Living in your own Light

The first question:

Question 1:

Prem Sukavi,

GOD is not a person. That is one of the greatest misunderstandings, and it has prevailed so long that it has become almost a fact. Even if a lie is repeated continuously for centuries it is bound to appear as if it is a truth.

God is a presence, not a person. Hence all worshipping is sheer stupidity. Prayerfulness is needed, not prayer. There is nobody to pray to; there is no possibility of any dialogue between you and God. Dialogue is possible only between two persons, and God is not a person but a presence - like beauty, like joy.

God simply means godliness. It is because of this fact that Buddha denied the existence of God.

He wanted to emphasize that God is a quality, an experience - like love. You cannot talk to love, you can live it. You need not create temples of love, you need not make statues of love, and bowing down to those statues will be just nonsense. And that's what has been happening in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques.

Man has lived under this impression of God as a person, and then two calamities have happened through it. One is the so-called religious man, who thinks God is somewhere above m the sky and you have to praise him. to persuade him to confer favors on you, to help you to fulfill your desires, to make your ambitions succeed, to give you the wealth of this world AND of the other world. And this is sheer wastage of time and energy.

And on the opposite pole the people who saw the stupidity of it all became atheists; they started denying the existence of God. They were right in a sense, but they were also wrong. They started denying not only the personality of God, they started to deny even the experience of God.

The theist is wrong, the atheist is wrong, and man needs a new vision so that he can be freed from both the prisons.

God is the ultimate experience of silence, of beauty, of bliss, a state of inner celebration. Once you start looking at God as godliness there will be a radical change in your approach. Then prayer is no more valid; meditation becomes valid.

Martin Buber says prayer is a dialogue; then between you and God there is an "I-thou" relationship - the duality persists. Buddha is far closer to the truth: you simply drop all chattering of the mind, you slip out of the mind like a snake slipping out of the old skin. You become profoundly silent. There is no question of any dialogue, no question of any monologue either. Words have disappeared from your consciousness. There is no desire for which favors have to be asked, no ambition to be fulfilled.

One is now and here. In that tranquility, in that calmness, you become aware of a luminous quality to existence. Then the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the people are all surrounded with a subtle aura. They are all radiating life, and it is one life in different forms. The flowering of one existence in millions of forms, in millions of flowers.

THIS experience is God. And it is everybody's birthright, because whether you know it or not you are already part of it. The only possibility is you may not recognize it or you may recognize it.

The difference between the enlightened person and the unenlightened person is not of quality - they both are absolutely alike. There is only one small difference: that the enlightened person is aware; he recognizes the ultimate pervading the whole, permeating the whole, vibrating, pulsating.

He recognizes the heartbeat of the universe. He recognizes that the universe is not dead, it is alive.

This aliveness is God!

The unenlightened person is asleep, asleep and full of dreams. Those dreams function as a barrier; they don't allow him to see the truth of his own reality. And, of course, when you are not even aware of your own reality, how can you be aware of the reality of others? The first experience has to happen within you. Once you have seen the light within you will be able to see it everywhere.

God has to be freed from all concepts of personality. Personality is a prison. God has to be freed from any particular form; only then he can have all the forms. He has to be freed from any particular name so that all the names become his.

Then a person LIVES in prayer - he does not pray, he does not go to the temple, to the church.

Wherever he sits he is prayerful, whatsoever he is doing is prayerful, and in that prayerfulness he creates his temple. He is always moving with his temple surrounding him. Wherever he sits the place becomes sacred, whatsoever he touches becomes gold. If he is silent then his silence is golden; if he speaks then his song is golden. If he is alone his aloneness is divine; if he relates then his relating is divine.

The basic, the most fundamental thing is to be aware of your own innermost core, because that is the secret of the whole existence. That's where the Upanishads are tremendously important.

They don't talk about a God, they talk about godliness. They don t bother about prayer. their whole emphasis is on meditation.

Meditation has two parts: the beginning and the end. The beginning is called dhyana and the end is called samadhi. Dhyana is the seed, samadhi is the flowering. Dhyana means becoming aware of all workings of your mind, all the layers of your mind - your memories, your desires, your thoughts, dreams - becoming aware of all that goes on inside you.

