Commandments, No - Just a Few Requests

Question 1:

Moses is one of the most charismatic leaders that the world has known, but he is not a religious man.

He is a lawgiver. But to be a law giver is one thing, and to be religious is totally different. He decides what is right, what is wrong for his people. But right and wrong are not eternal things. Something is right this moment, and the next moment it is not right. Something is right in one context, in another context it becomes just its opposite. Laws are dead. Once you have decided them, then they are fixed. They don't change with the context, with the situation, with the time. They cannot change, they are not living beings.

Moses guided his people out of slavery, gave them great hope for the future, inspired them, but he could not make them religious. Because he could not make them religious, he had to substitute religion with laws. Laws are a poor substitute for consciousness. But when consciousness is missing, there is nothing else to do except to give laws, and follow the laws.

Why could Moses not make his people religious? He himself was not a religious person. His encounter with God is nothing but an hallucination. God exists not, so those who have encountered God have encountered their own imagination. Wandering in the hot, burning, fiery desert for years; hungry, thirsty, his people dying, their hope dying - there seems to be no end to this search for the promised land.

He goes to the mountains to think, to contemplate, to pray to God. He must have been in a hopeless situation. Now the people were asking - and there was no answer - they were asking, "Where is the promised land? It seems you don't have any idea where it is. You uprooted us. Of course we were slaves, but at least we were surviving. Now we are dying."

People choose slavery for the simple reason that if the alternative is death, then it is better to be a slave. At least you are alive and there is a possibility someday you may get out of the slavery. But when you are dead, the possibility disappears. So it is not wrong to choose slavery when it is an alternative to death.

Moses brought these people out of slavery, giving them all kinds of dreams, and slowly those dreams started turning into desert dust. Days went by, months went by, years went by, and people were dying as they had never seen people dying. Forty years he was wandering in the desert of the Middle East.

In forty years, out of every four people, three had died. Three quarters of the original people were no longer there; and those who remained, you could not call them alive either. These forty years had been such a suffering that it would have been a lot better if they had died. They were skeletons.

Naturally, Moses was in a tremendous anguish, a great turmoil. He had not thought that this was going to happen. He was not deceiving his people; he was very sincere, his intention was good.

There was no way to get these people out of Egyptian slavery unless they were given a great hope that pulled them out of slavery.

But this happens to all great leaders: when they succeed, then comes the moment of their failure.

It happened in India. Mahatma Gandhi led the country for forty years and made the people believe, "When independence comes all your problems are solved. There will be no poverty, no suffering, no riots, no violence. These Hindu-Mohammedan riots in which thousands of people are killed, burned alive, are created by the British rulers." It was easy to dump it on the British rulers - dump everything on the British rulers. You are suffering because you are in slavery. You are poor because they are exploiting you. You can never live a respectable life if you are under the shoes of the British Empire.

People believed him, just the same way as Jews had believed Moses. They followed him. The independence came... and that was the great moment of failure for Mahatma Gandhi, because it is not such a simple affair that just by getting rid of British rule all your problems are going to disappear.

Your problems are millions of years old. The British were in India for only three hundred years.

Before that you were poor, hungry, uneducated. In fact, the British Empire did everything to raise the standard of life in India. It introduced all kinds of technology, science, in every possible way. It introduced medicine, schools.... But nobody was going to thank them. Who is going to thank the person who is enslaving you? - they were the cause of all the riots, of all the murders, of all the butchery.

So, people were waiting: "When the British go back, we will be living for the first time as human beings - there will be no poverty, life will be a bed of roses." But life not only remained the same, it became worse, because the British rulers knew how to rule. In three hundred years they had created a system to control, to keep discipline. Now all that disappeared with them, and the people who came into power had no idea what power was. What to do with power? How to use it? And suddenly there was a tremendous outburst of violence such as India had never seen before, perhaps no other country has seen ever before.

