Absolute Love, Absolute Freedom

The first question:

Question 1:

Anand Daniel,

THE SPRING still comes. It does not depend whether you are sitting silently or fretfully, whether you are sitting or not sitting at all. It does not depend on you; it comes on its own accord. And the grass goes on growing, but if you are not sitting silently you will miss it. It will come, but you will not be able to feel it. It will come, but you will not be able to experience it. The grass will grow, but you will not grow.

The sun rises, the night disappears, but the light is only for those who have eyes and only for those who open their eyes: otherwise you will remain in darkness. The sun will be there, the light will be there, but you will not be bathed in its light; you will remain the same.

The whole question is whether you are closed or open. Silence opens you; the inner noise keeps you closed to existence, within and without both. The outside is a beautiful world: the whole sky with the stars, the flowers, the birds singing, the clouds floating, the rivers, the mountains. And the inside world is even far more beautiful, because the outside is the manifest part of the inside and the inside is vaster than the outside. The unmanifest is unlimited, the manifest is bound to be limited. The unmanifest contains all the future possibilities; the manifest contains only that which has become actual in the past. The unmanifest contains all the universes that will ever happen in the coming eternity. Of course, it is far bigger than the outer.

Between the two is the mind. Between the within and the without there is a wall - a China Wall - of thoughts, desires, memories, expectations, frustrations. And because of the thick wall and the constant noise that is bound to be there... each memory hankering to be listened to, each desire nagging you to be fulfilled, each imagination forcing you to be realized, each expectation torturing you, goading you so that you can succeed in fulfilling it. The noise is great; there is great conflict.

The desires are antagonistic to each other.

If you want to be powerful, of course you will have to choose a few desires and you will have to leave a few desires. There are desires to be famous, desires to be wealthy, desires to be powerful, and desires to be healthy, and desires to be loved, and desires to be creative; they all cannot be fulfilled simultaneously. And whenever you choose. the unchosen desires will nag you; they will try to drag you towards themselves.

This chaos cannot allow you to see either the beauty that surrounds you or the beauty that resides in you. it cannot allow you to see the rainbows on the circumference and it cannot allow you to see the source of all joy, of all truth, of all beauty within you - the kingdom of God within you.

You ask me, Daniel: SITTING FRETFULLY, SQUIRMING ENDLESSLY, DOES THE SPRING STILL COME...?

Certainly... the spring comes, but not for you. You are not available, you are not there. You are so much occupied, so much engaged, you can't see out, you can't see in. Your eyes are covered with layers of desires and thoughts.

The grass certainly goes on growing, because the grass is sitting silently doing nothing - but you are not sitting silently, doing nothing. If you can sit silently doing nothing like the grass. you will also grow.

That's the way how the ignorant becomes enlightened: becoming silent... just now... just a moment of silence, a pause... and you can hear the songs of the birds and you can suddenly feel the silence. Then there are no more five thousand sannyasins here: the Buddha Hall is empty, and that emptiness is a great experience. It is ecstatic!

The spring is felt suddenly - it can be felt right now! Then nothing distracts you. This noise of the plane is not a distraction; it will even deepen your silence, it will become a contrast to the silence, it will help define the silence.

The outer noise is not a distraction; but the mind inside remaining continuously in an insane state is the only distraction.

And there are foolish people who renounce the world in search of silence. The world does not disturb you; what disturbs is your mind - and they don't renounce the mind. When a Hindu becomes a monk he still remains a Hindu. Do you see the absurdity? He has renounced the Hindu society, but he still carries the idea of being a Hindu! If you have renounced the Hindu society... then this idea of being a Hindu was given by the same society, how can you carry it?

Somebody becomes a Christian monk, but he still remains a Christian - a Catholic, a Protestant...

The mind is so stupid; if you look at its stupidities you will be surprised, amazed! How can you be a Catholic if you have renounced the world? But people renounce the world, they don't renounce the mind - and the mind is a byproduct of the world! The child is raised by the Hindus, then he becomes a Hindu, because the parents are cultivating Hindu ideology - or Christian, or Mohammedan, or Jain.

