The Only Golden Rule is There are No Golden Rules

Question 1:

Living itself is so intense for me that I certainly go on forgetting the right maxims for living, the right rules for living. It may seem a contradiction, but it is not. The people who remember maxims for life forget life completely. Yes, I have forgotten not only that, but a few more. It reminds me.... The one that I have loved most is: The golden rule for life is that there are no golden rules.

There cannot be. Life is so vast, so immense, so strange, mysterious, it cannot be reduced into a rule or a maxim. All maxims fall short, are too small; they cannot contain life and its living energies.

Hence the golden rule is significant, that there are no golden rules.

An authentic man does not live by rules, maxims, commandments. That's the way of the pseudo- man.

The authentic man simply lives.

Yes, if you ask the authentic man, he may tell you about certain rules, but they are not the rules that he has followed himself. He has just found them on the way of living, just like collecting seashells on the beach. He had not gone to collect the seashells, he had gone to enjoy the early morning, the fresh air, the sun, the sea, the sand. Just by the way, he found those seashells.

All the rules are collected by people who have not lived according to them, because the people who have lived according to them have committed suicide long before. Anybody living according to a rule is destroying himself, poisoning himself, because the rule was found by somebody who was not you, somewhere where you will never be, in some time, in some space, which is not your time and not your space. It is very dangerous to follow that rule. You will be distracting your life from its center, its grounding - you will misshape yourself. Trying to shape yourself you will only misshape yourself, disfigure yourself.

So all the rules I have talked about these two or three days - you have to remember: before all of them comes the golden rule. But I had simply forgotten about it. I got so immersed in wrestling with Moses - and poor Moses has never done any harm to me, nor do I intend to do any harm to him - but the word commandment triggered something in me.

It reminds me of when I was a postgraduate student. In India it became a rule that every student had to participate in a two year army training. I went to the vice-chancellor and said, "I simply refuse. I will not participate in any army training; the very idea is nauseous - that somebody says to me, 'Left turn' and I have to turn left. Who is he? And why should I turn left in the first place? If I want to turn right or if I don't want to turn at all.... It is going to be difficult. It is better you find some way to keep me out of it."

He said, "I can understand you, and I can see the difficulty. You have never followed any rule. I have had reports against you again and again, but I have never called you because I know that you may not be following the rule, but whatsoever you will be doing must be better than the rule itself. I know you, I have been watching you," he said. "For example, many professors were reporting to me," he told me, "that you fall asleep in their classes. Now, this is not right. And if they wake you up, you create so much fuss about it - that nobody has the right to wake you, and what harm are you doing?

You are simply sleeping."

I had told my professors, "It does not disturb your lecture, and anyway, who cares about your lecture!

Whatsoever you are saying is all nonsense, it is better not to hear it. And this is my time - from twelve to two I have always slept. From my very childhood, in my school, high school, undergraduate classes, I have always slept. It was always a recognized fact that from twelve to two, I am going to sleep. And people have come to accept it, because I was not going to do anything else at that time.

You can throw me out of the class; I will sleep there." I have been thrown out of the class - I slept outside, it didn't matter, but that is my time of sleep.

The vice-chancellor said, "I told your professors, 'Don't be worried. You can look at his marks in your paper last year. How much did he get? Ninety-eight percent. What more do you think he will be able to manage by keeping awake?'"

I told the vice-chancellor, "Here you are wrong. If I had been awake then ninety-eight percent would have been impossible. Even to get eighteen percent would have been difficult. That man was throwing so much crap into everybody's mind; I somehow avoided him. The two percent they are missing... it seems that even in my sleep, he has shouted something and it has entered my mind; otherwise why not a hundred percent? Those two percent must be his doing, and I am going directly to him to ask about the two percent: what happened about the two percent?"

He said, "It has been reported that you don't follow the hostel rules, and you are the prefect of the whole hostel. You are supposed to manage one thousand students and make them follow the rules, but you don't follow them at all. How are you going to manage one thousand students?"

I said, "Who bothers? And they are as happy with me as they have ever been with any prefect, because I never interfere. In fact I don't even know the faces of all of them. I don't know their names.

I never take their attendance. Each month I mark them present, and send the register to the office. I have told them, 'If you are absent, inform me, otherwise there is no problem. If you don't inform me, it is accepted that you are present.'"

