I say, Rejoice!

The first question

Question 1:

Pritam,

MY MESSAGE IS VERY SIMPLE Live life as dangerously as possible. Live life totally, intensely, passionately, because except for life there is no other God.

Friedrich Nietzsche says God is dead. That is wrong because God has never been there in the first place. How can he be dead? Life is, always has been, will always be. Allow yourself... and I repeat again, allow yourself to be possessed by life.

The so-called religions of the past have been telling you just the opposite. They say, "Renounce." I say, "Rejoice." They negate life, I affirm it. They say life is something wrong, illusory, and they create an abstract idea of God which is nothing but a projection of their own minds. And they worship that projection. It is so unintelligent, so utterly stupid that one wonders how millions of people have believed in such sheer nonsense. That which is, is denied for that which is only an abstraction of the mind. God is only a word, but they say God is real. And life is a reality.... You feel it in your heartbeat, it pulsates in your blood, it is all over the place - in the flowers, in the rivers, in the stars.

And they say this is all MAYA, all illusion. They say that it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. And they create a God - and of course, everybody creates a God in his own image. So there have been thousands of gods.

It is your imagination. You can make a God with four heads, you can make a God with a thousand hands. It is up to you, it is your game. And these people have been telling an poisoning the minds of others. They say, "BRAHMA SATYA" - God IS true, and "JAGAT MITYA" - the world, life is untrue.

I say to you, life is the only truth there is. There is no other God than life. So allow yourself to be possessed by life in all its forms, colors, dimensions - the whole rainbow, all the notes of music. If you can manage this simple thing... It is simple because it is only a question of let-go. Don't push the river, let the river take you to the ocean. It is already on the way. You relax, don't be tense and don't try to be spiritual. Don't create any division between matter and spirit. Existence is one, matter and spirit are simply two sides of the same coin. Relax, rest, and go with the river. Be a gambler, don't be a businessman, and you will know more of God because the gambler can risk. The gambler is non-calculative, he can put all that he has at stake. But the thrill of the gambler when he stakes every thing and waits;... what is going to happen now? In that very moment a window can open.

That very moment can become a transformation of the inner gestalt.

Be a drunkard, drunk with life, with the wine of existence. Don't remain sober. The sober person remains dead. Drink the wine of life. It has so much poetry and so much love and so much juice.

You can bring the spring any moment. Just give a call to the spring and let the sun and the wind and the rain enter into you.

It is because of THIS message that the spiritualists are against me because they think I am denying God. I am not denying God. For the first time I am bringing God into a real perspective, I am making him alive, I am bringing him closer to you, closer than your very heart. Because he's your very being, nothing separate, nothing far away, nothing there in the sky, but herenow. I am trying to destroy the very idea of there and then. My whole vision is of HERE AND NOW because there is no other space than the here, and no other time than the now.

The spiritualists are against me because they think I am making people materialists. And the materialists are against me because they think I am taking people into meditative drunkenness.

The Shankaracharya would not agree with me because he says, "God is true and everything else is false." I cannot agree with him. And Karl Marx will not agree with me because he says, "Religion is the opium of the people," that religion is something utterly false, that there is no God, no spirit, no life except matter, that what you think is your consciousness is an epiphenomenon - just a by-product.

The moment you die everything dies.

I tell you you are born and you will certainly die but something in you was before your birth, and something in you is there which will remain after your death. And that something is life. Life is eternal.

Twenty sannyasins walk into the World Trade Center in New York singing, "Drinking from your wine, Osho, drinking from your wine!"

The front desk receptionist calls for the manager to come quickly. He tells the sannyasins that they must be wearing formal dress to enter so one of the sannyasins goes over to the desk and gets the "Rules of the House." He finds out that priests and people of religious orders do not have the same dress code. He presents this rule to the manager who is thereby forced to allow them entry.

The twenty sannyasins walk into the bar on the one hundred and thirtieth floor still singing, "Drinking from your wine, Osho..." A couple of drinks later, the same sannyasin notices a fat old Texan sitting on the stool next to him. He raps him on the back and they get talking. Fatso happens to import fine scotch whisky into the States. He listens in amazement as this sannyasin tells him that he is a connoisseur and that he knows of a wine that just keeps getting you.higher and higher - it is made in India and brewed by a Master called Rajneesh.

