Blessed are those who doubt

Question 1:

The difference between doubt and negativity is great.

They look alike; on the surface they have the same color, but deep down the difference is unbridgeable.

First, doubt is not negativity; neither is it positivity.

Doubt is an open mind, without any prejudice.

It is an inquiring approach.

Doubt is not saying anything, it is simply raising a question. That question is to know, to find what the truth is.

Doubt is a pilgrimage.

It is one of the most sacred values of human beings.

Doubt does not mean no. It simply says, "I do not know, and I am prepared to know. I am ready to go as far as possible, but unless I myself come to know, how can I say yes?"

Negativity has already said no. It is not inquiry. It has come to a conclusion, the same way somebody has come to the conclusion to say yes. One man says God is; his statement is positive. The other says there is no God; his statement is negative. But both are sailing in the same boat, they are not different people. They have not inquired. Neither the theist has doubted nor the atheist has doubted; both have accepted borrowed knowledge.

Doubt says that, "I myself would like to know, and unless I know for myself, it is not knowledge. Only my experience is going to be decisive." He is not arrogant, he is not denying anything. He is just open for inquiry.

Doubt is not disbelief - that's how religions have been confusing people. They confuse doubt with disbelief. In fact disbelief and belief are exactly the same. Both accept knowledge from others, from books, from masters. And remember, anything that you do not know, yet you have started believing or disbelieving in it... you have missed a great opportunity for inquiry. You have closed the doors already, by yes or by no. You have not traveled.

It is easier to say yes, it is easier to say no, because there is nothing you have to do.

But to doubt needs guts.

To doubt needs courage to remain in the state of not-knowing, and go on questioning everything till the moment you yourself arrive at the reality. When you come to the reality there is no negativity, no positivity. You simply know - it is your experience. I will not say it is positivity because positivity always has the other pole of negativity. An experience goes beyond both; the whole world of polarities is transcended. That is true wisdom.

Doubt is the way to truth.

No or yes are not ways, they prevent you.

It will look very strange, that yes does the same thing as no. In dictionaries they are opposites, but in reality they are not. They look opposite only, but both have not asked the question. Both have not tried to find out what the case is.

The communist believes, exactly as the catholic believes. The communist believes that there is no God. You can call it disbelief, but it is his belief. He has not inquired, he has not meditated; he has done nothing to find out that there is no God. The theist says there IS God. He has also done nothing. Both have chosen without moving an inch towards truth. That's why a very strange thing happens: the person who is a theist, a believer, can become a disbeliever, an atheist, in a single moment; and vice versa.

Before the revolution in Russia, Russia was one of the most theistic, religious countries of the world.

Millions of people in Russia could have sacrificed their life for God. After the revolution, when the authority changed, when the priest changed, when The Holy Bible was replaced by the holy DAS KAPITAL, within ten years the whole country became atheist.

It was amazing! People who had believed their whole life that there is God started disbelieving. Even communists could not understand that these people are the same people who could have died for God - and now they are ready to die for no-God.

Nobody has analyzed the situation up to now, what happened there. This is the analysis of the fact:

negativity and positivity are both belief systems.

Doubt is against both. Doubt is the insistence of the individual that he wants to taste, to experience the truth. He is not ready to accept it from anybody else, this way or that.

They are very, very rare people who doubt.

But let me say to you: Blessed are those who doubt, because they shall inherit the kingdom of truth.

It is arduous to doubt, it is risky, it is dangerous.

One is going into the unknown, with no preparation, with no prejudice. He is entering into the dark hole, not even believing that there will be the other end of the tunnel, and he will again come out of darkness.

There is no belief; he simply takes the challenge.

There is only a quest, a question.

He himself becomes a question.

It is very consoling to have the answer, and if it is freely available, as it is.... Jesus says, "Just believe in me and you need not bother: I will take care. I will choose you at the day of judgment. I will recommend you to God: 'These are my people - they should be allowed in paradise.' All that you have to do is believe."

