The song of the tide

Question 1:

My contradictions are meant to do exactly what is happening to you. I don't want your mind to be convinced by me. I want to relate with your heart, because that is the only true communion. Mind to mind is always superficial.

I can be consistent, but then I will be convincing your mind - and that is the last thing I want to do.

I am not a missionary, and I have no message for you. I have only experience, and the way to convey the experience to you is not through words, theories, philosophies. The argument is not the answer.

So first I have to dismantle your mind, and the best way to dismantle your mind is to contradict myself as much as I can. Either you will escape, feeling that you may go crazy, or if you have guts, you will remain here and really go crazy!

When the mind becomes inoperable, that is the moment when the heart starts functioning.

You are in a good space. If the mind is saying, "I don't know," the mind is closing up shop. And here, when the mind closes the shop, immediately the doors of your heart start opening. They are two sides of the same coin. That's why when you hear me contradicting myself, you have a good laugh.

That is the right response to my contradictions.

Yes, it is still not a state of no-mind. It is still mind that is saying, "I do not know." When the mind is completely gone, in a state of no-mind, there is nobody to say "I do not know." That is the last knowledge. It is knowledge, "I do not know" - at least this much you know. This is the last barrier.

It also drops; then there is no question of knowing or not knowing. For the first time you feel, and feeling is the way of experiencing.

When you are in your head you are millions of miles away from me.

When you are in your heart you are in my heart too, because hearts don't know separation.

And my whole work is that it beats in the same rhythm in all of you.

Then you become an orchestra. There is still much more than the heart in you, but without heart you cannot reach your innermost treasure, the being.

So these are the three words: thinking, feeling, being. From thinking, nobody has ever been able to reach being. Nobody can bypass feeling; feeling is the bridge. The first step is from thinking to feeling, and the second step is from feeling to being. And in two steps the whole journey is complete.

So remember, feeling will be tremendously beautiful, but don't stop there. That is only a stopover.

You can rest there a little bit, enjoy the world of the heart, but remember there is one step more.

Through contradictions I destroy your clinging to the mind and thinking. Through silence I destroy the world of your feeling. And when both these layers are gone, you are as existence wanted you to be, in your purity, in your individuality. You have come home.

So don't be worried, the journey has begun. Don't stop until you come back home, where there is no thinking, no feeling, but only a sense of existence. In that experience, I will be able to convey to you that which is unconveyable in any other way. Then I am not the master and you are not the disciple.

In the mind, I am the teacher, you are the student.

In feeling, I am the master, you are the disciple.

In being, I am not, you are not - existence is.

Question 2:

Who told you that I am an ordinary man?

It must be me! Only an extraordinary being can have the guts to say that he is ordinary. Every ordinary person thinks in himself that he is extraordinary, although he has not the guts to say it.

I am extraordinary! Otherwise there is no reason for all of you to be here with me. What the hell are you doing here with an ordinary man?

Yes, while dancing with me you must have experienced something that you cannot experience with anybody else - because it is not a dance of two bodies, not a dance but a deep, very deep meeting.

Don't listen to my words.

Trust what you feel with me.

That dance has given you the right dimension which I cannot give you with words. Words are ordinary, but the silence, the beautiful dance - mingling, meeting, merging into each other, forgetting who you are... the dance is drinking from the very source of my being.

You have tasted something of me.

I have to create so many devices for you so that you can be taken out of your imprisonment.

You would never have thought that one day you would be dancing with me. Your mind simply stopped. Your heart started functioning with great energy. Looking into my eyes, looking into my gestures, slowly slowly there is a synchronicity. Then there are not two persons dancing, there is only dance. And that is the state of the divine drunkard.

You are blessed. But don't make it a mind thing; otherwise you will be back to the same old miserable state.

What you have experienced in the dance, let it become your life now.

And it is not that you have to dance only with me. I only give you the key; then, dance with the wind, dance with the sun, dance with the trees, and everywhere you will find me dancing with you. That's a promise.

Ordinarily, I never give promises.

Question 3:

So then don't get enlightened! Who is forcing you to become enlightened? Just get lost!

Do you know what you are saying? Do you understand the implications of it? I know what your life is, and I know what you are calling juicy. It is nothing but Coca-Cola. I have known your life, that's why I can say that. I have been in the same space where you are.

