Nobody is missing anything

Question 1:

Krishna Prabhu, to expect is to be disappointed. Jesus says, "Seek and you shall find it." I disagree with him absolutely, categorically. I say unto you, "Seek and you will never find" - because the searching mind cannot be silent, the searching mind cannot be at ease. The searching mind is always looking into the future; it is never here-now. The searching mind distracts you from reality.

Jesus again says, "Ask and it shall be given to you." And I say unto you, "Ask and you have missed it" - because the asking mind is the mind of a beggar. This beautiful existence belongs to the emperors, not to the beggars. And you don't have to have an empire to be an emperor. Just look at me: I don't have any empire, but that does not destroy my being an emperor. In fact the people who have empires are not emperors, they are imprisoned in their own empire, worried, continuously afraid of being invaded - a thousand and one worries. What kind of being an emperor is this?

Jesus also says, "Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you." I don't want to disagree with the poor carpenter. He would have been a beautiful sannyasin. He was just a little eccentric, but that is not a bad quality; it gives some color to life.

The statement "Seek and the doors shall be opened unto you" is again the same thing - between you and the future. You seek, then the doors shall be opened.

I say unto you, "Don't seek. Don't ask. Don't knock and disturb the neighbors! The door is open - enter."

I have spoken about one of the most beautiful women, Al-Adabiya, a Sufi mystic of very rare quality.

She was passing by the side of the mosque... she never went into the mosque. If this whole existence is not his temple, then man-made houses will be too small; he cannot be a guest in those small houses. They are going to remain empty and waiting.

She had heard many times of another seeker, who finally became a master - and he became a master because of Al-Adabiya. There is a limit... he was continuously praying, sitting outside the mosque, "God, open the door, let me in." She tolerated him for a few days, but the point came when she could not tolerate it. She hit him hard on his head and said, "You idiot, open your eyes! The doors are open, and there is no need to pray for it."

A crowd gathered. Hassan was very much respected as a religious man, a man of prayer, and Al-Adabiya was thought of as something crazy; she was always doing crazy things. Now she had done the last crazy thing. But to Hassan something happened. He looked into the eyes of Adabiya, touched her feet and said, "I am sorry, please forgive me. The doors are open."

How can existence close the doors to its own children? You expect and you create a tension in your being: somewhere, some day, in some life, you will become enlightened. But if I say to you, "I am ready to make you enlightened right now," you will say, "Just give me a little time to think. I have to ask my wife. And just to conceive of myself enlightened seems impossible. I am an ordinary man, living in the ordinary world."

But the people who became enlightened, they were also living in this world. This world is not ordinary. You cannot find any other world which is more extraordinary. In this vast universe, this small planet is very tiny. Just our sun is thousands of times bigger than this earth, and this sun is considered to be a mediocre star; there are stars millions of times bigger. And the expanse of the universe is infinite.

This earth is blessed: blessed with life, blessed with love, blessed with the possibility of your becoming aware, alert, conscious, enlightened. And nobody is preventing you. But in your drunkenness, in your unconsciousness are arising so many problems.

A drunkard reached his home. His wife was tired - every night he would come home late, completely drunk, and disturb the whole house and the people. The wife gave him the key finally, saying, "You don't have to disturb anybody. We know we cannot change you. The more we make the effort to change you, the more you drink. So keep this key and when you come, open the door silently and go to your bed. Don't disturb anybody's sleep and don't create the quarrel that we have been passing through for years."

The drunkard was very happy. That day he drank as much as possible - there was no fear now. And then he staggered towards his house. On the way, two things happened. One was, a lamppost...

he got struck by the lamppost. And he looked all around, could not believe it. He had always known that there was only one lamppost, and he was surrounded by twelve lampposts! He went this way and that way, but he would get hit again by the lampposts.

A policeman was watching from the road, felt mercy for the poor man - he had hurt his whole face, scratched it - so he came to rescue him. The drunkard asked, "Just this evening when I left the house, there was only one lamppost. Who is the idiot who has made twelve lampposts? And they won't let me out. Whichever way I go, the lampposts are preventing me."

The policeman said, "Don't be worried. Look again in the morning, when you have awakened. Right now, go to your home and go to sleep."

He followed him to his home, and now another problem arose. He could not manage to put the key into the hole of the lock. His hands were trembling, the lock was trembling. He managed this way and that way, but the hole of the lock and the key behaved as if they were conspiring against him.

The policeman laughed and he said, "Can I help you?"

The drunkard said, "It will be great if you can help. Just hold the house steady; it seems there is an earthquake happening."