Dhyana is awareness, and samadhi is when the awareness has become so deep, so profound, so total that it is like a fire and it consumes the whole mind and all its functionings. It consumes thoughts, desires, ambitions, hopes, dreams. It consumes the whole stuff the mind is full of.

Samadhi is the state when awareness is there, but there is nothing to be aware inside you; the witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed.

Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is.

It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it - that is the only way to know it.

The second question:

Question 2:

Anand Santamo,

THE UPANISHADS are not commentaries on the Vedas, neither are they extensions of the Vedas.

Of course, Hindus go on insisting that they are commentaries or extensions of the Vedas, but that is a falsehood perpetuated by the priesthood for their own reasons.

In fact, Upanishads are rebellions against the Vedas. Another name for the Upanishads is vedanta.

The priests have been saying that vedanta means the culmination of the Vedas; the word can be interpreted that way, but in fact it means the END of the Vedas and the beginning of something absolutely new. Vedas are very ordinary compared to the Upanishads.

The Upanishads say that there are two kinds of knowledges: the lower and the higher. The lower knowledge is the realm of the priesthood, the scholars, the pundits, and the higher knowledge is the world of the Buddhas, of the awakened ones. The priest is a businessman; his whole effort is to exploit people in the name of religion. He oppresses people, dominates people, and of course he goes on saying, "It is for your own sake." He makes people afraid of hell and greedy for heavenly joys. This is a psychological trick. He knows people are afraid, he knows people are greedy, so these are the two things that he goes on manipulating: fear and greed. And this is done by all the priests of all the religions in all the traditions all over the world.

Upanishads are rebellions against the priesthood. Upanishads are not at all commentaries on the Vedas - Vedas are very mundane, ordinary. Yes, once in a while you can find a sutra in the Vedas which is beautiful, but that is only one percent at the most. Ninety-nine percent is just rubbish, while the Upanishads are hundred percent pure gold - they are statements of those who have known.

The Vedas are full of prayers asking for worldly things: better crops, better cows, more money, better health, fame, power, prestige. Not only that, the Vedas are continuously praying "Destroy the enemies", "Destroy those who oppose us." They are full of jealousy, anger, violence. They have nothing to do with the Upanishads.

Upanishads are not commentaries and they are not the culmination of the Vedas either. Upanishads are a totally new beginning. The very word UPANISHAD is of immense importance. The word UPANISHAD is derived from the Sanskrit root SHAD. SHAD has many meanings and all are significant. The first meaning is "to sit".

The Zen people say:

Sitting silently, doing nothing, The spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

That is the meaning of SHAD: just sitting silently in deep meditation; not only sitting physically but sitting deep down psychologically too. You can sit physically in a yoga posture, but the mind goes on running, chasing; then it is not true sitting. Yes, physically you look still, but psychologically you are running in all the directions.

SHAD means sitting physically and psychologically both. because body and mind are not two things, not two separate entities. Body and mind is one reality. We should not use the phrase "body and mind"; we should make one word, "bodymind". The body is the outer shell of the mind and the mind is the inner part of the body. Unless both are in a sitting posture, not running anywhere - into the past, into the future - not running anywhere, just being in the present, now and here... that is the meaning of shad; it is the very meaning of meditation.

It also means "to settle". You are always in a chaos, in a state of turmoil, unsettled, always hesitating, confused, not knowing what to do, what not to do. There is no clarity inside - so many clouds, so much smoke surrounds you. When all these clouds have disappeared, when all this chaos has disappeared, when there is no confusion at all, it is called settling.

When one is settled absolutely, clarity arises, a new perspective. One starts seeing what is the case.

Eyes are no more covered by any smoke; for the first time you have eyes to see that which is.