When you become enlightened, it is not another idea like heaven, because you never become heaven. Have you ever heard of that, somebody becoming heaven? Heaven is a hope for all those who are miserable and are living in hell. It is for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Mohammedans; it is not for my people.

Enlightenment is a state of your own being.

It is not somewhere else far away above the clouds; it is within you. It simply means you start feeling and experiencing life itself. And it is luminous, hence the word 'enlightenment'.

You have no idea of your own life, so what juice are you experiencing? Making love to a woman?

That is making coffee - and with so much trouble. When there is instant coffee available, why are you doing these gymnastics?

A drunkard was roaming around the beach, and he saw a man, a wrestler, doing push-ups. He was very much puzzled. Finally, he could not contain himself; he went to the wrestler and said, "Friend, your girl has escaped! I also do these push-ups," he said, "but I always do them with my girl. What are you doing?"

You say, "Life is so juicy." Is it really so? Then why are you here? What is the search? What are you seeking? It is not juicy. Yes, once in a while you may get a moment of blissfulness, but that moment makes you more miserable. If misery is continuous you become accustomed to it. Man's adaptability is almost infinite. If you are in suffering, and suffering remains constant, you settle for it, you start taking it for granted.

Here, perhaps you may have some moments when another dimension of being enters you. For a moment you are no longer in suffering, in misery, in jealousy, in greed, in fear, in any kind of paranoia. For a single moment you are where the enlightened person remains twenty-four hours a day. He cannot fall from that state.

And your juiciness about life is always a kind of dependence. You have a beautiful man, or a woman - you think life is so juicy. But even Cleopatra - who is known to be the most beautiful woman who has walked on the earth - within two, three days will be just an ordinary woman. All the juice will disappear soon, because a woman is after all a woman, and a man is after all a man. You will start fighting, quarreling, arguing, nagging, and you will wonder what happened to the juice.

It was all imagination; imagination cannot last forever. It was a hallucination; you cannot depend on it. And everybody is dependent on different kinds of hallucinations. Sooner or later there is frustration.

Enlightenment is independence: the juice is not coming from somebody else. If it is coming from somebody else it can be stopped any moment. It if is coming from somebody else, the person can change his mind - his juice can start flowing towards someone else, not towards you. That's why there is so much jealousy. If your wife just looks at a beautiful man, stops on the street, forgets all about you - you are standing by the side - will you feel juicy?

Just look at husbands walking with their wives on the street in the marketplace, and you can immediately say whether this man is a husband or a boyfriend. There is no need to ask. The husband is burdened, sad, dragging somehow, wanting to escape - so many beautiful women are passing by. He cannot even look at someone, the wife is there watching, a detective. They both are watching each other, detecting something to fight about.

Anything that is dependent on something outside you.... You may be feeling very juicy because you have so much money, but soon you see you cannot eat the money, you cannot squeeze the dollar and take the juice out of it. You may hurt your hand. And you can see many people who are far richer than you, and far more miserable also.

Have you ever heard of a rich man being blissful? He is worried, continuously in anxiety. Nights, he cannot sleep - in fact, a man's richness can be measured by how many sleeping pills he needs.

Yes, in the beginning, when suddenly you win a lottery, you start jumping and enjoying and you feel life is very juicy. But the lottery is outside you, it is not going to happen every day. Tomorrow you will be miserable because the lottery is not coming today. The day after tomorrow? And what will you do with the lottery money? You may gamble, you may go to a pub and get drunk and fall in a gutter.

You may go to a prostitute. What are you going to do with the money that you have got?

Anything that is outside you can only give you an illusory feeling of beauty, of joy. But those moments are dangerous because they make you aware of all the darkness of your life. They give you the contrast.

Enlightenment is not an idea. It is an experience independent of any object. Nobody can steal it, nobody can borrow it. There is no way to lose it; it is yours forever. And then you will know what real juice means.

Right now you may be having a few games here and there. They are simply wasting your time. The same time can be given to finding your reality, your being. Enlightenment is eternal. And there is no way to lose it, because it is you. You have discovered yourself.

You are asking, "If the enlightened person is never born again in the body, and since life is so juicy, why bother about enlightenment?" You can ask the question because you don't have any way to compare. You have only known this life. You don't know there is an eternal life too, with no disease, no sickness, no AIDS, no old age, no death. That is enlightenment.