Gandhi was shattered. Now the British were gone, but the violence was a million times more, because the British had a certain discipline, power, and they had managed the country for three hundred years. Now there was nobody; everybody was free to do whatsoever he wanted.

Thousands of people were killed, burned; trains were burned, stopped and completely burned, and nobody was allowed to get out of the trains. Houses were set on fire. The whole country was in a mess. In Pakistan, the Hindus were being killed. In India, the Mohammedans were being killed.

And the leaders were at a loss as to what to do. Gandhi himself said, "Now nobody listens to me."

And he had been the absolute leader of the people for forty years. His voice was the voice of the country, and now he said, "Nobody listens to me. I have become a false coin - useless."

He used to say, before India became independent, that he would like to live for one hundred and twenty-five years, because after independence there would be real life; right now, what was life?

But as the country became independent, and the whole country was on fire - violence everywhere, destruction everywhere... even his own followers, intimate followers, were no longer listening to him - he said for the first time, "Now I don't want to live one hundred and twenty-five years." Perhaps when Nathuram Godse shot him, he felt relieved, because he was carrying a burden. He could not show his face to people; there was no answer.

The same was the situation facing Moses. He went into the mountains just to be out of the crowd, because they were continuously torturing him, asking him, "Where is the promised land? We don't see any promised land. Days pass, we don't come across an oasis. People are dying of thirst, and whenever we come across an oasis, it is not easy to get food either"... because they were all poor people, they had no money, they were slaves. They were not paid, and whatsoever they had brought... small things. That caravan of Moses is worth remembering. What had people carried with them? Somebody was bringing his donkey, somebody was bringing a cart, somebody was carrying two earthen pots, a few clothes.... There was nothing valuable. They had nothing. And on the way they sold whatsoever they had brought with them - these small things they sold for bread.

Moses must have been in terrible pain. Nobody has thought about it. I have never come across a Jewish book pondering over the situation of Moses. He went into the mountains, not to meditate.

That is a great luxury - Moses could not afford it - and that was not the time to meditate. He had gone just to avoid this crowd, and sit for a time to think out a plan. Something had to be done, otherwise he would be responsible for this whole race dying. And he had promised them....

And remember always, this is how the human mind works: when you start promising, you forget that there is a limit, don't exaggerate. Mind is very easily able to exaggerate. It enjoys exaggerating.

It magnifies things both ways. Just a little pain and it makes so much fuss about it. Just a little suffering and it becomes the greatest suffering in the world. Just a little pleasure and you are on top of the whole world, as if nobody else knows what pleasure is. You fall in love with a woman and you think, "Never before has such a love happened, and never again is it going to happen.

This is unique." This is happening everywhere, and everybody is thinking it: "This is unique!" Mind exaggerates everything, magnifies - it is a magnifier - and you believe it.

Moses' people were really in trouble. It was not a question of magnifying. And there was a limit to giving them consolation: "Wait just a little more - we are coming closer, coming closer...." It seemed as if they were going farther and farther away; there seemed to be no signs of coming closer.

In this state of anguish, in the burning hot desert, on the mountain - even hotter, because a desert mountain has no trees, no greenery - Moses hallucinates. In such a state of mind anybody can hallucinate. He starts talking to God. His human mind finds no answer. This is a state of hallucination: with open eyes he is seeing a dream. And he believes that God has given him advice, ten commandments: "These are the ten rules. Go to your people and give these ten commandments. If they follow these ten commandments everything will be all right." His hallucination is not a religious experience. There is no God in the first place. Even if there is, he does not speak Hebrew. How did you start thinking that God is a Jew? If there is a God and he comes to know that you call him a Jew, do you think he will be happy? There is no God at all, so there is no problem.

It is not Moses alone who is hallucinating; other religious leaders - of course, so-called religious leaders - have done the same. He comes with great authority and tells his people, "God has given these ten commandments. If you live accordingly, fulfilling God's desire, then only are you going to find the promised land. But first you have to be capable of it, worthy of it."