He said, "You get up at three o'clock in the night, and a few of your disciples" - I had disciples already - "they also get up at three o'clock, and you make so much trouble for others."

I said, "Those people are fools"... because the university I was in, and the hostel, was in such a beautiful place that three o'clock was the right time there. It was just on a hilltop, and just below the hill was a vast lake. It was so serene and so calm and so quiet that to miss this whole thing sleeping.... "It is perfectly good to miss the lectures through sleeping, because those idiots are simply telling things that they know nothing about. Some other idiot has told them, and they are simply transferring it.

"But I have seen, every morning the lake is new, fresh; it is not the same lake. Every morning....

"And I am simply surprised and amazed; even today I cannot believe that that place, the university of Sagar... I have been all over India, but I have never seen so much color in the sky as on that particular lake. So many colors, so much color in the sky, and everything is reflected in the lake. You could have just sat there and meditation would have happened. You were not required to do it.

So I said, "Of course I get up at three. The lake wakes me up, the birds start singing at three, and those few people who have once come with me to sit there under the trees... the last stars disappearing, and the morning descending by and by... and the first flowers opening."

The lake is full of lotuses. And as the sun rises on the horizon, the lotuses start opening. They close up when the sun sets; the whole night they also stay asleep. As the sun rises - the first rays, and the lotuses start opening. And it is the most beautiful flower you can imagine - the biggest flower, the most fragrant, and the most alive... and floating in water, but it has such a velvety skin that water cannot touch it. Even dewdrops falling on the lotus leaf or the lotus flower remain there like pearls.

Water cannot touch it, so the dewdrops cannot spread and make the leaf wet. They remain just like round shaped pearls sitting on it. And when the sun rises a little higher, all those lotuses, their leaves, and these millions of pearls, start reflecting the sunrays. Sometimes a rainbow is created on the lake.

I told the vice-chancellor, "Those who have gone with me, once I have invited them, but never twice have I asked them. And the people who have been reporting to you don't know anything about beauty, about existence." I told him, "I know who has reported to you. I don't think any student will report against me. It is the proctor, the professor in charge of the hostel, who is very worried because I will not listen to him."

I had told him, "You are the professor in charge of the students, not of the prefect." I had showed him the book in which the rules were written - certainly there was no mention that he was an authority over the prefect. Certainly he was, because the prefect was also a student, but there was no mention of it. So I said, "There is no mention of it. You take care of the students if you want. I will take care in my own way. I am taking care - by not interfering. And my students are immensely happy that for the first time there is nobody authoritative, forcing them to do this, not to do that: 'Go to sleep at nine o'clock; all the lights should be put out at nine.'"

But my own light was not put out. The proctor came on the first day to tell me that this was not right. I said, "Don't you disturb me at all. I will read as long as I wish - sometimes the whole night, because there is the whole day to sleep in - and nobody can control me. And I always used to keep the book of the rules that was given to me as prefect. I said, "Look into this: there is no mention of it, that you have any authority over my sleep or my waking. I will wake in my time; I will sleep in my time, and my students will do according to themselves, whatsoever they want to do."

The vice-chancellor said, "All these reports have been coming to me, but I know you. Rules are dead. All the prefects that have preceded you were dead. So I have not bothered about the reports against you, I have not called you. But now this is troublesome. This is a government affair. Now the government wants every student to be trained in the army; otherwise he will not be given the graduation certificate."

I said, "There is no problem. I will not ask for the graduation certificate, I can give you my word in writing. It is not a problem. What am I going to do with your graduation certificate? But I am not going to be forced by idiotic people."

And in the army the whole procedure is to destroy your intelligence - because if you are intelligent, you cannot be a good soldier. To be a good soldier, you have to choose.... You have to drop intelligence; otherwise how can you kill somebody who has done nothing to you, to whom you are not even introduced? You are killing him, and you don't know: he may have an old mother and an old father who depend on him, or a wife and children who will all be orphans and beggars - and you are killing this man for no reason, just because you are getting a salary to kill? And he is getting a salary to kill; you are both hired killers. "I am not going to become a hired killer."