The third meaning of shad is "to approach". You are confused, you are living in darkness, you don't know who you are, you don't know the meaning of your life, of your existence. You have to approach somebody who has arrived home, who has found the way. You have to approach a Buddha, an enlightened Master - a Lao Tzu, a Zarathustra, a Jesus, a Mohammed. You have to approach somebody who is afire with God, aflame, who is radiating godliness, in whose presence you feel bathed, refreshed, in whose presence something starts falling from your heart - the whole burden, anguish, anxiety - and something starts welling up within you: a new joy, a new insight. Hence the meaning "to approach".

UPA-NI-SHAD is made of three words. SHAD is to sit, to settle, to approach - to approach a Master, to sit by his side in a settled, silent state. And from the prefix UPA which means near, close, in tune with, in harmony, in communion... When you are settled, sitting silently by the side of the Master, doing nothing, running nowhere, then a harmony arises between you and the Master, a closeness, an intimacy, a nearness, a possibility of communion, the meeting of the heart with the heart, the meeting of the being with the being, a merging, a communion. And NI meaning down, surrendered, in a state of prayer, in a state of egolessness.

This is the whole meaning of the word UPANISHAD: sitting in a settled state, unconfused, clear, approaching the Master in egolessness, surrendered, in deep prayerfulness, openness, vulnerability, so that a communion becomes possible.

This is UPANISHAD - what is happening right now between you and me. This sitting silently, in a deep, loving, prayerful mood, listening to me not through the intellect but through the heart, drinking, not only listening - this communion is UPANISHAD! We are living UPANISHAD, and that is the only way to understand what Upanishads are. It has to become an alive experience for you.

The Vedas consist of all kinds of knowledge of those days. They are a kind of Encyclopedia Britannica, of course very primitive, at least ten thousand years old - at least - it is possible they are far more older. Scholars are not decided; there is great controversy about the time when Vedas were composed. The possibility is they were not composed at one period, they were composed at different periods. There are people who say they are at least ninety thousand years old; so from ninety thousand years to ten thousand years, a long stretch of time.

The Vedas are called SAMHITAS; SAMHITA means a compilation, encyclopedia. They contain all kinds of things, all kinds of information of those days. Upanishads are pure religiousness, nothing else. Each single word is a finger pointing to the moon. They are not compilations of all kinds of knowledge; their whole insistence is for immediate experience of that which is. The emphasis is on direct experience, not borrowed - not from scriptures, not from others. It has to be your own truth; only then it liberates.

Jesus says: Truth liberates. Certainly truth liberates, but it has to be your own. If it is somebody else's, then rather than liberating it imprisons. Christians are imprisoned. Jesus is liberated. Hindus are imprisoned, Krishna is liberated. Buddhists are imprisoned Buddha is liberated. Liberation comes by experiencing the truth on your own; it has not to be just an accumulation of information, it has to be an inner transformation.

The emphasis of the Upanishads is for immediate and direct experience of godliness. And why borrow when it is possible to drink directly from the source? But information seems to be cheap.

transformation seems to be arduous. Transformation means you will have to go through a great inner revolution; information requires no revolution in you, no radical change in you. Information simply is an addition: whatsoever you are you remain the same, but you become more and more knowledgeable.

Knowledgeability is not wisdom; knowledgeability is, on the contrary, a hindrance to wisdom. The more knowledgeable you become, the less is the possibility of attaining your own experience, because knowledge deceives - it deceives others, it deceives you. It goes on giving you the sense as if you know, but that "as if" has not to be forgotten. That "as if" can easily be forgotten and one can be deceived.

Remember one very significant saying in the Upanishads: Those who are ignorant, they are bound to be lost in darkness; and those who are knowledgeable, they are bound to be lost in a far more and far bigger darkness than the ignorant ones.

The ignorant person is at least sincere: he knows that he does not know; at least this much truth is there. But the knowledgeable covers up his wounds, his ignorance, his black holes. He covers them by scriptures and he starts pretending that he knows. He is harming others, but that is secondary, far more significant is that he is harming himself He will be lost in a far deeper darkness.

