My message - a matter of life and death

Question 1:

THERE are many things to be understood before we can enter into the question.

First, the word people.... There are no "people" as such. There are Americans, Russians, Indians; there are Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans; there are socialists, communists, fascists - but where are the people? These are all crowds, these are not people.

A crowd can be in three different forms. The worst is the mob, and the worst is the most prominent in the world. A mob means an unorganized crowd. The greatest crimes have been committed by mobs, because a mob functions completely unconsciously. And in a mob nobody is responsible:

you can do anything and you are not responsible.

I have seen mobs burning living people, and I have asked the people who were part of the mob, not just silent partners but active participants, "Are you aware of what you are doing? - burning living people, children, women, just because they happen to belong to another mob? They are Mohammedans, you are Hindus; the only difference is the label of the mob, because most of them have been Hindus before, and tomorrow one of you may be a Mohammedan. To change a label is not a difficult thing."

322 How many Mohammedans had come to India in the beginning? - only five hundred. Now India is the world's biggest Mohammedan country. Next to Hinduism, Mohammedanism is the biggest religion in India Half of India the Mohammedans have taken already - it has become Pakistan. Any day they will again demand the remaining part of India, for the same reason.

"Five hundred Mohammedans - how have they become millions? They were all Hindus, just their labels have been changed, forcibly - and you are killing them. And even if they are not Hindus, at least they are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, husbands, wives. And a mother is a mother: it doesn't matter whether she is a Mohammedan, a Hindu, a Christian. The relationship between her and her child is the same, whoever she is."

Do you know what those people said to me? They said, "We were not aware of all this. In fact, we were not doing it. Alone, on our own, we would never have committed such a crime, but when the whole mob was doing it, whether we participated or not made no difference; the people were going to be burned. And we don't know how we started doing things which we were not intending to do.

We had never thought about.

This is the way of the unconscious. But the unconscious is a vast continent; and the mob belongs to the unconscious, and any moment that you are possessed by the unconscious you are part of the mob. And the other way round too: the moment you belong to a mob you fall into the darkness of the unconscious. Then you can do anything without feeling at all responsible for it.

That's something very significant to be understood. If we want a better world, the phenomenon of the mob will have to disappear, because it is the mob that goes on pulling you down deeper and deeper into darkness. And there are mobs all around the world - where are the people?

The second stage of the crowd is a "crowd": a little bit organized, a little bit unorganized.

And the third form of the crowd is the organization - a perfectly organized crowd.

Think in parallels to the human mind. The mob, the lowest, is the unconscious. The crowd is the subconscious, just on the borderline; it is not much. Either you are in the mob or you are in the organization. Perhaps for a transitory period you may be in the crowd, passing from the mob to the organization, or from the organization to the mob. It is just the borderline, subconscious; there is not much space in it.

Crowds are not as dangerous as mobs because a little sense, a little consciousness is there, and a little responsibility. The traffic on the road is a crowd: a little organized, a little unorganized - but it is not a mob.

The highest in these three categories is the organization: Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism; the communist party, fascist party, socialist party - political, religious, philosophical organizations. It does not matter on what excuse the organization exists, but it is an organized crowd - well organized, regimented.

Look at the Catholic church, which is the most organized religion of all religions. It is almost an army camp - the bureaucracy, the hierarchy.... Every small detail is being dictated from above and has to be followed exactly the same as ordered. If you don't follow it, you are expelled. You are thrown out of your position and power - and it gives so much position and power that nobody is willing to risk it. So people go on pretending, showing false faces.

These are the three kinds of crowds in existence but none of them has the dignity to be called "the people."

Whether it is a mob or a crowd or an organization, one thing can be used as a criterion: no individuality is allowed.

In that sense the organization is the most dangerous, because it kills your individuality very methodologically.

The crowd is not so dangerous; it is a little loose, gives you a little more rope. The mob is less dangerous in this sense, that it does not bother about you at all.

It is a cloud, a dark cloud. There is no "who is who" nobody is the leader and nobody is the led.

Just the unconscious instinct predominates; and because it is the same instinct in all of us, a mob can function without any order, without any pope, without any church. But its function can only be destructive.

To create, you need a certain order - not organization but a certain order, a certain awareness, a certain individuality. But for destruction nothing is needed. You can became an instrument of destruction without any qualification. No university degree is needed, no skill, no craft - nothing.

