Knowing Nothing About Everything

The first question:

Question 1:

Prem Kavita,

THERE IS nothing wrong to be a Polack. Polacks are as beautiful as anybody else, or a little more, a little more juicy.

A sign outside a police station read: Man Wanted For Rape. Next day three Polacks applied for the job.

But it is certainly wrong to feel proud. Whether one feels to be proud as an Indian or as a Polack or as an Englishman, it does not matter. These are just excuses. The real thing is that the ego wants some support. The ego cannot stand on its own feet; it needs crutches. It claims that "My country is the best country in the world, my religion the most superior, my culture the most evolved," and so on, so forth.

Anything can be used as a prop for the ego, and that's certainly wrong, particularly for the sannyasin, because the w hole effort of sannyas is to drop the ego in all its possible forms, subtle or gross, manifest or unmanifest, direct or indirect.

One has to be constantly aware of the tricks of the ego; its ways are subtle. If you throw it out from one door it enters from the other door - and in a new disguise. Unless you are really alert it is going to grab you from the back.

Many times you feel the misery that is created by the ego and many times you have dropped it, but it again creates new temptations. And because the temptations are new you think it is not the old ditch you are falling in. It is the same ditch - of course painted with fresh colors, changed a little bit here and there, renovated...

Beware nf the ego! Pride is not good for a sannyasin. That's the only difference between a sannyasin and a non-sannyasin. The old idea of sannyas was to renounce the world; my idea of sannyas is to renounce the ego, because even if you renounce the world the ego will go on hidden within you wherever you go. In fact, when it starts taking on spiritual colors it becomes far more difficult to get rid of it.

Just like if your chains are made not of ordinary steel but of purest of golds, studded with diamonds - then you will not like to drop them. To you they will appear like ornaments, and if somebody says, "These are chains," you will be offended, you will be angry.

A Hindu is offended if you say to him that to be a Hindu is to be in a prison. A Mohammedan is angry if you say to him that to be a Mohammedan means to be a slave. The same is true about the Christians and the Jains and the Buddhists.

But to be proud simply means you are thinking yourself separate from existence. Secondly: you are thinking of yourself as special.

To be a sannyasin means to be just natural. You are no.t higher than anybody and you are not lower than anybody. You are simply part of the same existence. How can one be lower or higher? It is not only a question of being on equal terms with human beings; you are on equal terms with the trees, with the rocks, with the stars. Simply there is nobody inside you who feels separate. This is true equality, and the true equality is always rooted in equanimity, equilibrium.

To feel higher in any way is simply a proof that deep down you are suffering from an inferiority complex. it is just a compensation. The politician feels higher than others because he has power, political power. The wealthy feels higher than others because he has power, economic power. And the so-called spiritual person also feels higher than others because he has again the same kind of thing: power - spiritual power, purity, morality. virtue. But these are nothing but properties.

In MY vision a sannyasin is utterly ordinary. and in that very ordinariness the extraordinary explodes.

The second question:

Question 2:

Anand Maria,

THE DIFFERENCE between man and woman is not much; the difference is simple. It is like a man by your side is standing on his head: what is the difference between you who is standing on his legs and the man who is doing a headstand, a SIRSHASANA? In fact, none. You are both the same - but in a way there is a difference. The difference is that the man who is standing on his head is upside-down. That's the only difference between man and a woman.

What is conscious in man is unconscious in women, and what is unconscious in women is conscious in men. Man is man only in his consciousness; in his unconsciousness he is woman, feminine.

That's why whenever you feel a man in any way moving closer to his unconscious he becomes softer, feminine, loving, tender.

That's why the people who are condemned by the society, the sinners, are more loving people than your so-called saints. Your so-called saints are hung up in the conscious; they don't allow their unconscious, they repress it. They disassociate themselves from their unconscious, they condemn it. They create a distance between themselves and the unconscious; they define themselves only through the conscious. That's why they look so hard.

Look at the faces of your so-called saints - the moralists, the puritans, the people who are continuously carrying the load of "holier-than-thou", just look at their faces, and you will find hard lines, stiffness, uptightness - a quality which cannot be called soft, tender, loving.

