Your master is your whole universe

Question 1:

Prem Majjhama, the question asked by you... you will have to be prepared for a shock. I am going to analyze it point by point. You say, "I was with a very strict enlightened teacher, Lee Lozowick." I know Lee Lozowick very well. Neither is he strict, nor enlightened. And you remained with him in America for six years. That shows that you are not even intelligent either. If you were really with a master, there was no need to come here. Your innermost being would have been fulfilled, contented, blessed. If you could fall in love with my sannyasins in Boulder, Colorado, Lee Lozowick is not even worthy enough to be compared with my people there.

If you have looked into your question deeply, unprejudicially, silently, then my answer will be very clear to you. In the first place, a teacher is never enlightened. A teacher has teachings; he has a whole system of beliefs. A master is not a teacher. A master is a fire you have to go through so that all that is not gold in you is burnt, and only the pure gold comes out. To be with a master is not an easy job. It is the most difficult journey one can go on.

You wasted your six years. Lee Lozowick himself was with Da Free John. He is not only a fraud, he also betrayed his own teacher. Da Free John is also not a master, but at least he is a teacher of a far higher quality than Lee Lozowick. It happens all the time. People see that so many people are attracted towards certain doctrines, certain personality characteristics, and they feel they can also manage, if not so many people, then a few at least. Lee Lozowick betrayed Da Free John because he does not even mention his name, or that he has been a disciple himself. And how did he become a master? His own teacher has not recognized his enlightenment.

But in America everything is possible. I have heard a wise man saying, "A fraud is someone who can tell you to go to hell so tactfully that you start packing for the trip." That's what Da Free John and his disciple Lee Lozowick are. And when I am saying these things, remember, I have no personal antagonism towards anybody. But I have simply to say the truth to you, even if it goes against all manners, etiquette, culture. I am not here to teach you manners, I have to hit directly into your heart with the truth, howsoever much it hurts.

These people have sprung up all over the world. India has suffered from these people for many centuries, but this century is seeing a new phenomenon. The Indian frauds have created similar kinds of people all over the world - pretenders, who know nothing except some strategy that influences people to believe in them; and particularly at this time, when everybody is going down into a deep psychological crisis. Everything seems to be silent on the surface. You may not even be thinking about the third world war, the ecological crisis; you may not be thinking about AIDS. At least consciously you may not be concerned at all what is going to happen to humanity tomorrow, but deep down you cannot avoid it.

Your consciousness is a separate personality, but your unconscious, as you go deeper, becomes more and more part of the whole ocean. So whatever is happening in the soul of the cosmos has ripples in everybody's unconscious. If you can read your own unconscious, you can read the whole future that is going to happen. But you may know or you may not know about your unconscious situation.

These frauds - the Indians and their by-products, mostly American - are doing a good business.

It is said that psychologists build castles in the air, psychoanalysts live in them, and psychiatrists collect the rent. But I wonder who pays the rent? You! Prem Majjhama, I say again, you! You pay the rent, and there are many others who are paying the rent. Those castles do not exist, nobody lives in those castles...

But in a psychological crisis of this intensity - in which we are - everybody is shattered inside, is somehow holding himself together, and anybody who pretends to teach you the way towards the beyond immediately attracts you. You don't have any way, any criterion, any measurement to figure out whether the man is true or not, whether the man is authentic or not. In the East, because the tradition is more than ten thousand years old, slowly, slowly we have figured out a few indications of an enlightened master. Those indications may be helpful to you.

The authentic master is not at all interested in disciples, in the crowd, in the many numbers around him. He does not brag about it. He attracts only the very intelligent, because what he teaches and whatever he is, is understandable only by very highly intelligent people. Have you ever checked what intelligence quotient you have? Before figuring out whether a master is true or not, you should have a psychological test to find out what is your mental age.

