To be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world

Question 1:

Mediocrity is the general state of humanity as it is. It is a retardedness of intelligence. Nobody wants you to be intelligent, because the more intelligent you are, the more it is difficult to exploit you, to enslave you.

Every vested interest wants you to be mediocre. A mediocre person is just like a tree whose roots have been continuously cut so it cannot grow. The mediocre person never comes to know fruition, flowering, fragrance. He lives just like a vegetable. But this is the common state. And to keep the mediocre, mediocre, a strange thing has to be put in his mind: that he is extraordinary.

George Gurdjieff used to tell a story....

There was a shepherd who was a magician, and he had many sheep. To take care of them, not to let them wander into the forest and be eaten by wild animals, he managed a strategy. He hypnotized all the sheep and told them, "You are not sheep, you are lions." Since that day, the sheep started behaving like lions.

The mediocre person will rebel against mediocrity because it is ugly to be mediocre. But the society in many ways gives him the feeling of being extraordinary. Hence, it is very difficult to find a man who does not, deep down, believe that he is special - the only begotten son of God.

He may not say so, because he knows what happens if you say that you are the only begotten son of God. Then crucifixion is certain, and resurrection... nobody knows whether it happened or not.

So he keeps it inside. This helps him to remain mediocre.

If he understands he is mediocre, that very understanding will destroy his mediocrity. To understand you are mediocre is a great jump into intelligence.

The ordinary person I talk about is the natural person. Nature does not produce special people. It produces unique people, but not special. Everybody is unique in his own way.

The big pine tree and the small rosebush - who is higher? Neither the pine tree ever boasts that she is higher, nor the rosebush ever boasts that "You may be higher, but where are the roses? The real height is in the roses and the fragrance, in the flowering. Height itself is not enough to be higher."

But the rosebush and the pine remain together without any quarrel, competition, for the simple reason that both understand they are part of the same nature.

When I say ordinariness, I am saying drop the idea of being extraordinary, which is keeping you mediocre.

To be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world. Just watch yourself. It hurts very much, it is painful to accept that you are not extraordinary. Watch when you accept the idea that you are ordinary. A great burden is relieved. Suddenly you are in the open space, natural, just the way you are.

The ordinary person has a uniqueness and a simplicity, humbleness. Out of his simplicity, humbleness, uniqueness, he has really become extraordinary, but he has no idea of it.

So it is a paradox: the people who think they are extraordinary are simply retarded, mediocre. And the people who are humble and just accept that they are ordinary people like everybody else - you will see a light in their eyes. You will see a grace in their actions. You will not see them competing, you will not see them cheating. You will not see them betraying. They will not have double minds.

They will not be hypocrites.

What is the need for an ordinary person to be a hypocrite? He can show his heart openly to anybody, because he is not pretending anything.

You become secretive when you start pretending. You start feeling very great. You may say it or not, but by hypocrisy, masks, your head goes on becoming more and more swollen. It is a state of sickness.

And who is the person who believes himself extraordinary? The person who suffers immensely from an inferiority complex. To cover it up, he projects just the opposite idea. But he is only deceiving himself, nobody else is deceived by him.

The ordinary person has no need to be a hypocrite, no need to be a pretender. He is just open; he need not be secretive. And there is beauty in openness, simpleness.

So it is a rare paradox that the person who feels himself ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the person who goes on feeling himself extraordinary, remains very retarded, a mediocrity.

Everybody has to look within himself. But people are such deceivers that, deceiving others, slowly slowly they start deceiving themselves. They become so articulate about deceiving. It is dangerous to be a hypocrite, because sooner or later you will start thinking this is your real face.

In my thirty-five years' work with people I have come across thousands of people, intimately, and I was puzzled that these people have deceived themselves. To deceive others can be understood, but they have deceived themselves.

And you cannot take them out of that deception, because that is their only treasure. They know behind it there is just darkness, hollowness, an inferiority complex. So they cling to it.

