Was god thinking of a circus

Question 1:

Gayano, you have raised one of the most fundamental questions. Each human being has to face it. The majority face it in a cowardly way by escaping from it, by forgetting it, by not looking at it.

The very few spirits who are rebellious, courageous, and want to know their own essential being, the meaning and significance of their life, who don't want to be here accidentally, but want to be a significant, creative participant in existence, they have to go through the agony of exposure. They cannot escape.

Why has it become such an agony, such a suffering to expose oneself as one is? Because you have been told again and again that you are unworthy, that you are not acceptable, that you are not of any worth at all as you are. You will have to attain to respectability by following certain rules and regulations made by others. If you want some kind of dignity you have to become a puppet in the hands of others, because they decide what you should be, how you should act, and how not.

From the very first moment a child is born this ugly education starts. I was present at one of my friends' first childbirth. The woman had been a long acquaintance - she had studied with me, she had become a teacher with me - and this was going to be her first child. Even though the husband was against my presence - why should another person be present there? - she insisted. I had no idea that there had been a quarrel and a fight. Finally the doctors interfered and they said, "There is no harm. If her feeling is that she has found a man of grace and she would like her child to be seen by the same man whom she has respected..."

On the surface everything looks beautiful, but as you go deeper into analysis things start changing their colors. The mother is even deciding what the child should see first, who he is going to have his first human encounter with. The mother is deciding that. And from such decisions start our whole education.

Naturally, a strange calamity falls over the whole humanity. Nobody seems to be the right person.

Everybody seems to be in the wrong place. Somebody else may be in the right place, but you are never in the right place. And the person you think is in the right place is not in the right place either; he is thinking somebody else is in the right place.

This whole madness is the ultimate result of a wrong educational system, which does not accept you as you are in your naturalness, in your simplicity. You may not be a great leader... In fact there is no need for great leaders. What have they done except made history to torture small children with?

They have to remember their names, do the homework. What have all your great men done?

And who are these great men? - mostly criminals. Either they themselves committed the crimes:

people like Genghis Khan and Nadir Shah and Tamerlane... Just these three people killed nearabout one hundred and twenty million people. And you don't call them criminals; they are great leaders, great conquerors. There are others who have not committed crimes themselves, but have created the very source from which crimes arise.

I have heard an ancient story.... God had made the world. On the sixth day everything was complete, just one thing was missing - a moral code. So he went around to the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the people who lived on the drowned continent of Atlantis, and he asked them, "Do you want a commandment?"

Everybody asked, "What is a commandment?" Somebody said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

The Egyptians said, "Then what shall we do? The whole life will lose interest! We don't want any such commandment."

God was getting tired when he found Moses. He asked, "Do you want a commandment?"

Just like a fundamentalist Jew, Moses asked, "How much?"

God said, "Free!"

He said, "Then I will have ten."

Those ten commandments are torturing Jews, Mohammedans, Christians. Although these people are not criminals, Moses or Jesus, they are sources of certain criminality. For example, all the religious leaders of the world have made celibacy one of the most moral acts. And it is one of the most immoral acts because it it unnatural.

That which is unnatural cannot be moral.

I was in Greece. Amrito is here, my sannyasin. She told me that the Greek Orthodox Church believes very fanatically in virginity.

I said, "That must mean all the girls that are not married in Greece are virgins?"

She laughed. She herself had been a beautiful girl, had been chosen as a beauty queen in Greece, had been working as a model. She said, "Don't ask that. If you want to know, you cannot find a single virgin. This is simply a principle. And nobody ever enquires about how many virgins there are." Now, to make virginity a moral precept, unknowingly you are creating criminals, guilty people, psychopaths, perverted people.

In the nineteenth century in Europe it was absolutely necessary that you married a virgin girl. But sometimes a girl was a virgin, but the certificate that made her a virgin may have been lost. It is a very small certificate! Just riding on a horse, you can lose your virginity. Even riding on a bicycle you can lose your virginity - because it is a small, thin skin.

It is such a small, thin layer of skin that it can be broken in any accident: you fall from a tree and you lose your virginity. That's why... I was always wondering why nobody allows girls to climb trees.

