Don't walk on water - jump into consciousness

Question 1:

I am sorry to disappoint you, but I can't help it.

I cannot give you the consolation that has been given by all the religions down the centuries. I cannot do it because that consolation has cost too much. It has not given anything; on the contrary, it has taken away your very religiousness.

I cannot say anything that in the short-term may seem to help your growth towards religion, but in the long-term is simply poison. That's what the idea of a miracle is.

The human mind is begging for it. It is the need of a sick mind - but all minds are sick.

Mind as such is the sickness of man.

When the mind disappears you are, for the first time, really healthy and whole. Mind needs all kinds of poisons to continue to exist. The idea of miracles is one of the most important. The idea is absolutely against existence.

First you have to understand, what does a miracle mean? It means that existence is not trustable, that nature is not unprejudiced, that the laws of life allow exceptions. This is an absolute absurdity.

224 Existence has no prejudices - that for Jesus it has a soft corner in the heart, and not for you; that it allows Mohammed to go beyond natural laws, but it does not allow you. A miracle simply is a condemnation of the fairness of existence.

No, there is no such thing as a miracle - never has been, never will be. If miracles happen then science cannot happen; and we know that science has happened. And as science has grown, miracles have diminished in exact proportion. The more science grows, the less and less are there miracles. If you go farther back you can find thousands of miracles happening.

Most of those miracles are just stories invented to create messiahs, prophets, reincarnations of God - because how can you manage to put a certain man above all humanity? How can you manage to make him superhuman? His body follows nature, his life follows nature. From birth to death there is not a single exception.

But the fools around the world will not accept an ordinary man as enlightened. They need a superman, only then is their mind satisfied: Of course, he is a superman, a messenger of God; he can be enlightened - but how can we poor human beings be enlightened?

And how to prove that he is superior to you? Just look: Jesus is not superior as far as intelligence is concerned, shows no special intelligence. There were hundreds of more learned rabbis, great scholars of profound intelligence; he is just an uneducated, unpolished carpenter's son.

By intelligence he cannot prove - nor can his followers - that he is superior, that he is special, that he is the only begotten son of God. By physical strength he cannot prove that either. Any Muhammad Ali will throw him flat. Just by a single hit on his nose he is finished. Physically he cannot prove that he is superior.

Now these are the only two things in human life where you find.... Somebody is an Albert Einstein, a Bertrand Russell, a Jean-Paul Sartre - they have proved intellectually they are sharper, more talented. But a strange thing is, they don't claim they are the only begotten son of God. No intelligent person can claim such an unintelligent thing.

Or there are people who are physically talented. They may come first in the Olympic race, in some game, in some wrestling, but that simply shows a difference between you and them of quantity, not of quality. Howsoever powerful a man may be, he is only quantitatively different from you; and the difference of quantity is no difference at all.

If you had worked on the same lines with the same gymnastics for the same time, perhaps you might have proved even a better wrestler, a better runner. All that is proved is that this man has practiced a certain talent. Certainly he should be respected - but he does not become the messenger of God.

There are people who are world champions in chess playing. Certainly they have a tremendously complicated mind. A real chess player has to think five moves ahead. When you play chess you only think of one move ahead, at the most two moves; more than that and you will get puzzled.

Five is the minimum to become a world champion. Five moves means you take one move, the other person will take a move. You have to visualize what he is going to take, then what you will do, then what he will do, then what you will do - five times. You have to be clear about five moves ahead, only then can you be a world champion; otherwise it is impossible. That much concentration, practice...

it is a maddening thing.

But even then, somebody becoming a world champion in chess is not a prophet. He has a mind closer to a computer than you have. Your mind is simpler, a little more primitive a computer; his mind is a little more sophisticated a computer. Your mind can be trained also in the same way. It is only a question of training. The difference is only of degrees, there is no difference of quality. He is just as human a being as you are.

Then how to prove that Jesus, Mohammed, Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna - that these people are not just ordinary like you? The way that has been discovered is called the miracle. That makes them qualitatively different from you, because whatsoever you do, you cannot get trained in walking on water. Whatever you do you will be drowned again and again. So it is not a question of training, discipline, knowing certain strategies - no, nothing will help. How can you turn stones into bread?

How can you turn water into wine?