That's why it is very difficult for pundits, scholars, the so-called learned people, to become enlightened; it is a miracle if it happens at all. Sinners are more easily ready to go through the transformation because they have nothing to lose - except their chains. except their ignorance. But the knowledgeable person is afraid to lose his knowledge; that is his treasure. He clings to it, he protects it in every possible way. He finds rationalizations, excuses why the knowledge has to be protected. But, in fact, by protecting his knowledge he is simply protecting his ignorance. Hidden behind knowledge is his ignorance. The knowledge is just a mask which covers his original face.

You cannot see his original face, he himself cannot see it. He is wearing a mask, and looking in the mirror he thinks, "This is my original face."

It is very difficult for the knowledgeable to drop his knowledge and to become ignorant again. Unless he gathers that much courage of becoming ignorant again, of becoming like a child again - innocent, not knowing anything, what Dionysius calls AGNOSIA, moving into a state of not knowing...

It is certainly very arduous for the knowledgeable person - his whole LIFE he has been accumulating knowledge. He has wasted his whole life, he has invested his whole life in knowledge. How can he drop it? So he protects it, he fights for it.

And this is the most amazing thing in the world: the prisoner is fighting so that you cannot take him out of the prison! And of course he is very clever and very cunning, so he can play with words and he can quote scriptures, but all his quotations are parrotlike; he has no understanding.

The Upanishads emphasize direct experiencing. The Vedas belong to the priests, to the scholars, to the brahmins, who are the oldest priests in the world. And of course, because they are the oldest they are the most cunning in the whole world. No other religion can defeat the Hindu priest, obviously: he has lived for so long, he has become very clever in exploiting, he has become very cunning in rationalizing, in protecting.

Upanishads are a totally different dimension. Of course they don't speak the language of rebellion - they are very soft - but the rebellion is there. Because Upanishads could not create the revolution Buddha had to speak in a harsher tone.

Buddha speaks the same truth as the Upanishads, but his way has changed. Seeing that Upanishads have failed to have any impact - because the priests started managing : Upanishads also and they started saying that Upanishads are nothing but commentaries on the Vedas - Buddha had to be more alert. He was not so soft as the Upanishads. Of course his message is the same, but two, three thousand years have passed since the Upanishads were composed and one thing Buddha had become absolutely clear: that you have to be very harsh, very hard. He has sharpened his sword.

Twenty-five centuries have again passed, the same period. Upanishads and Buddha are divided by twenty-five centuries; between me and Buddha again twenty-five centuries have passed. I have to sharpen my sword even more, because Buddha has also failed.

The ignorance of man is so deep and the priests are so cunning that one has to be really hard. If one has compassion one has to be cruel, only then this whole stupidity that exists in the name of religion can be destroyed and man can be freed. Man needs freedom from all cages, from all fetters.

The third question:

Question 3:

Yoga Punya,

MAN can live in two ways: either he can live according to the dictates of others - the puritans, the moralists - or he can live according to his own light. It is easy to follow others, it is convenient and comfortable, because when you follow others they feel very good and happy with you.

Your parents will be happy if you follow their ideas, although their ideas are absolutely worthless because their ideas have not made their lives illumined, and it is so apparent. They have lived in misery, still they want to impose their ideas on the children. They cannot see a simple fact: that their life has been a failure. that their life has not been creative, that their life has never tasted of bliss, that they have not been able to discover truth. They have not known the splendor of existence, they have no idea what it is all about. Still their egos insist that the children should be obedient, they should follow their dictates.

The Hindu parents will force the child to become a Hindu, and they will not even think for a single moment what has happened to them. They have followed those same ideas their whole life and their life is empty; nothing has flowered. But they enjoy the idea that their children are obedient and they are following them. They have lived in misery, in hell, and their children will live in misery and hell, but they think they love their children. With all good intentions they destroy the future of their children.

The politicians try in every possible way that the society should live according to their ideas, and of course they pretend to others and to themselves that they are doing public service. All that they are doing is destroying freedom of people. They are trying to enforce certain superstitions which were enforced on them by their parents, by their leaders, by their priests.