Finally I found out myself that the real reason is - nobody talks about it, perhaps nobody knows about it - that climbing a tree is very dangerous for virginity. And once lost, it is lost forever.

In Europe, in the nineteenth century, there were doctors who were selling virginity. They prepared thin pieces of skin and planted them in the right place. And it was a great profession, because almost every girl is going to lose it; it is not simple to protect it. Swimming in a pool you may lose it....

Now, this made the girl unnecessarily feel immoral, unworthy, afraid, that sooner or later she is going to be found out. And how can she prove that she lost it when she was swimming? She has not done anything and the virginity is gone. It created guilt and it created criminals - those doctors who provided the virginity for a certain fee were the criminals. They were exploiting absolutely innocent women.

You will not believe it, but not only does the virginity have to be there, after the first night of marriage the young husband has to show the bed sheet to his family and to his friends with blood on it. It is not necessarily true, even if the girl is a virgin and has not lost her virginity, that making love to her is going to bring blood. So she has even to supply the blood, too. Those doctors who were implanting virginity also gave the woman a small tube of blood, so she just could spill it over the bed. And this was a show, exhibition; the neighborhood would see - yes, that girl was a virgin.

What is your business in it? In what way are you concerned with it? But because certain idiots have made virginity a moral concept, many more things are bound to develop by the side.

Similarly, celibacy has created even more crime. It has created all kinds of perversions - homosexuality, sodomy. And the reason is not in the homosexuals, the reason is in your religions.

They are preaching something which is unnatural. I challenge all the religions of the world, all their shankaracharyas and their imams and their popes and their rabbis, to come to a medical college and prove that they are celibate. Only a medical examination can give you a certificate saying whether you are celibate or not. You cannot be a celibate; it is such a stupid thing.

It is as if some religion arises and makes it a point that to urinate is against God. It looks to be against God! It is not a very nice thing to do. But if some religion arises and says it is against God, there will immediately be people who will say, "We will never urinate." And we see these people drinking water... then where is the water going?

We don't need to worry about their urination, but where is their water going? Once you have drunk water it has to find a way out of your organism. You cannot go on accumulating it - you will become a reservoir! And it will be a very strange, funny situation: reservoirs all around, carrying so much load.

And anybody with a sense of humor can put a knife into them and the whole city will be flooded, people will be swimming!

You eat food, you drink water, you breathe air; you do everything just as any other animal does.

Whether you are celibate or not, you do the same things. Just on the question of celibacy you cannot be separate. You don't even know what is happening inside you, how your sexual energy is created. It is created by your intake of air, oxygen, by your food, by your milk.

Strangely, it happened that I was staying in a rest house with a shankaracharya. And I told him, "Celibacy is an absolutely unnatural idea. Only an impotent person can be celibate. If you are potent then you cannot be celibate. You tell me what you are, potent or impotent?"

He said, "I am celibate."

I said, "Then I will take you to the hospital this very moment."

He said, "You seem to be a strange man. It is a question of ideology. Where does the hospital come into it?"

I said, "It is not a question of ideology. Do you know how your sexual energy is created? Do you have any scripture in which it is described? Do you have any control over it - not to create it, to prevent it? You don't have any control over it, just as you don't have any control over your blood, you don't have any control over your hair. Your organism has not left anything essential in the hands of your mind. And celibacy is part of your organism - the most important part. Biology cannot leave it in your hands."

He said, "I don't want to be in unnecessary trouble."

I said, "Trouble or not, I can bring a doctor here."

He said, "But I don't want to argue with you."

I said, "You are arguing, because you are saying that you are celibate."

Not a single religious person - there are thousands of monks: Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina - not a single monk has been to the people who can check whether he is celibate or not. But this ideal of celibacy has been created by very good people. They have not committed any crime - Mahavira or Gautam Buddha. They have not committed any crime, but they have created something which goes on creating immense crime.

According to me, they have to take the responsibility for it. With absolute respect and humbleness I want to say it, that all your religious leaders are responsible for your perversions, your pathologies, your mind going berserk. And they are the people who have condemned you. They won't allow you to accept yourself. That's why you are afraid to expose yourself: nobody should know that you urinate, hide it.