These stories are invented for a certain purpose - to make that man qualitatively higher than you.

But this is exploiting humanity, corrupting human consciousness, giving people false ideas.

Just look at these miracle-men of the world and you can see that of all those miracles, ninety percent were invented by the followers or by the originators themselves. It is difficult at such a long distance to know who started them. Most of them must have been started by the originators themselves, and of course followers go on adding to them.

It becomes an absolute necessity for followers to go on adding more and more miracles, because it is a competitive business and everybody has to prove his messiah the highest, the greatest.

Everybody else is below him. Now, only miracles can do that miracle, there is no other way.

Jainas have twenty-four tirthankaras, twenty-four messiahs. Because Jainas had twenty-four, Buddhists were at a loss; they had only one - Gautam Buddha. In the market - and this whole world is a market and every human being is a customer - when you are selling your messiah, your religion, your holy book, small things count. A Buddhist feels at a loss because people ask how many buddhas there have been. lust one? Looks very poor - Jainas have twenty-four!

Hindus up to that moment had ten incarnations of God. They immediately changed to twenty- four because ten looked poor before twenty-four. The idea of Jainas having twenty-four.... Before Mahavira, all Hindu scriptures talk of ten avataras; after Mahavira suddenly a great change happens - Hindus start talking about twenty-four.

Buddhists are at a loss because their religion starts with Buddha, so where to put twenty-four buddhas? But they have to be a little more creative. They started talking about twenty-four lives of Gautam Buddha - this was the twenty-fourth life. He had been an awakened one twenty-three times before.

You can see a clever legal process. They had no historical grounds to prove that there had been twenty-four buddhas. Even Buddha cannot say that because he was the originator. But this was easy, to invent twenty-three previous lives.

The span is thousands of years, and in those days particularly in India history was not written.

History was not even counted as a subject. Writing history was introduced by the Mohammedans in India. In India the idea was that history consists of mundane, ordinary, day to day things, which go on being repeated. A king is born, a king dies; another king will be there, he will die. Empires are built and disappear.

If you look at the millions of years in India it has been the custom to look at existence extending for millions and millions of years - what does it matter that a man was a prime minister for three months in a country? Why bother? For three months out of millions and millions of years, in a country on a very mediocre planet, of a very mediocre solar system, a certain man was prime minister - why bother? The Indian attitude is, why unnecessarily waste time?

So instead of history... the Indian word for history is very significant. It is itihas. The word means "that which comes and disappears like a soap bubble" the end is not very far from the beginning. So instead they used to write puranas. Now, the word puranas means something not concerned with individuals but with essentials.

For example, a tirthankara is not just a person. There are only twenty-four tirthankaras in one creation, and one creation means millions and millions of years. Each tirthankara simply represents the essence of consciousness touching the highest peak. In millions of years only twenty-four times has human consciousness risen so high that it touches the ultimate.

Now, this is essential. When Mahavira was born and when he died - that is history - doesn't matter; any date will do. What difference does it make whether he was born twenty-five centuries ago or twenty-six centuries ago, on Monday, on Sunday, on Saturday - what does it matter? What matters is that a consciousness reached a peak.

If you go in a Jaina temple you will be surprised to see twenty-four tirthankaras all looking exactly alike. This is impossible, that all these twenty-four persons - and they were born over a long period of thousands of years - looked absolutely alike. Their noses, their eyes, even their ear lobes...

because a Jaina tirthankara's ear lobes have to be so long that they touch the shoulder - on all twenty-four tirthankaras.

You cannot say whose statue this is - even Jainas cannot say whose statue this is. So they had to make, near the feet, a symbol: a lion represents Mahavira, a peacock represents somebody else....

So if you ask a Jaina he will just immediately look at the symbol near the feet. Only by the symbol can he say who this is; otherwise they are all alike.

It certainly is not history. No two persons are ever born exactly alike; to find twenty-four people exactly alike is impossible. But they are not concerned with those persons - their bodies, their noses, their ears - their concern is with their consciousness; and everything else is representing symbolically the highest peak of consciousness.

For example, the ear lobes touching the shoulders.... Perhaps once in a while you may find a person whose ear lobes do touch, but I have never seen one. I have seen millions of people and I have looked at their ears, but I have never seen a single person whose ear lobes touched the shoulders.