Just the other day I was talking about how Jainism destroyed the beautiful concept of the Upanishadic ashrams. When I passed around the Buddha Hall going back, I looked particularly at my Jain sannyasins - they were not looking happy! Even my sannyasins! But whenever I criticize Hinduism and I have seen the same sannyasins - so joyous. Of course Hindus feel offended. Even my sannyasins somehow deep down go on carrying their mind.

I don't teach you to renounce the world, I teach you to renounce the mind. And that's what is meant by this immensely beautiful Zen saying:

SITTING SILENTLY, DOING NOTHING, THE SPRING COMES AND THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF.

All that is needed on your part is just to be absolutely silent And that's exactly the meaning of the word upanishad: sitting silently, doing nothing, by the side of a Master - that means by the side of spring - allowing the spring to possess you, to take you along with it like a tidal wave.

Your inner being is not something that has to be developed; it is already perfect. No spiritual development is needed, only it has to be discovered. And once silence falls over you, you start discovering it. It is the noise and the dust that the mind creates that goes on hindering the discovery.

The second question:

Question 2:

Prem Shunya,

THE TROUBLE with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of their parenthood! Man has not even yet learned that parenthood is not something that you have to cling to it forever. When the child is a grown-up person your parenthood is finished. The child needed it - he was helpless. He needed the mother, the father, their protection; but when the child can stand on his own, the parents have to learn how to withdraw from the life of the child. And because parents never withdraw from the life of the child they remain a constant anxiety to themselves AND to the children. They destroy, they create guilt; they don't help beyond a certain limit.

To be a parent is a great art. To give birth to children is nothing - any animal can do it; it is a natural, biological, instinctive process. To give birth to a child is nothing great, it is nothing special; it is very ordinary. But to be a parent is something extraordinary; very few people are really capable of being parents.

And the criterion is that the real parents will give freedom. They will not impose themselves upon the child, they will not encroach upon his space. From the very beginning their effort will be to help the child to be himself or to be herself. They are to support, they are to strengthen, they are to nourish, but not to impose their ideas, not to give the shoulds and should-nots. They are not to create slaves.

But that's what parents all over the world go on doing: their whole effort is to fulfill their ambitions through the child. Of course nobody has been ever able to fulfill his ambitions, so every parent is in a turmoil. He knows the death is coming close by every day, he can feel the death is growing bigger and bigger and life is shrinking, and his ambitions are still unfulfilled, his desires are still not realized.

He knows that he has been a failure. He is perfectly aware that he will die with empty hands - just the way he had come, with empty hands, he will go.

Now his whole effort is how to implant his ambitions into the child. He will be gone, but the child will live according to him. What he has not been able to do, the child will be able to do. At least through the child he will fulfill certain dreams.

It is not going to happen. All that is going to happen is the child will remain unfulfilled as the parent and the child will go on doing the same to his children. This goes on and on from one generation to another generation. We go on giving our diseases; we go on infecting children with our ideas which have not proved valid in our own lives.

Somebody has lived as a Christian, and his life can show that no bliss has happened through it.

Somebody had lived like a Hindu and you can see that his life is a hell but he wants his children to be Hindus or Christians or Mohammedans. How unconscious man is!

I have heard:

A very sad, mournful man visited a doctor in London. Seating himself in a chair in the waiting room and glumly ignoring the other patients he awaited his turn. Finally the doctor motioned him into the inner office where after a careful examination the man appeared even more serious, sad and miserable than ever.

"There's nothing really the matter with you," explained the doctor, "you are merely depressed. What you need is to forget your work and your worries. Go out and see a Charlie Chaplin movie and have a good laugh!"

A sad look spread over the little man's face. "But I am Charlie Chaplin!" he said.

It is a very strange world! You don't know people's real lives; all that you know is their masks. You see them in the churches, you see them in the clubs, in the hotels, in the dancing halls, and it seems everybody is rejoicing, everybody is living a heavenly life, except you - of course, because you know how miserable you are within. And the same is the case with everybody else! They are all wearing masks, deceiving everybody, but how can you deceive yourself? You know that the mask is not your original face.

