissful romancing she wired her maid, "Having the time of my life. Let the cat out too!"

Let the cat out. When you know what love is, only then you know. There is no other way to know it.

I am here creating a situation for you to surrender. Don't ask for the meaning. Do it. Be courageous.

Let it be an experience. Accept my invitation. My doors are open; enter and be my guest. Surrender.

By "surrender," in the West, a very wrong idea arises - as if you will be dominated by somebody - because surrender has a very wrong association. It has become almost a political word in the West.

The Nazis surrendered; that's how it has become associated with politics. A surrendered one is the one who is defeated. In the East we have a totally different meaning for the term. It has nothing to do with war and nothing to do with defeat. Have you not heard the proverb that in love defeat is the only victory? If you are defeated in love you have become victorious. Yes, that's how it is in surrender. It has nothing to do with defeat. It is not that you are being dominated by somebody. It is not that now somebody else is going to oppress you, exploit you, that you are becoming a slave.

No, it is nothing of the sort. The surrender in the East is used as a technique.

And the surrender has to be made only to a person who is no more, so he cannot dominate you. So this has to be remembered: don't surrender to a person who is still there; otherwise he will dominate you and he will give you a discipline and he will start forcing you to do this and not to do that and he will create a prison around you.

That's why I don't give you any discipline. Even if you ask, I don't give. You ask continuously because you want to depend, because you want to be a slave, because you don't want to take your own responsibility. You want to throw the responsibility on somebody else. You are in search of a father figure; you want somebody to lead you. But I am not going to give you any discipline and I am not going to give you any clear-cut direction to do this and don't do that. All that I am going to do is to share my awareness with you so you can become a little more aware, to share my love with you so you can become a little more loving. It has nothing to do with any discipline.

Coming closer to me, you will be able to imbibe my spirit. That is the meaning of surrender: that you are ready to come close to me, that you are not afraid, that you will not protect yourself against me, that you will not be defensive, that simply you are ready to come closer to me, that you are attracted, that you have heard my call, that something has clicked in your heart and you will try to know who this man really is, what manner of man. You would like to enter into my emptiness and be surrounded by my emptiness.

Sannyas is the visible effort of surrender. Many people come to me and they say, "We don't take sannyas. Can't you help us?" I say, "I will try my best, but it won't be of much help because you will continuously protect yourself. You will be defensive." Sannyas is just a gesture that "Now drop my defenses and I am ready to go with you."

Of course, it is risky. You don't know me yet. How can you know? If you surrender you will know; you cannot know beforehand. So it is only for very courageous people. The daredevils - it is only for them. And I exist for daredevils, those who are ready to risk their life and to go into the unknown and to see if something happens.

If you are ready to go, it is going to happen; and then you will know the meaning. Then too you will not be able to tell somebody else what the meaning is! The meaning is in the taste, in the experience.

And you ask, "How is surrender?" Apparently, sannyas is the "how," obviously. The deeper "how" will open its doors when you have entered the porch. Sannyas is the porch; once you enter the porch - you have accepted me and I have accepted you - then there is a deep agreement, that you trust me. Now I can invite you to deeper realms of my being. You become an initiate.

The second thing happens someday. Sometimes it happens with the sannyas itself. If you are totally surrendered, then in the first moment of contact with me it happens - you become an initiate.

Sometimes it takes time. The outward sannyas happens first; then you wait, then you watch, then you see things, then slowly, slowly you relax, inch by inch you drop your ego, and more and more I penetrate in you. Then one day, without any warning, suddenly it has happened - you suddenly become aware it has happened: now my light exists in you and my heart beats in you. Sometimes it takes years, sometimes days, sometimes minutes, sometimes not a single minute. It depends on you, how much courage you have.

And of course, Westerners are gaining much more from me than the Easterners, because the East has become very cowardly. So by and by you will see more and more Western people around here.

The East is very cowardly. They have become almost corpses. They don't have the spirit - the spirit that Kabir calls the spirit for the quest of truth - they don't have it. Either they believe they already know what truth is or they think there is enough time and there is no hurry - if not in this life, then in the next life.

And for them, to be religious has become more a way of being respectable, and of course my sannyas will not appeal to them because if they are respectable, by becoming my sannyasin they will lose all respect. They will not become respectable through my sannyas. Through my sannyas they will become rebellious; they will start falling out of the society. People will start avoiding them.