Hence, the great appeal of the mob - to attract people.

You can become a great mob leader, for the simple reason that you will not be asked to have any qualification. What is the great quality in V. I. Lenin? It is the quality to create a mob around himself and to manipulate its instinctive destructiveness for his political ends.

And the same is true about Mahatma Gandhi, Mao Tse-tung - any so-called great political leader.

His only skill is in finding how to implant in the mob a certain idea. And because it is going to be destructive, there is no problem. Let me explain to you....

Mahatma Gandhi was the uncrowned king of India before Independence, because before Independence the question was destructiveness: the British Empire had to be destroyed. Everybody was qualified, and the whole country was under Mahatma Gandhi. But what happened? Even Gandhi had not expected it - could not have expected it, because he was not that conscious a man.

He was surprised, taken aback.

When Independence came the same mob forgot all about him. The same leaders who were nothing before Independence - who were just changing around him in the hope that if he won the battle they might also get some power - those leaders became prime ministers, ministers, governors, governor-generals. And they all forgot about Gandhi.

No Gandhian has analyzed the phenomenon. It is of much importance, because this has happened to every political leader in the same way. From before the revolution to after the revolution there is a tremendous change. Mahatma Gandhi himself said, "I have become a coin which is no longer in currency."

"A coin which is no longer in currency" He used to say before Independence that he wanted to live at least one hundred and twenty-five years, to see India completely renovated, renewed, rejuvenated.

And after Independence he started saying, "I don't want to live that long. I pray to God: "I have lived enough...."

What great change has happened? This is what he was living for up to now, and now he is victorious.

It is his disciples who are in power, the country is independent, the empire that he wanted to destroy is destroyed. Now, what more success was he waiting for?

But at this crucial moment he realized that he did not know anything about how the human mind functions. He was a leader of a mob, and a mob is interested only in destruction. Now the question was of creation. The whole dimension of work had changed: the country had to be created.

It was a tremendous job of almost impossible proportions. Who was going to listen to him? It was perfectly good to carry the flag and go on shouting against the British kingdom; it was fun. And particularly with Mahatma Gandhi it was absolutely fun because he was non-violent, so the British government could not be violent with his people; otherwise it would be condemned throughout the whole world: How can you fire at people who have come bare handed, with their chests open, saying, "If you want to you can kill us, but we don't want to remain slaves anymore"?

It was real fun! The British government was simply confused because never before had such a thing happened. You can hit somebody, shoot somebody if he is doing something criminal, but Gandhi was not doing something criminal. Just shouting slogans against those who have made his country a slave cannot be called criminal; carrying his own country's flag cannot be called criminal.

And Gandhi started inventing small things which nobody can call criminal, but legally they were criminal. For example, he started a movement, the "Salt Movement." Now, in India, salt is the cheapest thing in existence, and the poorest man can afford it because the poorest man's food consists of bread, salt, chutney - a little sauce. But salt is everybody's need.

Gandhi started a movement..."It IS our country, it is our ocean, and we are going to make salt."

Now, the British government was keeping control on salt production because it was one of the most consumed commodities in the country. So they were manufacturing salt from the sea. The sea was Indian, the people were Indian, but they were manufacturing the salt. And it was the cheapest thing, but still considering the population of India, it counted much.

Gandhi was not going to start factories, and on a large scale.... He simply started marching towards the sea and told people to go anywhere and start making salt from the sea - just to break the law.

And such a law was absolutely meaningless, because it is our water; if we cannot take our own water, then who are you to take our water? It is our salt, it is our land. Today you prevent us from making salt, tomorrow you will prevent us from sowing our seeds on our own land - because just as the sea.... If the sea is yours, the land is yours too: you should be harvesting, you should be cultivating. So what are we going to do - just be spectators here?"

It was such a small legal point that nobody in the world would have thought that it was anything illegal but it was illegal as far as their constitution was concerned. It was in their constitution that nobody was allowed to make salt except the government; it was a government-owned production.

But when just a poor man is making salt by the side of the sea, you cannot shoot him; it is not such a crime, and the whole world will condemn you. It was real fun, so everybody in India enjoyed it; but the real problem came when the country became independent.