While all this was going on, the wife, from the first floor, opened the window and asked, "What is the problem? Is the key not working? Should I throw down another key?"

He said, "No, the key is perfectly right, just throw me another lock!"

Somehow the policeman and the wife managed to get him into the house. He was worried because he knew that on his face there were scratches and blood, and in the morning the wife was going to find out. So first he went to the bathroom to clean off the blood, and he saw himself in the mirror.

He said, "My God! Those posts... I have never done anything harmful to them and they have been so nasty with me. Let morning come and I am going to go with an ax and cut down all those twelve lampposts completely. There was no need, even in darkness I was moving perfectly well.

Those lampposts..." And then he thought, "If my wife sees me there will be trouble, so somehow the scratches have to be covered with some ointment." He looked for some ointment and he found, instead of ointment, his wife's lipstick.

He said, "This seems to be perfectly good ointment," and he put it on every scratch. In the morning, the wife shouted from the bathroom, "Who has destroyed my lipstick? Not only the lipstick, but who has painted the whole mirror?" Obviously he was looking at his face in the mirror, and wherever there were scratches...

Man is living in a very unconscious state.

And whatever he does goes wrong.

Your question, Krishna Prabhu, is useful for everybody. You are asking, "A few months ago I had what seemed to be a great realization." After a few months, you will again feel that some great realization is happening. These realizations are just projections of the mind. It is because of the poverty of language that there is difficulty to say that one day you find that every moment is a moment of realization.

Is not this moment a moment of realization? Are not these birds and this sky and this silence a realization? Is not this intensity of thousands of people waiting for the unknown not a realization?

Don't make realization a special treat; make realization your usual life. Everything that you have to pass through is a realization.

But you have been blinded by all the vested interests. They have been using self-realization like a carrot, hanging far away. Once in a while you find a glimpse of the carrot and you say, "My God, this is it!" But the moment you have said, "This is it!" all realization is finished. Realization has to be synonymous with life, not something like an extracurricular activity.

I cannot see why you cannot understand this simple point. Waking in the morning, fresh, rejuvenated after sleep is a realization. Chopping wood, carrying water is a realization. Looking at the stars, looking in the eyes of people, holding hands with people and feeling the warmth is a realization.

Even being tired is a beautiful space, but you have made it ugly by giving it an ugly name. Your tiredness simply means you have lived your day, now is the time to relax. And relaxation is a beautiful realization - a silent sleep...

My approach is to bring down your gods, your goals, your realizations to this moment, and to make everything that you do an act of love and creation. Unless your whole life is a beautiful flow of experiencing the millions of mysteries which surround you, you are just being befooled by the priests, by hanging some fictitious carrots before you. Even the carrots are not real, because they are so far away, you will never reach; so you will never know whether they are real or not.

But those carrots keep you worried, tense, expecting, concerned. It is a miracle that once in a while you believe you have realized. Perhaps you are tired of expecting and you imagine that you have realized. But how long is your imagination going to last? Soon it will fade away, and then comes a deep failure, a feeling of utter frustration.

You say, "A few months ago I had what seemed to be a great realization - that all you have ever been teaching is witnessing. At the time, I was very excited about it, but this has faded, leaving me after twelve years of sannyas still with the question: What am I doing with my life here?"

Do you think I know what I am doing with my life here? I am enjoying talking, you are enjoying listening. What else do you want? Do you want to become Alexander the Great? - only then you will be satisfied? But even Alexander the Great died in utter frustration. He had conquered the known world and then he realized that he did not know even himself. He said to his people, "When you carry my casket to the graveyard, let my hands hang out."

They said, "This is not done." He said, "It is my order and it is my last will, whether it is done or not.

But it has to be done with me."

They said, "But what strange idea is this?" He said, "It is not strange. I want people to see... because thousands of people will participate in the last procession of my life. I want them to see that I am dying with empty hands. Conquering the whole world has not even filled my hands, what to say about my inner being. I am dying like a beggar."

Unless you understand a very simple thing... It is none of your business to bother about what you are doing here. You will have to do something somewhere. The question will be there - what are you doing here? The trees don't ask, they just dance in the breeze. The flowers don't ask what they are doing here. The birds are more sane than man.

A man reached his home earlier than expected. His wife was lying naked on the bed and there were shoes by the side of the bed. He recognized the shoes - they belonged to his best friend. Angry and frustrated, he looked all around, in every nook and corner. Finally he found him hiding in the closet, and he asked him, "What are you doing here?" And the man must have been a man of utter sanity. He said, "Everybody has to be somewhere. The question is not meaningful. I am standing here!" Now, what to do with such a man?