But the parents go on pretending before their children, go on deceiving their own children. They are not even authentic with their own children! They will not confess that their life has been a failure; on the contrary, they will pretend that they have been very successful. And they would like the children also to live in the same way as they have lived.

Prem Shunya, you ask: MY PARENTS ARE SO DISAPPOINTED IN ME...

Don't be worried at all - all parents are disappointed in their children! And I say all, without any exception. Even the parents of Gautam the Buddha were very much disappointed in him, the parents of Jesus Christ were very much disappointed in him, obviously. They had lived a certain kind of life - they were orthodox Jews - and this son, this Jesus, was going against many traditional ideas, conventions. Jesus' father, Joseph, must have hoped that now he is growing old the son will help him in his carpentry, in his work, in his shop - and the stupid son started talking about kingdom of God! Do you think he was very much happy in his old age?

Gautam Buddha's father was very old and he had only one son, and that too was born to him when he was very old His whole life he has waited and prayed and worshipped and did all kinds of religious rituals so that he can have a son, because who is going to look after his great kingdom? And then one day the son disappeared from the palace. Do you think he was very happy? He was so angry, violently angry, he would have killed Gautam Buddha if he had found him! His police, his detectives were searching all over the kingdom. "Where he is hiding? Bring him to me!"

And Buddha knew it, that he will be caught by his father's agents, so the first thing he did was he left the boundary of his father's kingdom; escaped into another kingdom, and for twelve years nothing was heard about him.

When he became enlightened he came back home to share his joy, to say to the father that, "I have arrived home," that "I have realized," that "I have known the truth - and this is the way."

But the father was so angry, he was trembling and shaking - he was old, very old. He shouted at Buddha and he said, "You are a disgrace to me!" He saw Buddha - he was standing there in a beggar's robe with a begging bowl - and he said, "How you dare to stand before me like a beggar?

You are the son of an emperor, and in our family there has never been a beggar! My father was an emperor, his father was too, and for centuries we have been emperors! You have disgraced the whole heritage!"

Buddha listened for half an hour, he didn't say a single word. When the father ran out of gas, cooled down a little... tears were coming out of his eyes, tears of anger, frustration. Then Buddha said, "I ask for only one favor. Please wipe your tears and look at me - I am not the same person who had left the home, I am totally transformed. But your eyes are so full of tears you cannot see. And you are still talking to somebody who is no more! He has died."

And this triggered another anger, and the father said, "You are trying to teach me? Do you think I am a fool? Can't I recognize my own son? My blood is running in your veins - and I cannot recognize you?"

Buddha said, "Please don't misunderstand me. The body certainly belongs to you, but not my consciousness. And my consciousness is my reality, not my body. And you are right that your father was an emperor and his father too, but as far as I know about myself I was a beggar in my past life and I was a beggar in a previous life too, because I have been searching for truth. My BODY has come through you, but you have been just like a passage. You have not created me, you have been a medium, and my consciousness has nothing to do with your consciousness. And what I am saying is that now I have come home with a new consciousness, I have gone through a rebirth. Just LOOK at me, look at my joy!"

And the father looked at the son, not believing what he is saying. But one thing was certainly there:

that he was so angry but the son has not reacted at all. That was absolutely new - he knew his son.

If he was just the old person he would have become as angry as the father or even more, because he was young and his blood was hotter than the father's. But he is not angry at all, there is absolute peace on his face, a great silence. He is undisturbed, undistracted by the father's anger. The father has abused him, but it seems not to have affected him at all.

He wiped his tears from the old eyes, looked again, saw the new grace...

Shunya, your parents will be disappointed in you because they must have been trying to fulfill some expectations through you. Now you have become a sannyasin, all their expectations have fallen to the ground. Naturally they are disappointed. but don't become guilty because of it, otherwise they will destroy your joy, your silence. your growth You remain undisturbed, unworried. Don't feel any guilt. Your life is yours and you have to live according to your own light.