Then Gandhi was shouting, "Do this, do that," but nobody was interested even in listening to him, because that mob was not capable of creation. And this is what I say was one of Mahatma Gandhi's blindnesses: he believed in the mass, not knowing that this mass is only a mob; this is not the people.

In his own life Gandhi saw all that he never wanted to see - villages burning, people being killed, butchered, slaughtered, women raped.... This was the result of his whole non-violent movement?

Yes, I want to say this was the result of his whole non-violent movement because he has no understanding of human psychology.

He was talking about non-violence to people who were not people, who were just a mob; and if they were following him as a non-violent leader, the reason was that to follow a violent leader you need guts, because sooner or later you will have to face bullets. To follow a non-violent leader you need nothing; you just need a flag and a good loud voice so you can scream and shout. That was enough.

And Gandhi believed that these people would be able to create the country.

His own very close disciples stopped listening to him the moment they were in power. They were listening to him because they wanted to remain intimate with him so that when power came they would not be left behind. Once they were in power Gandhi was no one.

In independent India's capital, its own revolution's leader was killed by one of the Hindus - and Gandhi was a Hindu mahatma. And nobody bothers to think how all this happened, why the same masses became so antagonistic to Gandhi that the people who used to worship him, killed him. The reason was simple: he was asking the impossible. It was his own misunderstanding.

He thought that he had created such a great movement, now nobody could prevent him from creating a new India. But he depended on the wrong type of people, because they were not interested in creativity, they were interested in destruction. So when he was not leading them towards destruction.... Anybody who was ready to lead them to destruction they were ready to follow.

So if they were Hindus they were following Hindu leaders, killing Mohammedans, burning mosques.

If they happened to be Mohammedans, they were following Mohammedan leaders, killing Hindus, destroying temples. And Gandhi was simply left alone.

He himself said, "I feel lonelier today than I have ever felt in my life. Nobody listens to me."

But it was not the fault of the masses; it was the fault of Mahatma Gandhi himself that he depended, hoped, and based all his future programs on the sands of a mob. You cannot make a palace on the sands.

There are mobs - mobs cannot listen to me. There are crowds - half mob, half organized - they cannot listen to me either. The half that belongs to the mob is incapable of listening; the other half is hindered from listening because of their organization - their religion, their politics, their cult, their prejudice - that hinders them.

And the organized one is the most difficult. He is almost deaf; he has no ears to listen. Yes, he can hear but you have to make a clear-cut distinction between hearing and listening.

Hearing is everybody's birthright; listening is not. Listening has to be earned - it is an art. You have to become capable of a certain arrangement. In hearing no arrangement is needed; as you are you are okay. Your ears are working, that's enough. You can go to the hospital and get your ears checked, and if they say nothing is wrong with your ears, you are capable of hearing - but not of listening.

For listening no doctor can give you a clearance certificate because he knows nothing about listening. He knows about the ear, which is a hearing AID. Listening is an inner art... to be so silent, so alert, that when you hear something you are only hearing and nothing else goes on in your mind no thought, no judgment, no decision. Even about the thing that you are hearing there is absolute impartiality. You are just hearing.

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was made a justice of the peace in his old age. The first case came into his court. He listened to one side and said, "Wait! I am going to give my judgment."

The court clerk could not believe that this old fool had been made a justice of the peace and he did not know a very simple thing anybody would know - that he at least has to listen to both the sides.

Whatsoever judgment he wants to give, he can give, but at least he should listen to the other side.

The clerk whispered in the ear of Nasruddin, "This is not the right procedure; you have heard only half the story. You have to listen to the other side."

Nasruddin said, 'Nothing doing! I don't want to get confused. Hearing both the sides I will be confused - that's what you want. Then judgment will be difficult. Right now it is absolutely clear, and I am not going to be confused by anybody."

He is saying exactly what goes on happening inside you. You decide before hearing all the possibilities and aspects, the implications of a certain thing.

How do you manage to be a Christian? Have you looked at all the implications? Have you searched into other religions? Have you bothered that there are three hundred religions on the earth; that when you are choosing to be a Christian you are declaring that two hundred and ninety-nine religions are wrong?

You don't even know what those religions are, and you have already decided that they are wrong!