You are hiding yourself because everything in you has been condemned. I have been looking... is there anything in man which has not been condemned by one or other of the religions? I have not found a single thing. Everything is condemned.

As long as my grandmother was alive, poor tomatoes were not allowed in the house, because Jainas believe in eating only vegetables; they are vegetarians. The tomato is also a vegetarian, but it looks like a meat eater. The color looks to be of the non-vegetarian food.

I had not eaten in the night up to the age of eighteen, because for Jainas it is a sin to eat in the night, it is a crime. When for the first time I went to a picnic with my school friends to a nearby beautiful old castle... They were all Hindus, so for them food was not a problem. And they were so much interested in exploring the whole castle, and it had so many beautiful points to explore... I was feeling hungry and tired, but I could not say anything. Finally, in the night they all prepared food.

Now a great question was before me - to commit the sin or not. The whole traditional education of my family was not to commit a sin; just one night's hunger is not going to kill you. It takes thirty days even for the sickliest person to die if he remains hungry. For the healthy person it takes ninety days, just by starvation. So just one night and you are losing your paradise and all the beauties of paradise and falling into hellfire. It was not a simple question of eating or not eating, it was a great metaphysical question. My whole existence was in turmoil.

I told the boys, "I am feeling hungry, but it is against my understanding, I cannot eat. I will have to suffer the whole night."

They said, "Are you mad? We will not tell anybody. Your family will never know, nobody will ever know."

I said, "That is not the question. Their knowing is not the question. I will know, and I will feel always guilty that I have committed a sin. Then I cannot expose myself, I cannot be read as a book - open, no secret."

But the hunger was there. The whole day being on the mountain was tiring, and the food they had prepared was so inviting. And they were all persuading me, "The whole night you will not be able to sleep."

I said, "That I know. Either way I am not going to sleep the whole night."

They said, "Why either way? Eat well and sleep! We eat every night and we sleep." And they were right; that was their experience.

Finally I got persuaded by my hunger, by their arguments. And I had not eaten much. To be safe I took just a small amount of food. I was not committing a very great sin - even God will forgive a boy of eighteen years committing a small sin. But that small sin could not allow me to sleep the whole night. I had to vomit continuously. By the morning, when I had thrown everything out, I could go to sleep just for two or three hours.

Those boys could not understand it: "What kind of man are you? We all slept. We were so tired that we could not even dream. One needs some energy to dream too. And we were so utterly tired and so well fed that we slept. What were you doing?" They could not understand it. But I could understand that my psychology had been polluted, that my mind had been corrupted by those whom I loved.

This corruption goes back to Mahavira. My whole night's suffering on that mountain, Mahavira is responsible for. He created the idea that eating in the night is sin. And perhaps in his situation it was right, because there was no light, no electricity, no kerosene oil, so to eat in the night was not only irreligious, it was unhygienic too. And you can understand that with so many mosquitoes and all kinds of animals, to eat in the night, in the dark, was dangerous. Anything could fall into your food.

But Mahavira was not aware that a situation was going to come when man would be able to create ways of having light after the sun has set. Now there is no need to be worried. But habits die hard, and habits which have been followed for thousands of years...

I used to stay in the house of one of the richest men in the world, Sohanlal Dugar. He was a rare man, and just because of his rarity he fell in love with me. I was speaking in Jaipur. Jaipur was his home, but his business was in Calcutta. So most of the time he used to live in Calcutta and for a few days in his home in Jaipur.

I was speaking in Jaipur and as I finished, an old man with a great turban... and I could not think that this man was one of the richest men in the world. He gave me a bundle of one-hundred-rupee notes.

I said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I want to offer this to you."

But I said, "I don't need it. If sometimes I need... just give me your address."

He said, "My address I will give to you on the condition that you accept this money."

I said, "But, money I have never accepted from anybody." When I was saying this, tears started coming to the eyes of the old man. I said, "Why are you crying? You should be happy, this much money is saved. I should be crying - why are you crying?"