"Faarrr out!" drawls the Texan, and he calls the bartender and pays for everybody's drinks.

A short time later, twenty sannyasins walk out of the bar, singing, "Drinking from your wine, Osho, drinking from your wine..."

That is my message.

The second question

Question 2:

Arvind Shah,

I DON'T BELIEVE IN ANYTHING. I am not a believer at all. I need not believe, I know. All the religions are humbug. This is not my belief, it is simply my experience. I can see it - they are humbug. The whole of human history proves it.

And the moment you say "all the religions" you have already gone astray because there is only one kind of religiousness. There cannot be many. Just as science is one, the scientific approach is one, so is religion, so is the religious approach.

Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, they all belong to one kind of religiousness. Of course, they speak different languages - that is another matter. They are bound to speak different languages. Lao Tzu will speak in Chinese, Jesus will speak in Aramaic, Buddha will speak in Pali, and of course they will use the idiom of their day. But that is the difference of expression. And one should not be deceived by expressions, one should not be deceived by words, because religion has nothing to do with the words. In fact, it is because of the curtain of the words that we cannot see.

It covers our eyes, it hinders our insight. Religion is a wordless experience. Hence Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism are all false.

Jesus is right, Buddha is right, Krishna is right. But Christianity is not right, cannot be right. In fact, to be a Christian is to settle for something pseudo. You can be a Christ! Then why be a Christian?

To be a Christian is just to be a shadow. You can drink from the very source of existence. Then why go on only talking about it, thinking about it?

A Christian is one who talks about truth and knows nothing about it. A Christ is one who knows about it. It is his experience. The Christian has no experience of his own, he is simply repeating words of Christ. And repeating other's words is a stupid activity. This repetition is called "believing."

Remember, religion has nothing to do with believing. The whole foundation of religion is seeing, not believing. Remember, only blind people believe in light. Those who have eyes, they don't believe in light, they KNOW! The moment you know something the necessity for belief disappears.

But the world is full of believers. That means the world is full of blind people. And how have you come to a certain belief? Just a coincidence - that you were born into a certain family and they started imposing their beliefs upon you. You are a Hindu. You have not chosen to be a Hindu, you have been forced to be a Hindu by your parents, by your society. Or you are a Jew... Or you are a Mohammedan... But you have not chosen it, and religion is not so cheap that anybody else can impose it upon you. It has to be one's individual choice.

Religion has to be chosen out of freedom. It is not a conditioning. Belief is a conditioning. Belief means you have been made afraid that if you don't believe you will be punished. Hence, hell. Those who don't believe, for them is hell. And those who believe? - for them are all the joys of paradise.

It is the same psychology that pervades the schools, the colleges, the universities, the law courts.

They all think that if you want people to be a certain way, the only possibility is to create fear and to create greed. And how can you be religious if you are full of fear and greed? - fear of hell and greed for paradise. That is the trick that has been played upon you. You have been cheated and you have been exploited. And you have only been given words - words which mean nothing to you.

When Buddha says something it has meaning. When Buddhists repeat it they are repeating like parrots. The parrot can repeat a mantra, there is no difficulty in it, you can teach the parrot. And the same methods have to be applied as are applied to you: if he learns the mantra he gets beautiful food; if he does not learn the mantra then he is punished, he has to starve, he is denied food. He is forced to learn. This is what psychologists call conditioning.

And there are people like B.F. Skinner who say that man can be conditioned for any behavior, just give him enough punishment and enough reward and you can manage, you can change anybody's behavior.

Why you are being good? - not that you really feel like being good. There is a great fear that if you are not good then you will have to suffer for it later on. The whole of humanity is living in fear and greed - and you call these religions?

Religions are not possible, only a religiousness is possible.

Arvind P. Shah, you are too much burdened with words.

You say: WE HAVE COME TO KNOW THAT YOU BELIEVE THAT ALL OTHER RELIGIONS ARE HUMBUG.

You have not even listened to me, you have not even been in communion with me. You have come to know... You have heard it from others who may have heard it from somebody else. That you believe.

If you had been here for a few days you would have come to know that I don't believe in anything.

