Sympathy is a dirty word

Question 1:

Sympathy is not compassion; it is just the opposite. Sympathy is a kind of exploitation of the other person. When you sympathize with somebody, you are higher, better, and the other is lower, falling, degraded. Your ego gets immense satisfaction out of sympathy. But this is how the unconscious mind functions. You don't know exactly what you are doing.

These sannyasins who sympathized with Anam must have been the same people who had raised their hands here against him. Now, this is strange. You raise your hands against him, and then you start feeling a little guilty. When you see him, you want to compensate for the guilt, so you hug him.

And it is an enjoyable moment for you, because the other is in need of your sympathy. You are the giver, the other is the beggar.

If a few of you did it to Anam, it was ugly, inhuman, against the dignity of an individual. You should have given him your compassion. In the dictionaries they mean the same, but not in actual life.

Compassion means making the other aware that he is going astray, that what he has done is not good. You are not putting him down, you are trying to raise him up. You are not saying, "You are alright as you are," you are making it clear: "Something is wrong in your attitude, and being your friend, being part of the commune, it is our duty to draw your attention to it, so that you can drop that attitude."

Nobody is right or wrong, only attitudes. And attitudes can be dropped, changed. If you were really compassionate you would have made it more clear to him again and again, all over the commune, wherever he went. It should have been emphasized, "Your attitude is wrong, and you are capable of dropping the attitude. We are in total support of you, we love you, that's why we want you to drop the attitude."

Why did I waste my time on Anam? Do you think I was criticizing him? Do you think I was saying anything against him? Then you have missed the point. I love the person, but he can be even more lovable. I love the person, that's why I pointed out to him that his attitude will hinder his growth. Yes, it looks a little hard. But only love can be hard, because only love can change you.

Your sympathy was phony, because here you were raising your hands, and with those same hands you were hugging Anam. Either your raising the hands was phony, or hugging Anam was phony.

You should not have double faces, that here you show one mask before me, and when you meet Anam you show another mask. Stop this stupid game, because in this game you are the loser, a person who is not integrated, who is not one.

Circumstances may change, but an integrated person remains centered. You can kill him, but you cannot make him a hypocrite. Anam gave a good chance to you. I knew it when you were raising your hands - I knew how many hands were going to hug Anam. Don't try to be so split. If you don't want to raise your hands against him, don't; raise them against me - but be true to yourself. If you are really in favor of Anam, then there is no need to be in favor of me. If you are in favor of Anam, then you should stand with him. That is the integrated person and his fragrance.

Remember, whomsoever I love I am going to be hard with. I love you all - any day the hammer can fall on your heads. And I want others to remember to remind you, "Bhagwan loved you so much; otherwise why should he bother about you? He loved you, that's why he picked up a wrong attitude in you - to purify you, to make you more in tune with the commune, with the way of life that we are living here." You will not start doing something that goes against me, my love.

The master is hardest on the best disciple - who cares about the third-rate? I am reminded of a beautiful true story. In India, just in this century, there was a world-famous painter, Nandalal Bose.

He learned painting from his teacher who was world-famous. The teacher was none other than the father of Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel prize for his poetry.

One day Nandalal painted a beautiful picture of Krishna playing on the flute. Whatever may be wrong in Krishna, one thing has to be appreciated - that he has chosen the flute as his symbol, rather than the cross. The flute reminds you of love, life, songs. The flute reminds you of the beauties and the wonders and the mysteries of life. It is a very life-oriented symbol. The cross is a death-oriented symbol.

Hence, around Krishna there is always dance; he is playing on the flute, and his female lovers are dancing around him. Many things are wrong in Krishna's philosophy, but I cannot say that his celebration is wrong, that his dance is wrong, that his flute is not the right symbol.

Have you ever hear of apostles dancing around Jesus, and Jesus playing the flute? That is inconceivable. His whole attitude is death-oriented. Just the other day I said to you that his own disciple - who was the most intelligent amongst all of his disciples, perhaps more intelligent than Jesus himself.... When he saw that Jesus was bent upon dying, Judas went ahead of him, just like a Jew: "He is going to die, he cannot be prevented; crucifixion seems to be his goal - why not do some business in between?" For thirty silver pieces Judas sold Jesus to the enemies.