Watch the so-called sinners, the condemned people, and you will be surprised that they have more tender hearts. They are more loving people, more companionable. You can enjoy the company of the sinners, you cannot enjoy the company of the saints. If you put four saints together they will be constantly quarreling - quarreling about stupid things: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, how many hells there are... Buddha says there is only one hell, Mahavira says there are seven Sanjaya Vilethiputta says there are seven hundred.

If you put a dozen saints in one house there will be no peace at all in that house; they will be constantly barking at each other. Sometimes I am fascinated by the idea that dogs may be reincarnations of saints - barking at anything, and particularly at few things. For example, all dogs are against uniforms. They will bark against the postman, the policeman, the sannyasin. Maybe they are angry at their own past life!

But sinners are very friendly for the simple reason... I am not telling you become sinners, I am simply making a point so that you can understand why sinners look so soft, loving, human, and why saints look so inhuman. The reason is the sinners are closer to their unconscious and man's unconscious is feminine.

The same happens with intellectual women, particularly the women who belong to Liberation Movement. They are harsh, ugly, hard, and constantly argumentative. They become unloving, they become very egoistic. They are a new version of female saints, for the simple reason again because they have gone against their natural unconscious spontaneity. They are living in their heads. They have dropped the very idea of the unconscious, they are not allowing their instincts.

They are lopsided; they have lost their balance.

The balanced man is neither man nor woman; he is a mixture of both, a synthesis rather. His masculinity compensates his femininity. They are not at daggers with each other; they are dancing in tune, in deep harmony, together. There is great accord.

So the difference is not much; the difference is very little. Of course it has become very big because for at least ten thousand years man has dominated the scene. He has repressed the woman in himself and because of that he has repressed the woman on the outside too. He had to - both are part of one logic.

If you allow your own inner woman freedom to meet with the man inside you, to have a deep togetherness, an orgasmic quality, so that as far as your consciousness is concerned it is no more split as man and woman... It is one, it is human, it is whole. It is no more a conflict; it is a concord.

It has attained to the highest synthesis possible. When this happens one is whole; whether one is man or woman does not matter.

But for centuries man has dominated, and the only way to dominate is to destroy the outer woman, to reduce her into a slave, to reduce her into a commodity, sellable, purchasable, something of the marketplace. This is the ugliest thing that has happened in the past. Because of this the whole past of humanity is rotten, unbalanced, insane. And if the man represses the woman on the outside, of course he cannot allow the woman inside either: he has to repress that too.

And the woman has been told that she has to be womanly; that means she has to reject all that is masculine in her. She has been forced to go to the very extreme of being a woman and the man has to be completely denied. And this has been taught as if it is something of great value - as culture, as religion, as civilization. The woman has to be shy; the woman has to be in every possible way dependent on man. She has to be a servant, not a companion, not a friend.

This idea affected everything, even religion. And the people like Jesus, Mahavira, Gautam the Buddha, these great persons who are the very salt of the past humanity, the few people who had flowered, even they could not go against the social structure absolutely. I can understand why they could not go against the social structure - because they had to work with a society which was not of their making; it was already there.

Buddha had only forty years to work. Now you cannot transform everything in the society. He had to decide whether he has to work and create something or he has just to fight. If he was to fight for every single inch, then no work would have been possible. He had to compromise. He accepted many things which I know were accepted very unwillingly.

And the same is true about Mahavira, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, Jesus, Mohammed. But they had to function in a particular society, which was given, already there, and it had existed for thousands of years. And they decided it is better to work silently and help few people to become enlightened rather than fight with the society and waste your whole time, and not help even few people to become enlightened. That was the choice before them.

Buddha was not willing to allow women to be initiated as sannyasins for the simple reason because the Indian society has been very repressive; it has created great walls between men and women. To destroy those walls would have been releasing a chaos. It would have released so much repressed energy that Buddha was not thinking that he will be able to help anybody; everything will go berserk.

Hence he postponed as long as he could.

When the women became very insistent, and particularly when his own stepmother asked to be initiated, he could not refuse. He owed much to this woman, because his own mother died the very day he was born. He was brought up by this stepmother with such care, with so much love. He had never felt that she is a stepmother; he had never missed his mother. And when this stepmother asked to be initiated - and she was getting very old, and death was com-ing close - he could not say no. Very unwillingly he said yes.