Just one person I know - he was a colleague of mine in my high-school classes - who had special kind of ears.

He could move them according to his will and wish. You cannot do it. You don't have muscles, you cannot do anything with your ears. Just try to do something; you cannot do anything. But this boy was a miracle! He could turn his ears down, up, move them in and out.

He is now a doctor, but more famous for his ears than anything else. Patients will come and ask, "Doctor, please, just show your ears." I have been searching for a second person who can do that even better - I have not found one. Some freak of nature.... It seems he has some muscles and nerves in his ears which are not needed, so he can pull his ears and do things with them.

But what were these tirthankaras doing with ears that long? One thing, it is not history, so it is not representative of reality; it is representative of something different. To me those long ears simply mean that these people were capable of listening. Now, how do you represent in a marble statue that they were totally capable of listening? Now, to represent that, they don't care about history; it is puranas. Puranas means we are concerned about the essentials.

All these twenty-four statues have their eyes half-closed. You can see only the lower white part of the eyes; otherwise the eyes are closed. But why half? That is the only difference you will find in a Buddhist statue and a Jaina statue: the Buddha's statue has the eyes completely closed.

Again, it is not history. They are not saying anything about these people; they are saying that a man who touches the highest consciousness is so complete that the outer and the inner become one. His half-closed eyes symbolize that the outer half and the inner half are meeting. This is what I mean by essence.

Mahavira had twenty-three predecessors - Buddha was in a difficulty. And there were so many miracles about those twenty-three predecessors of Mahavira that Buddha looked poor. So first he had to create the idea that he had been a buddha twenty-three times before; and then about those twenty-three buddhas he created miracles. Perhaps the miracles about him are created by his disciples later on, but he must have initiated them in some way.

At least one thing is certain, that none of these fellows prevented their disciples by saying, "Don't do this mischief to me." Even if they had not created the miracles themselves they allowed them by remaining silent. If the rumors were going around that they were doing miracles or miracles were happening, there is not a single statement from Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Mahavira, Mohammed, which says no, these were rumors.

My mother was just telling me yesterday... and Vivek listened to her talking so animatedly for the first time in so long; otherwise whatever she has to ask is answered in one or two sentences; yes or no, and the conversation is over. But yesterday she was talking for a long time and she was very animated, so Vivek asked me, "What was your mother telling you?"

I told her she was remembering a few things. I have not told her yet what she was telling me, because it was a long story. She was telling me that when I was five months old in her womb, a miracle happened.

She was going from my father's house to her father's house; and it was the rainy season. It is customary in India for the first child to be born at the maternal father's home, so although it was the rainy season and very difficult - no roads, and she had to go on a horse - the sooner she went, the better; if she waited longer then it would have become more difficult, so she went with one of her cousin-brothers.

In the middle of the journey was a big river, the Narmada. It was in flood. When they reached the boat, the boatman saw that my mother was pregnant, and he asked my mother's cousin-brother, "What is your relationship?"

He was not aware that he would get into trouble so he simply said, "We are brother and sister."

The boatman refused; he said, "I cannot take you because your sister is pregnant - that means you are not two, you are three."

In India, this is a custom, an old custom - perhaps it started in the days of Krishna - that one should not travel on water, particularly in a boat, with one's sister's son. There is a danger of the boat sinking.

The boatman said, "What guarantee is there that the child in your sister's womb is a girl and not a boy? If he is a boy I don't want to take the risk - because it is not a question only of my life, sixty other people are going in the boat. Either you can come or your sister can come; both I won't take."

On both sides there were hills and jungle, and the boat used to go only one time a day. In the morning it would go - and the river is really vast at that point - and then it would come back by the evening. The next morning it would go again, the same boat. So either my mother had to remain on this side, which was dangerous, or go on that side, which was just as dangerous. So for three days they continued to ask him, beg him, saying that she was pregnant and he should be kind.

He said, "I can't help it - this is not done. If you can give me a guarantee that it is not a boy then I can take you; but how can you give me a guarantee?"

So for three days they had to stay in a temple there. In that temple lived a saint, very famous in those days in that area. Now, around that temple there has arisen a city in the memory of that saint, Saikheda. Saikheda means "the village of the saint." Sai means the saint; he was known as Sai Baba. It is not the same Sai Baba who became world-famous - Sai Baba of Shirdi - but they were contemporaries.