A real shortcut - simple belief. That's why thousands of people around the world have believed, and thousands of others have disbelieved. Their sources are different but the basic approach is the same.

In India there has been a very ancient philosophy, charvaka. That philosophy says there is no God, no heaven, no hell, no punishment for your bad actions and no reward for your good actions. And thousands have believed in it. It is negative, absolutely negative, but very comfortable. You can steal, you can murder, you can do anything you like; after death nothing survives.

In many ways the West has lagged behind the East, particularly as far as religion, philosophy, culture, are concerned. Charvaka is a five-thousand-year-old ideology; Karl Marx just in the last stage of the previous century said there is no God. He was not aware of charvaka, he thought he had come to a great discovery. For five thousand years charvakas have already been saying that; but they had not inquired.

The man who created the philosophy was Brihaspati - must have been a man of charismatic personality. He convinced people that you can do anything you want to because the thief, the murderer, the saint, all fall: dust unto dust. And after death nothing is left; the saint disappears, the sinner disappears. So don't bother at all about afterlife, there is none.

This is not inquiry, because charvakas and their master Brihaspati have never gone beyond death.

According to their philosophy, if they had gone they would have not come back - so on what grounds do they say that there is nothing left? Nobody has visited the land. But it is very easy to believe. His famous statement is worth quoting.

Brihaspati says, RINAM KRITVA GHRITAM PIVET: "Even if you have to borrow money, borrow it, but drink ghee as much as you can" - because after death you are not going to be questioned, punished. The person who had given you money cannot drag you into the court of God; there are no such things. His whole philosophy is simply, "Eat, drink and be merry." You can believe in it - the theists will call it DISbelief.

And that's what Karl Marx did for the communists, he said that there is no soul, no consciousness. It is a by-product of matter, so when the body falls apart, nothing is left. This became a very dangerous attitude, because communists could kill people without thinking twice.

Their belief is that by killing you are not committing any sin. There is nobody inside a person; there is no inside. A man is chemistry, biology, physiology - but there is no soul. Joseph Stalin could kill almost one million people after the revolution without feeling even a slight doubt about what he was doing.

In Soviet Russia man has been reduced to a mechanism. You can kill - nothing is killed, because there was nobody in the first place. It is just like a clock functioning. It moves, it shows you the time; that does not mean that there is somebody inside. You can take the clock apart and you will not find anything.

I have heard.... Once Mulla Nasruddin's clock stopped. It was an old clock, and some day everything has to stop. He opened the clock and found there a fly, dead. He said, "Now I know the clock is dead - this is the clock's soul!" He was just going to bury the clock in the garden when his wife caught hold of him.

She said, "What are you doing? Have you gone mad? Clocks are not buried, graves are not made for them!"

Nasruddin said, "Those people have never known what I have come to know. The clock stopped; certainly I thought it was dead. I looked at it, opened it, and found its soul dead. This is the soul" - he was holding the fly in his hand; he said, "This is the soul."

The wife said, "You are simply an idiot, and you will always remain an idiot! Bring that clock out.

Perhaps it needs oiling, some repair work - it is an old clock. And clocks don't die, because to die first one has to live: clocks don't live!"

But that's what Karl Marx has preached to the communists, that man is also just like a clock. And now almost half the world believes in Karl Marx. Strange - these same people had believed in God.

Russians, Chinese, Indians, Mohammedans - all kinds of people change their yes to no. To change yes into no is so easy because they are not different. Basically they give you a consolation without the arduous journey to truth.

I have asked many communists, very old communists.... In India, S.A.Dange was a member of the international communist party along with Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin. He was an eyewitness of the Russian revolution. I asked him, "Have you ever meditated?"

He said, "Meditated - for what? Why should I meditate?"

I said, "If you have never meditated, then you don't have the authority to say that there is no soul, no God, no consciousness. Without going inside yourself, how can you say that there is nobody? And see the absurdity of it: who is saying that there is nobody? Even to deny you will have to accept that there is somebody. Even to say that there is nobody, somebody has to be assumed."