And to create this situation, that you can kill easily, first your intelligence has to be completely destroyed. That's the training, what they call the training in the army - right turn, left turn, turnabout, go forward, go backwards - three hours every day. The person is simply functioning like a robot. He is not to ask, "Why should I turn left? What is the reason? And if again I have to turn back to the same position, why bother? Remain standing in the same position. People are going to come back sooner or later to the same position." No, you are not supposed to ask.

All those procedures are created to destroy questioning, doubting, inquiring - and these are what give sharpness to your intelligence. When for years you don't ask and you simply follow, whatsoever is said you follow, your intelligence starts getting rusted. One day the order comes, "Shoot!" and you shoot. It is not that you are shooting. That intelligence that you used to have is no longer there to think. Now it is almost like, "Left turn."

So I said to the vice-chancellor, "I am not going to join. Count me out. If there is any problem, you have to fight for me. And I am ready to fight with anybody; with the state government... I am ready to stand before the state parliament and to fight for my right - that I cannot be destroyed. I will not allow anybody to touch my intelligence in this way. And if it is the federal government, I am ready to go there - but you remember that I am not joining. And I will not ask for the certificate."

He said, "Don't you be worried." He said, "To take you to the state government or to the federal government will create more trouble. So you keep quiet, you simply keep quiet; don't say anything to anybody. I will take care of it, I am responsible. So if any problem arises I am responsible." I said, "That is your business."

And I never went to him to ask for my graduation certificates; he came to the hostel. I never went to the convocation... because that was the agreement. After the convocation he looked around - he had given the certificates, and the man who had topped the university and had won the gold medal was not there! Everybody was asking why I was not there; only the vice-chancellor knew. He said, "I know why he is not here - just because of an agreement. I will have to go to the hostel to give him his gold medal, his certificates, and apologize. I was worried about this, that he may get the gold medal and the trouble would be known to everybody, why he is not here."

He came, he gave me the certificates. I said, "That's okay. If you are giving them, I will not refuse; but I have followed my agreement. I would never have come to ask for my certificates. And sooner or later I am going to burn them anyway."

He said, "What!"

I said, "What am I going to do? Carry them all my life?"

And after nine years, when I resigned from the professorship, the first thing I did was burn all the certificates. My father was there; he said, "Even if you have resigned, there is no need to burn the certificates. They can remain here. What is the trouble? You give them to me, I will keep them."

I said, "No, that means you are still hoping that someday I may need them. No, once I have passed a bridge I want to destroy it, so that I cannot go back. I am not going to give these certificates to you."

I burned them in front of him, and he said, "You are strange. I am not preventing you from resigning."

I said, "Once I have resigned, I am never going to need these certificates in my life, so why carry them?"

Rules of any kind I have never followed, so it is very natural for me to forget. Yes, I forgot to tell you that it is one of my requests to you to live dangerously.

What does it mean exactly? It simply means that in life there are always alternatives. You are always at a crossroad, always and always. Each moment is a crossroad, and you have to choose where you are going, what is going to be your path; each moment you have to choose. Each moment is decisive because you are discarding many ways and choosing one.

Now, if you choose the comfortable, the convenient, then you will never be able to live intensely.

The comfortable, the convenient, the conventional, which the society approves, means that you are ready to become a psychological slave. That's why all this convenience.... The society will give you everything, if you give your freedom to it. It will give you respectability, it will give you great posts in the hierarchy, in the bureaucracy - but you have to drop one thing: your freedom, your individuality.

You have to become a number in the crowd. The crowd hates the person who is not part of it. The crowd becomes very tense seeing a stranger amongst it, because the stranger becomes a question mark.

You have been living a certain life, a certain style, a certain religion, a certain politics. You have been following the way of the mob, and you were very comfortable, cozy, because those surrounding you were all people just like you. What you were doing, they were doing. Everybody else was doing the same; that gave the feeling that you were doing the right thing. So many people could not be wrong.

And in gratitude that you are following them, they give you respectability, honor. Your ego is fulfilled.

Life is convenient, but it is flat. You live horizontally - a very thin slice of life, just like a slice of bread cut very thin. In a linear way you live.

To live dangerously means to live vertically.