The politicians, the priests, the pedagogues, they are all trying to create a false humanity; they are creating insincere human beings. They may not have intended to do so, but that's what has happened. And a tree is to be judged by fruits; it does not matter what was the intention of the gardener. If he was sowing seeds of weeds and hoping, intending, desiring that roses will come out just because of his good intentions, roses are not going to come out of the weeds. He has destroyed the whole field. To impose a certain structure of character on anybody is to make him insincere, is to make him a hypocrite.

Sincerity, Yoga Punya, means to live according to y our own light. Hence the first requirement of being sincere is to be meditative. The first thing is not to be moral, is not to be good, is not to be virtuous: the most important thing is to be meditative - so that you can find a little light within yourself and then start living according to that light And as you live it grows and it gives you a deep integrity.

Because it comes from your own innermost being there is no division.

When somebody says to you, "Do it, it SHOULD be done," naturally it creates a division in you. You don't want to do it, you wanted to do something else, but somebody - the parents, the politicians, the priests, those who are in power - they want you to follow a certain route. You never wanted to follow it so you will follow it unwillingly. Your heart will not be in it, you will not be committed to it, you will not have any involvement with it. You will go through it like a slave. It is not your choice, it is not out of your freedom.

The first disciples of Jesus had chosen him; it was THEIR choice and they had chosen a very risky path - to be with Jesus was dangerous. It has always been so: to be with anybody who gives you freedom is dangerous because he will make you so independent that you will continuously be in a fight with the society, with the establishment, with the vested interests. You will be in a constant struggle your whole life. Of course, that struggle is worth and it is not a curse, it is a blessing, because only through that struggle you grow, you expand. Your consciousness becomes more and more clear; it becomes a peak. You have to pay for it; it is not cheap. Hence the risk.

The few people who followed Jesus were taking a dangerous path: they could have been crucified, and they were tortured in many ways. But today to be a Christian has no risk, hence it is bogus.

The people who followed Buddha were living dangerously, and to live dangerously is the only way to live. But they were sincere people: they followed their own inner voice against the whole society, against the whole tradition, convention. They followed a rebel and became rebels in their own right.

Buddhists were burned alive just as early Christians were burned alive, thrown to the lions and to the wild animals, tortured in every possible way. But still they attained to the ultimate experience of godliness - they paid for it. But to be a Buddhist now is very convenient there is no problem about it, anybody can be a Buddhist. And the same is true about all religions.

Right now to be with me is dangerous. You will be continuously in trouble; wherever you will go you will be opposed. You will be opposed by the Christians, by the Hindus, by the Mohammedans, by the Jains, by the Buddhists. You will be tortured, you will be condemned, you will not be accepted anywhere. But you will become sincere, you will have some authenticity. And you will suffer all these tortures joyfully because you have chosen them.

Even to choose hell is beautiful, rather than to be forced to live in heaven. If you are forced to live in heaven it is hell, and if you choose hell it is heaven - because it is your own choice. It brings your life to its highest peak.

Sincerity means not living a double life - and almost everybody is living a double life. He says one thing, he thinks something else. He never says that which he thinks, he says that which is convenient and comfortable, he says that which will be approved, accepted. he says that which is expected by others. Now what he says and what he thinks become two different worlds. He says one thing, he goes on doing something else, and then naturally he has to hide it. He cannot expose himself because then the contradiction will be found, then he will be in trouble. He talks about beautiful things and lives an ugly life.

This is what, up to now, humanity has done to itself. It has been a very nightmarish past.

The new man is an absolute necessity now because the old is utterly rotten. The old is continuously in conflict within himself; he is fighting with himself. Whatsoever he does he feels miserable. If he follows his own inner voice he feels he is going against the society, against the powerful people, against the establishment. And that establishment has created a conscience in you; that conscience is a very tricky procedure, a strategy. It is the policeman inside you, implanted by the society, who goes on condemning you that: "This is wrong, this is not right. You should not do it, you should feel guilty for it - you are being immoral."

If you follow your voice your conscience is at daggers with you; it will not give you any rest, it will torture you, it will make you miserable. And you will become afraid - afraid that somebody may find it out. And it is very difficult to hide because life means relationship - somebody is bound to know, somebody is bound to discover. You are not alone.