Sai Baba of Shirdi became world-famous because of the simple coincidence that Shirdi is near Bombay, and all the celebrities of Bombay and the rich people of Bombay started going to Sai Baba of Shirdi. And the richer you are, the more famous you are, the more successful you are, the more you are in need of something to give you fulfillment, because all your success, your riches, your fame has brought you nothing. These are the emptiest people in the world, the hollowest. And because of Bombay being a world center, soon Sai Baba of Shirdi's name started reaching outside India, and so many miracles were created around him.

The same was the situation with this Sai Baba who lived in that temple. Finally my mother had to ask Sai Baba, "Can you do something? For three days we have been here. I am pregnant and my brother has told the boatman that he is my brother, and he won't take us in the boat. Now, unless you do something, say something to that boatman, we are in a fix. What to do? My brother cannot leave me here alone; I cannot go alone to the other side. On both sides are wild jungles and forests, and for at least twenty-four hours I will have to wait alone."

I never met Sai Baba, but in a way I did meet him; I was five months old. He just touched my mother's belly. My mother said, "What are your doing?"

He said, "I am touching the feet of your child."

The boatman saw this and said, "What are you doing, Baba? You have never touched anybody's feet."

And Baba said, "This is not anybody; and you are a fool - you should take them to the other side.

Don't be worried. The soul that is within this womb is capable of saving thousands of people, so don't be worried about your sixty people - take her."

So my mother was saying, "At that time I became aware that I was carrying someone special."

I said, "As far as I understand, Sai Baba was a wise man: he really befooled the boatman! There is no miracle, there is nothing. And boats don't sink just because somebody is traveling with their sister's son. There is no rationality in the idea, it is just absurd. Perhaps sometime accidentally it may have happened and then it became a routine idea."

My own understanding is that because in Krishna's life his mother's brother was told by the astrologers that "one of the children of your sister will kill YOU," he kept his sister and his brother- in-law in prison. She gave birth to seven children, seven boys, and he killed them all. The eighth was Krishna, and of course when God Himself was born, the locks of the prison opened up, and the guards fell fast asleep, and Krishna's father took him out.

The river Yamuna was the boundary of Kansa's kingdom. Kansa was the person who was killing his sister's sons in the fear that one of the sons was going to kill him. The Yamuna was in flood - and it is one of the biggest rivers in India. The father of Krishna was very much afraid, but somehow the child had to be taken to the other side, to a friend's house whose wife had given birth to a girl so he could exchange them. He could bring the girl back with him because the next morning Kansa would be there asking, "Where is the child?" and planning to kill him. A girl he wouldn't kill - it had to be a boy.

But how to cross this river? There was no boat in the night, but it had to be crossed. But when God can open locks without keys, without anybody opening them - they simply opened up, the doors opened up, the guards fell asleep - God would do something.

So he put the child in a bucket on his head and passed through the river - something like what happened to Moses when the ocean parted. This time it happened in an Indian way. It could not have happened to Moses because that ocean was not Indian, but this river was.

As he entered the river, the river started rising higher. He was very much afraid: what was happening? He was hoping the river would subside, but it started rising. It went to the point where it touched the feet of Krishna, then it receded. This is the Indian way, it cannot happen anywhere else. How can the river miss such a point? When God is born and passing through her, just giving way is not enough, not mannerly.

Since that time there has been this idea that there is a certain antagonism between a person and his sister's son, because Krishna killed Kansa. The river was crossed, it subsided; it favored the child.

Since then rivers are angry against maternal uncles - all the rivers of India. And that superstition is carried even today.

I told my mother, "One thing is certain - that Sai Baba must have been a wise man and had some sense of humor." But she wouldn't listen. And it became known in the village what had happened, and to support it, after one month another thing happened which.... In life there are so many coincidences out of which you can make miracles. Once you are bent upon making a miracle then any coincidence can be turned into a miracle.

After one month there was a very great flood, and in front of my mother's house in the rainy season it was almost like a river. There was a lake, and a small road between the lake and the house, but in the rainy season so much water came that the road was completely like a river, and the lake and the road became merged into one. It was almost oceanic; as far as you could see it was all water.