It is just Jewish - nothing was wrong with Judas. He was an intelligent man, he used the opportunity.

In other circumstances, can you sell a dead human body for thirty silver pieces? And thirty silver pieces two thousand years ago was a great amount of money. Red Indians sold New York for exactly thirty silver pieces to the foreigners who had invaded it. It was a good price. But Judas loved Jesus.

Don't be surprised - he loved Jesus, he tried to prevent him, but when he saw the impossibility, just like a good Jew, he earned some money.

But when Jesus was crucified, Judas could not forgive himself. Then repentance overcame him and he started feeling guilty. And do you know, within twenty-four hours he committed suicide. Judas is condemned all over the world by the Christians. Nobody looks into that man's suicide - why did he commit suicide? He loved Jesus so much, he wanted him to turn back, not to move towards Jerusalem where nothing but the cross was waiting for him.

Jesus did not listen to Judas, and Judas started feeling bad - he should have made more effort, he should have persuaded him. If it was needed, he should even have dragged him away from the cross. On the contrary, he simply proved a Jew, he made a business of it: he sold his own master.

The guilt was so much that he committed suicide. The suicide was just to compensate for what he had done.

Nandalal Bose made a beautiful picture of Krishna playing on his flute, beautiful girls dancing around him. When he came to show it to his master - Rabindranath was present there - the master looked at the painting and said, "Nandalal, this kind of third-class painting is not expected from you." He threw the painting out of the house, and said to Nandalal, "In Bengal, on the birthday ceremony of Krishna, thousands of people paint Krishna's picture. They are sold very cheap."

In Bengal there are many painters who paint only Krishna. They are called patias, because on a plate - patia and "plate" you can understand are the same - on a plate of wood, either they carve or they paint. But those patias, those painters, remain anonymous; nobody comes to know about them. They are not thought to be great painters. Just by the side of the road in Calcutta you can find them, selling pictures, paintings, carvings, for almost nothing. They are poor.

The master said to Nandalal, "Listen, your painting is not even equal to the paintings of the patias.

Go to the patias and learn how to paint Krishna." This was so hard. Nandalal touched the feet of the master and disappeared. For three years he was moving from one patia to another patia learning the art, how to paint.

Rabindranath could not tolerate this. He said to his father, "If you want to know the truth, the truth is that his painting is better than the paintings that you have made of Krishna. And your behavior is just insane!"

The master laughed, and he said, "Rabindranath, I have to be very hard on Nandalal. He is my best disciple, and he has much more capacity. Yes, I know you are right - his painting is far better than my own paintings, but he has yet much potential. If I had praised his painting, that potential would have remained just a potential. I want to bring him to his utmost flowering." And there were tears in the eyes of the master; he said, "The job of a master is not easy, and it is not easy even to understand."

After three years Nandalal appeared with a new painting of Krishna. The master was thrilled. He said, "Now I can say to you, your first painting was also great, better than my paintings - but this is superb! Now nobody can transcend this painting. Now I am contented. You had potential, but a challenge had to be given to you."

Man's potential blossoms only when there are challenges.

I said a few things about Anam. I know he has great potential, and he is wasting his potential in stupid things. And you sympathized with him! Do you want him to remain the same as he is? It is not compassion that you gave him. You were not friends while you were hugging him, you were enemies. You should have told him, "You have behaved wrongly - this is not the way to communicate with a master. You are not making bridges with the master, you are making walls. We have great love for you, but no sympathy for your attitude."

And if he had heard, from thousands of sannyasins, the same thing - do you think something was not going to happen to him? I hit him hard, and you hugged him hard and destroyed my whole effort. Receiving your sympathy, he must have felt great, that everybody is favorable to him. You have supported his wrong attitude, not him. I was working on him, destroying his attitude; you did just the opposite.