I KNOW! I have eyes, I can see! What is the need for believing? Belief is for those who are not courageous enough to open their eyes. Belief is for those whose religion is formal, who have not experienced anything of life, anything of beauty, anything of joy, anything of love, for whom God is a word, life is a word. They live in words.

"Hey, Paolo, how come-a I no see you 'round no more?"

"I gotta new business now, but I am-a no do so good-a!"

"What's your business?"

"I am a pump!"

"What the hell-a is a pump?"

"I gotta these eight-a girls who work-a for me, and every time they go out-a and make fun-a with a guy, I make-a money!"

"You be a dope! You ain't da pump - you are a pimp!"

"No wonder business is-a no good-a. In the 'Yellow-a Pages' I am-a listed under 'pump'!"

Beware of words. You are listed as a Hindu, as a Mohammedan, as a Christian... YOU are none of these.

Friedrich Nietzsche is right when he says that the first and the last Christian died on the cross twenty centuries ago - neither before him was there another Christian nor after him. Only Christ is a Christian in the true sense of the word. He lived and experienced, and whatsoever he said was coming from his innermost core. It was not something borrowed. Everything borrowed is ugly.

Beliefs are borrowed, hence they are ugly. And when you live according to borrowed beliefs you create chaos in the world. YOU remain unconscious and you go on talking about the Bible and the Veda and the Gita. And you are repeating all these things in your dreams. You have not understood a single word.

One Sunday morning, a drunkard stumbled into a big building not knowing it was a church. When he entered, the ten o'clock mass was in process - the organ was playing, a choir was singing and the church was very crowded. The priest was standing in front of the people, swaying a pot filled with smoking incense.

Suddenly a shout was heard from the back of the chapel, "Madam! Hey, Madam! Your bag is on fire!"

You are not in your senses! You don't have any awareness. You are sleepwalkers. Almost the whole of humanity suffers from somnambulism, sleepwalking. And in your sleep the priests have caught hold of you. It is only accidental who was close by and who got hold of you.

If a child who is born into a Hindu family is given to a Christian family from the very beginning, he will never come to know that he is a Hindu. Or do you think he will ever come to know that he is a Hindu? - he will be a Christian.

So what is your religion? Just whatsoever is forced upon you by others is your religion. Religion basically is freedom. But your so-called religions are slaveries, they are humbug. And humanity has suffered much because of this nonsense.

I would like more Buddhas but no more Buddhists - enough is enough.

An Australian country town had an old nunnery at its center. The town was growing up fast all around it and the nuns would stand at the windows and watch the new multi-story building being erected on the other side of the street.

Around midday, the lunch siren would go, and the laborers with their bronzed sweaty bodies would come down the scaffolding to the ground floor to have their lunch.

The nuns would watch the blokes sit around in a big circle, get out their lunch boxes and thermos flasks and dive into their lunch.

"Sister, sister, did you notice that the gentlemen did not thank the Lord for their food?" said one nun to the other.

The other replied enthusiastically, "Yes, yes," I did! Perhaps we could mention it to Mother Superior."

So off they go upstairs and relate their tale to the Reverend Mother. After a moment of silence, she says, "Bring me a lunch-box tomorrow - just the kind the gentlemen use!"

The next day, when the siren sounded, Mother Superior picked up the lunch-box and slipped downstairs and across the street. She sat quietly down next to the men who were noisily hopping into their lunches, then she raised her hands suddenly and said, "Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Have you heard of Jesus Christ?"

One of the fellas stopped, pushed back his hat, scratched his head and said, "Hmmm, ah, Christ - Jesus Christ... Hey Danny, you heard of a Jesus Christ working here? Well, tell him his mum is here with his lunch!"

Jesus Christ... Twenty centuries have passed. Who cares? Who bothers? You have to live your life. You have to be authentic to yourself. You have to discover your individuality. And all these religions are humbug because they hinder discovering, they hinder exploration. They hinder you from knowing the truth. They hinder in every possible way.

They go on stuffing knowledge in your head, and that knowledge only creates stupidity. Pundits are the most stupid people in the world because they are parrots. And there are so many simple people

who even start trying to live according to the teachings that have been given to them by others, who start trying to live... they create a mess of their life. Then life becomes unnecessarily repressive because you are not a Mahavira, and you are not a Buddha, and you are not a Krishna.