People will start feeling they are dangerous and infectious, and people will think that they have gone mad or something.

But in the West something new is happening - a new courage, a new spirit of inquiry. It always comes whenever a country becomes materially rich. It always happens. When a country becomes materially poor, it loses spirit. Not only outwardly poor, it becomes inwardly poor. It loses confidence, it loses courage, it loses potentiality. It starts dragging. In the West people have become materially rich; they are well-fed, science has come to a certain point from where religion can be contacted, and people have seen material affluence. Now they would like to see something beyond it. It is not enough.

So if you are ready, don't ask "how is surrender?" Surrender.

Once it happened, Jesus was staying with his friends in a house, and the friends said, "Tell us how to pray." Jesus said, "But how to say how to pray? I will pray, and if you are ready you can participate."

And Jesus started praying. Now the others were standing there and they couldn't see what to do.

He started moving into some unknown realm. They watched and he prayed; and when he came back from the world of his prayer, they said again, "But tell us how to pray." He said, "I SHOWED you how to pray, and you ask how to pray."

Remember, maybe the question arises out of your cowardliness. Maybe you want to be certain about everything, what it is, whether it is worth it or not.

I am here surrendered. I am here in prayer. I am here in God. Come closer to me.

And I have made it easier than it has ever been, because I am not putting any conditions on you.

I accept you as you are. It has never been done before. I accept you as you are. I have no condemnation, no evaluation, no judgment. If you are a drunkard, good. If you are a gambler, good, exactly right. Because this is a sort of gamble and this is a way of becoming drunk. Whatsoever you are, you are accepted.

Come closer.

Sannyas will be a visible thing for you to do, and the next thing, leave it to me. I will do it. You do one thing; I will do the other. There is a saying in Arabian countries, "If you walk one foot towards God, he walks one thousand one feet towards you." You walk towards me one foot; I will walk one thousand and one feet towards you. You do the first; the second I will do.

But you come and ask, "But sannyas... just by changing the clothes.... It is too outward. Tell us something inward."You are not even ready to do the outward and you ask for the inward. And you are an outwardly-oriented man. That's why I am talking about the outward sannyas - that's where you are. That's from where the journey has to start. You arc yet outside yourself; from there the journey has to start. The inward can happen only later on, not right now.

Question 4:

but I have come across couples thousands and thousands of couples who are bad. In fact I have never come across a couple who is not bad. Persons are beautiful and couples are ugly. Something goes wrong somewhere. It should not be so but it is so.

The way love has been understood has been wrong. What you call love is not love; it is something else. Sometimes you are alone and you cannot tolerate your loneliness, and just to fill the gap, the inner hole, you find somebody. It is not love. And of course things are going to be bad. From the very beginning the very base is wrong. Love is a sharing of two individuals. And I call a person "individual" when he is happy with his aloneness; otherwise he is not an individual, if he cannot be happy alone. Just think. If you cannot be happy alone, how can you be happy together? Two persons are unhappy separately, and you think there is going to be a miracle? - two unhappy persons come together and suddenly happiness arises? Unhappiness is doubled - not only doubled, multiplied.

Out of your unhappiness you seek the other; then the relationship is going to be wrong. Seek the other out of happiness, and then the relationship will never be wrong. Seek out of happiness.

First meditate, first feel your own being, first pray. First grow into love; otherwise what are you going to do when you have found the lover? Then you don't know what to do.

An anecdote:

His friend was a shy one, but after being told that if he went to the dance all he would have to do would be stand in the corner, he went. The friend shoved him immediately into the arms of a pretty girl on the dance floor.

For an hour or so he lost track of his shy friend, but then spotted him standing happily next to the girl he had been "shoved" upon. What is more, he had his arm around her waist and she was looking up at him with adoring eyes.

"We are engaged," the shy one told his friend.

"Good heavens!" said the friend. "How did that happen?"

"Well," said the shy one, "I danced with her six times and I just could not think of anything else to ask her."

Your love affairs are so stupid. And then you are waiting for something great to happen out of them.

In the first place you don't have any love in your heart. That's why everybody wants to be loved. You want to be loved; your woman also wants to be loved. Naturally there is conflict: both are ready to take and nobody is ready to give. And how to give? You don't have it in the first place. Only a loving person - one who is already loving - can find the right partner.