Now, this is a good strategy. Neither can those poor people be worthy of fulfilling all those ten commandments, nor can they ask again, "Where is the promised land?" I don't think that he was being a politician, but who knows - it is good political strategy to give people a certain idea: "You fulfill it; if you don't fulfill it, then you are responsible, then you cannot blame me. I had told you before that these ten commandments have to be fulfilled."

And those ten commandments cannot be fulfilled by any natural human being.

The very structure is such that you will find it going against your natural instincts, your biology, your physiology, your psychology. So rather than blaming the leader, you will start feeling guilty, that it is because of you the promised land is not being reached.

I do not think that Moses was at all a religious man. He was a great revolutionary, and certainly a charismatic leader, not of an ordinary caliber, superb. It is not easy to keep people wandering in the desert for forty years and still keep their hope alive. This was a great strategy, knowingly or unknowingly. My feeling is that it was unknowingly. He certainly had the feeling that God had spoken to him, that he had seen God, that these ten commandments were from him. And by giving these commandments to the Jews, God had proved again that Jews are the chosen people of God.

You ask me, have I any commandments for you?

First: The very word commandment, to me, is ugly. It is okay for a commander in the army to give commandments. The very word means that you have to follow it. There is no question to be raised, a commandment cannot be doubted. And a commandment from God - you have to fulfill it. And a commandment from God gives Moses the authority to keep these people quiet, disciplined, under his rule.

I am not a commander, and I don't want anybody to be under my authority. I do not represent any God whatsoever - Jew, Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. I am nobody's representative. I simply represent myself. And any authority that I have is my own.

I can say to you authoritatively what my experience is, but I cannot be authoritative with you. Note the difference: whatsoever I say, I say with the authority of my own experience. But I am not being authoritative with you. If I say, "Believe me" - then I start becoming authoritative with you. "Don't doubt me.... If you believe, then paradise is yours. If you doubt, you fall in hell." I do not promise you any heaven. I do not make you afraid of any hell. Yes, my words have an intrinsic authority, but they are not authoritative. They don't enslave you.

So of course I cannot give you any commandments. That would be insulting you, that would be humiliating you. That would be taking your integrity, your freedom, your responsibility from you. No, I cannot commit such a criminal act.

I can request you, I can invite you, to share with me my experience. I can become the host for you and you can be the guest. It is an invitation, a welcome - but it is not a commandment.

What requests can I make of you? It will look a little strange because Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha - nobody requests you. They all have orders for you: "Follow, or fall into hell." They don't give you any chance even to think. They reduce your very existence, your very being, to an object. They reduce you, just like a number in the army. They don't respect your individuality. Hence I see something irreligious in all those people. They are special; somebody is special because he has seen God with his own eyes.... Now, in what way can you be equal to him?

On what right can you question him? He has seen God himself, talked to him. He has brought the message to you; he is the messenger.

Somebody is the only begotten son: now, what can you do about it? You cannot be equal to Jesus.

All that you can do is to follow, to imitate, to be a psychological slave, which is a far more dangerous slavery than any other. Economic slavery is nothing compared to psychological slavery.

I am reminded of Diogenes. I love this fellow Diogenes for the simple reason that he does not claim any authority from God. He does not give any orders and commandments and disciplines to others.

He used to live naked - not for any religious reasons, not to get to heaven; he was not concerned about heaven and hell at all. He lived naked, because, he said, "That's how I was born. Nature wants me to be this way. Why should I be otherwise? I am going to be just natural."

One day it happened, he was just going to the river. He used to carry, up to that time, a begging bowl which he used to collect food or keep water. He was running towards the river - he was thirsty - and just by his side a dog came running and reached the river before him and started drinking water. Diogenes said, "Great. This dog is far more independent than me." He threw the begging bowl into the river and said to the dog, "Master, you have really shown me the way. I was carrying that weight unnecessarily."