But when he said yes to his own mother, then other women also said, "Now you have accepted one woman as a sannyasin, then why debar us?" And it was logical. The door opened...

And Buddha said very sadly that, "My religion would have lived at least for five thousand years and helped thousands of people to become enlightened, but now it will exist only for five hundred years."

And that's how it happened, because once the women came in, the repressed male sannyasins started getting infatuated. They had lived in compartments and suddenly they were free - suddenly the women were there, and beautiful women. Almost from all royal families the first sannyasins had come. It almost always happens: when a man like Buddha arrives on the earth it is the most intelligent ones who come first to him. It is natural, because only they can understand.

You can see it here happening: the most intelligent people of the world from every nook and comer of the world, have arrived here. But the Indian masses go on ignoring as if it has nothing to do with them. They are not yet at the level of that intelligence where they can understand what is happening here. What to say about ordinary masses...

Just the other day the Poona magistrate has given his judgment concerning the case of one madman who had thrown a dagger at me, obviously intentionally to kill me. He has freed him, and the reason that he has freed him, the most basic reason that he has given, is really worth consideration. I laughed at it, I enjoyed it!

The reason that he has freed him is that if it was an attempt to murder me, then I would not have continued my discourse! Who can continue talking when somebody is trying to murder you? But he does not know me. I would have continued even if I had died - I would not have finished before ten!

But he cannot understand, and I can understand him - he cannot understand. When somebody is trying to kill you, can you go on speaking the same way? His argument seems to be very valid. So what to say about the ordinary masses? - even an educated magistrate thinks in the same way.

Once Buddha allowed women to enter in his commune, the repressed male sannyasins started losing their grip on their own consciousness. It happened because of repression. That's why Jesus and Mahavira were also of the same opinion.

I can allow for the simple reason that twenty-five centuries have passed and in these twenty-five centuries much has happened, particularly in the West. That's why my appeal will be far more in the West than in the East, because in the East nothing much has happened. Karl Marx has not happened in the East, Friedrich Nietzsche has not happened in the East, Sigmund Freud has not happened in the East, Carl Gustav Jung has not happened in the East, Albert Einstein has not happened in the East...

The West is far more ready. The West has gone through a great revolution about sex. about the discrimination between sexes. The West has dropped the old nonsense. That's why it is possible for me to allow man and woman together to be here. And you can see the difference: when Indians come here they create trouble.

For these six years I have been here, at least more than three to four hundred thousand westerners have visited the place. Not a single westerner has tried to rape any Indian woman. What to say about rape - they have not even bothered about Indian women, they have not even thought about Indian women! But so many Indians have tried molestations, efforts to rape; all kinds of things they have done. And they go on asking me why Indians are not easily allowed in the ashram. They come for wrong reasons, even the well-educated.

Just a few days before the manager of the Ambassador Hotel came to see - rich, well-educated - and when he found Padma working in her department alone, he immediately grabbed her breasts!

And the man had asked Sheela the first thing, that, "Why I don't see many Indians here?" And when he was caught red-handed Sheela told him, "Now you know the reason why so many Indians are not there in the ashram! We have to throw them, just as we are throwing you out!"

One government officer, one S.D.O. had come to investigate the morality of my sannyasins, and Sheela was showing him around the ashram. When he found that Sheela and he were alone he asked Sheela, "Can I kiss you?" And he had come to investigate the morality of the ashram! And because Sheela reacted and shouted at him he had written a very nasty and wrong report about the ashram, and he has been one of the causes that we could not get the Saswad land for the commune. He created every possible trouble. And he was sending messages that "If Sheela comes to me, then I will help you!"

Now these are the people...! Buddha had to work with these people, and Jesus, and Mahavira. They can be forgiven. They wanted to help man and woman both, but the trouble was the society.

To me there is a possibility. I can choose from all over the world people who are ready to drop this stupid division between sexes. Of course the approach will be different: the woman will start with love and end with meditation, and the man will start with meditation and end with love. Only this much difference will be there. To the man love will come as a consequence, as a fragrance of meditation. To the woman meditation will come as a consequence, as a byproduct, as a fragrance of love.