Growth is not child's play, it is a very conscious effort. And you all have to be supportive to the person's innermost being, but never support any wrong attitude. Supporting the wrong attitude you are poisoning him, and enjoying your ego. It is a double-edged sword: you are killing him and you are killing yourself too.

You have to learn very clearly that if you support any wrong attitude, sympathize with it, that means you are also carrying something alike in you. Secondly, you are exploiting the man's situation, and becoming holier-than-thou. Thirdly, you are pumping more air into the balloon of your ego. You are destroying both yourself and the other person.

I am also very destructive, but my destruction is devoted to creation. I am going to destroy so many things in you that unless you are courageous enough, alert, aware of the fact that my destruction is of all that which is wrong in you.... I am doing exactly what a sculptor does.

Michelangelo can perhaps be said to be one of the best sculptors of the whole history. He has made statues of Jesus so beautiful, so alive... even Jesus was not so alive nor so beautiful. The case is otherwise; there are ancient scriptures describing Jesus as an ugly man. Perhaps it may be an exaggeration by his enemies, but there must be some truth in it. At the best, he was just homely.

But Michelangelo has created such beautiful statues.... One of his statues of Jesus a few years ago was destroyed by an atheist. It was in St. Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican. Nobody had ever thought that it had to be guarded! It was available for everybody to see. Just to be close to that statue was an experience - but one atheist destroyed it.

He was caught. Because he had destroyed one of the most beautiful things that man has created, he was asked, "Why have you destroyed it?"

He said, "I am against God, I am against Jesus, I am against religion. That statue, although just a piece of marble, was creating in many people something which can only be called religiousness."

And do you know how Michelangelo found that piece of marble, that big rock? It was lying in front of a shop which had sold marble for years. Nobody had asked for it. Just to create a space in his shop, the shopkeeper moved the rock to the other side of the road, and it was lying there.

One day Michelangelo, passing along that road, saw the rock. He enquired of the shopkeeper, "To whom does it belong?"

The shopkeeper said, "Do you want it?" Michelangelo said, "Yes, absolutely."

He said, "Take it - without any charge. I want to get rid of it." And out of that ugly marble rock, which no artist had even looked at... and it was given to Michelangelo free, so some space would be created for other rocks. It was a big rock, and out of that rock Michelangelo created this statue, which was destroyed three or four years ago.

When the statue was completed, he asked the shopkeeper to come and see. The shopkeeper could not believe his eyes. He said, "You are a magician. What have you made out of that rock?"

The answer of Michelangelo is worth remembering. He said, "I have not created Jesus out of that rock. He was already there; I have only taken away unnecessary parts that were hiding him. Only the unnecessary has been removed, and the real which was lying within is now available to you. I have not created the rock, I have only destroyed those parts which were hindering the reality of the rock from your vision."

That's my work. You come to me just like a rock, with no face of your own, with no being of your own, with no centering, no grounding, no integrity, no individuality. I have to cut much; perhaps the major part that is hanging around you has to be cut.

It hurts, because you have been under the illusion that it is you. But when you come to see - if you go on hanging around me - one day, when all that is not part of you is eliminated and your reality is revealed to you and to others too, you will feel grateful. And then you will understand why I hit so hard.

I am chiseling, hammering all that is ugly in you, all that has been given to you by your society, by your culture, by your civilization. I want to discover in you your original face.

So whenever I hammer on somebody, nobody is to show sympathy. Be a little more compassionate.

Sympathy is a dirty word; be a little more compassionate. Help the man to understand that whatever I have said is creative, is to bring out his nature, his purity. And if you all go on making the man aware, there is a possibility that he will start thinking, "If so many people are saying it, there must be something in it."

But your sympathy destroyed... you washed out all that I had done. So when you see Anam again, take your sympathy back and tell him clearly, "That sympathy was bogus, unconscious, and what has been said is not against you" - what purpose have I to be against anybody? - "it was for your growth. We were wrong to sympathize with you. Our sympathy will strengthen your attitude, because you will think if so many people are with you, you must be right." So change it. Make it clear to him, "We were wrong to sympathize, and you were wrong in your attitude."