He was caught by a few thieves - because in those days people were caught and sold as slaves, and he looked very promising. He was very healthy and had a certain personality. They were certain that they would get good money if they could keep hold of him. They were three; he was alone, but they were not certain that even three would be able to keep hold of him. He might kill all three. So they followed him, afraid whether to try or just drop the idea because he seemed to be dangerous.

And who knows, he might be mad, because he was walking naked and enjoying so much, and he had nothing to enjoy.

Diogenes was listening to what they were thinking and talking about, and he said, "Don't be worried.

You want to steal me? You want to sell me in the marketplace?"

They were shocked. They said, "Now there is trouble. If we say yes, he is going to jump on us."

But Diogenes said, "Don't be afraid. I am going myself to the market. You can come with me, you can sell me. One thing I know: nobody can make me a slave. So you will get money, and you will be happy. And I know for certain that nobody can make me a slave, so why should I be worried about it? You just come along with me."

They could not even say, "We don't want to come along," because this man seemed to be so strange:

he might force them to come along with him. So they said, "Okay, if you say so, then we will come along." He was walking ahead and they were behind him; he was looking like an emperor and they were looking like the slaves.

When they reached the slave market he stood up on the platform where slaves used to be put so people could see from all sides, to measure them, weigh them, look at their teeth - just the way you purchase a horse or a bull, that's how - they could see your muscles, whether you were strong or weak, old or young. But these three thieves could not say to Diogenes, "Please stand on the platform." He jumped up himself, and what he said from the platform is something to be remembered. He said, "Listen!" - so loudly that the whole market became silent, seeing a naked man and so healthy, so beautiful, so proportionate. They had never seen such a slave.

There was great silence in the whole market, all the people gathered there, and Diogenes said, "For the first time a master is for sale. Any slave among you can purchase a master. But remember, you are purchasing a master." Those three thieves were hiding in the crowd because they thought the crowd might become angry, and they might be caught: "You have brought this man here."

But one rich man fell in love... just the idea. This man was saying, "A master is for sale; any slave can purchase him." This rich man asked, "Who owns you?"

Diogenes said, "Of course I own myself, but I have promised three thieves, so the money will go to them. They are hiding there. They have followed me. Really I have forced them to come here - they were trying to escape in the middle of the journey, and just now they are trying to disappear in the crowd. They are the three. You will have to give the money to these people. And I will come with you. As far as ownership is concerned, I own myself and nobody can own me."

The rich man said, "That's what has appealed to me. I am not taking you as a slave, I am accepting you as a master. You just come with me. Just your being in my house, your presence, is enough."

The thieves were paid. Diogenes went in the chariot of the rich man, and the rich man certainly behaved as if he was the slave and Diogenes was the master.

There is a certain phenomenon: if you are really independent psychologically, nobody can make you a slave. Yes, you can be killed, but you cannot be made a slave.

And all these people who have been giving commandments, disciplines, showing you the way to live, what to eat, what to wear, what to do, what not to do - all these people are in some way trying to make you a psychological slave. I cannot call these people religious.

To me religion begins with psychological freedom.

I cannot give you commandments, but I can give you a few requests. Nobody has done it before, so it may look a little outlandish, but what can I do? I can give you a few invitations.

My first request or invitation is: Don't let your doubt die.

That is the most precious thing you have got, because it is doubt that one day is going to help you discover the truth.

And all these people say, "Believe!" Their first effort is to destroy your doubt. Start with faith, because if you don't start with faith on each step you will raise questions. Hence I would like it to be my first request to you: doubt until you discover. Do not believe until you come to know yourself. Once you believe, you will never be able to know on your own. Belief is poison, the most dangerous poison there is; because it kills your doubt. It kills your inquiry. It takes away from you your most precious instrument.

Whatsoever science has achieved in three hundred years is through doubt. And in ten thousand years, religion has achieved nothing because of its belief. You can see, anybody who has eyes can see, that in three hundred years science has achieved so much, in spite of all the hindrances created by the religious people. What has been the basic power of science? It was doubt.