The same is the situation of religions.

Nobody has encountered God - no Christian, no Hindu, no Mohammedan - but they have all said yes because the crowd in which they were born was the crowd of theists. To say no amongst that crowd would have created difficulties for them. Yes was simply the accepted rule of the game. They have worshipped, they have prayed, not knowing why they were doing it. But everybody else is doing it so it must be right.

When the crowd changed - for example in Russia, the same people who were so certain of God became uncertain. It took ten years to change from one certainty to another certainty... an interval of uncertainty, but uncertainty is not doubt.

Doubt is simply a question, and doubt says, "I want to KNOW."

It has no ideology.

Doubt is absolutely pure quest.

You have asked, "What is the difference between doubt and negativity?"

Negativity and positivity are both the same.

Doubt is different from both.

It does not make you a theist, it does not make you an atheist.

Positivity makes you a religious believer, a theist; negativity makes you an unbeliever, irreligious, an atheist.

Doubt does not make you anything.

It simply makes you an inquirer.

And that is the dignity of man.

I teach you doubt because I know if you can doubt to the very end you will realize the truth of your own being, and simultaneously the truth of the whole existence. And that will be liberation, that will be freedom.

Doubt is neither Christian nor Hindu, nor American nor German. Yes may be Hindu, yes may be Mohammedan, yes may be Christian; no may be communist, no may be fascist - but doubt is simply a quest, an individual quest.

Yes and no both belong to the crowd.

Doubt makes you assert your individuality.

You start finding your path on your own. You don't accept the maps given you by others.

In India I have seen in Jaina temples, maps hanging which show seven hells, seven heavens, and the ultimate, moksha. Between seven hells and seven heavens is the earth. They show you exactly who goes where, what route he follows, what sufferings he comes across.

Even in my childhood I used to ask the priest, "Do you know where Constantinople is?"

He said, "Constantinople? That has nothing to do with religion."

I said, "That has nothing to do with religion, but it has something to do with maps. You don't know Constantinople and you know seven heavens, seven hells? Just be kind enough to tell me, how many have you visited? Who has made this map?" And for thousands of years Jainas have believed in this map.

People who had no idea that the earth is round were able to know how many hells there are, how many heavens there are; and each according to his action goes to a certain space, certain place.

They had no idea of the earth they were living on but they had ideas about things which are just fictions.

Now slowly slowly those maps are disappearing from the temples, because even followers have started asking embarrassing questions. But it continues. One small sect in India is that of Radhaswamis. They divide the whole existence into fifteen parts; the earth is the lowest.

I have been to their temple in Agra. They are very egoistic people; they have been trying for almost one hundred years to make the temple better than the Taj Mahal. They have poured immense amounts of money into it, but only one story is complete. They have done tremendous work.

Certainly if they succeed in making all the three proposed stories, the Taj Mahal will look very pygmy before that temple.

The Taj Mahal is also in Agra, and Radhaswamis originated in Agra; their founder was there. And from all over the world tourists come to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Radhaswamis wanted to make something so that the Taj Mahal becomes secondary. And seeing what they have done - it is only one-third complete in one hundred years, but even that much is enough to show you they have transcended the Taj Mahal already.

In their temple, this half-built temple, they have engraved in golden letters the fifteen levels of existence. And they have marked - for example, Jesus Christ has only reached up to the sixth.

A long journey is still ahead for that poor carpenter carrying his cross. How many times he will be crucified, nobody knows.

Mohammed is still on the fourth, Moses on the fifth, Mahavira on the seventh, Buddha on the ninth.

And their own master is on the fifteenth.

When I had gone to visit their temple, their priest welcomed me, he showed me everything. He showed this description of fifteen stages and he said, "What do you think about it?"

I said, "There is no question of thinking, I know your master is on the fifteenth."

He said, "How do you know?"

I said, "Because I am on the sixteenth - and he is trying hard, but I go on pushing him back. I won't allow anybody else to be on the sixteenth."