Each moment then has a depth and a height. It touches the highest star and the deepest bottom. It knows nothing of the horizontal line. But then you are a stranger in the crowd, then you are behaving differently from everybody else. And this creates an unease in people, for the simple reason that they are not enjoying their life, they have not lived their life, they have not taken the responsibility to live it, they have not risked anything to have it - but because everybody else was also like them, the question was not arising.

But this stranger comes who lives in a different way, behaves in a different way, and suddenly something is stirred in them. Their repressed life, which is like a spring, forcibly repressed, suddenly starts stirring, starts creating questions that this way too is possible. And this man seems to be having a different shine to his eyes, a different joy around him. He walks, sits, stands, not like everybody else. Something is unique about him. But the most impressive thing about him is, he seems to be utterly contented, blissful - as if he has arrived. You are all wandering and he has arrived. Now, this man is a danger to the crowd. The crowd will kill him.

It is not a coincidence that people like Socrates are poisoned. What was the trouble with the man?

He was such a unique genius, that if Greece had produced only Socrates, that would have been enough to make history, enough to be remembered forever. But the crowd could not tolerate this man. He was a very simple man, absolutely harmless. They poisoned and killed him. What was his crime? His crime was, he was an individual. He walked on his own path, not on the superhighway where everybody is moving. He was going through a labyrinth of his own. And the society soon became afraid because a few people started moving away from the highway to find their own ways.

Socrates was saying that you cannot walk on a way made by others for you. You have to walk, and make your road by walking. It is not that roads are made available to you readymade, you have simply to walk - no. You have to create the road by walking; just as you walk, you create the road.

And remember, it is only for you, not for anybody else. It is just like the birds flying in the sky leave no trace for any other bird to follow. The sky remains empty again. Any bird can fly, but he will have to make his own way.

This was the danger. Socrates was a real danger. Jesus was not a real danger. And you have to understand the difference - because Jesus was also crucified. But what was Jesus asking? He was asking to be accepted by the mob. He was not really a rebel, he was asking for respectability: "I am your awaited messiah." He was asking the crowd to give him sanctity, respectability, and he was trying in every way to fulfill the demands of the crowd. Even going to the crucifixion was just to fulfill the demands of the crowd. It is a different story.

People have always thought Socrates and Jesus belong to the same category of man - no; they are just the opposite. Socrates is not asking to be accepted. Socrates is saying, "Please leave me alone - just as I leave you alone. Please allow my freedom. I don't trespass on your life, you should not trespass on my life." It seems to be absolutely honest. He is not asking to be accepted. He is not saying, "Whatever I am saying is true, and you have to accept it. No, he is saying, "Whatsoever I am saying, it is my right to say. You have your right to say."

The judges were a little guilty when they decided this man should be killed. He was the best flowering of Greek genius. So they offered him a few alternatives; they said, "One thing is, you can leave Athens...." In those days Greece was composed of city democracies, and that is really a far more democratic way. The smaller the unit, the more democracy is possible, because it is direct democracy.

The people of Athens used to gather, raise their hands for or against, and decide things. Now, in a country like America the democracy becomes so indirect, and the person you choose... once you have chosen him for a few years then you don't know what he is going to do. During those few years you cannot control him. He may have promised you something and he may do just the opposite.

Exactly that is what goes on happening. But in Athens it was a direct democracy. Any important issue, and the people of Athens would be together there and they would vote for it or against it. So the power was not delegated for five years. The power was always in the hands of the people.

So the judges said, "It is very simple: leave Athens. You can make your home in any other city, and wherever you are you will find disciples, friends - about that there is no question."

Socrates said, "It is not a question of surviving. What you are saying is certainly convenient, and any businessman would have chosen that. It is simple. Why unnecessarily get killed? Move to another town." Socrates said, "I'm not going out of Athens because it is a question of choosing between convenience or life, and I choose life - even if it brings death. But I will not choose convenience, that is cowardly."

They offered him another alternative. They said, "Then do one thing: remain in Athens, but stop teaching."

He said, "That is even more difficult. You are asking birds not to sing in the morning, trees not to blossom when it is time to blossom? You are asking me not to speak the truth? And that is my only joy: to share my truth with those who are groping in the dark. I am going to be here and I am going to continue teaching the truth."

The judges said, "Then we are helpless, because the mob, with a majority, wants you to be poisoned and killed."