And that year perhaps India had the biggest floods ever.

Floods ordinarily happen every year in India, but that year a strange thing was noted, that floods started reversing the rivers' flow of water. The rains were so heavy that the ocean was not able to take the water as quickly as it was coming, so the water at the ocean front was stuck; it started flowing backwards. Where small rivers fall into big rivers, the big rivers refused to take the water, because they were not able even to contain their own water. The small rivers started moving backwards.

I have never seen it - that one also I missed - but my mother says that it was a strange phenomenon to see the water moving backwards. And it started entering houses; it entered my mother's house. It was a double-storied house, and the first story was completely full of water. Then it started entering the second story. Now, there was nowhere to go, so they were all sitting on the beds, the highest place that was possible there. But my mother said, "If Sai Baba was right, then something will happen." And it must have been a coincidence that the water came up to my mother's stomach and then receded!

These two miracles happened before I was born, so I have nothing to do with them. But they became known; when I was born I was almost a saint in the village! Everybody was so respectful; people were touching my feet, even old people. I was told later on that "the whole village has accepted you as a saint."

When I must have been nearabout four I was the only child in the house - nothing to do, no school, no place to go. My maternal grandfather had a multipurpose shop, of all kinds of things. That was the only shop in the village so every kind of thing... a very miniature market it was rather than a shop. So I started playing with sweets and things, and I don't know how it occurred to me... but soon people were continually coming who were sick; and there was no doctor, no physician, no hospital, even for hundreds of miles, no hospital.

Somehow it came to me that if people think of me as a saint, and they touch my feet, I would start giving them medicines. And the medicines were nothing but mixtures of a few sweets, ground well, powdered, and kept in bottles of different colors. And of course, people who get fever or headache or a stomachache don't die. And they started getting cured. They were going to be cured anyway - that was not a miracle, but it became a miracle.

My nana, my maternal grandfather, started saying, "You will spoil my shop - now it is a hospital! The whole day people are coming and sometimes I even have to give your medicines, and I have no idea what those medicines are! You are destroying my sweets and my shop. But they are getting cured, so no harm, you continue."

When I moved after seven years to my father's house I dropped that business of giving medicines, but people from that village, whenever they used to come, would remind me. They had already started calling me Doctor Sahib, and I would say, "Please don't use that word here, because I have stopped that profession completely. In the first place there are no sweets here; my father has a shop of cloth, I cannot make medicines out of cloth. And here nobody knows that I can do miracles. First people have to know, then you can do them; otherwise you cannot."

Coincidences perhaps may have happened in the lives of Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, but it would have been far more honest of them to say that these were coincidences, that nature had not broken its law, it had not given a special power to somebody. But they remained silent about it. Silence is a support. Perhaps there was not any bad intention, because it has been noted that people are not in search of truth but in search of power - and the miracle is a symbol of power, not of truth. Truth has nothing to do with miracles But who is interested in truth?

Everybody is interested in power.

So when you see a man of miracles you are immediately impressed: here is a man who has power.

And that is your deepest urge - the will-to-power. Then you start following this man. In fact, if somebody tries to explain to you that these are not miracles you don't want to listen because he is taking away your power; your only hope he is destroying.

So the people who believe in miracle-men are not ready to listen for the simple reason that you may destroy their faith, their belief You may be able to prove that either it is magic - that means just conjuring tricks - or it is simply a coincidence, or it is just an invented story. And many things can be managed very easily....

I used to know in Jabalpur a man from south India. He must have come some thirty, forty years before from Madras, and he had lived in Jabalpur for forty years; still he was known as Madrasi Baba because he was from Madras. It was known that he had revived dead people. I was a student in the university; I heard this many times so I collected a few people and one night we went to Madrasi Baba. He used to live in a small hut outside the town, so it was very easy.

We all entered his hut, and we took hold of him - he was lying down on his cot. We tied his feet and hands, and I told him, "You have to tell the truth - we are not going to tell anybody, but if you don't tell us the truth then today we are going to do a miracle."

He said, "What kind of miracle?"