Certainly you are following Mulla Nasruddin. He was at least better than you; he had heard fifty percent. You have heard only one side, and there are two hundred and ninety-nine more sides to it.

And then too it is not certain that any one of these is bound to be true. They all may be wrong.

Certainly they cannot all be right, but they all can be wrong. The true one may not have appeared yet - or you may have to find it on your own - so you cannot choose from the ready-made stock available.

That's what is happening. You go into a ready-made clothes store - none of the clothes available can be exactly of your own size because they were not made for you. They are made for the average man. It has been decided by mathematical calculations how many average sizes there are.

One of my friends had such big feet and no shoe company made that long a shoe. He was in such trouble. I said, "Don't be so worried, this can give you a great insight. You are not average - nobody is average." Everybody is wearing clothes not made for him. Some are loose, some are tight... just close to, but not exactly, their size.

That's why I have to have a whole department under Gayan to make my clothes exactly, because I am a fussy man. You can ask Gayan. She has to make my shirts two times, three times - the same shirt - four times. But she is a German.... If I am fussy, she is a German: she goes on making, I go on finding fault. But I don't think I will be able to defeat her - finally she manages.

One of my friends from Japan started sending sandals for me. Now, in Japan you cannot find my size - japanese feet are small - particularly because the sandals I use are really not meant for men.

But I don't believe that a sandal can be male or female. It suits me, for the simple reason that I do not have to bend to put it on my foot; I can just slip my foot into it. I am so lazy that bending and putting... all that, I cannot do.

So I have chosen this type of sandal - just two strips. I simply slip my feet in and that's okay. But from Japan - they have been searching all over Japan for me; finally they said that it seems to be difficult. Hundreds of pairs came but they were all short because they are feminine, and they are very small.

Then I had to find another German. I trust in Germans! When I want to do something I trust in Germans! So I have found Arpita - she is my shoemaker. She is also in the same difficulty as Gayan. She will make and I will find fault, and she will again make. And this goes on... but they know that finally they are going to succeed, that a moment will come when all faults are gone and then I will have to accept.

So they are always the winners, I am always the loser! But the whole journey is difficult, difficult for them. I simply go on sitting in my chair! It doesn't matter whether I lose or win. They can win. But they have to work hard for months, then they can win.

These principles, creeds, cults that you have chosen or you have been forced to choose - do you think they were meant for you? Can you by any trick of the imagination manage to think that Jesus was thinking about Siddha? I cannot. I have tried all kinds of ways to imagine it but I cannot find that Jesus was thinking of Siddha.

Manu wrote five thousand years ago, and he has written for the whole coming humanity. Now what kind of arrogant people were these? But that is their problem: they can be arrogant and they can write for the whole humanity or for other future humanities, future creations. That is their business - they can do it - but why should you be foolish enough to follow them?

Manu had no idea what kind of a world there is going to be, but he has written in detail for every religious person. If you don't follow accordingly you fall; you lose the dignity of your humanity.

As far as I am concerned, the moment you follow Manu you lose the dignity of being a human being.

You lose the dignity of being called part of "the people."

Mobs, crowds, organizations - all consist of persons, personalities. "The people" cannot allow you to have false faces, borrowed ideas, traditional, conventional, dead personalities.

No, unless you are an individual in your own right, you cannot be part of the word people.

You cannot be a Christian, you cannot be a Jew, you cannot be a Hindu, you can only be yourself if you want to be part of that tremendously significant word people. Only individuals, and only individuals....

But to be an individual is the most difficult thing in the world. It should be the most easy, but the way idiots have organized the world, they have made it the most impossible.

I have heard about a sardar, Pritam Singh. He was very famous in the village where he lived, and his fame depended on one thing.... It was a small village so nothing was private in that village. The smaller a place, the more difficult privacy becomes: everything is already public. You cannot do anything, you cannot go anywhere, without everybody else knowing.

But Sardar Pritam Singh was a mysterious man. Every couple was fighting - and in a village you need not fight with closed doors, because everybody knows. What is the point? People fight on the street; husbands beat wives, wives beat husbands. And every night it is the same scene: you can hear from every house screams and shouts and abuses and all kinds of things.

But the whole village was puzzled that from Pritam Singh's house they only heard laughter. That was unbelievable. Not even a single time did they hear any shout or even a scream, or any beating.