Doubt, and go on doubting until you come to a point that you cannot doubt anymore. And you cannot doubt anymore only when you come to know something on your own. Then there is no question of doubt, there is no way to doubt. So this is my first request.

My second request: Never imitate.

The mind is an imitator, because imitation is very easy. To be someone is very difficult. To become someone is very easy - all that you need is to be a hypocrite, which is not much of a problem. Deep down you remain the same, but on the surface you go on painting yourself according to some image.

The Christian is trying to become like Christ - that's what the word Christian means. You would love to be like Christ. You are on the way, maybe far away, but moving slowly. A Christian means a person trying slowly to become a Christ, a Mohammedan means a person trying to become Mohammed.

But unfortunately this is not possible; this is not in the very nature of the universe. It only creates unique beings. It has no idea at all of carbon copies, duplicators, cyclostyled material; existence has no idea - just the original. And each individual is so unique and original that if he tries to become Christ, he is committing suicide. If he tries to become a Buddha, he is committing suicide.

So the second request is: Don't imitate. If you want to know who you are, please avoid imitation, that's a way of avoiding knowing yourself I have always loved one of Friedrich Nietzsche's statements, and in many different contexts I have found it mysteriously true - again in this reference. Nietzsche says, "The first and the last Christian died two thousand years ago, on the cross." The first and the last.... Now, all others are just dodos.

They are trying in every way to be Christians, and it is not possible at all. It is not allowed by existence and its laws.

You cannot change the universal laws.

You can only be yourself, and nothing else.

And it is beautiful to be yourself.

Anything original has beauty, freshness, fragrance, aliveness. Anything that is imitated is dead, dull, phony, plastic. You can pretend, but whom are you deceiving? Except yourself you are not deceiving anybody. And what is the point of deceiving? What are you going to gain?

These same religious people, Moses, Mahavira, Buddha - these same religious people have been telling you, if you imitate exactly along the lines prescribed by them you will attain to great pleasure in heaven, in paradise. They have all been somehow reinforcing your greed, lust. They talk of desirelessness - and for what? Can you see the contradiction of all these religions? They say, "Drop desiring, so that you can attain to paradise." And what is this, if not desiring? This is the greatest desire. What other desires are you dropping for it? Wearing beautiful clothes - drop it.

Having a beautiful house - drop it. Eating good food - drop it. These are desires. These small things... and what are you going to gain in return? The whole paradise is yours.

These people are not teaching you desirelessness. On the contrary, they are giving you a great desire as a bargain - if you can drop your small stupid desires. And because of that great desire you are ready to imitate, because that's the only way to reach there. You are ready to imitate.

Thousands of people are living, even today, along the guidelines of Buddha. They may have been good for Gautam Buddha, he may have enjoyed it; I have no quarrel about it. But he was not imitating anybody; that you don't see at all. Is Christ trying to imitate anybody? If you have just a little intelligence, a very little intelligence, that will do; it is not that you need genius to understand the simple fact. Whom has Christ imitated? Whom has Buddha imitated? Whom has Lao Tzu imitated?

Nobody. That's why they have flowered. But you are imitating.

The first thing to learn is that nonimitation is one of the fundamentals of religious life. Don't be a Christian and don't be a Mohammedan and don't be a Hindu - so that you can discover who you are.

Before discovering, you start covering yourself with all kinds of labels, and then you go on reading those labels, and thinking this is you - you are a Mohammedan, you are a Christian.... And those are labels glued upon you by yourself or by your parents, by your well-wishers. They are all your enemies. Whosoever tries to distract you from your being is your enemy.

This is my definition: whosoever helps you to remain - determinedly, whatsoever the cost, whatever the consequence - to remain yourself, he is your friend.

I am not a messiah and I am not a prophet. I am only a friend, and a friend cannot do what you are asking me to do. What commandments can I give you? No, none. I cannot tell you what to do and what not to do. I can only explain to you that either you can be yourself or you can try and pretend to be somebody else. That trying and pretending is easier, because you are just acting.