The average mental age of humanity is fourteen years. Now, people with a mental age of fourteen years are not the people to understand something of the transcendental, something of the spiritual, something of the inner. It is time for them to play football, watch boxing matches, sit before their TV, glued to it for seven and a half hours every day. But I have always been wondering... nobody ever thinks about how much intelligence you have. Is it enough to be a disciple? Is it enough to be accepted by a master?

A master is not in any way interested in converting you to a certain system of beliefs. If any master is doing that, he is only a teacher. And a teacher carries only borrowed knowledge. He can say beautiful things, but they are all parrot-like. Sometimes he can talk even better than the masters because masters are spontaneous and the teacher has gone through many rehearsals. He is well prepared, he has done his homework, and he goes on teaching the same thing again and again to different people.

A teacher always remains consistent with a certain current of ideology. The master is basically contradictory, inconsistent. He has to be, because what he is saying is not within his hands. It is in the hands of the universe itself, he is only a vehicle. Whatever kind of song existence brings to his lips, he cannot edit anything out of it or make any additions, improvements. A master is very raw in the sense that he brings whatever comes from existence exactly as it is. He is never a polished man.

The master does not in any way humiliate you by making you disciples. By accepting you as disciples he gives you dignity and individuality. He asks nothing from you and he goes on giving to you things which have no price, but are immensely valuable. The effort of a master is to become a certain milieu, a certain presence so that he need not even say anything to you. Just sitting by his side, your heart slowly, slowly starts falling in tune with the master. And the master's heart is in tune with the heart of the universe. Being in tune with the master, you are also in tune with the universe. It is not knowledgeability that makes a master, it is innocence.

And I know absolutely, with certainty, that this fellow, Lee Lozowick, is not an innocent man. He has betrayed his teacher - and you are doing the same here. You have betrayed him. But one cannot blame him, because when he went to Da Free John he must have thought of him as a master and slowly, slowly discovered that he is only a teacher - but if a teacher can attract so many disciples, what is the point of remaining with him? And he started collecting his own disciples.

If you have been with a master, it is almost impossible to desert him. Your love will prevent you from doing that. Your trust will become a Himalaya between you and the whole world. Your master is your whole universe.

And it is strange that you are asking, "Now, after one week in Poona, a nagging feeling has arisen in me: Have I truly taken sannyas, and are you truly my master?" What happened to Lee Lozowick?

It took you six years and still you want to go back to him. The reason is clear: it is not that you have found a master in him, you have found in him a recognition for your ego.

Here, your ego is going to be destroyed every day. Unless you disappear completely, leaving only your essential being, you are not a sannyasin. What happens when a person like you, after six or seven days, takes sannyas? What is going on in his mind? He is thinking that by taking sannyas some miracle is going to happen to him. You are absolutely wrong. This sannyas that you take is not going to bring any miracle, it is simply entering into a commune of seekers, making yourself available, becoming an insider and not just a spectator. Then learn step by step the ways of love, the ways of trust; then learn step by step how to enter into your own being. The day you enter into your own center will be the true sannyas. This is only a formality.

With a true sannyasin, an authentic being who has come to his own, the question will not arise, "... and are you truly my master?" There is only one way to find out whether someone is truly your master. If in his presence, if in his universe of seekers, if in his caravan of searchers, you suddenly stumble upon yourself, and you find the ecstasy that you have never experienced, and the blessing that has not been even in your dreams; and after this experience no question arises in you... That is the very definitive thing, that no question arises in you. All questions have simply fallen, as leaves fall in the fall time from the trees. Only in that experience of the disappearance of questions, and with them thoughts and mind, will you have the answer, that you have found the true master. You cannot decide beforehand, because it is not a market; it is not that somebody has written on his door, "I am the true master."

You will have to learn patience and waiting. One never knows - it can happen today, it may take years; it all depends on you. The master simply creates a certain subtle atmosphere. That atmosphere is here. If you can get in tune with it, you are a sannyasin. And if you get slowly, slowly dissolved and become part of the dance and the celebration that is going on here, of the meditation and the ecstasy, suddenly you will realize you have come close to an authentic master.