I was working for years individually, but then I thought, how many people can I reach? - and I was continuously traveling up to 1970. So I could go on saying things, but it was not going to bring a transformation in people.

I had to create a commune, where whatever I say is not just lost, but is echoed from everybody else too, from all sides and dimensions. And the person finds himself thinking, "So many people, friends, lovers, cannot be wrong."

You have to help me in creating the New Man.

Question 2:

As long as you wish. As far as I am concerned, this very moment it can happen. It is not a question of time, it is a question of intense understanding.

It is true: whatever the question, my answer is the same, because there are not many questions, they are just phrased in different ways.

But the question also is one: you don't know who you are. You are absolutely in darkness - unaware of your glory, your divinity, your beauty, your truth. All the questions differ only in phrasing. Naturally, I have to phrase my answers also according to your question.

Somebody has counted through my books and found that I have answered ten thousand questions.

My answer is one. I have not answered ten thousand questions, and I have not given you ten thousand answers. Your question is one, but you have asked it in ten thousand ways. My answer is one; just not to spoil the game I have answered you in ten thousand ways, hoping that perhaps, sometime, in a certain moment of silence, in a certain way, you may catch hold of the one answer.

How long you are going to miss, that depends on you. You have to receive it. I cannot give it to you, you have to take it.

Gurdjieff's disciples were very puzzled about his statements. One of his statements which has been puzzling his disciples - there are still a few disciples of Gurdjieff in the world - was, "Unless you are capable of stealing the truth from the master, you will never get it."

There is nothing puzzling about it. I am saying "You have to take it" just not to puzzle you. In fact, you have to steal it. It is just in front of you. The doors are open, nobody is guarding it, but you are keeping your eyes closed. It all depends on you. Open your eyes and see the light. Turn your back towards darkness, turn your face towards light. But you are standing just in the opposite way: facing a darkness that centuries have made denser and denser, darker and darker.

If you go on looking at this darkness of millions of years, you are bound to think you are blind. And what is the point of opening your eyes, even if you are not blind? It is better to keep your eyes closed and dream of some beautiful things. What is the point of looking into the abysmal darkness? - and that is what your Christianity is, your Hinduism is, your Mohammedanism is.

All the cultures and all the civilizations have been created to destroy the individual in you, and to create phony personality in you, and make you so much attached to the phony personality that you start thinking, "This is my individuality."

I have to hammer hard on your personality. It is going to hurt, but there is no other way. If you want not to be hammered, drop the personality yourself. Who is Anam? - just a personality. Who are you? - whatever people have said about you.

Women are known all over the world for continually looking in the mirror. The more idiotic of them carry a mirror in their bag too. What do they go on seeing in a mirror? The mirror cannot reflect your individuality - for that you need a master. The mirror can only reflect your personality; it cannot reflect your being, your center, but only your circumference.

And women go on looking again and again. Once is enough - but how to be certain? Somewhere deep down you know perfectly well that that which is mirrored is not you, but you want to be convinced that it is you. And you go on decorating your personality - your hairdo, your lipstick.

It is very strange.

To have red lips out of health is totally different to just painting them with lipstick. Who are you going to deceive? You cannot deceive even yourself. And this is not only true of children and young people; I see old women, who should have been in their graves by now, still painting their lips, putting on false eyelashes.

Your personality is your creation. The society gives you all the incentives to create it, because phony people can be enslaved. Phony people can be Americans, Indians, Arabians, Chinese. Phony people will go to the church, to the mosque, to the synagogue.

The real individual finds his synagogue, his mosque, his temple, inside himself. He need not go anywhere. Whenever he wants to have a taste of that indefinable phenomenon, he just goes in. And just to be there is enough religion. More than that is not needed.

There is your silence, there is your peace.

There is your blessing, there is your ecstasy.

There is your love - the whole treasure, the whole kingdom of God.

Hammering on your personality, I am trying to turn your attention from the personality towards the individuality. So please remember, whenever I hit somebody's head, you are not to sympathize; you are not to put ointment on his head. And the person who gets the hit should feel grateful that he has been chosen, that he has been thought worthy, that he deserved a hit from the master. So whatever you have done with Anam, you have to undo. Anam has to be brought to his real, beautiful being.