I said, "Today we are going to turn an alive man into a dead man. Just in front of your house there is a big lake; we are going to throw you into it. And we will make every certainty and surety that you cannot survive. We have big rocks outside which we are going to put on your chest, bind with your cot and throw the whole cot with you and the rocks. And you will go down - unless you tell us how you managed to revive a man."

He said, "I will tell you but please don't tell anybody; otherwise my whole life will be ruined. I live only on that miracle."

I said, "First tell us." And what miracles had he done? It was one of his friends who pretended to be dead. He was a practitioner of yoga, they both were practitioners of yoga. If you practice yoga then there is a possibility that for at least ten minutes you can stop your breathing.

With certain exercises it is possible that your heart goes on at the minimum, the pulse at the minimum, and your breathing completely stops - but for not more than ten minutes. But ten minutes are enough to prove a man dead, you don't need more.

One morning he declared that his friend had died. People came, they looked, they took his pulse; it was gone. There was no breathing, his heart was not beating - he was dead. They covered him, and then Madrasi Baba chanted some mantras in Telugu, in his language, so nobody knew whether he was chanting mantras or singing film songs. And after seven rounds of chanting and throwing some invisible power over the man he took off the cover, put his hands on the nose of the man, looked upwards - and slowly slowly, the breathing came back, the pulse came back and the heart started beating.

The man is still alive, the other man. And we confirmed the story through this other man also, in the same way; we had to because there was no other way. We said that Madrasi Baba himself had told the whole story, "but now you are also in the same situation. So you just tell us, otherwise you will go; we will perform the real miracle."

And he said, "It is true, I conspired with him - we are partners. Whatsoever money he gets, half he gives to me. For these forty years life has been very pleasant, without any work, without any trouble; we have lived comfortably, and people respect us. Now I am his disciple in people's eyes, but really I am a partner in his business." So either miracles are invented....

Now, nobody can say this Lazarus was not a partner in the whole conspiracy. He was a friend of Jesus' - that much is reported. And why only Lazarus? There were so many people dying. Did he have to wait to do the miracle only when Lazarus died? And Lazarus was young - it was not his time to die either. He was Jesus' friend so there is every possibility that Jesus may have told him, "Just pretend you are dead." He had learned all yoga practices in India, in Egypt; both countries know the secrets about stopping the breath.

Either it is a coincidence, or it is a conspiracy, or it is just a myth created when the person is gone.

But you can judge very easily.

Jesus can revive a dead man, but when he is feeling thirsty on the cross he cannot materialize a single glass of water, or just a Coca-Cola. That would have been a real miracle - if he had produced Coca-Cola. Then I would never say that miracles don't exist, because to produce Coca-Cola at that time would not have been possible. Even today you cannot make it, because the secret of Coca- Cola is absolutely preserved, there is no way.... There are so many cold drinks available in the world, but nothing comes close to Coca-Cola.

If Jesus had produced that, with the label of Coca-cola and the bottle and everything, then there would have been no need for any other proof; they could have just preserved the Coca-Cola bottle in the Vatican.

But whatever he did is not of much significance, and he could not do it when he was himself in need.

He could revive the dead but he could not change those apostles, transform their beings.

What to say of transformation - even on the last night when Jesus is to depart he says to them again and again, "Remain awake, don't fall asleep! This is my last night; tonight they are going to catch me. Remain awake so that I can pray silently - and be watchful!"

And after each hour he comes and he finds his disciples are fast asleep, snoring. He wakes them up and tells them again, "Have you forgotten?"

Now, with these stupid people Jesus wasted his whole life - people who were not even capable of remaining awake just one night. When the master is going to be crucified the next day, even out of curiosity one would have remained awake; but even curiosity is not there. The moment Jesus goes back behind the bushes to pray... and why does he go behind the bushes? That I don't understand.

You can go behind the bushes to piss, not to pray, but it would stink.

He should have remained just in the middle of those fools and prayed there; that would have kept them awake at least. But going behind the bushes.... Again and again, the whole night that drama continues, but they are not ready. You can't change people's minds just a little bit but you can raise people from the dead? It doesn't seem to be possible.

There are miracles around Buddha - that when he passes, trees blossom out of season. The whole forest might be dry if the season was fall and all the leaves had fallen, but if Buddha passes through the forest it looks disrespectful - those barren trees without leaves, without flowers. No, suddenly the whole forest changes its course of millions of years; suddenly there are leaves, suddenly there is greenery, flowers, fruits.