Rut whether the man or the woman when they reach to the highest peak of consciousness, to the Everest of consciousness, they will have both exactly balanced: meditation and love.

The third question:

Question 3:

Prem Shraddhan,

BULLSHIT is simply bullshit! Even if you make it esoteric it does not change its quality - it still stinks!

You can give it a beautiful cover, a beautiful packet, but the content will be the same. You can wrap around it something beautiful, but that will be only a wraparound. When you will dive deep into it, then you would know - you have fallen into a ditch full of bullshit!

A sannyasin and newly-arrived non-sannyasin are sitting together in Vrindavan. "Hey, Swami," says the non-sannyasin, "you have probably been around this place for a while. Can you tell me what Osho is teaching you?"

The sannyasin ponders over this for a while, then says, "It's like this: imagine two guys walking along a road; they both fall into a ditch. One of them gets dirty, the other does not - which one of them is going to have a shower?"

"The dirty one, of course!" says the non-sannyasin.

"No. The dirty one sees the clean one and he thinks himself to be clean. The clean one sees the dirty one and he thinks HE is dirty, so the clean one is going to wash himself. Now imagine they fall into a ditch again - who is going to shower now?"

"Now I know," answers the non-sannyasin, "the clean one!"

"No. The clean one realizes while showering that he was clean, and the dirty one realizes while the clean one is taking a shower, so now the right one showers! Now imagine they both fall into a ditch again - who is going to shower now?"

"From now on, of course, always the dirty one!"

"No. Have you ever seen two guys fall into a ditch three times, and one always comes out dirty and the other always clean?"

A Catholic priest was walking along a cliff by the sea when he heard the shouts of someone in difficulty. He saw a man who obviously could not swim struggling for his life in the water.

"Save me, save me, father! I am drowning!" cried the young man.

"Are ye Catholic or Protestant, son?" asked the cleric.

"Protestant, father!" gasped the young man as he went under the water. The priest began to walk on.

"For God's sake, father, save me!" screamed the terrified boy surfacing again.

"What religion are ye, son?" shouted back the priest.

"Protestant, father!" spluttered back the answer. The priest again began to walk on as the unfortunate youngster went under for the second time.

"For the love of God, save me, father!" screamed the boy in desperation.

"What religion are ye, son?" came the demand again.

After a moment's hesitation the young man shouted, "I'm a Catholic, father!"

The priest immediately threw off his clothes, dived into the sea and swam strongly to the boy, catching him by the hair as he went under for the third and last time.

"What religion are ye, son?" asked the priest again, as he help the young man's head above the water.

"Catholic, father!" came the response.

The cleric smiled, let go the young man's hair, and as he sank said, "Good, die in faith!"

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Pritama,

IT IS NATURAL. They philosophize about God, I know. They think about light, I see. They read the scriptures, I have read the universe. We cannot agree.

It is like a blind man collecting information about light. How he can agree with the man who has eyes? Although he collects information about light, but information about light is just information; it is not an experience. The experience is bound to be totally different. The experience is qualitatively different; it is not only a question of quantity. It is not that I know more than that they know or less than that they know; it is not a question of more or less. I simply know, and they have been collecting information from others. Their knowledge is borrowed, and of course the man who lives with borrowed knowledge, whose whole life depends on borrowed knowledge, is bound to be afraid of the man who has experienced it.

They have always been against; it is nothing new. If they were not against me, that would be surprising. That will be almost unbelievable! Their being against me simply proves that man has not learned anything, as if the evolution of man has stopped long before. They still behave in the same way they behaved with Jesus, with Buddha, with Krishna. Their behavior has not changed, and I don't see that it is going to change ever - because of their vested interest. Men like me are dangerous to their business!

It is a question of life and death for them. Their whole profession depends on borrowed knowledge, and my insistence is to help you to know it on your own. And the moment you know, all that is borrowed fades away, becomes irrelevant, meaningless, loses all significance. And with it disappear all the priests, all the theologians, all the philosophers, all the scholars, the pundits...

Right now you respect them, you honor them, because you feel ignorant and you think they know.

And blind are leading the blind! You are far more honest - at least you recognize your blindness, your scholars are far more cunning; they don't recognize that they are ignorant. Deep down they know it, but they don't show it. They go on hiding it in every possible way. And people like me start exposing them - how can they tolerate it?