Now, in this film of Richard Attenborough's, "Gandhi," the man who was acting as Gandhi - what do you think? He is doing perfectly well; he looks like Gandhi. Attenborough had to go around the world to find a man who looked like Gandhi. It was very difficult, and this man simply walked into his office and he said, "What! I have been searching all over...." He was just a poor actor in some small drama company. He looks like Gandhi, he wears clothes like Gandhi, he walks like Gandhi, he talks like Gandhi: what more do you want? But do you think he has become Gandhi? Sometimes he can manage even to be better than Gandhi, because Gandhi was doing it for the first time, he is doing it for the second time. He can drop all the mistakes and faults. He can improve upon it. It has happened....

Charlie Chaplin's friends, on his fiftieth birthday, had a special arrangement to celebrate. All over England people were invited to play the part of Charlie Chaplin. From villages they were chosen.

Then there was a competition on another level, the district; then there was another competition, higher. And then the final competition was in London. Charlie Chaplin was a joker, and he said, "This is a good time to play a joke." So by the back door he entered the competition. But the joke turned upon him - he came second! Somebody else came first. Judges were not aware that Charlie Chaplin himself was playing; it became known only later on that he had come second - as Charlie Chaplin. Somebody else had gone farther in being Charlie Chaplin.

So it is possible that a Christian may go a little ahead of Christ, a Buddhist may go a little ahead of Buddha. But it is still acting, you are only doing it; it is not your being. Keep the distance between being and doing. You can do things against your being, there is no problem. The being is very patient, very calm and quiet; it won't disturb you. If you want to play somebody else's role, it will allow you.

Now, this man who came better than Charlie Chaplin still knows that he is not Charlie Chaplin.

His being is his being; it was just acting. And when he discovered that he had gone farther in being Charlie Chaplin than Charlie Chaplin himself he could not believe it. He apologized to Charlie Chaplin, "Forgive me, I had no idea that you were in the competition."

Charlie Chaplin said, "I was thinking to play a joke, but I became a laughingstock myself. But you have revealed a great truth, that acting and being are two separate things."

But in ordinary life, you are not playing a role of being a Christian, you start thinking you are a Christian. Slowly, slowly, slowly, conditioned by the society, by the parents, by the education, you become a Christian. You completely forget that you were not born as a Christian. And you completely forget what your potential is. You have moved away in a direction which may not have been your potential. You have gone far away; you will have to come back.

When I say this to people, it hurts. But I cannot do it in any other way. It is going to hurt. You have gone miles away in being a Christian; you have to come back miles, and it is going to be a hard task.

And unless you come back to the point from where you deviated, you will never be able to discover yourself - and there is all that has to be discovered.

My third request is: Beware of knowledge.

It is so cheap to become knowledgeable. Scriptures are there, libraries are there, universities are there; it is so easy to become knowledgeable. And once you become knowledgeable you are in a very sensitive space, because the ego would like to believe that this is your knowledge - not only knowledgeability, it is your wisdom. The ego would like to change knowledge into wisdom. You will start believing that you know.

You know nothing. You know only books and what is written in the books. Perhaps those books are written by people just like you. Ninety-nine percent of books are written by other bookish people. In fact, if you read ten books, your mind becomes so full of rubbish that you would like to pour it down into the eleventh book. What else are you going to do with it? You have to unburden yourself.

Books go on growing. Each year each language goes on producing thousands and thousands of books. Never before was the danger so great as it is today, because never before was knowledge so easily available to you - through all kinds of media. Now the book is not the only thing; you can get it from the newspaper, from the magazine, from the radio, from television, and these sources will be becoming more and more available. The danger will become even stronger.

I have been a professor in two universities, and I have watched hundreds of professors. That is the most snobbish tribe in the whole world. The professor thinks himself to be a different species altogether - because he knows. And what does he know? Just words, and words are not experience.