Philosophers, theologians, thinkers have created hundreds of questions to torture you. I don't want you to be unnecessarily in a self-torture. Just to be here is so beautiful, it does not need any other reason to be here. Just watch for a moment, just remember what I had said about witnessing that has given you great excitement. That excitement was wrong; excitement is not understanding. If you have heard my word 'witnessing' peacefully, silently, allowed it to sink deep into your heart, there will be no excitement.

The birds are singing, the sun has risen, the trees are basking in the sunrays, and we are here in one of the most unique gatherings of people: silent, not asking for God or anything, not asking, not desiring, not being ambitious, just simply enjoying being whatever we are. And who is going to answer your question? So the question will torture you your whole life - what are you doing here? - wherever you are. Even if you meet by chance God himself, you will have to ask, "What am I doing here? And what are you doing here?"

It is not a question of doing, it is a question of being - relaxed, joyous for no reason at all.

We are the universe. These kinds of questions create more questions. Questions are Indians - they don't believe in birth control. They are very religious people. They go on creating only one thing:

more questions.

Now first, "What am I doing with my time here?" Who told you it is your time? "And the feeling that there is some dimension that I am not yet experiencing." These are ways of torturing yourself. "... or that somehow I am still missing you."

Strange, I am missing you, you are missing me; it is hilarious. And what will you get by not missing me? The question will persist: what are we doing here together? Be simple and get out of these self-torturing questions. I answer your questions to destroy them, not to answer them, because any answer will bring new questions.

Krishna Prabhu, everything is as it should be. Nobody is missing anything. But if you want to crucify yourself then create such questions - that you must be missing something. But what gives you this idea that you must be missing something? And everybody in the world has that question lurking in their mind: we are missing something. Have a good laugh, jog and jump. If you cannot dance, do anything bizarre, and enjoy!

Life is in itself the answer.

Nobody is missing anything.

Your heart is beating perfectly - otherwise take a cardiogram. I become puzzled. I don't have any of my own puzzles, just your puzzles: Why are these people always running in some direction to find something? There is nothing to be found. What you will find is already within you; it is your life energy. Let it sing, let it dance, let it experience peace, let it enjoy blissfulness. And you will start blossoming, and your spring has come.

But people go on thinking that something is missing. Why do they think that something is missing?

Because they have not been allowed to know the art of life. On the contrary, they have been told everything that is against life. That has created the problem. Certainly you are missing God, but I promise you, God is not missing you. And after all, who is this god that you call "God"? And why should you miss him? And what are you going to gain by not missing him? It will be very boring company.

Just think for a moment that you are with God for twenty-four hours. That will be the most boring and anguish-creating thing. You don't have anything to say to him and he has nothing to say to you.

I used to travel in India for twenty years continuously. And I enjoy all kinds of things. One day, I got on the train in Bombay and many people had come to see me off. As I entered my air-conditioned coupe, there was another man inside also. He was watching all the people outside from the window.

He certainly thought that I was a very important person - so many rich people touching my feet.

And as I entered inside the coupe he fell flat on the floor and touched my feet.

I said, "What are you doing? I am a Mohammedan." And he was a high-cast brahmin.

He said, "My God! No, it cannot be true, you must be joking."

I said, "I never joke."

He became very much fidgety. I sat there. After two minutes he again said, "No, you are just joking."

I said, "I am not joking, I am a Mohammedan."

He said, "My God, in this cold night I will have to take a bath."

I said, "You go and take a bath."

So he went and took a cold bath and came back shivering, and I started laughing. He said, "Why are you laughing?"

I said, "I was just joking." And he fell again to my feet.

He said, "I knew from the very beginning."

I said, "No, not that time. This time I am joking. I am a Mohammedan."

He said, "You will drive me crazy! Now I have to take another shower."

I said, "It is up to you, I don't say anything. You are doing all these things on your own."

He said, "That's true." He took another bath and came in. I closed my eyes and did not say anything to him. But he could not sit restfully. He again asked, "Tell me the truth. Were you joking?"

I said, "If I tell you the truth, you will have to take another bath. So it is better I keep my eyes closed."

But he could not... because it is such a sin for a high-cast brahmin in India to touch the feet of a Mohammedan. He said, "But if you are a Mohammedan, then why did all those people - none of them was a Mohammedan - come to see you off?"