And I had to create a commune, because alone, how many people can I hit? And their skulls are so thick that small hits once in a while don't matter. Here, you are thousands of sannyasins. Whatever I am doing, you all have to take part in it, you all have to help me.

I would like you to be completely free from personality, because that means you are free from religion, you are free from culture, you are free from civilization, you are free from nationality, you are free from other kinds of ideologies. They are all part of your personality. Your individuality is just pure ecstasy.

So this should never happen again. And those who have hugged Anam should say to him, "Give it back - and we are sorry that we did something wrong to you. We love you, but we cannot love your stupidity, we cannot love your insanity."

Then only will the commune become a real organism, functioning in tune. Then only can there be a strange and new music, an unknown fragrance surrounding you and this holy land. This land is the same everywhere. It is the people who live on the land, who by their living meditatively, joyously, lovingly, consciously, not only transform themselves, they transform the whole atmosphere.

Jerusalem is not the holy land; perhaps once it was. Mecca and Medina are no longer holy lands; perhaps once they were. Bodh Gaya is no longer a holy land. It was once, but twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha meditated, lived with his disciples in Bodh Gaya; it was a holy land.

If you remove the barrier of the personality, holiness suddenly explodes.

Question 3:

This is the happening for which I am here, you are here. It has no name. Call it just "happening." It is immensely beautiful. When your heart starts pounding, that means your heart is close to my heart.

It is a sign to you that the mind is left far behind, that you are no longer thinking but feeling, that you are no longer doing anything; it is happening. In the beginning you may get scared because it is so new. You may think something is going wrong - why is my heart pounding? - but only in the beginning. Just allow it, don't try to stop it. Enjoy it, rejoice in it. This is communion, heart to heart.

There comes a moment when your heart pounds, beats in exactly the same rhythm, in the same frequency as my heart. Immediately there is a meeting. And that meeting brings transformation.

The master cannot do anything. He can only create certain devices in which the happening becomes possible. This commune is a device; otherwise there was no need for it. You were living somewhere, everybody was doing something. To take you out of your houses, your families, your cities - what is the purpose? The purpose is that if so many hearts start beating in the same rhythm and frequency, others whose hearts are not beating but whose heads are circling may catch the fire. It simply jumps like wildfire from one tree to another tree.

I know a few people are in tune with me. That makes it easier for others to be tuned in with me. All these hearts together become a tremendous force. If five thousand people can be in one rhythm, in one frequency, they may create such great energy that it will start spreading around the world.

That's why I have created communes in so many countries. I want all those communes to be exactly like this place, because I will not be there. The governments are making it impossible for me to go anywhere.

In India it was happening, just a very strange thing: in Poona the people were exploiting my sannyasins. For those seven years I was there, prices of everything had gone up ten times - only in Poona! A house that was available for twenty thousand dollars was not available even for one hundred thousand dollars. And seven thousand sannyasins were almost always there, and at moments there were ten thousand, fifteen thousand. All the hotels were full, overfull. People were renting houses, giving enormous amounts of money. They were becoming paying guests, giving enormous amounts of money.

So on the one hand the Hindu chauvinist mind was against me, because whatever I am doing goes absolutely against any kind of chauvinistic attitude - Hindu, Mohammedan or Christian - and on the other hand they were very happy that I was there. They were pressurizing the government of the state that I should not be given any land in the state; I should be living in Poona. Poona knew if I moved to some other place, all the beauty, the joy, the money - particularly the money - would disappear.

The Maharashtra government was preventing my moving from Poona. They found a way to prevent me. They would not say - politicians are cunning, they would not say, "You cannot go out of Poona"; that is against freedom. They continued to say, "You can find a place and you can go there," but in that place they would create trouble so that people in that place would start being aggressive and protesting that I should not be allowed to be given any land close to them.