Just try to be a Krishna. Stand in the street, Arvind P. Shah, playing on a flute, and immediately the police will catch hold of you. You cannot repeat Krishna. You have to be only yourself. Nobody is capable of repeating anybody else. There is no need either. It creates repression. You repress your individuality and you start acting like somebody else, and you are NOT that somebody else so your life becomes a hypocrisy. Hence I call all these religions humbug.

Chandulal got an out-of-town construction job, and asked his guru, Swami Dharamdas Brahmachari to check up on his wife to see that she did not fool around with anybody.

Of course, he argued within himself that his guru Swami Dharamdas Brahmachari is a celibate, so his wife is in the right hands, there is no fear.

If he had asked me I would have said, give the control of your wife to anybody else. Anybody else will be far better than this so-called celibate.

Six months later he returned and found his spouse and his guru in bed doing the very same thing he had tried to prevent. He called his wife every name in the book, and then threatened divorce.

"And as for you, you dirty dog!" Chandulal shouted at his guru, "could not you at least stop while I am talking to you?"

Repression sooner or later explodes. You are sitting on a volcano.

Arvind P. Shah, you say: WE HAVE COME TO KNOW THAT YOU BELIEVE THAT ALL OTHER RELIGIONS ARE HUMBUG.

They are.

HOW CAN YOU SAY THIS?

Because I know it.

You ask: ALL PEOPLE HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BELIEVE IN SOME SPECIFIC RELIGION.

There is no specific religion. There is only a religiousness. And nobody has the right to believe!

Everybody has the right to KNOW.

You say: EVERYTHING CAN BE GOOD AS WELL AS BAD.

No. If you know then the right is right and the wrong is wrong. Then the white is white and black is black. If you don't know, then of course you are in a confusion.

You ask: SO HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT OTHER RELIGIONS ARE HUMBUG?

What can I do? If they are humbug they are humbug. I am simply stating a fact.

To me, it is a truth which has to be said. And the time for it has come.

The third question

Question 3:

Prem Hari,

YOU NEED NOT do anything. Let her have her own way. You can see the nonsense that she is falling into, but that is her freedom, and one learns only by experience. If you try to pull her out she will not be able to live her experience totally.

In the first place it will be almost impossible for you to pull her out because mind functions in a very different way. Your very effort will push her deeper into the mire. And a husband particularly is the last person to transform a wife or convert a wife - impossible. Wives can convert husbands very easily, but husbands have never been known to convert wives.

A wife can nag you - she knows the art, that is part of her feminineness. She will torture you in such subtle ways that finally you have to give in. It is very difficult to find a husband who is not henpecked.

All husbands are bound to be henpecked. If somebody is not henpecked that simply means that he is not a husband. He may be somebody else but he is not a husband. And every husband knows it and every wife knows it. But wives are very clever. They go on giving the sense to the husband that he is the master, and deep down they know who is the master, so what is wrong in it, let him pretend. So he can go and walk in the streets and in the factories and in the offices as if he is the master!

The wife gives him enough rope. But remember, it is a rope and the wife keeps the other end in her hand. Enough rope she gives - go on pretending - but she is the real master.

So if your wife was trying to get you out of the hold of these so-called Prejapita brahma and their brahma kumaris then it would have been very easy. But it will be almost impossible for you.

And I think it is a good chance to get rid of her. Don't miss the opportunity. People are so foolish.

When opportunity knocks on the door they complain about the noise!

A Jewish comedian telling jokes about women: "Now take my wife, for instance... please!!!"

It is such a good opportunity, such a golden opportunity for you. You are out of the mousetrap. Why do you want to get into the mousetrap again? Let her do her own thing. She will learn by bitter experience. I know these fools because I have been visiting Mount Abu for almost twenty years.

India has given birth to two of the most stupid religious movements. One is Hare Krishna - that has become worldwide. The other is these Brahma Kumaris, it has not reached the whole world, it has remained confined to India. They talk utter nonsense, and they talk with authority. And they go on saying everything. This date that you mention that in 1987 this world will end... This date has changed many times in thirty years, and it will change again. But fools are fools. '87 is not far away, only seven years. And you will see that in '87 it will become something else - '97 or 2000 will be exact, the right time. It goes on, it goes on changing. And people are so foolish, they go on believing.