And it has always been a known fact that scholars are one-dimensional. They have to be one- dimensional if they want to be scholarly. If a man tries to know everything about God... and remember, "about". By knowing God he will become multidimensional, because God means the whole existence. By knowing God he will know the whole, but by knowing ABOUT God he has to become one-dimensional. He has to focus his mind, he has to go on narrowing his consciousness; he has to pinpoint it. Naturally he knows more and more about God, but less and less about everything else. His knowing becomes only inclusive about God and excludes everything else.

That's why authorities always behave foolishly. As far as their own field is concerned they are great experts. If you ask any question about something which is not part of their expertise they are at a loss - they are as foolish as no fool ever can be, because fools have a little bit of multi-dimensionality.

But the scholars are absolutely one-dimensional, they are fixed on one point; they are specialized people.

In the beginning, just two thousand years before there was only one knowledge without any divisions; it was called philosophy. In the days of Aristotle it was called philosophy; philosophy meant all knowledge. So if you look in Aristotle's books - who is the father-figure of the western philosophy - you will find everything, things which have nothing to do with philosophy at all.

For example, how many teeth a woman has. Now what it has got to do with philosophy? And even about that he is wrong! And he had two wives, not only one - he could have counted very easily.

And as far as a woman s teeth are concerned you need not even say her to open her mouth - it is always open! You can count very easily; there is no trouble. And having two wives and committing such a mistake! He says that women have less teeth than men. The logic is: how women can have anything equal to men? He never bothered to experiment.

But his books contain everything. It contains biology, religion, philosophy, mathematics, logic, language, aesthetics - everything possible. It contains physics... That's how the name "metaphysics" was born, because in Aristotle's books, after physics comes religion. Metaphysics simply means "the chapter next to physics". After the chapter on physics there is a chapter on religion, hence it was called metaphysics.

If Aristotle comes back he will be absolutely puzzled. If he goes to Oxford there are three hundred sixty-five subjects taught. He would not be able to believe - three hundred sixty-five subjects! And they are every day growing more and more - branches of branches of branches.

I have heard a future story:

A man goes to his optician. He is suffering from pain in one of his eyes, and he tells the doctor.

The doctor asks, "Which eye, right or left?"

And he says, "Left."

And the doctor says, "Sorry, but I have specialized only in the other eye. You have to go to somebody else."

A man's son came back from the medical college, and he asked, "In what you have specialized?"

He was an old physician, old kind of physician who used to treat every kind of disease.

The son said, "I have specialized about nose."

And the father asked, "Which nostril?"

Yes, it is going to happen one day - right nostril or left nostril, and you will have to go to different experts.

This is the way of specialization: one becomes narrowed, one starts knowing more and more about less and less. And a moment comes, is bound to come - at least logically it can be conceived that it will happen one day... If this is the process of science - knowing more and more about less and less - then one day somebody will declare. "I know all about nothing."

The process of experiencing is totally different: it is knowing less and less about more and more.

And a moment comes: one knows nothing about everything. That's what Dionysius calls AGNOSIA, that is the State of meditation: one knows nothing about everything. He has become absolutely multidimensional. He is simply aware, not a knower. There is no knowledge, he is simply wise.

Now how the expert can agree with the wise man? The expert cannot agree with the Buddha, impossible; their dimensions are totally different. One knows more and more about less and less, the other knows less and less about more and more. One reaches ultimately to know everything about nothing, the other reaches ultimately to know nothing about everything - they are following diverse paths. But the Buddha experiences and the expert only accumulates information.

A very pretty secretary, wearing a sweater and mini-skirt, passed through a chemistry lab.

"Get a load of that!" said one of the scientists to the other.

The other glanced at the well-stacked figure and replied indifferently, So what? She's nine-tenths water!"

"Sure," said the first, "but what surface tension!"

A great scientist riding on a bus had noticed a clock on a building that showed nine-thirty. Farther on he saw another clock; this one showed nine-fifteen. Good heavens!" he cried. "I must be going the wrong way!"

A story is told about a professor of English who was indisposed and stayed home one day. "What happened?" one of the students asked his daughter.

"He is terribly upset," she disclosed. "Last night an owl in one of the trees kept repeating 'To who?