The Maharashtra government was enjoying, and greatly, because they have never seen so many tourists coming to Bombay airport. Now my secretary has just been there; you cannot find any tourists. And poor countries like India have much investment in tourism. So the Maharashtra government was forcing the central government, saying, "You should not give any place to Bhagwan, because Maharashtra does not want to lose its tourism."

The central government was being wishy-washy, always saying "We are giving you this land and that land." It went on for seven years continually. They would not allow us to purchase more houses in Poona either, because they were afraid that if thousands of people who belong to me started living in Poona, they would take it over. And certainly, it would have happened.

Even the Poona ashram was not in the name of the Foundation. We paid prices ten times more than anybody else, yet the government did not put those houses in our name. It was a very strange situation: we were paying the taxes, we were paying the electricity bills - and the houses were not in our name! We had given the money to the previous owners, but the houses remained in the name of those owners.

They were afraid that if a great commune happened, Poona's whole character, its whole atmosphere, would change. And they were afraid of that. Poona is a very Hindu-minded city. It is a strange coincidence that the man who killed Mahatma Gandhi was from Poona, and the man who attempted to kill me was also from Poona. This is strange, because both these people belonged to the same political party. I have always been against Gandhism, but the political party that killed Gandhi... the same people tried to kill me. I am not a Gandhian, I am absolutely and totally against Gandhi and his ideology.

But the moment the knife was thrown at me, I could see the hesitancy in the minds of Poona people.

On the one hand they wanted to exploit all these people; on the other hand they were afraid these people would destroy their so-called culture - which is already dead. There is nothing to destroy; the dead culture just has to be dragged to the crematorium.

The man who threw the knife must have been of the same dual mind. The whole of Poona was of the same dual mind: they could neither allow me to move out, nor could they allow me to grow vast.

He threw the knife, and the knife fell nearabout twelve feet away from me. I was surprised! One can miss the target, but not by twelve feet.

It shows something in the psychology of the man. He represented the whole Poona-Hindu mind. He wanted to kill me, and yet he wanted me to remain there. So he did both things together: to satisfy himself and the Poona people he threw the knife, but it fell twelve feet away from me.

I cannot go to another country, they have taken precautions. In Germany, they have put a lawsuit against me - I have never been in Germany! They have filed a case in the court to prevent my coming; if I go to Germany I will be arrested, and I will not be able to leave Germany till the litigation is over.

It is natural: the creation of a new milieu for growing individuals is bound to be opposed by everybody in the world. But there is nothing to be worried about. In fact, their opposition keeps us growing stronger and stronger. But they don't know that. They are not intelligent enough to know either.

Politicians are always mediocre, because to be in politics you don't need any qualifications except that you can be cunning, a hypocrite, expert in lying. And these things are not taught in any university, you don't get any degrees in them. Politics is the only job where no qualification is needed. In fact, an intelligent person will not degrade himself by getting into politics. He can do far more and better things; why should he be sitting foolishly in a parliament, arguing about trivia?

For months, what do these people in the parliaments and the assemblies go on doing? It is just a kind of insane chattering club. About small things they go on arguing. The whole world is on fire, and they go on talking about land use laws. The attorney general of Oregon, the governor or Oregon, the "One Thousand Enemies of Oregon" - they are trying to prove that if Rajneeshpuram becomes a legal city it will go against land use laws. Can you think... are these people sane?

This land has not been used for many decades: no use is perfectly good use! We have made this land productive, and we are going to make it more and more productive; this is misuse, it is against land use laws. The Oregon Supreme Court has proved to be saner.

Anybody can see a simple thing, that we have made a wasteland a beautiful oasis; they should be grateful to us. But the fear is that if this commune becomes a great power, it is going to create a wildfire all around. And they cannot ignore us. Nobody can ignore us.

But before they woke up to the fact, we had already made the commune, the city was incorporated.

Now there is no way of going back. And my people are always going forward. We are going to make this place - for the first time - a real holy land.

Question 4:

I have never done anything in my life. Even my shoes... Vivek puts them on my feet. You can't conceive of a more lazy man than me. You must be thinking, why do I cross one leg over the other and never change it? It is sheer laziness, it is not some yoga posture. I don't even put the watch on my wrist; that is Vivek's job. She puts it on me, she chooses.