Even in this commune - which hurts me, because at least here people should not be like that.

Otherwise, what the hell are you doing here?

I just saw Venu at the gate.... Sheela had asked which people were coming with her, and Venu had said that her place is with Sheela. I was surprised. What is she doing here standing at the gate?

Her place is not here! She should go with Sheela. Not a single moment she should be here. People should be honest!

Sheela asked me again and again during these four years, "Beloved Master, help me, so that I never deceive you, never betray you."

I told her, "Sheela, asking it again and again means there is a tendency, of which you are aware, that you can betray, you can deceive. Otherwise, what is the point of asking it?"

And finally she did. And the reason why she did is worth understanding for everybody.

When I was silent for three and a half years, she was the spokesman. I knew that this is going to be a difficult task the day I start speaking directly, because then she will see she is no more a celebrity; no interviews on the television, radio, newspapers, magazines.

But I had to speak. Just for one person I cannot hold back from one million sannyasins, and for the sannyasins who will be coming later on, my heartfelt feelings, truths, experiences. And there is too much to say.

As you get prepared only then I can say it. Those three and a half years prepared you, and now you can see the difference between the way I am speaking now and the way I was speaking three and a half years before. As you mature, as you graduate, I can tell you more naked truths, trusting that you will be able to understand them.

So the problem was, I knew that if I start speaking, then Sheela's swollen head will start shrinking, and that will be difficult. I was perfectly aware the day I started speaking, she started becoming sad; and slowly slowly she started being away from Rajneeshpuram, finding excuses that she is needed in Australia, she is needed in Europe. She was never needed before.

And this time when she came, she wrote a letter to me, "Beloved Master, I do not feel the same excitement here. I feel happier in Europe, in Australia, anywhere else." But she did not look why.

I sent a message to her that, "See the point. Where has the excitement gone? The excitement was not being with me, with the commune, creating a new way of life, hoping for a new man to arrive. That was not your real excitement. Your real excitement was becoming a celebrity - on the television, on the radio, in the magazines, in the newspapers. You enjoyed your name, your photograph; now this will not be possible. I am speaking myself. I am speaking to the whole world press. And certainly you cannot represent me."

I had to teach her everything for three and a half years, two hours every day - what she has to say, what she has not to say. And she was repeating like a parrot, because it is not her experience. But she did well; as a parrot she was perfect.

But now, when I started speaking, she started feeling sad, gloomy. I sent the message, "You should look at the cause of it. The cause is your ego.

"Three and a half years is a long enough time to get a swollen head, and I am now bringing it back to its real position. It is sick. This swelling is more dangerous than any cancer, because the cancer can kill the body, but this swelling kills the mind and the very soul of man.

"And why are you feeling happy in Europe? If you want to check it, I can come to Europe, and immediately you will know it is not because you are in Europe that you are feeling happy. You will feel even more unhappy than here."

But man is so stupid.... She did not even respond to my message. On the contrary, she collected the bunch of people that she has placed in important places. Now the sadness was turning into revengefulness. The idea was that all these people will go with her, and the commune will be in a chaos.

Now, the commune is always in a chaos! Nobody can disturb it. What more chaos can be there?

And it is a simple law that people who are in power... and I had given her all the powers, simply because I was not interested in getting involved in small things. It was impossible to be silent and get involved in small things.

She removed all the people who were in some way more intelligent, stronger, and a danger to her position; any day they can be the competitors. So she removed those people, and she chose people who were even more mediocre than her. They will never be a challenge.

Now, this Venu was saying, "My place is with Sheela." Certainly her place is with Sheela, because she is more mediocre than Sheela. But I was surprised to see her standing here. What is she doing here? She should have left with Sheela.

It is a good change. Be happy about it. It was bound to happen. Now you can have a better and stronger group of people to run the commune - because I am not afraid of anybody being more ordinary than me. You cannot find on the whole earth a competitor for me. So this gives me immense freedom.