This is my observation: if you are unhappy you will find somebody who is unhappy. Unhappy people are attracted towards unhappy people. And it is good, it is natural. It is good that the unhappy people are not attracted towards happy people; otherwise they will destroy their happiness. It is perfectly okay. Only happy people are attracted towards happy people. The same attracts the same.

Intelligent people are attracted towards intelligent people; stupid people are attracted towards stupid people.

You will see it. In Poona there are thousands of people, but only a few people will be attracted towards me - only those who are really concerned with knowing who they are. Others won't be attracted. Even my neighbors, just the next-door neighbors - they have not come to listen. In fact they are very much worried.

It happened, in one town I lived for ten years, and a person used to live just above me, but he never came TO see me. Thousands of people would come and go, but he never came. He was simply puzzled as TO why people came TO me. Then he was transferred - he was a principal in a college - he was transferred to another town. I visited the other town. I was invited to his college to speak to the students; then he heard me for the first time. He had to because he was the principal! Then he became more puzzled; he said, "Ten years I lived just on top of you, and I missed. I never came.

And I never knew that you had something to share, that you had something to give to us." He started crying.

I said, "Don't be worried. Just tell me, during these two years you have not been in that town, what has happened?" He said, "My wife died and I became very miserable. Then I started meditating, thinking maybe it helps. Then really something started happening in me and I started feeling very happy. I was worried I would not be able to be alone without my wife, but now I am so happy that I don't want to get entangled with anybody." I told him, "Maybe that's why you could understand me.

The meditation that you tried, the happiness that you are feeling - then there is a possibility to have contact with me. There you were on a different plane."

You meet people of the same plane. So the first thing to remember is: a relationship is bound to be bitter if it has grown out of unhappiness. First be happy, be joyful, be celebrating, and then you will find some other soul celebrating and there will be a meeting of two dancing souls and a great dance will arise out of it.

Don't ask for a relationship out of loneliness, no. Then you are moving in a wrong direction. Then the other will be used as a means and the other will use you as a means. And nobody wants to be used as a means! Every single individual is an end unto himself. It is immoral to use anybody as a means. First learn how to be alone. Meditation is a way of being alone.

And if you can be happy when you are alone, you have learned the secret of being happy. Now you can be happy together. If you are happy, then you have something to share, to give. And when you give you get; it is not the other way. Then a need arises to love somebody. Ordinarily the need is to be loved by somebody. It is a wrong need. It is a childish need; you are not mature. It is a child's attitude.

A child is born. Of course, the child cannot love the mother; he does not know what love is and he does not know who is the mother and who is the father. He is totally helpless. His being is still to be integrated; he is not one piece; he is not together yet. He is just a possibility. The mother has to love, the father has to love, the family has to shower love on the child. Now he learns one thing: that everybody has to love him. And he never learns that he has to love. Now the child will grow, and if he remains stuck with this attitude that everybody has to love him, he will suffer his whole life - his body has grown, but his mind has remained immature.

A mature person is one who comes to know the other need: that now I have to love somebody. The need to be loved is childish, immature. The need to love is mature. And when you are ready to love somebody, a beautiful relationship will arise; otherwise not.

"Is it possible for two people in a relationship to be bad for each other?" Yes, that's what is happening all over the world. To be good is very difficult. You are not good even to yourself. How can you be good to somebody else? You don't even love yourself! How can you love somebody else? Love yourself, be good to yourself.

And your so-called religious saints have been teaching you never to love yourself, never to be good to yourself. Be hard on yourself! They have been teaching you be soft towards others and hard towards yourself. This is absurd.

I teach you that the first and foremost thing is to be loving towards yourself. Don't be hard; be soft.

Care about yourself. Learn how to forgive yourself - again and again and again - seven times, seventy-seven times, seven hundred seventy-seven times. Learn how to forgive yourself. Don't be hard; don't be antagonistic towards yourself. Then you will flower.

And in that flowering you will attract some other flower. It is natural. Stones attract stones; flowers attract flowers. And then there is a relationship which has grace, which has beauty, which has a benediction in it. And if you can find such a relationship, your relationship will grow into prayer...

your love will become an ecstasy... and through love you will know what God is.