And when you have arrived at the source of joy, your inner bliss, go to them to share. They will be angry - wait, because anger is not anything permanent; it comes like a cloud and passes. Wait! Go there, be with them, but only when you are certain that you can still remain cool, only when you know that nothing will create any reaction in you, only when you know that you will be able to respond with love even though they are angry. And that will be the only way to help them.

You say: THEY WORRY ALL THE TIME.

That is their business! And don't think that if you had followed their ideas they would not have worried. They would have still worried; that is their conditioning. Their parents must have worried and their parents' parents must have worried; that is their heritage. And you have disappointed them because you are no more worrying. You are going astray! They are miserable, their parents have been miserable, and so on, so forth... up to Adam and Eve! And you are going astray, hence the great worry.

But if you become worried you miss an opportunity, and then they have dragged you again back into the same mire. They will feel good, they will rejoice that you have come back to the old traditional, conventional way, but that is not going to help you or them.

If you remain to be independent, if you attain to the fragrance of freedom, if you become more meditative - and that's WHY YOU are here: to become more meditative, to be more silent, more loving, more blissful - then one day you can share your bliss. To share first you have to have it; you can share only that which you have already got.

Right now you can also worry, but two persons worrying simply multiply worries; they don't help each other.

You say: THEY WORRY ALL THE TIME.

It must have become their conditioning. It is the conditioning of everybody in the world.

A rabbi was being hosted by a family, and the man of the house, impressed by the honor, warned his children to behave seriously at the dinner table because the great rabbi is coming. But during the course of the meal they laughed at something and he ordered them from the table.

The rabbi then arose and prepared to leave.

"Anything wrong?" asked the concerned father.

"Well," said the rabbi, "I laughed too!"

You don't be worried about their seriousness, about their worrying about you. They are trying unconsciously to make you feel guilty. Don't let them succeed, because if they succeed they will destroy you and they will also destroy an opportunity for them which would have become possible THROUGH you.

You say: THEY HAVE MADE MY BEING HERE POSSIBLE.

Be thankful for that, but there is no need to feel guilty.

SO HOW CAN I TURN FROM THEM?

There is no need to turn from them, but there is no need either to follow them. Go on loving them. When you meditate, after each meditation pray to the existence that "Something of my meditativeness should reach to my parents.

Be prayerful for them, be loving to them, but don't follow them. That won't help you or them.

You say: WHAT DO I OWE TO MY PARENTS?

You owe this: that you have to be yourself. You owe this: that you have to be blissful, that you have to be ecstatic, that you have to become a celebration unto yourself, that you have to learn to laugh and rejoice. This is what you owe to them: you owe to them enlightenment.

Become enlightened like Gautam the Buddha and then go to your parents to share your joy. Right now what can you do? Right now nothing is possible. Right now you can only pray.

So I am not saying turn away from them, I am saying don't follow them, and this is the only way you can be of some help to them. They have helped you physically, you have to help them spiritually.

That will be the only way to repay them.

The third question:

Question 3:

Prem Idama,

ONE REMAINS in the need of the other to that point, up to that experience, when one enters into one's own innermost core. Unless one knows oneself one remains in the need of the other. But the need of the other is very paradoxical; its nature is paradoxical.

When you are alone you feel lonely, you feel the other is missed; your life seems to be only half It loses joy, it loses flow, flowering; it remains undernourished. If you are with the other, then a new problem arises because the other starts encroaching on your space. He starts making conditions upon you, he starts demanding things from you, he starts destroying your freedom - and that hurts.

So when you are with somebody, only for a few days when the honeymoon is still there... and the more intelligent you are, the smaller will be the honeymoon, remember. Only for utterly stupid people it can be a long affair; insensitive people it can he a lifelong thing. But if you are intelligent, sensitive, soon you will realize that what you have done. The other is destroying your freedom, and suddenly you become aware that you need your freedom because freedom is of immense value. And you decide never to bother with the other.