He said, "That's perfectly okay. You can kill me, but you cannot kill my spirit...." But remember, by spirit he does not mean soul. By spirit he means his courage, his devotion to truth, his way of life.

You cannot change that. "... You can kill me. And about death I am not worried at all, because there are only two alternatives. Either I will simply die, so there is no problem then. When I am not, what problem can there be? So either I simply die, then there is no problem, or I don't die and my soul goes on living. Then at least I will have the satisfaction that I was not a coward, that I stuck to my truth, that you could kill me, but you could not bend me."

He died joyously. The death scene of Socrates is something beautiful in the whole history of man.

In Greece it was not a cross; it was poison that had to be given. So outside the man was preparing the poison, the official poisoner who gives the poison to people who are sentenced to death. Six in the evening was the time. The sun was setting and Socrates asked again and again, "What is the matter? Ask that man; it is getting late."

And the poisoner was really trying to make it as late as possible. He had loved this man and he wanted him to live a little longer. That much he could make possible... he could go on preparing the poison, slowly. But disciples came again and again and they said, "The master is asking why you are late."

With tears in his eyes, he said, "He is really a dangerous man. I am trying to give him a little longer to live, but he is in a hurry."

The poisoner asked Socrates, "Why are you in a hurry?"

He said, "I am in a hurry because life I have lived tremendously, totally; I know it. Death is unknown; it is a great adventure. I would like to taste death."

Now, you cannot kill such a man. There is no way to kill such a man, who wants to taste death, who wants to know death, who wants to jump into the challenge and the adventure of the unknown.

Living dangerously means whenever there are alternatives, beware: don't choose the convenient, the comfortable, the respectable, the socially acceptable, the honorable. Choose something that rings a bell in your heart. Choose something that you would like to do in spite of any consequences.

The coward thinks of consequences: "If I do this, what will happen? What will be the result?" He is more concerned about the result.

The real man never thinks of the consequences. He thinks only of the act, in this moment. He feels, "This is what is appealing to me, and I am going to do it." Then whatever happens is welcome. He will never regret. A real man never regrets, never repents, because he has never done anything against himself. The coward dies thousands of times before death, and continuously regrets, repents: it would have been better if he had done that, married that man, that woman, chosen that profession, gone to that college.... Thousands of alternatives are always there, and you cannot do them all.

The society teaches you, "Choose the convenient, the comfortable; choose the well-trodden path where your forefathers and their forefathers and their forefathers, since Adam and Eve, have been walking. Choose the well-trodden path. That is a proof: so many millions of people have passed on it, you cannot go wrong." But remember one thing, the crowd has never had the experience of truth.

Truth has only happened to individuals.

The well-trodden path is not trodden by Socrates and people like Socrates. It is trodden by the mass, the mediocre, the people who have no courage to go into the unknown. They never get off the highway. They keep clinging to each other because that gives them a certain satisfaction, consolation: "So many people are with us...."

That's why all the religions continuously go on trying to make more and more converts. The reason is not that they are interested in people and their life and their transformation - no, they themselves are not transformed - but if you have more Christians than Hindus, naturally it seems you have better chances of having truth with you than the Hindus. If the Buddhists are more than the Christians, then of course they can go on believing that they have the truth, that's why so many people are with them.

But I want you to remember, truth has always happened to individuals. It is not a collective phenomenon, it does not happen to a crowd. It always happens to the individual. It is just like love. Have you seen a crowd in love? That is impossible... that a crowd falls in love with another crowd. At least up to now it has not happened. It is an individual phenomenon. One person falls in love with another person. But in love at least there are two persons. In truth, even two are not there.

You alone, in your absolute aloneness, experience it.

So beware of the crowd. Beware of the well-trodden path. Beware of the millions of Christians and Buddhists and Mohammedans, and Hindus and Jews; beware of all these people.

If you have to find someone, then find someone who is not part of any crowd. Then find a Socrates, who does not belong to any crowd. That is why I said Jesus and Socrates are totally different. Jesus is trying to belong to the crowd. The crowd is discarding him; that is another matter. The crowd is not willing to accept him, but he is trying in every possible way.... He had never thought of any Christianity. He was a Jew, born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew, praying to the Jewish God, still trying to convince the Jews, "I am your awaited messiah." He is not a rebel.