He said, "Listen, I am a rich man as far as money is concerned, but I am a very poor man as far as the heart is concerned. I don't know how to give love except by giving money. If you reject my money, you are rejecting me and my heart and I will never forgive you." He said, "You can take it and burn it - that is not my concern - but don't reject it."

And that's exactly what I did. I took it from his hands - it must have been ten thousand rupees - and burned it just then and there.

And he was very happy. He said, "You have followed your principle, I have followed my principle, we both are happy. But remember, now, whenever you come to Calcutta you have to be my guest."

So after that, for almost ten years I used to be his guest three or four times a year. His whole house was centrally air-conditioned, but he would sit with me at the dining table with a small bamboo hand-fan. I would be eating and he would be moving the bamboo fan.

I told him, "What are you doing? You know perfectly well that the house is absolutely air-conditioned; there is not even a single mosquito here. It is so clean. There is no need."

He said, "But it is traditional for the host to sit and fan the guest while he is eating."

I said, "It may be traditional, but it should not be stupid. In these conditions it is becoming stupid."

He said, "You don't understand. This air-conditioning, this house, everything can collapse, because I am a gambler. Today I am the richest man, tomorrow I might be a beggar. It has happened many times - up and down. But this bamboo fan will always be with me. I cannot depend on something which I can lose; I can depend on this fan."

I said, "You are giving a beautiful argument, but deep down you know and I know that it is just old habit. In the whole of Rajasthan, everywhere, this is the habit."

That night I became aware that you can corrupt the mind in any way. In fact any kind of ideals given to the mind are corrupting. You are telling the person, "This is right and this is wrong." This is not love and this is not education.

According to me, you have to tell your children, "Be alert, be aware. To be alert, to be aware, to be more conscious - of the consequences, of the implications - is the only morality. We don't give you particulars, what is right and what is wrong, because situations change. What is right in one situation may be wrong in another situation. We give you only awareness, so you can find with the light of awareness what is wrong in a situation and what is right. But you should remain the center of your decision. The decision should not come from outside." If the decision comes from outside...

that has created the problem.

Everybody is afraid of exposing himself. What will people say? And everybody is trying to pose according to people's ideas: what they want, what they like. If you want their respect you have to be a puppet, but then you cannot be real and authentic; you will be a hypocrite.

And the hypocrite is certainly afraid of being exposed. If somebody takes away the curtain that you were putting all over your reality, you are going to be afraid. This is the situation.

Gayano, not only you are in this situation, every human being is in this situation, because up to now the right human atmosphere has not been created on this planet.

One of my friends was the oldest member of parliament. For sixty years he was a member of the parliament, without any discontinuity. His name was Dr. Govindas. He was second only to Winston Churchill; Winston Churchill had been in the parliament two years longer.

I used to stay with him in New Delhi. He was a fanatic about cows - the Hindu fanatic mind... And you cannot believe that a man of intelligence, a man who has a doctorate, a man who has been for sixty years a member of the parliament, was so fanatic that he would only drink the milk of a white cow.

I said, "This is strange. Up to the cow I can understand, but a white cow?"

He said, "Black is a symbol of evil and bad things."

I said, "A symbol is one thing, but just a patch of black on the cow will not make the milk black."

He said, "You don't disturb my mind. I have followed this idea my whole life."

He used to take a cow everywhere he went, because who knows? Somewhere you may not find a purely white cow. Some dots... finished, religion is finished! And Hindus think that cow's milk is the purest food.

The reality is that the more milk you drink, the more milk you use, the less is the possibility of your being celibate. Nobody even points out the fact that the milk of the cow is not produced by nature for man. It is produced for bulls, and certainly it has a thousandfold more sexuality in it than a woman's milk.

And you can see that no animal in the whole of existence goes on drinking milk their whole life. Just when the animal is small and cannot digest solid food, for a few weeks it depends on the mother and then it is free. It is strange that man is the only person on the whole planet who goes on drinking milk even when he can digest solid food. And it is thought in India that if somebody lives only on milk he becomes a saint. To me he becomes a bull! He is dangerous, he should be kept in chains.

But people worship him.