For what should the enlightened person be born again? To be sick? To be old? To go through this whole rut of life, which is nothing but suffering, continuous pain? The enlightened person does not enter into the body again because he has entered into the cosmos.

It is as if you are living in a small hut, and somebody says to you that there is a marble palace of infinite dimensions; but one condition is, you cannot come back to your hut again. You will say, "I don't want to go after such an idea. Losing my hut? It is so cozy and so comfortable, and I have lived here so long." The poor man cannot compare, he has no idea....

Have you heard the story of a frog from the ocean who happened to come to Oregon? He was on a journey towards the White House. The moment he heard that even chimpanzees can become presidents in America, he said, "What is wrong with me, a perfectly beautiful frog?"

Feeling thirsty - in Oregon, who would not feel thirsty? - he jumped into a well. In the well there was another frog who had owned the well as far back as he could remember. He was surprised to see this frog, but frogs are not so hostile to strangers as Oregonians are. He welcomed the new frog and said, "Any news about the outside world? - I don't go anywhere, I simply live here. It is perfectly beautiful: enough water, enough shade, enough food."

The frog from the outside said, "My boy, you don't know anything. I come from the ocean."

"Ocean?" the frog said. 'What is that? What kind of a well?"

The frog from the ocean said, "It is not a well at all."

The frog of the well asked, "Then how big is it?"

It was difficult for the ocean frog to give some estimate of the vastness of the ocean. He said, "It is very difficult to express. You have to experience it."

The well frog said, "I will give you some measurements." He jumped one-fourth of the well, and he said, "Is it that big? No?" Then he jumped half of the well and said, "Is your ocean that big? No?"

He jumped the whole well from one corner to the other, and he said, "Is your ocean that big?"

The ocean frog said, "Please forgive me, you don't understand at all. From your well, there is no way to measure the ocean."

And the well frog said, "Just get out of here! You are insulting your host. This is all a lie! There is no such thing. It is just your idea, just to make me feel humiliated. This is not the right attitude, right etiquette! Just get out of this place immediately; otherwise I will kill you!"

You cannot be angry with the well frog - that was his only vision, his only perspective. You have to forgive him. You have to forgive him because you are in his position. If you don't forgive him, you will not be able to forgive yourself either.

I am talking about the oceanic juice, and you are comparing it with Coca-Cola.

Just come along with me. There is no other way, no other way to explain it to you. All explanations are false. But I can take you to the place, the very space of enlightenment. I know the way. I know your situation. I was one day in your situation, and I would have asked the same question.

Unless you know enlightenment, don't start thinking about it as an idea. It is not an idea. It is reality, your very reality. And a reality so big, so vast, so beautiful, so full of blessings - the whole universe is smaller than it.

But if you are satisfied in your well in Oregon, it is perfectly okay. It is not a trouble for me. You can become one day the attorney general of Oregon, or the governor. But remember, whatever you become, you will remain a frog of the wells - limited, very much limited.

I am challenging you to jump out of the well. And the ocean is not far away - just come with me up to Portland. It is not a long journey either, because my methods are jet-age methods. By the time you have put the belts on, you have reached, it is time to get out of the plane. And the moment you see the ocean, there will be no need for me to convince you that this is bigger than your well. In fact, I will see tears flowing from your eyes, of sheer joy, of great gratitude that the ocean was so close and you remained confined in a small well your whole life. And you were thinking it was very juicy.

Now you know the beauty of vastness.

Now you know the song of the tide, the waves.

Now you know the sunset on the ocean.

In your well it was always night: dark, dismal, dull. Here, confronting the ocean, every moment is change. The ocean is never static; waves upon waves... it is moving. It is so full of energy; it is not something dead, it is alive.

But it is up to you; nobody can force you into enlightenment. Only you, if you have any courage, can take the jump.

I can guarantee one thing: you would not like to be born again, because what have you gained? In the body, in this life, you are a pauper. Enlightened, you will become an emperor. Why should an emperor want to be a pauper again?

But first one has to have both the experiences; only then is there the possibility of comparison.

Otherwise, you think what you are living is real, and enlightenment is just an idea like heaven. No.

Heaven is just an idea, enlightenment is your consciousness blossoming, flowering with tremendous fragrance - inexhaustible. You can share it with the whole world. You are so blessed, you can bless the whole existence.

And this I am saying on my own experience.

Question 4:

First, you have asked; and I had said, "DON'T ask; otherwise, it shall not be given to you." You have not understood it.