That's why the cowards escaped to the monasteries, to the Himalayan caves, just for a single reason:

that there they will not be found out at all. But what kind of life you can live in a cave? You have already committed suicide. To be in a cave is to be in a grave - and alive! If you are dead and in a grave, that seems right - where else you can be? But alive AND in a grave - it is real hell!

In the monasteries people are living a miserable life; that's why they have such long faces - not that they are religious. Those long faces are a simple outcome of a cowardly life. If you are in the world living with people you cannot hide for long; you can deceive a few people for a time being, but not forever. And how can you deceive yourself? Even if you are not found out by others you know that you are living a double life - and the guilt...

And everybody is guilty, and the priests want you to be guilty because the more guilty you are, the more you are in the hands of the priests. You have to go to them to get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Ganges to take a bath, you have to go to Mecca, to Kaaba, so that you can get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Catholic priest to confess so that you can get rid of the guilt. You have to do fasting and other kinds of penances and other kinds of austerities so that you can punish yourself These are all punishments! But how can you be happy? How you can be cheerful and blissful? How can you rejoice in a life where you are constantly feeling guilty and punishing yourself, condemning yourself?

And if you choose NOT to follow your inner voice and follow the dictates of others - they call morality, etiquette, civilization, culture - then too that inner voice will start nagging you, it will continuously nag you. It will say you are being untrue to your nature. And if you feel that you are being untrue to your nature then your morality cannot be a rejoicing; it will be only an empty gesture.

This is what has happened to man: man has become schizophrenic.

MY effort here is to help you to become one. That's why I don't teach any morality, any character. All that I teach is meditation so that you can hear your inner voice more clearly and follow it, whatsoever the cost. Because if you follow your inner voice without feeling guilty, immense is going to be your reward, and looking backwards you will find that the cost was nothing. It looked very big in the beginning, but when you have arrived at the point where sincerity becomes natural, spontaneous, when there is no more any division, no more any split in you, then you will see a celebration is happening and the cost that you have paid is nothing compared to it.

You ask me, Yoga Punya: WOULD YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT SINCERITY?

Sincerity is the fragrance of meditation.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Prem Pushpa,

THE CHRISTIAN, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, they cannot understand me - they are determined not to understand me. It is against their vested interests. They are afraid of me and they will try in every possible way to confuse people.

Because it is a Christian broadcasting company they must have come with prejudiced ideas, they must have come with a closed mind. They had come already with conclusions, hence whatsoever they say only shows something about them, nothing about me. And remember, their title is right:

NOT TO BE BELIEVED!

They have received many letters - I have received many letters too - and there have been many comments in the newspapers in Holland. And almost all the newspapers have asked one question:

that their whole program about me does not give any indication about the title, BHAGWAN, SEX GURU FROM POONA. Their whole program has nothing to do with the title. People are meditating.

people are sitting silently listening to me, people are working... It has no relationship at all with the program. What they have filmed and what they have tried to project is totally irrelevant! But they were not even aware, it seems, that the title has no relevance with the program - it has nothing to do with sex!

And what this director has replied? - because the newspapers asked the director, "Why you have given such a title, which has no reference with the program at all? It shows a prejudiced mind!" So he has answered that, "That was our very purpose, that's our very purpose of a Christian broadcasting company: to expose everything that is not Christian." They are not concerned with truth - as if truth is Christian! Truth is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan.

And he should be reminded that Jesus was not a Christian himself! Christianity never existed in those days. Jesus was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a jew! I may be a little bit of Christian - in fact, more Christian than Jesus! - hut Jesus cannot be Christian at all. First they should condemn Jesus - why he was not Christian; that will serve their purpose more accurately.

And they should make a film on Jesus. Jesus was moving with a prostitute, Mary Magdalene - must have been a sex guru! He was always in the company which this director would not approve of - gamblers, drunkards, prostitutes. He himself was a drunkard! He should make a film on Jesus.

And there are rumors that he was a homosexual! I don't know how far they are true, but there is a possibility... because he was constantly moving with those twelve boys! And religious people are known, very well-known, to be homosexuals. Homosexuality is a religious phenomenon! When you keep men separate from women and women separate from men, homosexuality is a natural byproduct.