The world is not going to end in any atomic war for the simple reason... not that humanity has become non-violent, not that it has heard the message of Buddha and Mahavira and has dropped all violence, no. It has come to a point where total war is possible. Strange it is, what Buddha and Mahavira could not do Albert Einstein has been able to do. The discovery of atomic energy on one hand has been one of the most dangerous discoveries because two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were destroyed within minutes. One hundred thousand people in Hiroshima were reduced to nothingness within three minutes. But on the other hand, the discovery of atomic energy is going to change the whole future of humanity because it has made it possible to go into a total war.

All the wars in the past - and they have been many... In three thousand years we have fought five thousand wars. But they were partial wars. Even the First World War and the Second World War should not be called World Wars because the whole world was not really involved. A major part was involved but not the whole. The Third World War will be the first and the last World War, first and last both because it will be total destruction. Nobody can win it - that is one of the greatest blessings - that nobody can win it, neither Russia nor America. The difference between the victor and the defeated will be a difference of only ten minutes at the most because if America attacks Russia first then it will take ten minutes for Russia to attack America. Just ten minutes! Or vice versa. And we have so many atom bombs and hydrogen bombs available that the whole of humanity can be destroyed seven hundred times. In fact, a person simply dies on the first attempt. There is no need to kill a person seven hundred times. But politicians are very calculative: in case some body survives they have made it in such a way that there is no possibility to survive. Not only men but trees and birds and insects, and all the amoebas you are suffering from. All will be destroyed.

In fact before the Third World War you cannot be free of amoebas! Amoebas are the longest-living beings. An amoeba can live at least one hundred thousand years. They are immortals, gods. And their reproduction system is really aesthetic. Man's reproductive system is very ugly compared to the amoebas.

Amoebas are brahmacharis, celibates, absolute celibates. There are not females and males, remember. The way the amoeba reproduces itself is a very different one. The amoeba simply goes on becoming fatter and fatter and fatter, and then it splits in two; then there are two amoebas.

Both are fathers, both are sons. And then they go on, start eating and becoming fatter and fatter, and a moment comes when they split into four. This is a beautiful way to reproduce.

Just think of a man doing pushups on a woman. What nonsense! Amoebas must be laughing! What are you doing?

I have heard a story.

The first human couple reached Mars. And of course they were interested to know how the Martians reproduce. So they asked the first Martian couple they met, "How do They said, "It is very simple."

They invited the couple into their home. They opened the freezer and brought out two bottles of some strange chemicals. In a jar they mixed those chemicals in the same proportions. They put the jar back into the freezer And they said, "After nine months we will have a baby."

The human couple was very much puzzled. "What kind of reproduction is this?"

Then they asked, "And how do YOU reproduce?" And so they started making love. And while the man was doing pushups on the woman - because they were Christian and they knew only the missionary posture... that is the missionary posture, the Christian posture. Those two Martians, the Martian couple, started laughing. They laughed so much that tears came to their eyes. And of course the human couple was feeling very awkward.

When they were finished they asked, "Why you are laughing?"

They said, "This is the way we make coffee!"

Amoebas must be laughing at you and all the tantrikas and all the tantra methods, and amoebas must be laughing at the whole nonsense. Nonsense in the sense that they have a very simple method. No sex is involved at all. They are non-sexual beings. In fact they are the only eligible beings to enter into paradise.

Your wife has gone into some stupid ideology. It is good riddance. Forget her. She will come to her senses if you don't try to force her. And the world is not going to end, because everybody is aware that now war has become meaningless. The whole meaning of war is in getting victorious.

Now nobody can be the victor. The days of war are over, the days of love are coming. And this world is not going to end, but certainly it is going to go through a tremendous change, a radical transformation.

I am preparing you for that radical transformation. I want you to be the future of humanity.

And of course, you are worried about her ideal of purity.

Indians have very strange ideas about purity. They have suffered much because of that. The whole country lives with such deep suppression, with such deep unnaturalness that everybody is miserable, everybody is sad and serious.