If it does not happen, there can be two reasons: either the master is not authentic or your disciplehood is not authentic. Rather than jumping to the idea that the master is not authentic, it is better first to look at your disciplehood. What have you done by becoming a sannyasin? What changes have happened to you? In what ways have you become more involved in the movement, in what way have you entered yourself, in what way has your lifestyle changed?

Everything depends on you. Giving you sannyas simply means that we accept you, our doors are open to you, not more than that. Now, inside the temple what is happening will depend on you - your intelligence, your integrity, your sincerity, your authentic search for truth. And I cannot think that in six days you have found that meditation leads nowhere, that you have touched the presence of my being. But I will suggest to you, perhaps you should go back to Lee Lozowick, because I am not interested at all in gathering a crowd of unintelligent, impatient people, in a hurry.

You will come back - about that I am certain. But this time you go back; first be finished with Lee Lozowick. That is what is nagging you. You are thinking that perhaps you have left your right master and here you have come into a strange world. Why not go back home? I never want anybody to be here half-heartedly. Either you are here or you are not here; there is no other choice. So you can think it over.

Either say goodbye to your so-called teacher, strict teacher... strictly enlightened. That I have heard for the first time. There have been enlightened people, but strictly enlightened...! So it seems a few are lousy. Gautam Buddha is not a strictly enlightened person - a lousy person in comparison to Lee Lozowick. You just go back to him, because that is the only way to be finished with him.

Now that you know me and you know my people, and you know the space that is being created here, going back to Lee Lozowick you will have something to compare him with. And if you feel to come, then come with totality. Your totality will be respected and loved. And only your totality can make you discover the master that is here.

I am not a teacher, not at all. I have no teaching. I have simply a presence that I want to share with you - in my words, in my silences, in my presence, in my absence. I want you to feel that this small place is not part of the neurotic world outside the gate, that a different kind of consciousness is growing here. It is a nursery. But perhaps... it happens to many people: when they come the second time, then they recognize.

It is just like a joke. There are very few people who understand when they hear a joke for the first time. Most of the women, particularly, who get it for the first time... it simply means that they have good teeth; it does not mean that they have understood the joke. The Englishman never understands when he hears a joke for the first time. He wonders what it is. He gets it in the middle of the night.

Thinking about it this way and that way, figuring it out, suddenly he catches the glimpse. He says, "My God!" And then he laughs in his bedroom silently so that nobody can hear.

The German never gets it. He laughs because everybody else is laughing, and if you don't laugh they will think you are German. The Indian never gets it either. But he does not laugh like the German, just to give company to other people who are laughing. It seems to the Indian that he is too serious a person, far above, spiritual, how can he laugh? It is not that he is spiritual or far above, the real fact is that he does not understand the joke.

I have been searching for a purely Indian joke. I have gone through almost thousands of books in search of a purely Indian joke. I have to confess that there exists no such thing. All jokes that are available in Indian literature are imported.

Only the Jew understands it. But he understands it before you have even finished it. And to tell a joke to a Jew is a very embarrassing experience, because in the middle of the joke he will say, "Shut up! It is an old joke, and moreover you are telling it all wrong."

I have been watching. Many people have come for the first time, and only the very intelligent have remained - and remained silently, without ever thinking that any other world exists except this commune.

A few remained here just to learn enough so they could go back and become great masters in their own right. They are not interested in truth, they are interested in their own egos. And now there are a few people around the world - they will not mention my name, and they have lived with me for ten years. They are afraid that somebody may recognize: "You have been Shree Rajneesh's disciple."

They want to erase that part of their life completely so that they can say they are a master, unique; they have discovered the truth themselves, they are not repeating.

I go on receiving their pamphlets and their leaflets and I wonder... these people are either blind or utterly unconscious. They are quoting me, in their name, and they are sending those pamphlets to the sannyasins. And the sannyasins send them to me, saying, "Look what your people are doing."