He has also said in one interview to a newspaper, that "Bhagwan's sannyasins say that, 'We feel immense energy, that we feel the presence of Bhagwan transforming us.' " And he says, "I lived there for a few days - I didn't feel anything!"

When Jesus was crucified there were at least one hundred thousand people present. Did they feel anything? If they had felt anything Jesus would have been saved. Those one hundred thousand people could have easily saved him, because there were only a few policemen; they could have been destroyed, killed by the masses. But nobody could feel any energy, nobody could see any godliness in Jesus. In fact, people were mocking and laughing at him.

They were waiting for him to show some miracle and they were shouting that, "You have been showing miracles, we have heard. We have heard that you used to walk on water, we have heard that you have given eyes to the blind people, we have heard that you have cured incurable diseases, we have even heard that you raised Lazarus from death, you revived him again - now show us the miracle!"

And these people came back home very frustrated because no miracle happened. Jesus died like any ordinary man. And remember, these were simple people - not journalists!

This director of NCRV, if he was present there, would have become very frustrated because he would have gone there with the whole crew to film some miracle, and it was not happening!

Do you think Hindus felt the energy of Buddha? Do you think Jains felt the energy of Buddha or Buddhists felt the energy of Mahavira? Mahavira and Buddha were both contemporaries, lived in the same part of the country, Bihar, moved in the same villages and towns continuously for forty years, many times stayed in the same village and once at least stayed in one house - half was occupied by Buddha and half by Mahavira - and still their disciples were not able to feel the energy of the other. What was happening?

Could not the Jews feel the energy of Jesus?

It is a simple phenomenon to be understood: to feel the energy you have to be in a certain state. It is like - he will understand this better - it is like carrying a radio set with you, but if you don't put it on no music will flow through it. Even if you put it on, and you don't fix the needle at a certain point it will not receive. One needs openness, and the needle has to be at a certain point; a deep harmony is needed. Whether it is with Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira, it does not matter: whomsoever you are attuned with you will feel the energy.

But he is like a man who stands before the sunrise with closed eyes and he says, "There is no sun, because I cannot see. And the people who are saying it is are all false - not to be believed! - because I cannot see, and I have been standing here for hours."

You have to open the eyes to see the sun. And the sun is a gross phenomenon: the energy of a Master is a very subtle phenomenon - unless you are in deep love you will not feel it.

And he says: BHAGWAN NEVER LOOKS AT YOU.

In a way he is true! I never look at you because you are two: the false and the real. I am not concerned with the false. I don't look at your mask. I DON'T look at the accidental in you I look to the essential, I look to the very core of your being. I am not concerned with your masks and the personality; my whole concern is with the center of your being.

And why should I look at you? He must have felt it, because I perfectly remember I never looked at him! - because there was nothing to look at, just an empty man, a container without any content.

Why should I waste my time looking at such people? It is only out of compassion that they are allowed, and this too is not going to happen very long any more. In the new commune I am going to prevent all these people coming in.

I certainly look, but my ways of looking are my ways I look behind the mask, because that is where my work is.

He says:... HE LOOKS OVER US.

That is true, because I look at the transcendental self in you and that is something over you, above you, surpassing you. You are far more than your body, far more than your mind, and I look to that "far more". And that is the real thing and that has to be brought into your focus. I am not a psychoanalyst - I am not concerned with the superficial but with that which SURPASSES YOU. I AM concerned with your beyond.

And he says: WHAT KIND OF MASTERSHIP IS THIS IN WHICH SOMEONE PULLS PEOPLE TOWARDS HIM WITHOUT PAYING ANY ATTENTION TO THEM?

Ego needs attention, ego feeds on attention, ego wants that attention should be paid to it; it is constantly hankering for attention. While he was here he must have been hankering for attention.

It has been one of the problems here: whenever people come here - journalists of all kinds - their whole effort is that the commune should pay great attention to them. They want a private interview with me, they want to ask me questions directly. I am not a politician! Of course, if they go to the president or the prime minister of any country they will give them great attention. I am not interested at all in what they write, in what they show on the television. I am not concerned at all with whether they write negatively or positively, whether they make a film supporting me or condemning me. It is all the same to me.