I can say this must be a myth because Buddha himself has a personal physician continuously moving with him, his Devaraj. For what? If even trees understand, I won't his body understand? The most famous physician of those days, Jivakar, was continuously with him, just like a shadow, taking care of his body - and still he died of food poisoning. Not a great way to die, through food poisoning.

If some glutton dies of food poisoning he can be forgiven, but not Buddha. The poison had no consideration for Buddha, the food had no consideration, the body had no consideration - and the trees and the forest and the mountains had consideration for him?

He was sitting in meditation, and his brother, his own brother, Devadatta, who was a follower... but he wanted Buddha to declare him his successor. Buddha said, "That is not possible. You are not yet capable of such a position. And there are people - Mahakassapa, Sariputta, Moggalayan - so many people who are already enlightened. How can I declare you, an unenlightened person, as my successor? I am not going to declare anybody my successor because there are so many people who are capable of being my successor - how am I to choose?"

But Devadatta was very angry, so angry that he left Buddha, taking five thousand disciples of Buddha with him. And he tried many ways to kill Buddha. One was that while Buddha was meditating, sitting on a rock Devadatta slid a big rock from the mountain top aimed exactly to hit Buddha.

And it would have simply crushed him - there was no chance - but the rock, just on the way, thought, "There is Buddha, and this would not be right, to go on falling in the traditional way." It moved, changed its course - which was very strange because there was no reason for it to change its course, no obstacle that moved it from its course.

Devadatta brought a mad elephant who was known to have killed many people and so was kept always in chains. He brought him and left him without chains close to where Buddha was sitting.

And the elephant came rushing, because after many days he had got the chance to kill somebody.

He was murderous. But just coming close to Buddha, a sudden break: no, this is not the man to kill.

He lowered himself, went on his knees and touched Buddha's feet.

Now if elephants, mad elephants, rocks and trees are so careful about Buddha - and I would like them to be so careful, there is no harm in it. I would like them to be so careful about everybody, why only about Buddha? But when he eats the poisonous food his own body does not bother; the poison takes no care. That proves that all other stories are beautiful stories created to make Buddha a superhuman being.

The same is true about all your miracle-men. As far as I am concerned, a miracle is something against nature, against existence; hence it is impossible. Yes, your mind wants it because your mind is sick. It is hungry for power and it would like its master to be a man of power. Then of course you can hope that some day you can manage - by serving the master, by trusting the master, by surrendering to the master - you can get some power yourself.

It is a deep desire for power that goes on asking again and again whether miracles happen or not.

I say categorically they have never happened, because in the very nature of things a miracle is an absurdity. It simply means suddenly nature forgets its laws, existence changes its course. No, existence is fair, it is equal to all, exactly the same to all. And it is good that it is fair and equal; otherwise there would be the same bureaucracy and hierarchy that goes on in governments.

And that's what religions have been trying to create. What is this Christianity? A certain kind of bureaucracy from God, the Holy Ghost, Jesus, the messiah; then the pope, his representative; then the cardinal, then the bishop, and so on and so on.... It goes on and on to the lowest priest in the village.

This is a hierarchy, a bureaucracy. But everything is based on the miracles of Jesus. That's why I want to hammer those miracles as forcibly as possible. If they are broken completely the whole hierarchy and bureaucracy falls down; they have nothing else to support them. And the same is true about all religions I know only of one miracle which is not included in your question about miracles; and that miracle is a jump of consciousness between the Master and the disciple.

Something transpires, but it is not done by the Master, it is not done by the disciple. Both are surprised when it happens.

The Master is available.

Whenever the disciple is also available, it simply happens.

This is the only miracle I know of But it is not to be categorized with other miracles because it is really the ultimate law of existence.

It is not something against existence, it is something which is the deepest, most central, most fundamental part of existence itself.

Just look for this miracle, wait for this miracle, and forget all nonsense about everything else.

If you really want to be religious, if you really want to be transformed, then you have to destroy all barriers between you and the transformation you are searching.

Yes, that miracle is possible. That miracle is possible any moment - here, now. So prepare for that.

Don't go on digging in bullshit.