He was very much shocked, but I said, "If you can just imagine fifteen, what is the trouble? On what authority do you put Buddha under your master? On what authority do you put Jesus... what grounds have you got?"

They said, "Our master said it."

So I said, "I am a master, and I say to you, make a place also for me on the sixteenth. And of course your master could only talk about the fifteenth because he has never entered the sixteenth. I will not allow him to enter! I am alone there."

These are your theists who simply believe.

It is cheap to believe, it is cheap to disbelieve.

But it is really a dangerous journey to know.

I would like my sannyasins neither to be negative nor to be positive, but open, available, with a quest, a question mark, and to go on searching.

Many times your mind will say it is good to believe - because the journey is arduous, and one never knows where one is going, whether one is going to find anything or not. But don't listen to the mind.

Mind has created all these "yes" philosophies, "no" philosophies.

Doubt has never created any philosophy; doubt has created science.

And doubt is going to create religion.

They are exactly the same - the same application of doubt in different fields. About objects, the outside world that spreads to millions of stars, doubt has given tremendous insight just within three hundred years. You are carrying another world within yourself, which is in no way smaller than the world you see outside; perhaps it is bigger.

Why do I say that perhaps it is bigger? I am including the word 'perhaps' so that you should not believe. I know it is bigger, for the simple reason that you know the stars, you know the sun, you know the moon - but the moon does not know you, the sun does not know you. The stars are great, the universe is vast, but you are the only knower. You have something more than the whole universe.

That's why I say inside you are carrying something bigger than the universe, more than the universe.

Just inquire.

One of the most beautiful men of this century was Maharishi Raman. He was a simple man, uneducated, but he did not accept the ideology, the religion in which he was born. When he was only seventeen years of age he left his home in search of truth. He meditated for many years in the hills of Arunachal in south India, and finally realized himself.

After that his whole teaching consisted only of three words, because those three words had revealed to him the whole mystery of existence. His philosophy is the shortest. What are those three words?

Whoever came to him - because as he became slowly slowly known, people started coming to him from all over the world - his whole teaching was to sit silently and ask only one question: "Who am I?" and go on asking that question.

One day the question will disappear, and only you will be there. That is the answer.

Not that you will find the answer written somewhere; you will find yourself. You just go on digging with this question - this question is like digging - but do you see the question? It is a doubt: Who am I? It does not accept the spiritualist who says you are a soul. It does not accept the materialist who says there is nobody, don't waste time; eat, drink and be merry. He doubts. Those three words are followed by a question mark: Who am I?

And he says this is enough. If you can go on and on and on patiently, one day the question suddenly disappears and what is left is your reality. That is the answer.

And the moment you know yourself you have known everything that is worth knowing.

Question 2:

It is a very simple thing. You say you have moments of great ecstasy, full of juice, but you become drowned in that juice; the ecstasy is so overwhelming you forget to be watchful. You become immersed in that ecstasy, the witness is not there. And then you say there are moments when you are sad, bored, but the witness is there.

You just have to put things in their right place. Start from your boredom and sadness, because the witness is there and the witness is going to be the bridge. So when you are sad and bored, just watch it, as if it is something outside of you - it is. You are always a witness - now you are witnessing sadness and boredom.

It is easy to witness sadness and boredom, because who wants to get immersed in boredom?

But this is of tremendous importance because you can learn the whole art while you are bored.

Just watch it, and as your witnessing grows you will see there is a distance between you and the boredom, the sadness, the misery, the pain, the anguish. You are not part of all that experience; you are standing high above on the hills, a watcher on the hills, and everything else is moving down deep in the dark valley.

You already have the secret, just practice it more and more. Just sit by the side of a donkey, sit by the side of a buffalo; go on looking at the buffalo and you will be bored! All around you can find objects which will be immensely helpful for you. You need not wait for moments to come, because who knows when the buffalo will come to you? Why not go to the buffalo?

You can just go to our cattle, sit amongst them, and you will be bored. Those cattle will go on munching the grass - do you think you will start munching the grass? You will not get involved in that. Sitting amongst the cattle, amongst the buffaloes, you will find yourself just a witness.