Again when you are alone you are free, but something is missing - because your aloneness is not true aloneness; it is only loneliness, it is a negative state. You forget all about freedom. Free you are, but what to do with this freedom? Love is not there, and both are essential needs.

And up to now humanity has lived in such an insane way that you can fulfill only one need: either you can be free, but then you have to drop the idea of love... That's what monks and nuns of all the religions have been doing: drop the idea of love, you are free; there is nobody to hinder you, there is nobody to interfere with you, nobody to make any demands, nobody to possess you. But then their life becomes cold, almost dead.

You can go to any monastery and look at the monks and the nuns: their life is ugly. It stinks of death; it is not fragrant with life. There is no dance, no joy, no song. All songs have disappeared, all joy is dead. They are paralyzed - how they can dance? They are crippled - how they can dance? There is nothing to dance about. Their energies are stuck, they are no more flowing. For the flow the other is needed; without the other there is no flow.

And the majority of humanity has decided for love and dropped the idea of freedom. Then people are living like slaves. Man has reduced the woman into a thing, a commodity, and of course the woman has done the same in her own subtle way: she has made all the husbands henpecked.

I have heard:

In New York a few henpecked husbands joined hands together. They made a club to protest, to fight - Men's Liberation Movement, or something like that! And of course they chose one of the most henpecked husbands the president of the club.

The first meeting happened, but the president never Turned up. They were all worried. They all rushed to his home and they asked him, "What is the matter? Have you forgotten?"

He said, "No, but my wife won't allow me. She says, 'You go out, and I will never allow you in!' And that much risk I cannot take."

I have heard about the doors of paradise there are two boards - there are two doors in fact. On one board is written: "Those who are henpecked should stand here." This is the door for them, and the other is for those few rare human beings who are not henpecked. St. Peter has been waiting and waiting that some day somebody will turn who will stand on the other door which is not meant for the hen-pecked ones, but nobody ever stood on that gate.

One day St. Peter was surprised: a very small, thin, weak man came and stood there. Peter was puzzled, amazed. He asked the man, "Can you read?"

He said, "Yes, I can read - I am a Ph.D., a professor of philosophy!"

Then Peter said, "This door is meant only for those who are not henpecked husbands. Why you are standing here when the whole queue is standing at the other door?"

He said, "What can I do? My wife has told me to stand here! And even if GOD says to me, I cannot leave this place unless my wife allows!"

Man has reduced woman into a slave and the woman has reduced man into a slave. And of course both hate the slavery, both resist it. They are constantly fighting; any small excuse and the fight starts.

But the real fight is somewhere else deep down; the real fight is that they are asking for freedom.

They cannot say it so clearly, they may have forgotten completely. For thousands of years this is the way people have lived. They have seen their father and their mother have lived the same way, they have seen their grandparents have lived in the same way... this is the way people live - they have accepted it. Their freedom is destroyed.

It is as if we are trying to fly in the sky with one wing. Few people have the wing of love and a few people have the wing of freedom - both are incapable of flying. Both the wings are needed.

Idama, you say: WHY IS IT I FEEL FULLY ALIVE ONLY WHEN L AM IN LOVE?

It is perfectly natural, there is nothing wrong in it. It is how it should be. Love is a natural need; it is like food. If you are hungry, of course you will feel a deep unease. Without love your soul is hungry; love is a soul nourishment. Just as body needs food, water, air, the soul needs love. But the soul also needs freedom, and it is one of the most strange things that we have not accepted this fact yet.

If you love there is no need to destroy your freedom. They both can exist together; there is no antagonism between them. It is because of our foolishness that we have created the antagonism.

Hence the monks think the worldly people are fools, and the worldly people deep down know that the monks are fools - they are missing all the joys of life.

A great priest was asked, "What is love?"

The priest said, "A word made up of two vowels, two consonants and two fools!"

That is their condemnation of love. Because all the religions have condemned love; they have praised freedom very much. In India we call the ultimate experience MOKSHA; MOKSHA means absolute freedom.

You say: I TELL MYSELF THAT I SHOULD BE ABLE TO SPARK MYSELF WITHOUT THE OTHER, BUT SO FAR NO LUCK.