But perhaps worship is, in a very psychological way, chains. When you worship somebody, when so many people give you so much respect because you just drink milk - a great creative act! - the crowd and its respect become chains.

But still, this man will have to find some perversion to release his sexuality. So every day newspapers are full of stories: some great saint has been found sexually misusing small children, somewhere a bishop is found...

In America, the man who was most against me in Portland was the bishop of Portland. And he was continuously saying, in every sermon, that my presence in America would corrupt people. Just recently he was caught, and has confessed before the court that he has been using small boys and girls sexually, in the name of teaching them the HOLY BIBLE. These are the people...

Now, I have been looking at these things because the question has become very prominent.

Even the person below the archbishop of England - only one step more and he can become the archbishop - he is saying, "Celibacy does not include homosexuality. You can be celibate and you can be homosexual; they do not in any way contradict each other. Celibacy is only against heterosexuality. The man should not contact the woman and the woman should not contact the man, but it has no implications..."

And in a way he is right, because in no Christian books, scriptures, nobody has ever thought that homosexuality... And then there are other kinds of sexuality - there is sodomy.

In faraway places - in deserts, in mountains - when you cannot have a woman or a man, people start making love to animals. That is sodomy. Certainly celibacy cannot include sodomy. Sodomy is such a saintly word! And these people are coming up with these ideas now because they have to prove that they are really celibate.

Monasteries are full of homosexuals. In one monastery in Athos there are one thousand people, and they have divided the monastery in two because five hundred people are homosexuals - not a small number. Half of the monastery is homosexual. And who knows about the other half, what they are doing?

These people are made unnecessarily criminal, unnecessarily unnatural, guilty, condemned. Then everybody starts having a mask: don't show your face, just show the face people want to see. And that's how everybody is functioning. But there are moments when one would like to drop the face, the mask, and in these moments the problem arises.

You are asking Gayano, "When you look at me in discourse - whether or not you actually see me - I feel your love pouring out of you and penetrating to my heart. At first it feels a little scary, because I feel very exposed, and then I love the feeling inside my heart."

Love is one of the things that forces you to expose yourself. You cannot cheat love; that is sacrilegious. That is the only authentic spirituality, not to cheat love. If you can cheat love then there is no hope for you, because love is the opportunity to expose yourself. Whatever garbage the society has poured on you, throw it away and be utterly nude in yourself, in total acceptance, respect and dignity.

Love loves you, not your clothes.

Love loves you, not your masks.

And love certainly creates a great question: whether to choose the mask or to choose love. The mask is a miserable life. It has not given any joy to you, it has led you more and more towards the false. Love is the beginning of a new journey towards blissfulness. Don't miss that moment. When love calls, say yes. And when love calls, move. Move beyond your so-called personality.

So your problem is simple. First you will feel scared, afraid. You have been hiding behind this mask so long that you yourself have started believing in it. You have forgotten your own face; the mask has been there so long. It happens...

In the second world war, for the first time ration cards were issued. One great American scientist, Edison, had to go... everybody had to go personally to register his name, family members, dependents and get the ration card. He had never been in such a situation. He was not a social being; otherwise he would not have been able to give to humanity one thousand inventions - a single man. Nobody else has done that much. Everything that you use - you don't know - Thomas Alva Edison is behind it. Electricity, radio, anything that you are using; your whole life is filled with his contributions. But that meant he was hidden in his lab the whole day.

This was the first time that he was standing outside in a queue under the sky. When his number came, as the queue became smaller and smaller and the clerk was facing him, and the clerk said, "Thomas Alva Edison," he looked here and there... perhaps he is searching for somebody called Thomas Alva Edison. The clerk was also at a loss - certainly this man who is standing in the front cannot be Thomas Alva Edison. He was supposed to be, because that was the order of the queue.

He shouted, "Thomas Alva Edison, your number has come!" No reply. The whole queue stood silent.

One man looked at Thomas Alva Edison and said, "I think the first man who is standing in the queue is Thomas Alva Edison, because he lives just near my house." The clerk said, "You seem to be a very strange man."