Just the other day three Indians came to visit; they had come from one of our friends, so Sheela received them as guests. And they were very rich people, belonging to the topmost, richest society of Bombay. One of them asked Sheela, "We have heard many things about free sex here. This is against spirituality, this is against religion" and all kinds of things. And then one of them asked, "Why don't we see many Indians here?"

Sheela said, "First you go... because you have come to see the ashram... first you have a look around the ashram. You will have a better perspective, and then we can sit and talk."

And the same man, do you know what he did? In the fashion department - Padma was alone - he grabbed her breasts. The same man who was asking why there are so few Indians.

Then Sheela told him, "Now, you know" - he was caught red-handed - "why there are so few Indians.

We have to throw them out. Now we have to throw you out." We would have given you a good beating and handed you over to the police, but because you have come from a friend, a well-wisher of our commune, we will not do anything to you. We'll just throw you out."

Now a rich person, well-educated, behaves in such a way and thinks himself spiritual. Indians have a strange idea of spirituality. Their whole mind is sexual and they talk of purity in the sense of no sexuality - to drop sexuality is to be pure. Then only amoebas are pure.

You cannot be pure because you are born out of sexuality in the first place. How can you be pure?

You cannot change your birth, it has already happened. You came out of your mother and father's sexuality. Half the cells of your body belong to your father, and half the cells belong to your mother.

They are sexual, those cells are sexual. Hence each man carries within him a woman - his mother.

And each woman carries a man within her - her father. And now psychologists have come to a certain insight into it.

You will fall in love many times but every time you will feel frustrated for the simple reason that deep down the cells of your mother are projecting a chemistry in you which can be fulfilled only if you can find a replica of your mother in your beloved. And that is impossible. Where will you find your mother as your beloved? Or where are you going to find your father as your lover? Hence ALL love affairs are bound to fail. They can only be temporary affairs, no love affair can be permanent. Stable it can be. Stable only because of security, convenience. But no love affair can be really fulfilling for the simple reason, a basic reason, that each man is trying to find his mother in the woman he loves.

And of course that woman is totally different. She comes from a different sexual source: her father was different, her mother was different.

You fall in love with a woman who has something similar to your mother - maybe the color of the hair, maybe her eyes, maybe her nose, maybe her shape.

Just a few days ago, Vivek brought to me a picture of Krishna Prem's mother. It was amazing! The mother looks exactly like Vasumati, exactly like Vasumati - the nose, the face. And Krishna Prem has been gay for many years, and suddenly seeing Vasumati his gayness has disappeared. He has fallen in love with a woman. And he has not even been consciously aware of his mother's existence because his mother died very early. I think he was only two months old or something when his mother died, so he does not remember. But the chemistry remembers.

Each cell has its own memory. Falling in love with Vasumati, here in the ocean of so many women, just finding Vasumati is strange - and that too for a person who has remained gay for many many years. In fact, it was one of his problems. He was asking again and again, "How can I get rid of my homosexuality?" And suddenly the meeting with Vasumati and the homosexuality disappeared. He has found something similar.

But it can be only similar; hence when they asked, "Can we live together?" I said, "Beware. If you live together then the relationship will be very short-lived. If you remain aloof and meet only once in

a while, then your relationship can be prolonged, can be far more enriching." And they understood it. They both understood it, which is rare. Because when you are in love you are crazy, you don' t understand anything. You go cuckoo . But they both understood. They both proved that they can see things clearly. They remain separate. Only once in a while - two, three times a week they meet.

Now this can be a lifelong relationship... unless I disturb it!

So, Prem Hari, it is good. Thank these Brahma Kumaris of Mount Abu - they have been of tremendous help to you.

Abe died of a massive heart attack. His wife, Rose, followed Abe's instructions and had him cremated. She insisted on taking the ashes home to their small apartment in Brooklyn, and had the following conversation:

"Abe, remember the Cadillac you promised me? Well, here are the keys.

"Abe, remember the trip to Europe you promised me? Well, here is the ticket.

"Abe, remember the condo in Miami Beach you promised me? Well, here are the keys.

"Abe, remember that blow job you always wanted? Well, here it is!" (And she blows the ashes.....

"phooow! ") What else can you expect from a wife?

Don't be bothered at all. Let her try her own way; and everybody has the freedom to do whatsoever he likes, she likes. Don't interfere. You be on your path and let her seek her own path. She will come sooner or later because nobody is so foolish as to remain trapped into something ridiculous.