That's why Arup can ask the question. While Sheela was here, Arup was pushed back in every way.

And I was watching, sadly. She is far more intelligent, far stronger.

Now all the people who had been thrown out of the commune by Sheela can come back. So inform all your friends who have left that Sheela is gone and gone forever. And not alone - with the whole bunch, the whole gang. So inform the people who have left just because of her, because those people were intelligent, and she could not tolerate any intelligent person.

This is a problem with all mediocre people. They cannot tolerate anybody who is better than them because that destroys their illusion of being extraordinary. But nobody can take your ordinariness.

It is something which is not a projection, but a reality.

The rosebush is ordinary, the pine is ordinary, the deer is ordinary. Why should any man try to be extraordinary?

Only man seems to be sick. The whole existence lives in absolute ordinariness and is so joyful, such a blessing; but man is sick. His sickness is that he cannot accept himself as he is. He wants to be somebody great: Alexander the Great. Less than that won't do.

But he forgets what Alexander gained. He lived only thirty-three years, spent his whole life fighting, invading, killing. He had no chance to live, no time to live.

He had met a great philosopher, sage, wise man, Diogenes, before he was going to invade India.

He asked Diogenes if he had any message for him.

Diogenes said, "Only one: rather than wasting time, live it. You are not living yourself, and you are not allowing others to live. You are committing immense crimes against life - for what? Just to be called Alexander the Great?

"Everybody thinks like that. Just inside, you can call yourself Alexander the Great; nobody is preventing you. If you want, you can even put a signboard on your chest: 'Alexander the Great' - but live! You will look like a buffoon, but that is far better than to be a buffoon; at least you will have time to live, love, sing, dance."

Alexander understood the message. He said, "I can see the point. When I come back, I will try to follow it."

Diogenes said, "Remember, nobody comes back from such an ego trip, because this ego trip never ends, it goes on and on. You will end, not your ego trip."

And that's what happened: he never came back home. On the way, he died. And when he was dying, he remembered Diogenes' statement that nobody comes back. Ego drives you, and there is no end for the ego. It creates more goals, new goals, higher goals.

In deep respect for Diogenes, he told the people who were going to carry his body to the grave, "Let my hands hang out of the casket."

His prime minister asked, "But this is not the tradition. Hands have to be inside the casket. Hanging them out will look really odd."

But he said, "I want them to hang out, because I want people to know that empty-handed I had come into the world, empty-handed I lived in the world, and empty-handed I am going from the world."

These empty hands of Alexander the Great represent almost everybody's hands.

If you want to live authentically and sincerely, then just be ordinary. Then nobody can compete with you. You are out of the race of competition, which is destructive.

Suddenly you are free to live. You have time to live. You have time to do what you want to do. You can laugh, you can sing, you can dance. You are an ordinary man. Even if the whole world laughs at it, so what? I am an ordinary man. They are all extraordinary people. They have the right to laugh; I have the right to dance. Their laughter is phony; your dance is real.

Sheela could not tolerate it. I even sent her the message, "If it gives you pleasure that I should not speak, I can go into silence again. Of course, millions of sannyasins today and tomorrow and in the future will be at a loss, because there is much which I have yet to say. But to make you happy, I can do that.

"But remember, if my silence makes you happy, then my absence may make you happier. Perhaps, deep down, my death will be the right thing for you. Then you can become the head. Nobody will be there to prevent you."

If you try to look into things deeper, you will be surprised what revealing factors come up.

Now, Sheela was very much concerned about my death - almost paranoid. She had arranged so many guards and security. But she will never understand why this paranoia.

Something deep inside herself was longing for my death. And to avoid seeing it, she was projecting that somebody is going to assassinate me.

Mind is very complex. It projects things which are inside onto others.

And she was promising me continuously, "I am yours forever."

I said, "Sheela, don't say such things, because forever is a long time. Just today is enough.

Tomorrow, nobody knows."

But she said, "I love you so much that I can say that I will always love you."