Don't become sad, don't become bored. Let the boredom be there, let the sadness be there; you remain just a witness. And it is easier in such situations.

Once you have strengthened your witness, then let those moments of ecstasy, heights... try your witnessing then. It will be a little difficult there; one wants to jump into that groovy space. Who wants to sit on the bank and watch? - because one is afraid one may be simply watching and the moment will go.

Don't be worried. If you witness, the moment will remain there and will grow deeper, bigger, more colorful. But not at any point have you to become identified with it. Remain detached, just a spectator.

The art is the same; whether it is boredom or ecstasy does not matter. What matters is that you are not involved, you remain aloof, you remain standing there.

There is a Zen story I have loved very much. Three friends had gone for a morning walk, and then they suddenly saw on the hill a Zen monk standing.

One of the friends said, "I think he must have come with his friends; they must have been left behind and he is waiting for them."

The other said, "I cannot agree with you, because seeing that man I can say one thing is certain; he is not waiting for somebody who has been left behind, because he never looks back. He is just standing like a statue. Anybody who is waiting for somebody who is left behind will once in a while look, to see whether the fellow has come or not. But he is unmoving.

"He is not waiting for any friend. I think... I know this monk; he has a cow and the cow must have been lost in the thick forest. And that is the highest place from where he can look all over the forest and find the cow."

The third man said, "You have forgotten your own argument. If he was looking for the cow then he would be looking all around. He would not just stand there like a statue, focused in one direction; that is not the way of looking for a lost cow." He said, "As far as I can tell, he is doing his morning meditation."

But the other two said that the basic philosophy of Zen is that you can meditate anywhere, you can meditate doing anything. What was the need to go to that hill in the early morning, in the cold, and stand there to meditate? "He could have meditated in his cozy monastery where they have a special meditation temple. He could have been there - what was the need to go? No, we cannot agree."

They argued; finally they said, "It is better we go to the hill. It will be a waste of time but there is no other way to settle what he is doing." Such is the curiosity of the human mind - very monkeyish.

Now why trouble yourself? Let him do whatever he is doing. If he is searching for his cow it is his business; if he is waiting for his friend, it is his friend; if he is meditating it is his business - why should you poke your nose into it? But that's how people are.

They became so excited arguing with each other that they decided, "We have to go." They forgot that they had come just for a small morning walk, and going to the hill will take hours, then coming down the hill... the sun will be almost directly overhead. But the question... they have to come to a conclusion. And in fact they want to prove that "I am right." Each of them wants to prove that "I am right." Now the only man who can decide is that monk.

They reached - huffing, puffing. The monk was standing there with half-closed eyes. That is the Buddhist way - to keep the eyes half closed when you are meditating, because if you close your eyes completely you may doze into sleep; that is more possible than going into meditation. If you keep your eyes fully open you will get interested in thousands of things. A beautiful woman passes by, and meditation is lost, anything can disturb. So keep the eyes half closed so you don't see exactly what is happening outside, and you have to keep your eyes half open so you don't fall asleep.

The first man asked, "Master, we have heard much about you but we never had any chance to come to your monastery. Fortunately we had come for a morning walk and we saw you. We have a question I want you to answer: Are you not waiting for somebody who has been left behind?"

The monk with half-closed eyes said, "I have nobody, I am alone. I was born alone, I will die alone, and between these two alonenesses I am not trying to fool myself that somebody is with me. I am alone and I am not waiting for anybody."

The second man said happily, "Then certainly your cow has got lost in the thick forest and you must be looking for it."

The monk said, "It seems strange idiots have come here! I don't possess a single thing. I don't have any cow, the monastery has it; that is not my business. And why should I waste my time looking for a cow?"

The third man was immensely happy. He said, "Now you cannot deny: you must be meditating. Is it not so? - you are doing your morning meditation!"