To who?' instead of 'To whom?'"

The newlywed wife was a professor of philosophy, and it always almost happens with the professors of philosophy, that she suffered from insomnia. She kept waking up her husband whenever she heard noises downstairs.

Finally he said, "Go to sleep, dear, please. Burglars don't make noises!"

So she started to wake him up every time she heard nothing.

That is logical! That is philosophical!

Before beginning a postmortem the doctor wanted to check the chest. The cadaver was wheeled into the X-ray depart-ment and placed properly in the apparatus by the pretty technician, then she put the photographic plate into the control panel. As she stuck her head out from behind it she said automatically, "Please take a deep breath and hold it!"

A technician is a technician! They function automatically. Experts function very unconsciously. They know not what they are doing, they know not what they are saying. They know nothing because their whole consciousness is full of dead facts and informations. They can TALK about love, but they have never loved. They can talk about God...

And remember the meaning of the word "about": about means around. Around and around they go, but they never touch the center of it. It cannot be touched just by knowing about God. You can quote the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, the Vedas; that is not going to help, unless you can speak out of your own inner communion.

And Jesus said unto them, "Who do you say I am?"

And they replied, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the charisma manifested in conflict and decision in the humanizing process."

And Jesus said, "What?"

Now this language! Even the Polack Pope would have understood - this is the language of the Christian theologian: "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the charisma manifested in conflict and decision in the humanizing process."

And Jesus said, "What?!"

You ask me, Pritama: WHY THE SO-CALLED AUTHORITATIVE SCHOLARS...?

They are not authoritative; they are quoting others. What authority they can have? Authority should come from your own authentic experience. That is the only source of authority; there is no other source of authority.

A Ramakrishna can speak authoritatively, a Raman can speak authoritatively, but not Vivekananda; he is just a scholar. Mahavira can speak authoritatively, but not Gautam Ganadhara, his disciple, who is just a brahmin pundit collecting information, taking notes, compiling what Mahavira has said.

Jesus can speak authoritatively, but not the popes.

And the irony is that these people are thought to be authoritative because they can quote exactly the words of the scriptures. But the words of the scriptures can be quoted by a computer more efficiently, more accurately! It can be done by a mechanical device; no consciousness is needed for that, no awareness is needed for that. One need not be a Christ to repeat the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of God." This can be repeated by a record, a gramophone record!

Have you seen the most famous gramophone company, His Master's Voice symbol? - the dog wagging its tail. A gramophone record can do it, and that's what these popes are doing - His Master's Voice - the shankaracharyas are doing, ayatollahs, imams are doing - just repeating.

A small child was teaching to his parrot all the four-letter words. The mother when heard was shocked. She came running in and she said, "What are you doing? Have you gone mad? You are destroying the parrot - you are teaching him four-letter words!"

And the child said, "No Mummy, I am just telling him, 'Please remember, these words are not to be repeated by you!'Just the way you have taught my father and my father has taught me, I am teaching him and I am telling him, 'Remember to tell your children not to repeat these words. These are very ugly and dangerous words.'"

You can teach a parrot and he can repeat anything, but a parrot is not an authority. Machines can do. computers can do even a far better way.

So, Pritama, don't call these people authorities - they are not. They are befooling others and perhaps themselves. They are not real philosophers; they are more "foolosophers" than philosophers! Philosophy, the very word, means love for wisdom, and they have nothing to do with wisdom at all.

Wisdom happens only through meditation; it never happens by collecting information. It happens by going through a transformation. Wisdom is the flowering of your consciousness, the opening of the one-thousand-petaled lotus of your being. It is the release of your fragrance, the release of the imprisoned splendor.

Real philosophy has nothing to do with thinking; on the contrary it has everything to do with transcending thinking, going beyond and beyond thinking, going beyond mind, reaching to the pure space of no-mind. Out of that space something flowers in you. You can call it Christ-consciousness, Buddhahood, or whatsoever you like. That is true philosophy.

The better word for philosophy will be philosia - not only love for wisdom but love for seeing the truth.

SIA means to see, PHILO means love - love to see. That's exactly the Indian word for philosophy, darshan; darshan means philosia. Don't translate it as philosophy. Doctor Radhakrishnan and others have done a great disservice to the East by translating darshan as philosophy. It is philosia.