It will remain so, it will not change. You should rather change your conditioning about love and freedom. Love the person, but give the person total freedom. Love the person, but from the very beginning make it clear that you are not selling your freedom.

And if you cannot make it happen in THIS commune, here with me, you cannot make it happen anywhere else. This is the beginning of a new humanity. Of course it is only a seed now, but soon you will see it will grow in a vast tree. But we are experimenting upon many things. One of the dimensions of our experiment is to make love and freedom possible together, their coexistence together. Love a person but don't possess, and don't be possessed. INSIST for freedom, and don't lose love! There is no need. There is no natural enmity between freedom and love; it is a created enmity. Of course for centuries it has been so, so you have become accustomed about it; it has become a conditioned thing.

An old farmer down South could barely speak above a whisper. Leaning on a fence by the side of a country road he was watching a dozen razorbacks in a patch of woodland. Every few minutes the hogs would scramble through a hole in the fence, tear across the road to another patch of woodland, and immediately afterward scurry back again.

"What's the matter with them hogs anyway?" a passing stranger asked.

"There ain't nothing the matter with them," the old farmer whispered hoarsely. "Them hogs belongs to me and before I lost my voice I used to call them to their feed. After I lost my voice I used to tap on this fence rail with my stick at feeding time."

He paused and shook his head gravely. "And now," he added, "them cussed woodpeckers up in them trees has got them poor hogs plumb crazy!"

Just a conditioning! NOW THOSE WOODPECKERS ARE DRIVING THEM HOGS PLUMB CRAZY - because when they do the knocking they rush, thinking that it is food time.

That's what is happening to humanity.

One of the disciples of Pavlov, the founder of the conditioned reflex - the discoverer of the theory of the conditioned reflex - was trying an experiment on the same lines. He bought a puppy and decided to condition him to stand up and bark tor his food. He held the pup's food just out of reach, barked a few times, then set it on the floor before him. The idea was that the pup would associate standing up and barking with getting his food and learn to do so when hungry.

This went on for about a week, but the little dog failed to learn. After another week the man gave up the experiment and simply put the food down before the dog, but the pup refused to eat it. He was waiting for his master to stand and bark! Now he had become conditioned.

It is only a conditioning, it can be dropped. Just you need, Idama, a little meditativeness. Meditation simply means the process of unconditioning the mind. Whatsoever the society has done has to be undone. When you are unconditioned you will be able to see the beauty of love and freedom together; they are two aspects of the same coin. If you really love the person you will give him or her absolute freedom - that's a gift of love. And when there is freedom, love responds tremendously.

When you give freedom to somebody you have given the greatest gift, and love comes rushing towards you.

You ask me: IS THIS SOME STUPID "WAITING for GODOT" GAME I AM PLAYING WITH MYSELF?

No, Idama.

WHEN THE LAST LOVE AFFAIR ENDED, I SWORE TO MYSELF I WAS NOT GOING TO LET THE SAME OLD DEADENING PROCESS HAPPEN, BUT HERE I AM AGAIN FEELING HALF ALIVE, WAITING FOR HIM TO COME.

But just by swearing, just by deciding, you cannot change yourself. You have to understand. Love is a basic need, as basic as freedom, so both have to be fulfilled. And a man who is full of love AND free is the most beautiful phenomenon in the world. And when two persons of such beauty meet, their relationship is not a relationship at all. It is a relating. It is a constant, riverlike flow. It is continuously growing towards greater heights.

The ultimate height of love and freedom is the experience of God. In God you will find both:

tremendous love, absolute love, and absolute freedom.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Divakar Bharti,

THE FIRST thing to be understood is that Divakar Bharti is an Indian, and Indians are absolutely unable to understand jokes! They don't have any jokes in India. I have not come across a single Indian joke. Indians are serious people - spiritual people, religious people! They talk only of great things: God, heaven, hell, the theory of karma and rebirth.