Second, you quote an Arabian proverb: "Trust in Allah, but first tie down your camel."

In the desert of Arabia in the night, if you go to sleep your camel can move in any direction, and you may not be able to find the camel again. Hence the proverb: "Tie down the camel first; then trust in Allah." That proverb is not made by any saint nor any prophet, that proverb has come out of generations of human experience. It is the conclusion of millions of people's lives.

Trust in Allah - because there is no Allah, but if you want to trust, trust. But on that trust don't leave the camel untied; otherwise, you will be in difficulty. Allah is not going to take care of the camel the whole night.

This is folk wisdom. It does not say, "There is no Allah, so don't bother about Allah; just bind your camel, tie your camel." But that actually is the meaning. Both cannot be true together. If trust in Allah is enough, then just say to Allah, "Please take care of my camel, I am going to sleep." And just one experience will show you that there is no Allah, and no trust is of any help: the camel has gone.

The camel does not believe in your Allah or in your trust; he believes in being tied. So do what the camel believes in, not what you believe in. Use the language of the camel, not your theology, your religion. The camel is not Mohammedan, not Hindu nor Christian.

Except for man, no animal worships anybody. All animals are free of religions, theologies, churches.

And strange, that you think you are more evolved than animals. At least in this case, you are not.

Whom are you worshipping? You have not seen, you have never met, you don't have any eyewitness nearby - and you are trusting in something absolutely hypothetical.

It is folk wisdom. It is practical and pragmatic. I would like to say to you, forget all about Allah and trust: you simply tie down your camel, that will do. Why bring in Allah and trust, when just tying down is enough? That's actually the meaning of the proverb.

And you are not listening to me, or perhaps you are not getting the point although you hear me. I had said, "Ask not, and it shall be given to you." Asking makes you a beggar, and the blessings of this existence can belong only to an emperor.

Do not ask.

What is yours will be revealed to you.

In asking, in running, in seeking, in searching, you may completely forget that what you are looking for is within you.

In my childhood I had a teacher with very weak eyes and very thick glasses; they had almost become part of his body. One day when I was sitting with him, he started looking here and there. I asked, "What is the matter?"

He said, "I am looking for my glasses."

I said, "How can you look without glasses?"

He said, "That's right."

I said, "You are getting senile. The glasses are on your nose."

He touched them, and then he said, "This is strange. Perhaps you are right that I am going senile.

The glasses are on my eyes, and through the glasses I am looking." It was a simple thing: he could not look without glasses, and he was looking all around, searching. That was enough proof that the glasses were on his eyes. But in searching.... In fact, he was in a hurry: one of his friends was coming, an old friend. He was an old man, and the station was almost two miles away - so he was in a hurry to get to the station. In the hurry he forgot that the glasses were on his own eyes.

The people who are seeking, searching, asking, running all over the world to find the truth, have only forgotten one thing: that before you start searching anywhere, please look within. That is the first place to start with. And whoever has looked within has never searched anywhere else. He has always found - without exception.

You are born with the truth.

It is your very flavor.

You can forget it, but you cannot lose it.

And that's what has happened: you have forgotten. You got so interested in so many things that you have forgotten who you are. Whom are you going to ask? Who is going to give you the answer?

I had said that statement in contrast to Jesus Christ's words. He says, "Seek and ye shall find."

Analyze that sentence. That simply means that what you are seeking is something outside you:

"Seek and ye shall find." But if it is the seeker itself, then seek and you will go on missing.

Jesus says, "Ask and it shall be given to you." He is trying to convince you to pray - that is the meaning of ask. Pray, beg, and God is compassionate: if you pray honestly, it will be given to you.

But no prayer has ever been answered - not even Jesus Christ's prayer. On the cross he was waiting and waiting for God to do the miracle, and finally out of frustration, anger, disillusionment, he shouted, "Have you forsaken me?" Still there was no answer from the sky.

There is nobody. You cannot complain; it was your idea to project a God far above the clouds. Now, ideas don't answer. That's why I said, "Ask not." It is already given to you. Just keep quiet, silent.

I am against prayer because I am against begging. I am against prayer because there is nobody in the sky to answer your prayer. You are simply wasting your time; not only that, you are living a deception.