But it helps many people at least to get rid of their absurd ideas.

In this world everything has a purpose. There are so many fools - that's why there are so many foolish philosophies. Wherever there is a demand there is going to be a supply. So your wife must have needed something like that.

And it is not time for her to come to me. Let her wander around.

There is a famous Sufi story: a man went in search of a Master. He was ready to go around the world, but he was determined to find the Master, the true Master, the Perfect Master.

Outside his village he met an old man, a nice fellow, sitting under a tree. He asked the old man, "Have you ever heard in your long life - you look like a wanderer..."

He said, "Yes, I am a wanderer. I wandered all over the earth."

The man said, "That is the right kind of person. Can you suggest to me where I should go? I want to be a disciple of a Perfect Master."

The old man suggested a few addresses to him, and the young man thanked him and went on.

After thirty years of wandering around the earth and finding nobody who was exactly fulfilling his expectations, he came back dejected, depressed. the moment he was entering his village he saw the old man who had become very old now, sitting under the tree. And suddenly he recognized that he is the Master! He fell at his feet and he said, "Why didn't you say it to me, that you are the Master?"

The old man said, "But that was not time for you. You could not recognize me. You needed some experience. Wandering around the earth has given you a certain maturity, a certain understanding.

Now you can see. Last time you had met me, but you had not seen me. You had missed. You were asking me about some Master. That was enough proof that you could not see me, you could not feel my presence, you could not smell the fragrance. You were utterly blind; hence I gave you some bogus addresses so you could go. But even to be with wrong people is good, because that is how one learns. Fol thirty years I have been waiting for you here, I have not left this tree."

In fact the young man, who was not young anymore, looked at the tree and was even more surprised.

Because in his dreams, in his visions he was always seeing that tree and there was always a feeling that he would find The Master sitting under this tree. Last time he had not seen the tree at all. The tree was there, the Master was there, EVERYthing was ready but HE was not ready.

Prem Hari, let her wander, let her search. Don't try to pull her here, otherwise she will even distract you. You have come home. Drink as much wine as you can out of me. Maybe your transformation will help her too.

These are not things which can be proved or argued about. And never argue with a woman, because you will always be defeated because she does not argue logically. She simply jumps from one conclusion to another while the man follows the hard way - he completes the whole process of arguments. That's why it is almost impossible between husband and wife to come to any conclusion.

Mulla Nasruddin was saying to me, "I have never argued with my wife in my whole life."

I said, "How did you manage it?"

He said, "The day we got married we decided that every non-essential thing" - remember DESIDERATA - "every non-essential thing she has to decide. And I will decide only the essential ones. And we have remained true to our contract."

I said, "What are the non-essential things?"

He said, "Almost everything."

"And what are the essential things?"

He said, "For example: whether God exists or not whether Jimmy Carter should be chosen again or not whether communism is the right thing or not. How many hells are there? - one or seven. All the essential things I decide. And everything else... what type of car to purchase, what kind of food to eat, what kind of restaurant to go to, what kind of movie to see, where the children are to be sent - which school, which hostel... Almost everything is a non-essential thing. It covers everything except the most essential. That I decide. And there is no argument, there is no question of argument."

I think that is great wisdom. If every husband and wife divided..."You decide the non-essential and I will decide the essential" - because ANYWAY the wife is going to decide it, so why bother?

Leave her alone. You be transformed. Maybe seeing the transformation in you, seeing your blessing and benediction, she may be transformed. She may be converted. That is the only possibility. But not by dragging her, not by pulling her out, but helping her to be herself. Tell her, "You are completely free." Don't make her feel guilty. That is ugly and irreligious.

The fourth question

Question 4:

Sangit,

IT IS VERY RARE in life to come across perfection, but Morarji Desai is a perfect Polack. It is a rare phenomenon. Perfection is not easy.

I call him a perfect Polack because that's how he thinks. He thinks only in words; he has no experience, no experience about the ultimate. But he talks about it. Only a Polack can do that.

Just the other day I read this statement. He said he had one ambition to be fulfilled: to know God and attain the heights of truth. "I have not acquired the truth in totality yet," he said, "nor had Mahatma Gandhi."