Sometimes Sardar Pritam Singh used to laugh, sometimes Sardani used to laugh - and they used to laugh really loudly.

Finally the whole village decided, "This mystery is too heavy, and we cannot resist the temptation:

we all have to go to him and ask, 'Sardar, explain why it is that you laugh - and particularly at the time when we are all fighting. You have chosen some time to laugh! Are you laughing at us? Then when do you fight? - because we never see you fighting."'

Sardar Pritam Singh smiled and said, "There is a secret, but I have been hiding it for twenty-five years, so please don't insist."

But they said, "It is unbearable. For years we have been also carrying a heavy burden of curiosity; today it has to be settled. It is making our life difficult. The whole day the idea comes again and again, 'Why does Sardar Pritam Singh laugh in the night, and so loudly too?and both of them? And they never fight - this is strange because couples are supposed to fight; otherwise what is this whole marriage for? What is the purpose? If you are not even fighting then what are you doing?'"

Sardar Pritam Singh said, "If you insist, if the whole village says, I will tell you: I have been married twenty-five years - and we fight every day."

They said, "What!"

He said, "Yes. The time you hear our laughter - that is when we fight: she throws things at me.

Verbal fights we don't believe in - we are Punjabis. Verbal fights we don't believe in. What is the point of just shouting screaming, saying...? Nobody is hurt, nothing. She throws things at me, and I, being a sardar, can't throw a thing at a woman - although she happens to be my wife. But it is against manliness; so all I do is, I save myself.

"She throws, I save myself. If she misses, I laugh; if she hits me, she laughs! And this way things have been going beautifully. We both enjoy it."

The village people were really at a loss: what to say? But one day there was an even greater surprise: they saw both of them going to the court, so they all followed. In the court the magistrate said, "What do you want?"

Sardar Pritam Singh said, "I want a divorce."

"But," the magistrate said, "I have heard so much about you and your laughter, and you are the only couple in the surroundings who is living joyously, laughingly. You too want to divorce your wife? How long have you been married?"

He said, "Twenty-five years."

The magistrate asked, "After twenty-five years what makes you decide?"

Sardar said, "I will have to explain to you. She throws things at me. I, being a man and a sardar, I cannot hit a woman, although she is my wife, so I go on hiding myself. That's why these people who are here from my village - they all have come to listen to what is going to happen. They have been puzzled all these years as to why we laugh. It is a simple matter: if she hits me, she laughs; if she misses me, I laugh."

The magistrate said, "If it has been going on so well for twenty-five years, what trouble has arisen now?"

Sardar said, "You don't understand. In twenty-five years she has become so practiced that now I have no chance of laughing at all. Every day she is laughing. It is unbearable; now I cannot stay with her."

These are our so-called people. They fight - that is unconscious. They laugh - that is silly. They arrange certain compromises just to pull them through, but nothing works. At a certain point every compromise breaks down. Neither the husband hears what the wife is saying nor the wife.... Both have ears - but the art of listening has not been taught to you. Nobody has told you how to listen.

When I became a professor, this was my first thing.... Every year for one month I was not teaching anything. For the first month those who wanted to participate in my classes had to learn how to listen.

It was complained against me that, "this is not part of the university course, syllabus; nowhere is it mentioned that for one month we have to learn to listen."

The vice-chancellor asked me, "What is this, that you ask students just to sit and learn to listen for one month?"

I said, "Yes. What can I do? I am carrying the whole burden of your society. This should have been done in their earlier stages; it would have been easier."

"But, he said, "they all hear perfectly, their ears are perfect."

I said, "It is not a question of ears. You can hear something while you are thinking inside; then that thinking gets mixed with your hearing - it is contaminated, corrupted. Then what you carry as if you have heard it is not what has been said. It is something else; it can be even just the opposite.

"You have prejudices inside which go on screening everything that passes through your ears. They prevent all that is against their prejudices, and they allow only that which supports their prejudices.

Now, this way at least you cannot understand philosophy. I am not concerned about other subjects, but in my subject it is impossible, because philosophy basically is an awareness of a problem from all its aspects.