They have never been my people. They were here just to learn some strategy so that they could be masters.

The third type is more sincere. They come and they don't feel at ease. It is natural. When you change from one commune to another commune, it is changing from one river to another river. The taste of the water changes, the flow of the river changes. The climate changes, the trees on the banks are different, a different fragrance.... everything changes. Naturally one feels to be back in the old, which you have become accustomed to.

I want you to go back, because that will reveal to you that your six years have been a wastage, and your six days here have given you greater insight. And when you come again, you will come clean - clean of your past hanging on. This will bring you a certain maturity that you need.

Little Ernie and little Elmer are outside the whorehouse, and after seeing the comings and goings their curiosity is aroused. So they knock on the door and ask the madam if they can come in and find out what it is all about, but she tells them the price is ten dollars.

After saving their pocket money for weeks they amass the sum of seventy-nine cents and approach the madam again. Being a businesswoman and sensing the possibility of future clients, she takes their seventy-nine cents and tells one of the girls to give them a quick flash of her pussy for their money.

Two minutes later they are leaving the place when Ernie turns to Elmer and says, "I didn't like the look of that, did you?"

"No," replies Elmer, "I'm glad we didn't have ten bucks' worth."

Question 2:

Milarepa, it is certainly true that without women no man would have ever been enlightened. They create such hell that there is no way out except becoming enlightened. This also explains why very few women have ever become enlightened - and not very strictly enlightened, just so-so. The reason is that husbands are not capable of creating that great a hell. Who is going to help women to become enlightened?

But I am certainly against marriage. My being against marriage has many reasons. One of them is that if there is no marriage, man and woman will be moving freely with each other. And soon you will see there are an equal number of women enlightened as men; this disparity will disappear. There have been thousands of enlightened men and perhaps five enlightened women - you can count them on five fingers. And still, their enlightenment is lukewarm. Once you have released the man and the woman from this bondage, you will be creating a situation in which nobody nags you into enlightenment.

Enlightenment that has come out of nagging is not much of an enlightenment; it is simply escape.

I want authentic enlightenment, and that needs absolute freedom from nagging. Nobody is nagging you, nobody is telling you to become enlightened, everybody is accepting you as you are, enlightened or unenlightened. Out of this freedom will come more authentic men and authentic women to become enlightened. But this will be out of freedom, not out of bondage. Not out of misery, despair, agony, but out of joy, out of love, out of orgasmic experiences.

You can see, the quality of enlightenment will be totally different. The first kind of enlightenment is bound to be dry, juiceless... the enlightened man unable to laugh because he is completely afraid, continually defending his achievement because anybody can pull him back into the world.

Gautam Buddha says to his disciples, "Never look, while you are walking, more than four feet ahead so that you will never see any woman's face." What kind of fear...? And these people are going to become enlightened.

One disciple is going for a journey, and Buddha says to him, "Remember never to look at a woman."

The man seems to be some stubborn type. He says, "But there may be some accidental situation when, not knowing, I may have looked at a woman. Then what am I supposed to do?" He is right, because going into the world, there is every possibility of seeing a woman. You can close your eyes then, but you have seen.

Buddha says "Okay, you can see, but never touch."

But the man is not in any way of a lesser quality than Gautam Buddha. He says, "There is a possibility that one may have to touch a woman. What about that? For example, a woman falls into a ditch and I am alone on the road, and unless I help her, she is going to die. Do you want me to let her die?"

Certainly Buddha cannot say that, so he says, "Okay," reluctantly. "You can touch in certain emergencies. Don't make it a common practice. But even if you touch, don't speak."

The man said, "This is putting me into a difficult situation. If the woman says something, do you want me not to answer? If a woman asks me where this road goes, should I remain silent, knowing perfectly well where this road goes, that she is going on a wrong road and may suffer for miles and miles and will never reach?"

Just desperate with this man, Buddha says, "Do whatever you want to do!"