I said, "I am a Mohammedan mystic. I tell people which horses are going to win in the race."

He simply jumped up again and touched my feet. He said, "Forget about Mohammedanism or Brahmanism, just give me a number. I am in a financial difficulty."

I said, "You don't understand at all. You again will have to go to the shower. It is not easy for me to give the number of the horse that is going to come first in the coming race, and I cannot give it to somebody who distrusts me."

He said, "No, I will trust you. If you say, I will not take a shower again."

I said, "Promise?"

He said, "I promise."

I gave him a certain number - just any number. He said, "But what is the guarantee?"

I said, "When the race happens, then you will know the guarantee. Right now, it is just a fictitious number. That is my business - I cheat people."

He said, "What? So this horse is not going to win?"

I said, "In my whole life, I have not been in any contact with horses. I don't understand their language, they don't understand my language. But if people want to be exploited, I go on giving numbers. And before the horse race I move to another place."

He said, "My God, so this is useless?" He threw it out of the window. "I will have to take another bath."

I said, "You promised. As a high-cast brahmin, breaking a promise is a sin."

He said, "You will kill me! And we have to travel for twenty-four hours together."

People have been cheated by the priests, by the politicians, by the pedagogues for centuries. They were giving them fictitious numbers; those horse races don't happen.

You are not missing anything. The moment you realize, "I am not missing anything," all your problems will disappear. It is up to you. There are only two alternatives: either to get it right now and become blissful, or to postpone and remain miserable. My preference is, get it right now.

And what I have said for you about witnessing is nothing but a simple art of seeing. You are breathing, you are seeing, your heart is beating, you are surrounded by a beautiful universe. What more do you want? And are you certain that even if something more is added, you will not want more again?

The realization is instantaneous. It is not from point A to point B. It need not go anywhere - to Mecca or to Moscow or to Kashi or to Lhasa. Wherever you are, just enjoy the moment. I cannot conceive a better situation than this.

The trees must be laughing at you. Do you think the crows are doing it for some purpose? Just clearing their throats - early morning clearings. Do you think anybody is saying to the flowers to open and release their fragrance? No, it is all intrinsic. Only man has forgotten the language of being intrinsic. And the language of being intrinsic is the language of religion. Any moment decide, "This is enough" - and become enlightened.

It is not a question of becoming enlightened after arduous disciplines. It is a question only of deciding: "From this moment I am going to enjoy totally and fully whatever is available." And witnessing will follow on its own accord.

And finally Krishna Prabhu is asking, "Would you say something about this and maybe a prayer for me?" Prayer to whom? There is nobody to listen. The universe does not understand human language, but it understands love, it understands laughter, it understands peace, it understands silence - not the words, but the experiences.

So I cannot pray, Krishna Prabhu, for you because there is no God who is going to answer your prayer. But I can make a device in which a prayerfulness happens, not only to me but to you too.

Paddy is a drunkard and yet Maureen has never tasted alcohol in her whole life.

"Hey, you drunk," she says one day, "give me that bottle. I want to taste whatever it is that has made you the bum you are."

Taking the bottle of cheap whiskey, she takes a good gulp from it. "Yuk," she gasps, "that's the most vile-tasting liquid that has ever passed my lips. It tastes terrible."

"You see," says Paddy, "and all these years you thought I was having a good time."

Different things make different people feel insecure. For instance, to make a German feel insecure, tell him a joke.

To make an Italian feel insecure, agree with him.

To make an Australian feel insecure, talk to his girlfriend in German.

To make a Polack feel insecure, invite him home to play with the dog.

And to make a sannyasin feel insecure, tell him he is enlightened.

Outside the classroom it is snowing hard. "Boys and girls," says Mrs. Goodbody, "you must be very careful not to catch colds in this weather. I had a dear little brother, only seven years old. One day, he went out in the snow with his new skis. He caught a cold, pneumonia set in, and three days later he was dead."

A hush falls over the classroom and then little Ernie jumps up to his feet and asks, "Can I have his skis?"

Moishe Finkelstein goes into a jewelry store to buy his wife Ruthie a present. "How much is that?"

he asks the clerk, fingering a silver crucifix.

"That is five hundred dollars, sir," replies the clerk.

"Nice," says Moishe. "And how much without the acrobat?"

Kowalski, the Polack farmer, is struggling to hold a pig above his head while the pig eats apples from a tree. A man passing by watches this for a moment and says, "Why don't you pick some apples and put them in a trough? It will save you time."

"Don't be a dummy," snorts Kowalski. "Pigs don't care about time."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.