"If you already have a mind about it.... For example, if we are discussing God and you already think that you know God is, or you know that God is not, then you cannot understand all possible aspects:

what it will mean if God is, what it will mean if God is not, what it will mean if we simply remain indifferent to the question, what it will mean if we conclude that it is impossible to know whether He is or not and we remain agnostic? And there are hundreds of other implications; but these are only possible to think of if you don't have a predetermined idea."

In the beginning it was very difficult for the students to sit for one hour silently listening: the birds outside, any noise - some professor shouting, some car passing, some airplane zooming - and you just listen. Nothing has to be done - just pure listening.

Many of them left before the month was finished. If thirty started, it was almost certain that only ten would be left. But those ten have remained grateful to me; not for what was taught after that one month but what they learned in that one month. What was taught was good to get the certificate but what they learned in that one month of silent listening became a new way of seeing things, of feeling, of being.

I call a person an individual if he is capable of listening.

That means, if he is capable of being in a state of meditation.

Then he is no longer a person, he is an individual.

You cannot in any way force him to do anything that his consciousness does not allow. He would rather die than take a false step. Death does not matter; what matters to him is remaining true to himself.

It becomes so valuable that everything else can be lost, but there is no way to lose it. Once you have it - in fact it will be better to say you have it already - once you discover it you cannot forget it again.

You ask me why people are not listening to my message. In the first place there are no "people," so who is going to listen? I have been trying to find my people - that has been my whole life's work, just to find people.

I don't want mobs, crowds, organizations. I want individuals - so pure, unprejudiced, that whatever I have to say they can take it in without judging whether it is right or wrong.

This is one of the greatest experiences of life - that anything that is not right starts melting before your alertness.

Your alertness, your awareness, your meditativeness functions almost like sun rays for dewdrops:

all that is false evaporates. You need not decide what is right and wrong; the wrong disappears of its own accord, and what is left is right.

This is a totally new way of existing.

But people are already carrying the idea of what is right, of what is wrong; that the right has to done, the wrong has not to be done. Yet they go on doing the wrong, and they don't do the right.

Even a man like Saint Francis says, "God, help me, because I go on doing what should not be done, and I go on avoiding what should be done. Help me!"

A man like Saint Francis.... And the same has been said by Saint Augustine, just in slightly different words: "God, please take care of me. I am not strong enough to do what is right. You have to give me strength to do it. And I am so weak that I am easily tempted to do the wrong. You have again to help me and prevent me."

Now, the problem is that these are saints; what to say about ordinary human beings? What will be their situation? - they are almost always doing the wrong. Naturally they feel guilty, miserable - sinners. They fall in their own eyes, they lose self-respect. They cannot feel dignity, and if they cannot feel dignity for themselves, who is going to feel dignity for them?

If you are not respectful towards yourself, do you think anybody else is going to respect you? If you yourself feel that you are worthless, then you will be surprised: if somebody thinks that you have some worth you will try to prove that "no, you are wrong, I am worthless."

This is what your religions have given to you - not respect, not dignity, not the pride of being human beings. These things have nothing to do with the ego; in fact the ego is needed because these things are missing.

Ego is a false substitute for a real dignity. When a man is really dignified there is no way to insult him, there is no way to disrespect him. You can be disrespectful, but you will see that he is completely unaffected, he is beyond your reach.

Dionysius used to say, "You can kill me but you cannot insult me." Alexander the Great had come to meet Dionysius. He was coming towards India, and Dionysius was on the borders of Greece, just one or two miles away from the main road.

Alexander wanted Dionysius to come to see him - which seems to be expected of a man like Alexander. He sent the message to Dionysius: "Alexander the Great wants you; he wants to meet you, and we have come to take you."

Dionysius said, "Tell Alexander that those who are really great don't call themselves great. If he wants to know what greatness means he should come here. Also, take the message that 'living, nobody can budge me from here; dead, you can take the corpse but that will not be Dionysius. If you want to meet Dionysius you have to come here."'

When this message reached, Alexander felt a little insulted, shocked, but also intrigued, very interested: What kind of man is this? And the people who had come said, "It is good, sir, that you don't go, because that man is Lying naked in the sun on the bank of a river. He has only one companion, a dog sitting by his side. And, if you don't feel offended, we would like to say to you that it is safer not to go there because once in a while he also talks to the dog. The man may be mad!"