You can go on repeating the word love, love, love, millions of times; then too it won't give you the taste of love. But if you read books on love - and there are thousands of books on love, novels and poetries, stories, treatises, theses - you can come to know so much about love that you may forget completely that you have never loved, that you don't know what love is all about... and you know all about love that is written in the books.

So the third thing is to beware of knowledge, to be so alert that whenever you want, you can put your knowledge aside and it will not block your vision. It will not come between you and reality. You have to go to reality utterly naked. But if there are so many books between you and reality, then whatsoever you see will not be the real. It will be distorted by your books in so many ways, by the time it reaches you it may have no connection at all with the reality.

The fourth thing... I will not say "pray" because there is no God to pray to. I cannot say, like all the religions, that prayer will make you religious; it will give you a bogus religiousness. So in my religion the word prayer has to be completely dropped. God is not there, hence talking to the empty sky is utterly foolish. The danger is, you may start hearing voices from the sky; then you have gone beyond the limit of normality. Then you are abnormal. Then you are no more capable of doing something, you will need psychiatric treatment. So before that happens - before God answers you - please don't ask. That is within your power, not to ask, not to pray. God cannot force you to pray and to ask. If you pray and ask and you insist, he may answer - that is the danger. And once you hear the answer, then you are not going to listen to anybody. Then you have to be forced to go for psychiatric treatment, otherwise you are going insane.

My word for prayer is love. Forget the word prayer, replace it with love.

Love is not for some invisible God. Love is for the visible - human beings, animals, trees, oceans, mountains. Spread your wings of love as far and wide as you can.

And remember, love needs no belief system. Even the atheist loves. Even the communist loves.

Even the materialist loves. So love is something intrinsic to you - nothing imposed from outside, that only a Christian can love, or a Hindu can love - it is your human potential. And I would like you to depend on your human potential rather than these bogus conditionings of Christian, Jewish, Hindu.... You don't bring them with you, but love you bring with you; it is part and parcel of your being. Love without any inhibition, without any taboos.

All these religions have tabooed love. You can understand their strategy. The strategy is that if your love is tabooed, then your energy of love will start moving towards prayer. That's a simple way:

you block the passage of love, it will find some other way. Now you have blocked it from reaching to the real, it will try to reach to the unreal. You have blocked the human possibility; now it will try something imaginary, hallucinatory.

All the religions are against love because that is the danger: if a man moves into love he may not bother about the church and the temple and the mosque and the priest. Why should he bother?

He may not think at all of prayer because he knows something more substantial, something more nourishing. He knows something more existential, why should he go into dreams?

Just see it this way: fast one day, and next morning remember what you dreamed. You will certainly dream of food, a feast - it's absolutely certain. Just fast one day and you will dream in the night.

What happened? You dropped the real but your whole being wants it. If you drop the real, then the only way possible is to have the substitute, the unreal. Whatever you dream, keep a check on it: that dream indicates what you are missing in reality. A man who lives in reality, his dreams start disappearing. There is nothing for him to dream. By the time he goes to sleep he is finished with the work of the day. He is finished, he has no hangover that moves into dreams.

Sigmund Freud, Jung, Adler - all these people have been working on dreams. They should have looked at least into one person's life where dreams have disappeared, and that would have given them the clue. But these people are just as stupid as you are. Freud was so much afraid of ghosts that you cannot believe it. You are not that afraid of ghosts.

Jung was thrown out of the psychoanalytic movement for the simple reason that he believed in ghosts. And one day, when Sigmund Freud and Jung were sitting in Freud's sitting room, Jung started talking about ghosts. He was very interested in ghosts. Just as he started talking about ghosts there was a great explosion in the cupboard. Freud fell from his seat, and he said, "I have told you again and again: talk of the devil and he is there - but you don't listen." Even Jung was shaken. They opened the cupboard; there was nothing. How come so much noise, as if a bomb had exploded? He closed the cupboard and they sat again. Again they started talking about the ghost, because how can you stop so suddenly after such an experience? And again there was an explosion! And that was the end. After that, Freud never saw Jung.