I said, "If you want to say these things, you can go on saying, but you don't see that I am a mirror. I can see all the layers within you. Why this insistence that 'I will never betray you. Even if you tell me to resign from the presidentship of the commune, foundation, or any post that I am holding, I will do it immediately'?"

I said to her, "Just wait."

Now she has resigned on her own, and she has taken those idiots she has put in powerful positions.

Vidya is gone with her. She was one of the thickest heads here.

And they all have written letters to me, "Beloved Master...." Still they don't see the point, that now it is better to address them "Mr. Rajneesh." Why "Beloved Master"?

"We love you, and we will always love you, but we are leaving." No reason why they are leaving.

And still no sensibility that words like "Beloved Master" do not suit in the context they are, perhaps unconsciously, using them.

And none of them - neither Sheela nor Vidya - has given any reason why, because they know if they give the reason why.... They cannot give the real reason, which will be very humiliating. And they cannot give any wrong reason, because I can see what is right and what is wrong. So they decided not to give any reason.

But to see the words "Beloved Master" from these people makes me sick. What they are doing is just the opposite.

These are the mediocre people. Remaining here with me for years, they have not understood what it means to be ordinary, simple human beings. They wanted a hierarchy, they wanted to be on the top, they wanted to have power. It was their political game.

I told Sheela again and again, that the people who have come to the commune have not come just to work; they have come here to meditate, to grow, to come to a realization of their self. But she was not interested in that at all. Her interest was only one: that she should remain on the top.

But it is good that on her own she has taken all the stupid people. A few are still here who have promised her they will leave. I hope they leave soon, because I have better people here, I have better people around the world who can be called.

And the commune does not become just a factory where people are only working, no time for them even to love. This was heavy on my heart for all these years. I cannot see my people just working, and tired and going to sleep.

You are not for the work. Work is for you.

We will work, we will do things, but that does not mean that you don't have any time to dance and sing and compose music and love your woman - or somebody else's woman.

If you don't have much time left for yourself, you can at the most love your own woman. To love somebody else's woman takes a longer time - to persuade her, talk all kinds of nonsense. But it is perfectly good just for a change - good for you, good for the other man's woman. Good for the other man, because he will also be having a chance with somebody else....

Because I was silent I had to keep this heavy load on my heart.

You will not believe it, that many nights I had tears in my eyes for the simple reason that I don't want to reduce my people to living in a slave camp - at least while I am alive.

I want my people to rejoice in life. Work is part of it, but not the whole of it. We will make houses, and we will make roads, and we will make everything, but for what? Just for the sake of making them?

So necessarily, I had to start speaking. And you will be surprised that all the people who were in power - Sheela, Vidya, Savita, Krishna Deva, your mayor - they are all leaving with Sheela. Thank God! - who does not exist, but in such moments you can use the name.

Now we can put more intelligent, more loving, stronger people, who will be more human and who will understand the needs of the sannyasins.

A commune has to be a place of love, song, dance. Yes, work is needed, because you need food, you need shelter. And to reach the other man's woman you need roads, so we will make them!

But that is not all. You need sometimes to just sit silently in the hills, by the side of the lake.

So I am immensely happy that Sheela has gone with her gang. Now I can give you better people who will take care of more essential things than the nonessentials.

But mediocre people function in that way. They were not ordinary. If they had accepted the ordinariness that I have been continuously talking about, they would not have been in such a trouble.

And I know, wherever they are they will be in trouble.

They may be thinking that in Europe they will not be in trouble. They are wrong. I just have to send a message to all the communes that these people should not be listened to anymore.

If they cannot be happy here, then they cannot be happy in any other commune. And those who have left with them will repent.

The remaining ones... for example, Krishna Deva, I think, is still here.

And sometimes I wonder.... Krishna Deva has been guarding me with a gun. Sometimes I think these people who can leave because Sheela is leaving, they were not here for me. Their hands and their guns were dangerous. They may not have known it, but now they can understand that they were not for me. And it is more possible for a guard to shoot me than for anybody else.