But whatsoever Dionysius had said, they related. Alexander said, "Whatsoever is the case, it is only a question of two miles. And I want to finish it; I don't want to carry all my life this question of what kind of man this Dionysius was. I have heard about him so much; since my birth I have been hearing about him.

"My master" - his master was Aristotle and Dionysius was continuously attacking Aristotle. Aristotle had defined man as "a two-legged animal." Dionysius caught a bird with two legs, tore off all its feathers and sent it with a note to Aristotle: "This is what you call a two-legged animal - this is man?"

This bird arrived while Aristotle was teaching Alexander. Since that time Alexander was interested in that man. Dionysius has simply crushed the whole definition of Aristotle - that man is a two-legged animal. By sending a two-legged animal, he proved to Aristotle that "you are wrong."

Then Alexander heard that Dionysius went around with a burning lamp in the daylight and looked at everybody's face. He inquired for what he was searching, and he found that when people asked what he was searching for, Dionysius said, "I am searching for man. I find the crowd, but man is lost."

And it is said that when Dionysius was dying - the dog was sitting on one side and his lamp was on the other side - somebody asked him, "Dionysius, you are dying. Will you please tell us what happened to your whole life's search? Have you found man or not?"

Dionysius said, "Yes, I have something to say. I have not found man, but one thing I must appreciate, that nobody has stolen my lamp. At least this much I can say about humanity, that people are at least this good: nobody has stolen my lamp! I was always afraid that somebody was going to steal it; perhaps it is because of the dog that nobody dared."

Alexander went, and he saw the scene as described: Dionysius was lying naked - he was a beautiful man, a very strong man - and the dog was sitting just by the side of his head. He did not receive Alexander as an emperor, a world conqueror, should be received. He did not even get up. Alexander had to introduce himself: "I am Alexander, and I have come to see you."

Dionysius said, "Good, you can see me. I have no desire to see you at all." And he asked the dog, "Do you? If you want to see Alexander the Great, see him! This fellow is Alexander the Great."

Alexander said, "I am going to conquer India. Would you like me to bring something for you? I can bring it from there."

Dionysius said, "No, because I don't need anything. But it would be very kind of you if you would stand a little aside, because you are blocking the sun. If you can do this much that is more than one can expect of a man like you."

Alexander remembers that he had not met many people of such integrity, such dignity - and with nothing: no power, no post, not even clothes; no disciples, no church, nothing... only one companion, a dog. And still he asked, "If you can do only this much: stand a little aside, and don't block the sun.

And remember, never prevent anybody's light, anybody's warmth.

"And I tell you that you will never be the world conqueror, and you will never be able to come back home, because the path that you have chosen never comes back. On and on... you will find something more has to be conquered, something more has to be conquered: there is no end to things.

"And I want to ask just one thing before you go:

What are you going to do when you have conquered the world?"

Alexander said, "What? Really, I have never given a thought to it, but I think I will relax."

Dionysius looked at the dog and said, "Are you listening? This man thinks he is going to relax after he has conquered the world, and I am relaxing already - without conquering the world! This is strange! For relaxation is it a condition to conquer the world? I hen how am I relaxing?"

And Alexander never forgot it his whole life. What the man had said was right: there was no condition. If you want to relax you can relax now; you need not postpone it even for a single moment, because relaxation needs no pre-condition. All it needs is for you to want to relax - then relax! Don't even ask how to relax because that is a trick of the mind to postpone.

Then the mind gets involved in "how" - methods, techniques, strategies. Then relaxation is forgotten, then you are again in a trip of finding methods; and there are thousands of methods. And there is not a single method for relaxation. Relaxation is simply a decision: you want to relax, you relax.

If you want to close your eyes, close your eyes. Do you ask how to close your eyes? Once you ask somebody how to close your eyes, then one thing is certain: you will never be able to close your eyes. You may learn thousands of methods but you will never be able to close your eyes. If you want to close your eyes, close your eyes; it is just a natural phenomenon. Relaxation is just natural.

Tension is unnatural.

There are no "people" around the world. That's what Dionysius was trying to search for, for a human face, but he saw only masks. He was searching for an individual but he saw only personalities.

Hypocrites he found everywhere, but not a single authentic individual.

And why did he want to find man? The purpose was the same: he wanted to say something. But to whom to say it? Somebody is needed to listen to it; otherwise you are just talking to the walls.