Edison said, "Strange? In fact for sixty years nobody has used my name. And do you think for sixty years you can remember? My colleagues call me professor, my students call me professor, and there is nobody who ever calls me Thomas Alva Edison. It seems this gentleman may be right, because far away, sixty years back... I can hear a small murmur, 'Yes, Thomas Alva Edison. I have heard this name before.'"

There is a limit. You can forget, your own falseness can become your reality. So when love strikes you like lightning it exposes for a moment your reality. Then the fear, "Should I throw away all the falseness and be myself and risk, whether I am respected or disrespected, condemned, blamed?

Whatever happens, without thinking of these consequences, should I expose myself?"

When love strikes you, it fills you with fear and also underneath with joy, with a feeling of love, because a moment has come into your life when you can change from the false to the real.

As for the beginning part of your question, it is a little difficult for me to say. You are asking, "When you look at me in discourse - whether or not you actually see me - I feel your love pouring out of you." When I am looking at you, I am simply looking. I am not seeing you. And particularly when I am speaking and I look at you, it is not possible for me - because I am no longer there, just a great emptiness responding to your heart, responding to your being. Yes, love is there showering on you.

It has nothing to do with seeing you or not seeing you. Even when I am exactly seeing you, if you look into my eyes it is utter emptiness. Only out of that utter emptiness does love flow. Then it flows without any address. Then it simply flows for whomsoever is ready, receptive. It is available, it comes close to you; you can be filled with it or you can remain standing on the riverbank, thirsty.

An Indian mystic, Kabir, used to sing a song. The title of the song is, "The Fish Is Thirsty In The Ocean." That describes you. But there is no need, it is an unnecessary misery imposed upon yourself. Drop it!

A little priest, a minister and a rabbi get together and talk about the issue of "When life begins." The priest opens by saying, "I think that life begins at the precise moment the sperm fertilizes the egg."

The minister says, "Well, I think life begins at the moment the baby draws its first breath."

Then they both look at the rabbi, who says, "Well, I think life begins when the dog has died and the children have moved out of the house."

It all depends on you when life begins. It can begin right now - the dog need not die, the children need not move out. And what kind of life will that be when the dog has died and the children have moved out?

I have heard about a court case - a divorce. A man of ninety and a woman of eighty-five wanted a divorce. The magistrate asked, "But how long have you been married?"

They said, "Nearabout sixty years."

The magistrate said, "If you managed for sixty years, then what great crisis has suddenly come into your life that you want a divorce?"

The man said, "There is no question of crisis. We were waiting for all of our children to die. Now we are free - no burden, no responsibility - so please help us to go on our own ways. Up to now whenever we raised the question of divorce, everybody said, 'Think of the children!' So for sixty years we have been thinking about the children. And those idiots went on living, went on living, went on living... Just yesterday the last one died. Now we want to live our own lives. Enough thinking about children!"

It is not a question of when that great moment of transformation will come into your life; it can come this very moment. The whole existence is ready, except you. You go on finding excuses, and then you become so expert in finding excuses that it becomes almost impossible for life, love, beauty, existence to penetrate you. You see and yet you don't see. It is all around. It touches you, it comes with the wind, but it does not enter you; your doors, your windows are closed.

This has nothing to do with your question... I am as irrelevant as the existence. What is the point of a roseflower? Or what is the point of a deer or an elephant? Was God thinking of a circus? Elephants and camels... these are all jokes!

Paddy nearly has an accident at work, and he is so shocked that he decides to become a reformed Christian. He tells Maureen that he is going to give up sex for a month.

With only a few days to go before the end of the month, Paddy and Maureen are shopping together in the local supermarket. Maureen leans over a tray of apples and Paddy gets a good look at her chest and nearly goes mad. A few minutes later, Paddy sees her thigh when her dress gets tangled in another customer's shopping cart. In the confusion, he loses all control of himself, forgetting his vow of celibacy completely.

A few days later, Paddy goes to confession and tells Father Murphy that he has broken his vow. The priest tries to console him, saying that after all the days and nights of his great effort, God and the church would forgive him.

"I'm not worried about God and the church," replies Paddy, "but Maureen and I feel terrible because they won't let us back in the supermarket!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.