But the mediocre mind has no capacity for understanding. It is absolutely retarded. It is stuck somewhere near thirteen years of mental age, or even below it. He may be forty, he may be fifty, seventy - that does not matter, that is his physical age. He has been growing old, but he has not been growing up. You should keep the distinction. Growing old, every animal does it. Growing up, only a few human beings manage.

And the first step is just to accept your simpleness, humbleness. And how can you be an egoist in such a beautiful, immense, vast, infinite universe? What ego can you have?

Your ego may be just a soap bubble. Maybe for a few seconds it will remain, rising higher in the air.

Perhaps for a few seconds it may have a rainbow, but it is only for a few seconds. In this infinite and eternal existence your egos go on bursting every moment. It is better not to have any attachment with soap bubbles.

You can play with them while you are in your bathtub. You can go on bursting those soap bubbles, telling yourself, "This is my ego that I myself am destroying." So when you come out of your bathtub, you are an ordinary man, fresh, humble, clean.

The desire to rule over others, the will to power, is one of the greatest crimes that man has committed. My sannyasins have to be aware of it. Hence, my insistence for being just ordinary.

And it is so beautiful, because I am saying it out of my experience.

No egoist in the whole history of humanity has said that ego is beautiful, that it has given him great ecstasies. All the egoists have died in frustration, despair, because the ego knows no limits. So you are always frustrated.

I can tell you from my experience of being just an ordinary human being that it is the ultimate ecstasy.

It merges you with existence. There is no barrier. It merges you with the stars, and with the sky, and with the earth. You are no more separate.

Ego separates you.

And the feeling of oneness with this exquisite existence is religion to me.

Question 2:

There has always been a confusion in people's minds about singlemindedness - in other words, concentration - and meditation. They think both are the same.

The reality is just the opposite. When you are single-minded, you are one dimensional. Your mind becomes narrower and narrower and narrower, and remains focused on one point. This is concentration.

If you are learning shooting, the art of archery, and things like that, it will be helpful.

There is a story in ancient Indian scriptures. The great master archer, Dronacharya, asked his disciples to shoot their arrows at a bird sitting on a tree. They were all ready with their bows and arrows, and he said, "Before you shoot, I want to ask a question, and each one has to answer."

He asked the first one. The question was, "What are you seeing?"

He said, "I am seeing everything: the tree, the sky, other trees, the birds flying."

He went on asking the same question to the other disciples. One disciple said, "I can see only the tree on which the bird is sitting."

He was far better, but the other one was even closer. He said, "I can only see the bird."

The master has said that you have to make the target the bird's right eye.

The other said, "I can see both the bird's eyes."

Arjuna was the only one who said, "I don't see anything except the right eye."

This is one-pointedness.

Arjuna became his master's most important disciple, a great archer.

So one-pointedness is needed in many things, but it is not meditation. It is putting your mind together in one narrow dimension - linear, just in a line.

In science it is useful, but it is not meditation.

Meditation is a state of no-mind.

Meditation means the mind has stopped. Just you are, pure consciousness, simple awareness; all the dimensions are available to you. So it is just the opposite of concentration.

You are asking what it means to space out. You all know it.

When you are doing something and you are not there, that is spacing out. It is against concentration.

It is against meditation. It is just a wandering mind.

If you are chopping wood and thinking of a film star, you are spaced out. And it is dangerous: you may chop one of your legs. You are not where you are supposed to be.

Even in such sacred moments when you are making love to your beloved, you are not there. The woman is there, but her mind is also far away. So two bodies are going through a gymnastics.

Of course it is not productive of any contentment. You both come out of it frustrated, cheated.

Something went wrong.

The man immediately turns to the other side, pulls over the blanket, and goes to sleep. The woman cries, weeps, because such a moment... and nothing comes out of it. The whole day she has been waiting, that her lover will be coming; but when he was making love, she was thinking of Muhammad Ali the Great.