Now these words are enough to prove what I mean by his being a perfect Polack.

In the first place any ambition is a barrier. Ambition for truth is a contradiction in terms. He is a politician and all politicians are Polacks. He is a politician, he knows only the language of ambition. He knows no other language. And the ambitious person suffers from an inferiority complex, otherwise he will not be ambitious. He knows perfectly well that he is mediocre, that he is stupid. Just to hide the fact of his stupidity he tries to create some status, some outside status.

He wants to become the president, the prime minister - that was his whole lifelong ambition to be the prime minister. The day he became prime minister, he said immediately, "This is one of my ambitions which is fulfilled. Now only one more is left, and that is God-realization. I want to know truth. That is now my only ambition."

It is okay if you are ambitious to be a president or a prime minister, but one cannot be ambitious about knowing truth. That is a contradiction in terms.

Truth is known only when all ambitions have been dropped - the ambition for truth is included in it. When all ambitions and all desires have been dropped, suddenly truth is available. Truth is not somewhere far away that you have to reach to it, it is not a goal. It is already a given fact. It already exists in you. You can be ambitious for money, for power, for prestige, but you cannot be ambitious

for truth. If you are ambitious for truth that means you are trying to find, search, seek - and truth is inside you. It IS NOT to be sought because it is in the seeker himself. The moment all your outer seeking stops, the moment you have understood the futility of desire, the futility of ambition... In that state of non-ambitiousness, desirelessness, truth is revealed. And it is not revealed as something objective. It is your own interiority, it is your subjectivity.

Soren Kierkegaard says, "Truth is subjectivity" and he is right. Jesus says, "The kingdom of God is within you." The same thing expressed in a different way. Buddha says, "There is no God. There is no self to be sought, just go in, turn in - a one-hundred-eighty degree turn - and you will be surprised. The thing that you have been searching for for lives has always been inside you." God is hiding within you. He is not in the Himalayas.

Now to say that "I am ambitious... the only ambition to be fulfilled now is to know the truth" is to live in just words. He knows the word "ambition," he knows the word "truth." But he has not experienced any meditativeness. If he had experienced even a drop of the nectar of meditation, he would have dropped the word ambition, it would have been impossible to use that word. That word is ugly.

And then he says, " I want to know God" - as if God is a person, as if God is something objective that you can know. There is no God to be known in that way. It is not a question of encountering God. You will not meet him somewhere. God is the name of absolute silence, the name of profound peace, a name - just a name - for overflowing love and bliss. God is nothing but godliness.

H.G. Wells says Gautam the Buddha was the most godless person and yet the most godly. H. G.

Wells has a great insight there worth meditating upon: the most godless and the most godly.

All godly people have been godless. They have to be - AES DHAMMO SANANTANO - because this is the ultimate law. When you know, you know there is no God. Your very knowing, your awareness, your consciousness, is all that is.

But people who live in words go on talking about these things unconsciously.

One hundred Italian soldiers had only ninety-nine rifles with bayonets. Their sergeant said, "Everybody rush up the hill. You, Luigi, without a rifle, you just say, 'Bang, bang - stick, stick.'"

They charged up the hill. Luigi came face to face with a six-and-a-half-foot-tall Polack.

Luigi shouted, "Bang, bang - stick, stick."

The Polack said, "Tank, tank!"

This is how theologians go on talking: God-God, Self-Self, Truth-Truth! But there is nothing else.

"Why are you huffing and puffing, Zbigniew?"

"I have been on the slippery slide."

"Why should you be out of breath from sliding down the slide?"

"Ah, DOWN?"

He was trying to go up. That's what ambition is. Ambition means going up, and non-ambition means slipping down into a state of nothingness.

Pulpushki showed up one morning at work with a big smile on his face.

"Why you so happy?" asked a co-worker.

"Thursday I find wife in bed with the electric meter reader!" explained the Polack. "Friday, I catch her taking samples from a salesman on the living room sofa. Saturday morning, the milkman do business with her on kitchen table. But I fix them all. No one get last laugh on Pulpushki. I just phone Good Will and tell them to take up the furniture... the whole furniture of the house!"

Morarji Desai is a Polack, and a perfect Polack.