There is no need to pray. You have it already within you! Just close your eyes and look within. Go deeper, as deep as you can go, and at the very innermost core you are in for a great surprise: the one you were looking for is not above the clouds, it is just within you. It is you. And that moment is the moment of total freedom, total independence.

Jesus says, "Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you." I am reminded of a Sufi woman mystic.

There have been very few women who have attained to the state of enlightenment. Her name was Rabiya al-Adabiya.

She was passing along the street - she was not much known, it is a man's world. Who cares about a woman, even if she is enlightened? She saw in front of a mosque a very famous Mohammedan saint, Hassan - who was known all over the country and beyond - with his hands stretched towards the sky, praying to God, "Give me this, give me that."

Rabiya was a rare woman in the history of men. She went, stood behind Hassan, and hit him on his head. He certainly could not believe that he is asking God for beautiful things, and a hit comes!

He looked back, and he found a woman. Hassan said, "This is not right, disturbing somebody in his prayer time."

Rabiya said, "You idiot! You were asking, 'Please open the doors' - and I tell you the doors have never been closed! So who is going to open them? There is nobody to close them, there is nobody to open them. Just enter!"

Jesus says, "Knock, and the doors shall be opened unto you." There are no doors. If you knock you will be knocking on a wall. Then you can knock with your head, still the doors will not open.

As far as existence is concerned there are no doors. It is all open, from all sides. Just enter from anywhere, and the closest place to enter it is within you. Any other place will be distant. Why not start from the point where you are?

So first, get there where you are - grounded, centered in your own interiority - and the miracle is, there will be no need for you to go anywhere.

No need to knock - the doors are open.

Your interiority is the door, the open door for the whole cosmos.

Question 5:

There is no harm in crying if it comes out of gratefulness, if it comes out of joy, if it comes out of love.

Tears are beautiful. What words cannot say, tears can say.

And you feel a deep sadness. That too, is not bad. Just as near high mountains there are valleys - you cannot have valleys without mountains, you cannot have mountains without valleys. Mountains have their beauty, valleys have their beauty. Both are one. So when you are full of joy, love and gratitude, you are raised high to a mountain, you are on the peak of Everest. But by the side there is a deep valley - that is your sadness. There is no need to be worried about it.

The sannyasin has to enjoy everything. He has to enjoy blissfulness, he has to enjoy sadness, because sadness has its own beauty. Joy can never be as deep as sadness. Sadness is unfathomable. Enter into it, allow its silence to penetrate you. The laughter, the dance, the joy - they have their beauties, but sadness is not without beauty. It has tremendous silence, stillness, serenity. You have just to start looking in the right direction.

Your mind is associated with your old sadness - that your husband has not come back home, the night is half over and you are sad. I am not talking about that sadness - that you are going bankrupt and you are sad. I am not talking about that sadness.

The sadness you are experiencing is part of the gratitude, blessing, love. It is not negative. This sadness has its own positivity. It is as existential as your joy; in fact, it gives the foundation to all your blessings. A man who has not know the silence of sadness is incomplete. You should know both.

Life consists of contradictions. You should know the day, its beauty; you should know the night and its beauty. And remember, they are not separate. Every day brings you to the night, every night brings you back to the day. It is one wheel, one circle, one organic whole. Once you understand that, then in your life there will be a wholeness: nothing is rejected, everything is absorbed.

And to me, to experience life in its wholeness is the only holy thing.

The word 'holy' is derived from whole. Don't forget that your saints are not whole, cannot be. They have not accepted life in its wholeness. They have chosen, they have been calculating.

My sannyasins can be holy, because I don't tell you to choose. I tell you to enjoy and celebrate everything. Once in a while, sadness is such a relaxation that if you are continuously laughing, continuously joyous, you will get tired and bored. That sadness gives you relaxation so that you can laugh again. It is not against your laughter, they are all together. In life everything is joined with everything else.

That's why I say, all old religions have been teaching renunciation. I teach you rejoicing, not renunciation, because renunciation means: "Cut off this, cut off that. Drop out of the world, go to the monastery. Forget your family, your wife, your children. Be celibate. Fast. Don't enjoy your food. Torture yourself. Don't love your own body." Renunciation is sick.

Rejoice - that is health. And let me remind you, the word 'health', the word 'whole', the word 'holy', all come from the same root. Health means healed; the wound is healed. Now nothing is missing, there is no wound in you. You are complete, you are a circle.

Be whole, and health and holiness will follow you like a shadow.