Truth comes only to the rebellious, and to be a rebel is certainly to live dangerously.

Every moment you will be faced from all sides, in every possible way.... You live with a man you don't love, but you go on clinging for the sheer comfort, that at least there is somebody you can cling to. Thinking of separating from the person, there is darkness, loneliness - what are you going to do? How are you going to survive? You may not love, he may not love, but still at least somebody is there. You are choosing the convenient, the comfortable. You are in a profession, you hate it....

One of my uncles is a poet, and would have been one of the greatest poets of India if he had listened to me. But I was so young, and he was a university graduate. I tried my best; I said, "You may not listen to me, that is your choice, but I am going to tell you."

He said, "But why do you bother me?"

I said, "It is going to decide your whole life. You are a poet. I do not understand much poetry, but whatsoever I have seen in your notebooks gives me a certainty that if you choose the comfortable and the convenient - that is the profession of my family...."

My grandfather was telling him, "Now you are a graduate. Be finished; start looking after the business."

I told him, "Don't listen to him. He will kill your whole future."

He said, "You are a strange boy. You are suggesting to me that I should not listen to my own father and I should listen to you."

I said, "One day you will repent. So listen to him." He listened to him. And just before we left Poona he came to see me, and he told me, "Forgive me. I can still remember you, so small, trying to persuade me not to listen to my father. And of course that was the most convenient thing for me.

The business was there; I was getting my inheritance. The business was settled, I was not to do much."

And once he went into the business, my grandfather immediately started looking for a girl for him. I said to him, "Look. You are getting caught by and by."

He said to me, "Are you my friend or my enemy? My father is looking for a wife, and you are telling me that he is looking for a prison for me."

I said, "It is up to you to decide. You should look for your wife. Why should your father look? Strange, his father looked for him - he missed. Now he is looking for you - you will miss. How can he find a wife for you?" But my grandfather was a strong man. It was not possible for my uncle to say anything to him; if he decided, it was final. And one day he decided for his marriage. The marriage happened.

I went to his marriage, and I teased him all the way: "You are going to a life imprisonment."

When he came to Poona, he said to me, "You were right. It was a life imprisonment, and it went on growing bigger and bigger - first business, then wife, then children, now children's education, now children's marriage." And now he is sixty-five, and he has no time for poetry. When he was in Poona, just for two, three weeks, he started writing poetry again. And he told me, "For years I have completely forgotten; there has been no time. But looking at you, remembering what you had said to me, I realized you were right. I would like to come here for a few months and to bring back my dreams and my visions, which have all disappeared."

Just two, three days ago, Sheela brought his letter: "Now you have gone too far away and it will not be possible for me to come there, and I was hoping to come to Poona." For what was he hoping to come to Poona? And do you think now - since I had advised him, so much water has passed down the Ganges - he will be able to revive his poetry? I don't think so, because he had shown me a few things that he wrote while he was in Poona - they were not of the quality that I remember was there when he was young. Now so much junk has collected. He is no longer young: tired, bored, repenting continuously. The few days he was there, every day he was repenting, "Alas, I did not listen to you." But nobody would have listened to a child. And what I was suggesting was rebellion against the father, his father.

A profession you can choose, which is convenient; friends you can choose, who are convenient. I have seen strange people. I had one friend - I rarely had friends, and those I had were not much of friends. So I don't remember really having any friend; it is just a word. But he thought that he was a friend to me - he was a professor in the chemistry department.

In the whole university only I had a car and he had a car. First only he had a car; he was a rich man's son, so it was not a problem for him. It was not possible for me to have a car. I used to walk four miles to teach in the university, and back four miles - two hours every day. But I enjoyed it, it was such beautiful exercise. But one of my lovers could not tolerate that exercise; he presented me with a car. The day I came in the car to the college - that chemistry professor had never bothered even to be introduced to me - he came running to me. He told me his name, and said, "I would love to be a friend of yours."

I said, "Strange, so suddenly...? I have been here for two years. We have been crossing each other's path every day almost, two or three times; you have never said even hello." Of course, I had never said hello, because I don't interfere in anybody's life. Who knows what you are thinking... and I may throw a stone and your dream is disturbed, or something happens. I don't interfere, unless somebody invites me; then it is his responsibility. "What has happened so suddenly?"