When you tell a joke to an Indian he feels offended... you see? He feels offended, insulted! You look at his face - he feels embarrassed. Talk about something esoteric - bullshit him! - and then he is perfectly happy. He never laughs, he cannot; laughter is beyond him. He has forgotten laughter.

That's why, Divakar, the question has arisen in you. Otherwise each joke, in a different context, is different. The joke in itself may be an old one - and in fact, there are no new jokes in the world. The proverb that there is nothing new under the sun may not be right about other things, but about jokes it is absolutely right. If Adam and Eve come back to the earth they will recognize only the jokes and nothing else! The same jokes, but the context goes on changing, and in a different context the same joke has a different meaning.

But because you cannot understand the jokes you must be feeling bored.

G.C. Lichtenberg has a profound statement. He says: A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

I have heard:

It is said: The gravest fish is an oyster, the gravest bird is an owl, the gravest beast is a donkey, and the gravest man is an Indian fool.

There are fools of all kinds, they come in all shapes and sizes, but the Indian is the best! Each race reacts, responds differently about jokes...

If you tell the German a joke, he laughs once, just to be polite. If you tell the same joke to a Frenchman he also laughs once because he understands immediately. If you tell the same joke to an Englishman he laughs twice: first to be polite, and second when in the middle of the night he gets it. If you tell the same joke to an American he laughs, but not loudly, and says that "I have heard it before!" If you tell the same joke to a Jew, instead of laughing he says, "It is an old joke, and what is more, you are telling it all wrong! "

And I don't feel bored because I cannot feel bored - it is simply impossible for me. I have completely forgotten how to feel bored! You can go on telling me the same joke again and again and I will always find some new meaning, some new nuance, some new color, some new dimension to it, but I cannot feel bored because I am no more. To feel bored you need the ego; it is the ego that feels bored. When the ego is no more there it is impossible to feel bored.

A simple-minded old woman had a cow that fell sick. In her distress she called the rabbi to pray for its recovery.

To comfort the poor woman, the rabbi walked around the cow three times intoning, "If she dies, she dies, but if she lives, she lives." Happily the cow recovered.

Some time later the rabbi became ill and the woman, recalling how he had cured her cow, visited him. She walked around his bed three times, solemnly repeating, "If he dies, he dies, but if he lives, he lives." Whereupon the rabbi burst out into sidesplitting laughter which soon led to his recovery.

I cannot feel bored - I am no more there. And I don't remember what I have said to you yesterday, so how I can say the same joke again? It is never the same, it cannot be.I never remember what has been said by me, and I have been telling to people thousands of things for all these last twenty-five years.

I never read any of my books, I never listen to any of my lectures - why should I feel bored?

But Divakar, you are in a wrong place here. This is not the place for serious people like you! You should find some old Hindu monastery.

The little red man woke up, opened up his little red curtains and looked out at the little red sunrise.

He showered in his little red bathroom, put on his little red clothes and left his little red house. Getting into his little red car, he drove through the little red town to his little red office block. There he went up in the little red elevator to the tenth floor, walked along the little red corridor and entered his little red office. He sat down at his little red desk and read his little red newspaper. Deciding that his life was too boring to live any more, he took out a little red knife and slashed his little red wrists.

Ten minutes later his little red secretary entered his little red office and found her little red boss covered in little red blood. She grabbed the little red telephone and phoned the little red hospital.

Soon a little red ambulance arrived. The little red attendants rushed into the little red office, put the little red man on a little red stretcher and raced across the little red town to the little red hospital.

Quickly they carried the little red man into the little red operating theater and placed him on a little red table.

One minute later the door to the little red operating theater opened and in walked a little green man.

"Sorry!" he said. "I seem to have walked into the wrong joke!"

This is not a place for you - little red world, and you are a green man here! You have walked in a wrong joke, Divakar - walk out!

The last question:

Question 5:

Prem Pramod,

TWO WOMEN were looking into new arrivals in a bookshop. One woman was very much interested in one book; the title of the book was: How to Torture Your Husband. She told to the other woman, "Look at this book! I am going to purchase it! Are you also interested in it?"