So whenever two persons are making love, there is at least a crowd. The man is thinking of Marilyn Monroe, the woman is thinking of Muhammad Ali, and these pictures in the mind go on changing.

And on the margin they are trying to make love.

Why unnecessarily harass each other? If this is the situation in love, what will be the situation in other things?

Spacing out is unhealthy. If you want to think of Muhammad Ali, you can sit silently and think of Muhammad Ali. At least it will be one-pointedness. But people are doing many things at a time, and they think that this is some achievement.

Just in front of my house in India, was one woman I used to see every day. She had a small child.

So the child was put in a rocking chair, and she would be sitting in front of the child, and she would go on pushing the rocking chair with her leg, because the child cannot manage that. So the chair would go on rocking, and the child would remain silent.

And she was continuously making something for the child, because the winter was coming: a sweater, socks, a hat. So with her hands she was engaged with the sweater, and with her eyes she was always reading the newspaper. A multipurpose woman!

And I don't think this was all; this was outside so you could see. What was going on in her head nobody knows, because when she can manage three things simultaneously outside, in the mind she can manage three hundred things.

These people go on missing the moment - its purity, its life, its joy - because they are not there. And they will never be anywhere if this becomes their habit - which has become the habit of the whole humanity.

And you ask me what is work and worship.

Work is when you space out. You do the work, but you are not totally there. If you are totally there, it is worship.

Then the work is not only work; then the work takes a new flavor: of silence, of meditativeness, of joy - just the wind passing by, the sunrays falling on you, you chopping wood, and the perspiration coming to your forehead. And all is in utter silence; you are simply chopping wood. You are not going anywhere; you are here.

One of the emperors of Japan had gone to see a great Zen master, Nan Yin. He asked Nan Yin, "What have you learned that makes you a great master, known all over the country?"

Nan Yin said, "Very simple: when I chop wood, I simply chop wood; and when I carry the water from the well, I simply carry the water from the well."

The emperor said, "I had come to listen to something spiritual. What nonsense are you talking?

Chopping wood, you simply chop wood? Everybody does it; what is special in it? Carrying water from the well, you carry the water from the well? I have come a long distance, and I am your country's emperor. You should at least give me some spiritual advice."

Nan Yin said, "That was my spiritual advice, and I want to make it clear to you that everybody is not doing that. It took me years to chop wood without any thoughts: to just be there, chopping.

"And it is tremendously beautiful: the sound in the valley, the chips of the wood flying all over, the wind blowing through the trees, their song, their music. And I am utterly silent, just chopping wood.

Carrying water from the well is the same.

"My whole day is the same. I have given you, in short, my basic approach of life. Be where you are.

Don't let mind go away."

Work immediately becomes worship - if you have understood Nan Yin's statement.

Things are not complex, things are very simple. You just have to be a little alert and watch what is happening within you: whether it is singlemindedness, whether it is spacing out, whether it is work, whether it is worship. Just watch.

And your goal should be that everything becomes worship: walking, or sitting, or even doing nothing.

If you are there, absolutely there - nothing is moving in your mind, all movement has stopped - then your whole life is worship.

Then your whole life is meditation.

Christians go to the church on Sunday. Their religion is Sunday religion. One hour there, listening to the same boring sermon - but they have to listen to it, because they are afraid of falling in hell.

This boring sermon is okay; for a few years you listen to it, and you will go to heaven.

But they don't know that in heaven you will have all the saints for eternity giving you the same sermon. They will bore you so much, because the time is so long. And Sunday is not Sunday there; it is every day, the whole day, and for eternity.

And suicide is not possible in paradise - at least I have not come across any incident that any saint has been able to commit suicide - although everybody who is there must be thinking of it. But it does not happen in heaven. They will be wanting to come back to the earth. It is not allowed.

They may be thinking that it would have been better to be in hell, because in hell there are all the colorful people: all poets, painters, singers, dancers, actors, actresses. All the colorful people, juicy people, are in hell.