I have talked to the walls for so many years. When for the first time, somewhere in 1950, I entered a radio station studio for a lecture to be recorded.... They wanted to display it all over India, broadcast it, for the simple reason that I was so young and the director of the radio station had heard me speaking in a university debate. He could not believe what I was saying, so he invited me to the studio sometime "to record any subject you give me."

Obviously he was worried, because I was in a studio for the first time. I had never spoken in an empty room just in front of the microphone, so he said, "You will feel a little awkward, but just once or twice in the beginning it happens. It happens to everybody, so don't be worried."

I said, "I will not feel awkward, because I have been talking to the walls."

He said, "What do you mean 'to the walls'?"

I said, "That day also when you were listening and you got impressed and you brought me here - to you there were people, to me there were only empty benches. The people were gone in all directions. Nobody was there. It was absolutely empty; there were only walls around. So don't be worried."

He thought me a little crazy, but he said, "Okay, you do it. I will be watching you from the outside, giving you the signals when to start, when to stop."

I said, "Don't be worried. Just tell me the time, and I will start and I will stop, because you will be a constant disturbance standing there in the window" - it was enclosed with glass. "And from outside you will be making signs. Don't disturb me. You simply give me the time when I have to start.

Ten-thirty? - I will start then. At ten-forty I will stop. You don't bother."

He watched from there, and he was very puzzled because it was as if I was talking to people, the way I am talking to you! He had seen many orators giving their speeches for records but he had never seen people moving their hands and talking and looking at people.

When he came in he said, "What were you doing?"

I said, "It is not a question of whether people are there or not - they are never there. And I can't speak without my hands. If you hold my hands I cannot speak a single word, because it is not only that a part of me is speaking, it is my whole being that is involved in it. My eyes, my hands, my whole body's involved. My whole body is saying something, is supporting what I am saying in words."

He said, "I don't understand you, because first you said that you always talk to the walls. That, I was puzzling about. And when I saw you talking here I saw that you are talking to people. I actually looked into the room to see if there was somebody."

I have been talking, many have been hearing, a few have been listening; and slowly slowly I have been sorting out those people who are capable of listening. And now I am talking only to those who are listening. Now I am not talking to the walls, I am talking to the people.

But the questioner must be asking the question about the outside world, the great world around.

There is no way, nothing can be done about it; they don't know how to listen. I have talked with them - it is not that I am a pessimist - I have struggled thirty years continuously with those people, but nobody seemed to be listening.

Slowly slowly I started sorting out my people, and just to sort them out I started initiating them into sannyas so that I could recognize them and know who my people are. I started giving them names so I could remember, because it is difficult for me to remember all kinds of strange names from around the world. The real reason was simply to have names that I could remember; otherwise it would be impossible for me. Now, there are people from almost all the countries, of all languages: it is impossible to remember their names.

But when I give you a name it is a totally different matter. When I give you a name, I give you a name for certain reasons, for certain qualities that I see in you, for certain possibilities that I see in you, for certain characteristics that are already there - and all these become associated.

The name that I give is known to me, its meaning is known to me. Its meaning and your lifestyle, pattern, potentiality, all become associated. It becomes easier for me to remember you; otherwise it is very difficult, almost impossible.

I have given you the red clothes for the simple reason so that I can recognize you; all other excuses are just hogwash. Just to give you good reasons - because people will be asking you and you will have to give good reasons to them - I have been trying to make a philosophy out of nothing. But the truth is simply this, nothing more than this.

And the last thing you say is, "Your message... why are people not listening to Your message?"

My message is not something just to be listened to.

My message is not a doctrine, not a philosophy.

My message is a certain alchemy.

It is a science of transformation.

It is only for those who are willing to die as they are and be born again into something so new that they cannot even imagine it right now. So only those few courageous people will be ready to listen, because listening is going to be risky. Once you listen you cannot escape from it. Then without your commitment you are committed; without even saying a single word from your side, you are finished!

In listening you have taken the first step towards being reborn.

So it is not a philosophy that you can just make an overcoat of and go bragging about.

It is not a doctrine in which you can find consolation about harassing questions; a doctrine which can make those questions subdued, and slowly slowly forgotten.

No, my message is not some verbal communication.

It is far more risky.

It is nothing less than death and rebirth.