The other woman said, "NO, I have my own system!"

I also have my own system, but I cannot tell YOU! Certainly I have given more names than anybody may have ever given in the whole history - almost two hundred thousand sannyasins are there in the world! - but my system is such that I can give names to the whole humanity.

One Red Indian boy was asking his father, "Father, what is the way how you give names to new children? Your name is Black Horse, my mother's name is Buffalo, my uncle's name is White Cloud - how you manage to find out what is the true name for the new arrival, the new child?"

The father said, "It is not difficult - we have a system. Whenever a child is born, the eldest member of the family - the grandfather, the grandmother or the father - goes out of the house, and whatsoever he sees first... For example when my grandfather went out he saw a black horse; that's how I am named Black Horse. But why you are asking Two Dogs Fucking?"

That was his name!

I have my own system, but I cannot tell you!

Just the other night I gave sannyas to a beautiful woman; her name is Diotima. I called her Dhyan Diotima. Diotima is a mythological name: in Greek mythology Diotima is the priestess of love or goddess of love. But it can be derived from another root also, diota; and diota means a jar with a neck and two handles.

So I told the woman that "This is your situation right now: a jar with a neck and two handles.

That's what a woman is all about! But through meditation you can become a priestess of love; that transformation is possible. Otherwise you will remain just a jar with a neck and two handles!"

It is not very difficult, and the more names I have given the easier it has become, because I have become more proficient! I can find some way, either from the root of the word... and there are different roots; even in one language a word .means many things. Sometimes a word has different roots in different languages: in one language it means one thing, in another language it means another thing. And it is very easily possible to play with words, and names are nothing but a game.

I give you a new name only to make you feel that names are not important. Your old name can simply disappear because it was only a label, it can be changed. You are not the name. To insist this fact, to emphasize this fact upon your consciousness, that the name is not your reality...

Every child comes into the world without a name, but we have to give a name; it has some utility. It is absolutely false, but in a vast world with millions of people it will be difficult to manage if nobody had any name; it will become almost impossible to manage. Some names are needed; false they are, but they work, they have a utility. They have no reality, but utility certainly they have.

But ordinarily you grow with your name; in fact, you become conscious only later on. Your name is deeper than your consciousness, hence there arises an identity with the name. You start feeling, "This is my name, this is me."

When you become a sannyasin I want to destroy that identity, because this is the beginning of destruction of all identities. First I destroy the identity with the name, then I will destroy the identity with the body, then the identity with the mind, then the identity with the heart. When all these identities have been destroyed you will be able to know who you are: the unidentified, the nameless, the formless, the indefinable. And that is only a pure witness in you; nothing can be said about it, no word is adequate to explain it.

Hence I change the name - to give you a break, to give you the idea that name is just a given thing.

Your old name disappears, a new name becomes your reality, but now you will not get so much identified because you are now more mature. The first name was given when you were a small child; you were not aware. Now you are a little bit aware. And by becoming a sannyasin you are becoming committed to more and more awareness, to a life of witnessing in which all identities have to be dropped.

A man is absolutely free only when there is no identity left. You are neither a Christian nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan; you are neither an Indian nor a Japanese nor a German; you are neither a man nor a woman. You are just a pure consciousness, and that consciousness is eternal. The Upanishads are talking about that consciousness.

The only thing to be learned in the communion with the Master is that witness, that watcher, that seer, that watcher on the hills who is beyond everything. Everything falls short of it which is transcendental. To know that transcendental reality of you I start by changing your name; that is just taking one brick out of your false edifice. And then if you allow me to take one brick, I will go on taking other bricks. I change your clothes just to give you a discontinuity with the past.

You have to become discontinuous to the past. Unless you die to the past you cannot be reborn, you cannot be here-now. The past has to be completely dropped and forgotten - it was a dream, nothing more - and out of the past arises the future. If the past is dropped, the future disappears.

Then the ONLY reality is now and here. And to be here and now, absolutely here and now, is to know all that is worth knowing, is to really live an authentic, sincere life, a life full of truth and bliss and godliness.