Freud was so afraid of death that you could not talk about death. His disciples were made aware, particularly the new ones, never to mention the word death. Twice it had happened, people had mentioned something about death and he fell on the ground in a fit, he became unconscious. He was so much afraid of death, even the word death was enough to make him unconscious. And these people are giving you psychoanalysis, these are your great scientists of the mind!

Jung was afraid of dead bodies. And this is the natural law: whatsoever you are afraid of you are fascinated by too. So he wanted to go to Egypt to see the ancient mummies, those dead bodies which have been preserved in the pyramids and now are in the museums of Egypt. He wanted to go many times. The tickets were booked, sometimes he even reached the airport, but became nervous, so nervous, so feverish, that he came back again - canceled the trip. He never managed to reach Egypt. But he tried a dozen times, and always he became nervous. Just the idea of seeing a three, four, five thousand year old dead body and something inside him just freaked out.

These people have not known a single person whose dreams have disappeared. For example, I cannot dream even if I want to; there is no way. I have tried and failed. I have tried many ways, invented them because there is no book which says how to create dreams, so I invented my own ways. I will go into sleep thinking of something, visualizing something, so that, as I am going into sleep, whatsoever I am visualizing may remain in the sleep and it will become a dream. But as sleep comes, what I was visualizing disappears. Sleep is there, but what I was visualizing is not there.

If you live your real life authentically, sincerely, totally, dreams are finished. If you love, you will never think of prayer because you know the real thing - so why should you go after the pseudo? And all these religions were aware of that: stop the real so you have to go to the pseudo.

The fifth thing I would like to say to you: Live moment to moment. Go on dying every moment to the past. It is finished. There is no need even to label it good or bad. The only thing to know is: it is finished, it is no more. It is going to be no more... gone and gone forever; now why waste time about it?

Never think of the past, because you are wasting the present, which is the only real thing in your hand. And never think of the future, because nobody knows how tomorrow is going to be, what tomorrow is going to be, how it is going to turn out, where you are going to land - you cannot imagine.

Do you think about what happened to our commune? Had you ever thought that we were going to land up in Oregon, in America? I don't think anybody, howsoever dreaming and imaginary and hallucinatory, had thought of Oregon. But we landed here. This goes on happening every day - you don't take note of it - that yesterday you wasted so much time thinking for this day, and it has not turned out to be according to your ideas and your plans and this and that. And now you are worried why you wasted that time - again you are wasting it.

Remain in the moment, true to the moment, utterly herenow, as if there has been no yesterday and there is going to be no tomorrow - only then can you be herenow totally.

And that totality of being in the present joins you with existence, because existence knows no past, no future. It is always herenow.

Existence knows only one tense, that is the present tense. It is language which creates three tenses, and creates three thousand tensions in your mind. Existence knows only one tense, and that is present: and it is not a tension at all, it is utterly relaxing. When you are totally here, no yesterdays pulling you back and no tomorrows pulling you somewhere else, you are relaxed.

To me, to be in the moment is meditation, to be utterly in the moment. And then it is so beautiful, so fragrant, so fresh. It never gets old. It never goes anywhere.

It is we who come and pass; existence remains as it is. It is not time that passes, it is we who come and pass. But it is a fallacy: rather than seeing that we are passing, we have created a great invention, the clock - time passes.

Just think, if there is no man on the earth will there be any time passing? Things will be all there, the ocean will still be coming to the beach, crashing its waves on the rocks. The sun will rise, the sun will set, but there will be no morning, there will be no evening. There will be no time as such. Time is a mind invention, and basically time can exist only with yesterdays and tomorrows; the present moment is not part of time.

When you are simply here, just now, there is no time. You are breathing, you are alive, you are feeling, you are open to everything that is happening all around.

When your every moment starts becoming meditation, you are religious.

... So these five requests for you.

Okay Sheela?