I have never done anything in my life, but millions of things have gone on happening around me. I cannot take the credit for those happenings.

Existence is not an act, a creation by a God; existence is an autonomous happening. Nobody is behind the curtain pulling the strings, sending messengers, holy books; there is nobody. Existence functions as an autonomous happening.

That day, thirty-two years ago, I became aware of the fact that even my birth was a happening. I have not had anything to do with it. In fact, nobody had asked me, "Do you want to be born?"

My breathing goes on happening - it is wrong to say that I am breathing. You are not breathing; otherwise you would have been dead long ago, because what will you do in the night? When you are asleep, the breathing will stop; or sometimes even in the day you may forget, and you are finished.

I trust in existence - I am part of it. And the moment I became aware that if stars go on moving without any mover behind them, if this whole vast existence is possible without any doer.... I am just a small, tiny part of this whole existence, why should I bother doing anything? Let things happen.

And so much has happened that sometimes even I start wondering whether it has happened or somebody has done it.

But I have been continuously aware - aware that I am not going to do anything, because the ego is the doer. If you don't do anything, the ego disappears; doing is nourishing the ego. Shifting from doing to happening, you have dissolved the ego. In doing you can fail, but in happening there is no way of failing. Whatsoever happens is right. So nobody can make me depressed, nobody can make me disappointed, because in the first place I am not trying to do something.

Do you think that when I speak I move my hands? No, my gestures are just a happening, there is no doer behind them. My gestures are not the gestures of a Christian missionary.

I used to go to visit.... In Jabalpur there was Asia's biggest training center for Christian missionaries, Leonard Theological College. Thousands of people were being trained how to become a missionary.

I used to go - the principal was my friend, but that was just an excuse - I used to go there to see how stupid people can be.

The professors were teaching the students how to speak - when you have to speak slowly, when you have to shout loudly - and when you are speaking what gestures are suitable: when you have to raise your hand, when you have to hit the desk to make a point. I was simply amazed. These are actors, these are not missionaries; they are being trained.

I don't know how to speak; you cannot find a more amateur speaker in the world. I don't know what I am going to say the next moment. My hands move on their own. In fact, the hands are extensions of your brain; your right hand is connected with your left brain, your left hand is connected with your right brain. They are in tune with my brain, so whatever gesture is there, it is not my doing. And the brain is a mechanism, it is not me.

What I am going to say, I don't know; I simply allow it to be said. That's why it is so easy for me to go on speaking for years - there is no problem. These are no prepared speeches.

Just the other day Vivek was very amazed.... In the morning, after my bath and taking my breakfast, which is nothing much, just a glass of juice.... I am always in such a beautiful relaxed state that although I have slept the whole night - that was also beautiful - after my bath I can fall asleep again.

I have to come here, so I have to leave at eight-fifteen. Vivek came and she saw me fast asleep.

She woke me up, and she said, "It is now eight-twenty. Your secretary is waiting outside, and you are sleeping!" So just out of sleep I come here and start. But there is no doing in my life.

You all have come to me, I have not called you. Just think, your coming to me was a happening.

Your being here with me is nothing like doing. Anybody who is here with effort is not going to remain here long. Only those who are here simply as a happening are going to be with me forever. And to me, each moment is an eternity unto itself.

If you are with me without any effort, without any doing on your part, you have fallen in tune with me, because I am just happening. If you are also in the mood of happening, suddenly there is no duality between me and you. Two happenings are not two; a thousand happenings are not a thousand.

If all the sannyasins here are here without any effort and are just enjoying whatever is happening, then we are one soul.

Why does one have to make an effort? - because deep down one does not want to be here, that's why one has to make an effort to be here. How long can you repress your going away, and why waste your time in repressing? If that is your destiny to go away, go away with joy, with all my blessings.

If it is a happening to you, then there is no question ever of saying, "Be here with all my blessings."

You will know it without my saying it. I will be overflowing in you, you will be reaching me. And this will be an absolutely invisible phenomenon.