The monk laughed; he said, "You are the worst idiot of the three! Meditation is not done, it is not a doing. You can be in meditation but you cannot do it. It is a state. So certainly I am not doing meditation. I am in meditation, but for that I need not come to this hill; anywhere I am in meditation.

Meditation is my consciousness.

"So you all get lost! And never disturb anybody who is standing with half-closed eyes, remember it."

But they all three said, "Forgive us - we are stupid, certainly we are stupid to walk miles and to ask you such.... We are feeling embarrassed. But now that we have come and now that we accept we are stupid, just one question from all of the three, not separate: Then what are you doing?"

And the master said nothing.

In that nothing is the witness.

When you witness, you will be surprised that the boredom, the sadness, the blissfulness, the ecstasy - whatever it is - starts moving away from you. As your witnessing goes deeper, stronger, becomes more crystallized, any experience - good or bad, beautiful or ugly - disappears. There is pure nothingness all around you.

Witnessing is the only thing that can make you aware of an immense nothingness surrounding you.

And in that immense nothingness.... It is not empty, remember. In English there is no word to translate the Buddhist word shunyata. In that nothingness... it is not empty, it is full of your witness, full of your witnessing, full of the light of your witness.

You become almost a sun, and rays from the sun are moving into the nothingness to infinity.

One of the Indian mystics, Kabir, has said, "My first experience was that of a sun, and as my experience went on growing... the outer sun is nothing; the inner sun is infinite. Its light fills the whole infinity of existence. And in that moment I am only a witness; I am there."

So start witnessing your boredom, sadness, because the question is not the object, the question is the art of witnessing. So use any object - anger, hate, love, jealousy - anything will do. If you cannot find anything just put up a mirror and look at your face and witness it. And you will be surprised, immensely surprised; when you are in a complete state of witnessing the mirror becomes empty, you are not there.

In total witnessing the object disappears.

You will be able for the first time to see the mirror just as nothingness.

Start from things which are easier, and then go on moving to things which are groovier. The bridge is simple.

Question 3:

That's true! Women are not by nature nags, but man has forced them to become that. Whoever said that is a wise man!

Whenever a woman is bitchy she really needs it! So rather than getting worried about her bitchiness, do something!

And for thousands of years they have not been having it; it has become heavy. I know in India at least ninety-eight percent of women have never experienced any orgasm. They don't know that there is such a thing. In the West too, only within thirty years have women become aware that for millions of years they have been missing something.

The orgasmic experience in lovemaking is tremendously relaxing, fulfilling. If a woman gets it - which is really a little difficult, difficult for the poor man because nature is not very scientific. There are many corrections needed. Nature has given man only single-orgasm capacity, and to women, multiple orgasms. And if the woman gets her first orgasm that is dangerous, because then she wants the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth... And the poor man cannot manage it.

So what man did, he found a strategy: don't give her the first orgasm. She will never know what is missing, and she will never ask for the second.

But if a woman's nature needs multiple orgasms to relax her and she is not getting it, she is bound to be bitchy. She is bound to be continuously in a fighting mood, angry. Those are not her natural qualities - they are gifts given by man.

But what can man do? His trouble is that he is very poor sexually because he is a donor; his energy is spent in a single shot. The woman is a receiver. She is not giving any energy; in fact she is enjoying your shots. She is on the receiving end, as many shots.... But with one shot your gun is empty. It is hanging down! You cannot do anything about it. That has made women all around the world very bitchy. Either science has to make arrangements for a man, that he can give as many shots as needed, or science has to do some surgery on women, that only one shot is enough. But if this cannot be done then the only way is that when you make love to your wife, invite all your friends too, so that by the time she asks for the second, the second friend is ready.

What else to do? I am simply suggesting a practical thing. If one gun goes empty in one shot, have many guns ready in line. And the woman will be so utterly satisfied with you. She will not nag you ever again! She will not be angry, she will not throw things. She will prepare the most delicious food for you - you have done so much for her.

This seems to be simple. Scientists may be able to do it or not; but this is very simple, to invite your friends. And in return they will be inviting you, so why be so miserly? Share!