And people who are just dry bones are in heaven. They are not allowed to visit hell even for the long weekend. Once you enter heaven there is no exit.

Other religions are in the morning - ten minutes, twenty minutes - chanting mantras, and thinking that this is all.

I have consideredly given you red clothes, a mala with a locket of a madman, to remind you - even in sleep - that your whole life has to become religious; it is not a question of a few minutes, a few hours.

And for me, there is no other paradise. You have to create it here and now. You have to learn how to create paradise.

Meditation is the technology.

Changing work into worship is the secret.

So wherever you are, it doesn't matter. If after death there is heaven and hell, then of course you will all be in hell with me, because hell needs my people immensely.

And there are so many intelligent people; in fact, all intelligent people are there. We can create a really big commune.

And the people who are in hell have been misfits in the world. But we are a commune of misfits, so nobody can be a misfit with us. We are all misfits, and nobody takes note of it. In fact, we respect the misfit person because he has some individuality. The person who simply fits like a cog in the wheel is not worth.... Let him go to heaven. Perhaps he may serve as a cog in some wheel.

If there is any heaven and hell, if we end up by chance in heaven - accidents happen - we are going to do the same. We are going to initiate those poor saints into sannyas, and teach them Dynamic Meditation. And they will rejoice immensely, because for centuries they have been sitting there, simply playing on the harp, "Alleluia, alleluia!"

I have heard about a porter in Munich, a German guy, addicted to beer. By mistake - that's why I say accidents happen - by mistake, somebody else was to die but the angels of death took the poor porter, because he was lying in the other man's house who was going to die, completely drunk. It was just a mistake. In such a state he could not find his house, so wherever it happened, he fell down there. The man of the house was not at home, so the angels took that man.

When he opened his eyes he could not believe where he was. He was handed a harp.

He said, "What are you doing? I am a porter, I don't play the harp."

They said, "Here you will have to play the harp for eternity and sing, 'Alleluia!' You sit on one of the clouds. Just look at what the other saints are doing."

But the man said, "I am not a saint! I am just a porter in the Munich station. And what about my beer?"

The angels said, "Don't mention such things here. These things are not available. All that you have to do is rejoice and play."

For a few minutes he tried. He said, "What nonsense! I was living such a beautiful life in Munich, earning well as a porter in the station. And then every evening going to the pub, meeting the friends, drinking - it was such a joy. And where have I landed? I am not a saint at all; I never even went to the church."

He was very angry after a few hours. "This is too much. Just in a few hours I am getting so angry, and it is a question of eternity. Something has to be done!"

He became angry. And a porter is, after all a porter, he is not a professor. His language is not of the cultured, high society. So he would sing, "Alleluia, alleluia," and in between he would say, "Fuck you all!" - and start again, "Alleluia, alleluia."

The other saints saw that this man was doing really badly. Between "Alleluia, alleluia," he says something which is not mentionable.

They went to God and said, "This man is saying things which have never been said."

God said, "I know. The trouble is you have brought a wrong man. He is not the saint I have sent you to bring. He is a porter in Munich, and naturally he is getting angry. And when he gets angry he will say things like that. You take him back and leave him in Munich so that he can enjoy his life. He is not meant for heaven."

The man was brought down. He was immensely happy. Immediately he went to the pub and he said, "Alleluia! Now bring as much beer as you can." He said, "My God! I had entered into such a bad space. Perhaps I was too drunk and dreamt....

"Only one thing helped me. And everybody condemned me - 'Don't use that word' - but only that word helped me. Alleluia did not do anything! Playing on the harp I got tired, but the moment I said to the saints, 'Fuck you all!' they all disappeared from their clouds."

So if by chance we end up in heaven, remember the word. Don't forget it! And when so many people on the harps sing that beautiful word... we are going to change heaven into real heaven.

You just have to know the secret - and I have told you the secret.

Okay?