He said, "Come into the corner and I will tell you." He took me into the corner; he said, "I have made it a point only to be friendly with people who have cars."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "If you make friends with people who don't have cars, they ask... they need your car, every day they ask for a lift and you even have to pay the petrol. And they will damage the car, they will do this, they will do that, and you have to look after it. So I have decided to be friendly only to people who have cars."

I said, "That's a great idea. But you please forgive me. Listening to your idea, I decided that I will not have any friendship with anybody who has a car."

He said, "But why?"

I said, "Because of your idea - perhaps that will be their idea too!"

People's minds function in the same way. People will become friends if they are of the same society, have the same standard of life; if they go to the same synagogue, the same church, if they are rotarians, or members of the lion's club. They are people of the same standard of life; it is convenient.

If you make friends with a poor man, it is inconvenient. Some day he is going to come and ask for a few rupees, his wife is sick....

Now, a rotarian is not going to come to you like that. It is good to have a friendship with a rotarian.

You are comfortable, he is comfortable; there is no trouble. You have your house, you have your car; he has his house, he has his car. You have servants, he has servants. There is no trouble. But just a step below and you will be in trouble, because the person may ask, is bound to ask.... Someday he will be in trouble, then where is he to look for help? You are a friend.... That's why people don't make any friendship with servants. For years the servant will be in their house - but no friendship.

They remain almost unacquainted.

Living dangerously means: don't put such stupid conditions between you and life - comfort, convenience, respectability. Drop all these things, and allow life to happen to you, and go with it without bothering whether you are on the highway or not, without bothering where you are going to end. Only very few people live. Ninety-nine point nine percent of people only slowly commit suicide.

Just the last thing to remember - because that is so absolutely essential I should not be forgiven for forgetting it: LIVE WATCHFU]LY.

Whatsoever you are doing - walking, sitting, eating, or if you are not doing anything, just breathing, resting, relaxing in the grass, never forget that you are a watcher.

You will forget it again and again. You will get involved in some thought, some feeling, some emotion, some sentiment - anything will distract you from the watcher. Remember, and run back to your center of watching. Make it an inner process continuously.... You will be surprised at how life changes its whole quality. I can move this hand without any watchfulness, and I can also move this hand absolutely watching from inside the whole movement. The movements are totally different. The first movement is a robot movement, mechanical. The second movement is a conscious movement.

And when you are conscious you feel that hand from within; when you are not conscious you only know the hand from without.

You have known your face only in the mirror, from the without, because you are not a watcher. If you start watching, you will feel your face from within - and that is such an experience, to watch yourself from within. Then slowly, strange things start happening. Thoughts disappear, feelings disappear, emotions disappear, and there is a silence surrounding you. You are just like an island in the middle of the ocean of silence... just a watcher, as if a flame of light at the center of your being, radiating the whole of your being.

In the beginning it will only be an inner experience. Slowly you will see that radiation spreading out of your body, those rays reaching other people. You will be surprised and shocked that other people, if they are a little bit sensitive, will immediately become aware that something has touched them which was not visible.

For example, if you are watching yourself.... Just walk behind somebody, watching yourself, and it is almost certain the person will turn and look back suddenly, for no reason. When you are watching yourself, your watchfulness starts radiating, and it is bound to touch the person who is ahead of you.

And if he is touched by something which is invisible, he is going to look back: "What is the matter?"

And you are that far away, you cannot even touch him with your hand.

You can try that experiment: somebody is sleeping and you can sit by their side, just watching yourself, and the person will suddenly wake up, open his eyes and look all around as if somebody has touched him.

Slowly you will also become able to feel the touch through the rays. That is what is called the vibe.

It is not a nonexistential thing. The other person feels it; you will also feel that you have touched the other person.

The English word, being "touched," is used very significantly. You may use it without understanding what it means when you say "I was touched" by the person. He may not have said a single word to you. He may have just passed by. He may have just looked once at your eyes, and you feel "touched" by the person. It is not just a word - it actually happens. And then those rays go on spreading to people, to animals, to trees, to rocks... and one day you will see, you are touching the whole universe from within.

Your aloneness remains absolutely as it was. It becomes bigger, vast. This is the experience I call the experience of godliness.