I exist here for my sannyasins, my whole energy is for them; it is not to be wasted on stupid people.

So he must have felt that no attention is being paid to him - and I deliberately never pay any attention to such people. They come with closed minds, they come with great egos - and we are not here to nourish their egos. In the new commune they will be debarred; that will be the only attention we will pay to them!

And he says: JESUS HUMILIATED HIMSELF TO BE EQUAL WITH US.

What I am going to say has nothing to do with Jesus; it has something to do with what this man, the director of NCRV, is saying. So remember it.

He says: JESUS HUMILIATED HIMSELF TO BE EQUAL WITH US...

That simply means he knew that he is not equal with you! "He humiliated himself to be equal with us." He was NOT - I am, so why should I humiliate myself? For what? I am simply equal, there is no need to humiliate!

HE HUMILIATED TO BE EQUAL WITH US AS A SERVANT!...

I am neither a master nor a servant. I don't possess you, I don't own you. If Jesus tried to be a SERVANT TO you, that MEANS somewhere deep down he must HAVE been self-conscious THAT he possesses you, THAT HE owns you - otherwise why? Neither are you a servant to me, why I should be a servant to you? We are all friends here! There is no need to be a servant or to BE humiliating oneself.

And do you think this is true? Jesus called himself the only-begotten son of God - the ONLY. How he can be equal to you? You are born out of sin, he was born out of a virgin mother. I am not born out of a virgin mother! My mother is here, you can ask her. And I am not the only-begotten son of God, because there is no God at all, so there is no question of my being the only-begotten son of God. This is all sheer bullshit!

The Christian God must be homosexual because the whole trinity consists of three men - no women at all! On the earth Jesus is born out of a virgin mother. That is nonsense, absurdity - illogical, unscientific! Secondly, he is the only-begotten son of God; God must have carried him in his womb.

Because he is not a woman, and there is no woman in Christian trinity - unless the Holy Ghost functions in double ways!

This is not right about Jesus. He dragged the money-changers out of the temple violently; that is not the way of a humble man. With a whip in his hand he chased them out of the temple. I have not done anything like that! I never enter a temple - I never think any temple is worth entering in. And this whip - is this a way of a humble man? And driving the money-changers out of the temple!

He cursed a fig tree because they were hungry... Jesus and his disciples were hungry and the fig tree was without figs. He became very angry; he cursed the fig tree. The fig tree died immediately!

This is how a humble man behaves? Then why he was crucified if he was so humble?

And doing all those so-called miracles - walking on the water, raising the dead - is this the way of a humble man? Those are all strategies to prove superiority, all those miracles.

This man, the director of NCRV, is talking sheer nonsense. He knows nothing about Jesus, he knows nothing about me.

And he says:... BUT NOT BHAGWAN. BHAGWAN RAISES HIMSELF ABOVE HUMANITY - HAUGHTY! A STRANGE RULER.

I have never ruled anybody. I never come out of my room to rule anybody! What kind of ruling he has seen here? I never order anybody, I don't give any commandments to anybody. And I have never said that I am above humanity. What I am saying is that EVERYBODY is above humanity! Humanity is only a bridge, not a place to live but something to be surpassed.

And "Bhagwan", the word "Bhagwan", creates misunderstanding in Christian minds, because they immediately translate it as "God" Bhagwan simply means "the Blessed One", and I am certainly a Blessed One - I cannot deny it! Just to be humble have I to falsify, start lying about myself? I AM blissful, I AM the Blessed One - and you can be blissful and you can also be the Blessed One. What has happened to me can happen to you, because this is your birthright too.

But he had come with a particular idea. In a way it is good that people are becoming so much afraid of me. It is good: it shows that the impact is making them tremble. Holland is becoming one of my most important orange countries. Christians are becoming afraid - it is good. Make them as much afraid as possible! Make everybody afraid of you! Let them all tremble - before they collapse! It is good...