In the East our interest has always been to SEE the truth, because by seeing the truth, as the Isa Upanishad says, you become the truth itself Only by becoming the truth you have authority; then the truth speaks through you. You are just a medium, a vehicle, a hollow bamboo flute, and God starts singing through you.

That miracle has to happen here to my sannyasins. That's what my only teaching is: become a hollow bamboo flute. Don't hinder. Let God flow through you naturally, spontaneously. And if you allow your nature and spontaneity, just as every river reaches to the ocean you will also reach to the ultimate ocean of God.

The last question:

Question 5:

Yoga Nishant,

I AM nobody's disciple, and I am nobody's Master either. I am not your Master, just a friend on the way, a fellow-traveler. And I am nobody's disciple, because nothing can be learned from anybody, and I am nobody's Master because nothing can be taught.

I can allow you to be with me. Something can happen which is neither done by me nor done by you. Nobody can claim that "I am the doer of it." It can simply happen, just as in the morning the sun rises and the flowers open and the birds start singing. The sun cannot say "I have opened the flowers." The sun cannot say that, "I have managed this whole orchestra of the music that suddenly has arisen on the earth." Neither the birds can say that, "It is because of our singing that the sun has risen."

You must have heard an old story of a woman who had a hen, and she believed that it is because of her hen that the sun rises, because early in the morning just before the sunrise the hen gives a joyous shout. And she was very proud because she was the only one who had a hen in the village.

And nobody seemed to be grateful to her, so one day out of disgust she said, "I am leaving this village, and then you will know! The sun will never rise in this place because I am taking my hen away."

And she left the village, she reached another village, and of course when the hen shouted with joy in the morning, the sun rose there and the woman was tremendously happy. She said "Now, now those fools will realize. Sun has risen in THIS village, it cannot rise there! Now it will be always night there!"

Neither the birds can say nor the flowers can say that, "The sun has risen because of us," nor the sun can say. It is a synchronicity. This word is very beautiful; it is coined by Carl Gustav Jung. You understand the law of causality: in the law of causality one thing functions as a cause and the other thing happens as an effect. Wherever the cause is produced, the effect is bound to follow. It is a mechanical process. You heat the water to a certain degree and it evaporates; heating is the cause and evaporation is the effect.

Synchronicity is a non-causal relationship. Things happen, but you never know who is the cause and who is the effect. They happen simultaneously.

That's the beauty that happens whenever you are with a Buddha. The Buddha is not a Master, you are not a disciple; you are not learning anything from Buddha, the Buddha is not teaching anything to you. It is just being together. It is a love affair! Being together... and something happens, something which is beyond both. Something is triggered. At the most it can be said that the Buddha functioned as a catalytic agent, but whatsoever happens happens in you; he has not caused it.

Hence I say I am not anybody's disciple nor I am anybody's Master. But, Nishant, you have found the right name for me: I am an Italian, Maha-Gossipa! Remember me not as the man who has given you a great gospel but as a man who has given you many gossips. My gospel is my gossip!

At a local businessman's club four members got together after a few drinks and began to confess their secret vices.

"I must own up," said the leading banker, "that I gamble. Every week or so I place a bet on the horses, not too much, but I have been doing it for years."

"Well, I will come clean of my weakness," said the prominent executive. "No one in town has ever seen me drunk, but twice a year I drive to another town where I am not known, rent a motel room for a few days, get stoned, and return home feeling better than ever!

"I am not ashamed to admit that my weakness is women," said another important businessman. "I have to be very discreet, of course, but with a cautious secretary it can be managed easily enough.

I have never yet been found out."

The fourth member of the group, who had been listening intently, said nothing. He was the rabbi of the village. The others expected him to reveal something, but he shrugged his shoulders as is the way of all the Jews of all the ages. He simply shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," asked one of them, "Rabbi, how about you?"

"I would rather not confess," he said shaking his head. They looked at him with suspicion. What could he be covering up? Each of them accused him of being a poor sport, especially since they had all opened up.

Finally the rabbi gave in. "All right," he said reluctantly, "if you must know my weakness, it is scandal - and I can hardly wait to get out of this place!"