But putting people under such conditions to make them enlightened is not my way, and I don't think it is the right way either. Any kind of experience that may happen in this way cannot be joyous; it cannot blossom into flowers, it cannot release fragrance; it will be dry, dirty, escapist, fearful, always on guard. No, I don't support any such enlightenment.

I want you to withdraw all miserable conditions from the world, and marriage is one of the most miserable conditions.

Let love be freed from the chains of marriage. Allow humanity to love, to laugh, to enjoy, to celebrate life, to experience life to its very depth.

And out of this intensive experiencing of life will arise a totally different kind of enlightenment which will be able to dance, which will be able to sing, which will be able to laugh. It will have a beauty of its own, a glory, a splendor.

I am introducing a totally new kind of enlightenment into the world. The old one, to me, looks rotten.

That's why, Milarepa, I am against marriage. It will go on creating the rotten enlightenment.

An optimist is a man who marries his secretary and thinks he will still be able to dictate to her.

If married life was supposed to be fun, it would not start in church.

Love is temporary insanity, curable by marriage.

Marriage is permanent insanity, curable only by enlightenment. But that enlightenment will come out of an insanity; its roots, its juices, all will be poisoned.

A single man is one who runs around and gets into all kinds of trouble. A married man does not have to run around.

... He is already in trouble. This trouble creates the possibility of thinking of a life beyond, because this life is finished. If there is not a life beyond, that would be a very terrible and shocking situation.

A wedding day is when rings are put on the finger of a woman and in the nose of a man.

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you sleep alone.

I am describing these different aspects of marriage....

Notice in a restaurant window: Don't stand outside and be miserable, come inside and be fed up!

Not to take women seriously is to ask for trouble. To take them seriously is to get it!

All marriages are happy, it's living together afterwards that causes all the trouble.

He that will not reason is a bigot, he that cannot reason is an idiot, and he that dares not reason is a husband.

The best training up to now has been marriage, if you want to attain enlightenment. But that enlightenment will be as miserable as the sources from which it is coming. I want sages who can dance, sages so innocent that they can laugh, sages so innocent that they can enjoy small things of life with such joy, sages who can live on this earth as if it is paradise, not asking for any paradise beyond. But up to now our sages have all been psychologically sick.

A little time for enjoying enlightenment... If you cannot enjoy it forever, there is no harm in enjoying it temporarily, even for a few moments. When you laugh you all look almost like Gautam Buddhas.

When you sit silently, you look like a congregation in a church!

Mendel Kravitz arrives at a cabaret club and asks the doorman who he should see to get a booking for his singing act.

"You should see the concert secretary," says the doorman. "By the way, you're not a hypnotist, are you?" Mendel assures him that he is not, and goes in.

The concert secretary looks up suspiciously and says, "I hope you are not going to tell me you're a hypnotist, are you?"

Mendel assures him he is only a singer, and is sent to find the organist for a tryout. The organist likes the songs but looks uneasily at Mendel. "You don't do any side acts by chance, do you?" he asks. "No hypnotism for instance?"

Mendel is tired of the question and demands an explanation.

"Well," says the organist, "last week we had a hypnotist here. He was so good that he had at least two hundred of the audience in a trance."

"What's wrong with that?" asks Mendel.

"Nothing," continues the organist, "but half way through his act, he fell over the microphone, hurt his foot, and yelled out, 'Shit!' The cleaners have only just cleaned the hall."

Kowalski and his wife are celebrating their thirty-first wedding anniversary. As a surprise he comes home with a little monkey.

"What's that?" asks his wife.

"It's a monkey," replies Kowalski. "What did you think it was? This is my anniversary present to you."

"You are crazy!" she cries. "What are we gonna do with a monkey?"

"Well," says Kowalski, "he's gonna eat with us, he's gonna sleep with us..."

"Sleep with us?" shouts Mrs. Kowalski. "What about the smell?"

"Listen," says Kowalski, "after twenty-five years, if I could get used to it, so will the monkey."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.