The Drunken Dancer

Question 1:

THE question is of course from somebody who is very new here. Many things will have to be understood.

First: there is no need to understand what god is, because whatsoever god is cannot be understood.

Understanding is not the right direction towards god. Understanding means you are trying intellectually - through logic, reason, concepts - and that's the sure way to miss god.

It is as if somebody is trying to see through the ears. He will not be able to see. Or somebody is trying to hear with the eyes. He will not be able to hear. The ears are to hear and the eyes are to see.

The intellect is utilitarian. It helps while you are moving outside of your being. It is helpful as a guide in the world of the without. The moment you turn inwards it becomes useless; it is no more a guide.

Then it misguides. There is a limit to the intellect... and god can be felt only, not understood.

When you are moving inwards, you come closer to the source of your own being - and that is the source of all being. If I can come to my own self, I have come to the supreme self, because at the center I am no more I AM; I am the whole.

But the movement has to be inwards, the movement has to be somewhere deep in the depth.

Intellect is superficial - so if you are trying to understand god, you will go on missing. The first thing to be understood is that understanding is not the right direction. Feeling....

"Once a christian missionary asked a very primitive man, an aboriginal, 'Who told you what you know of god?"

The primitive laughed and replied, 'Told? Whoever is so stupid that they have got to be told about god? Never did any man know god by tolds. You get god by feels. All the told there is to it is his name. You call him god, I call him gallah. I english gallah's name so you can understand me, but whoever has got anything by tolds?""

Whatsoever you know about god is through tolds - the parents, the society, the culture. It is your conditioning. And now you have got a concept about god and you are trying to understand that word. God is not a word. The word 'god' is not god. The word is simply a word; in itself empty and meaningless.

If you really want to know what god is, you will have to drop the word and move into feeling. You will have to drop the mind and move into no-mind. Love will bring you closer to it than thinking.

And when I say life is god, I am saying that if you want, you can experience god but you cannot understand. Life cannot be understood. You can live it - that is the only understanding there is. But you are worried. You say that you understand that - but what is god? If you understand that, if you understand what life is, you will never ask what god is. In that very understanding, the problem of god is solved.

A man who has lived life in its totality has understood all that is there to understand. He will be full of god. He has given enough of god to himself and there will be no problem of understanding.

You have not given anything of life to yourself. Empty you live. Hiding in a cocoon you live. Blind, deaf, you live. Dead you live. You have not given any life at all to your being - and there is the flavour, there is the taste of what god is.

You have to eat out of life. You have to drink out of life. You have to live, merge into it.

But the mind is cunning; it goes on thinking about god. Thinking is a very secure situation. You never go out of yourself. You go on playing with words. If you are too interested in the word, if you want to know what the word 'god' means... it doesn't mean god. If you are only interested in the linguistic symbol 'god', then you can ask the linguists; don't come to me. They say that 'god' is derived from a word 'ghu-to'. That 'ghu-to' means 'the called one', nothing else.

If you call life, it becomes god - the called one. If you provoke life, it becomes god.

God is a certain situation in life when you provoke it, when you pray to it, when you are in a deep dialogue with it. When you look at the sky and you say, 'Father, who art in heaven...' you have called life. Now life is no more just life - it has become the called one, the provoked one. The word 'god' simply means that.

In deep love, someday one cries, one starts uttering words... a dialogue arises. Life is no more 'it'; it becomes a 'thou'. That is the meaning of the word god. If life becomes your beloved, if life becomes a thou and you are in deep relationship with it, suddenly life has become god.

God is a deep communion with life.

If you are just trying to understand the word.... Yes, there is a need to use a different word - 'god' - rather than just calling it life. Life provoked, called. Life in deep relationship.

An ordinary woman passes by. She is a woman - but if love calls in your heart she is no more a woman; she is a beloved. We can say all beloveds are women. To become a beloved is a certain function in the being of a woman - when she is called, when she is no more just a she... becomes thou, becomes related.

Have you watched this transfiguration? The woman may have passed you many times, you may have seen her many times, yet she was just a woman, as there are millions of women. Then suddenly one day something changes. The woman is no more an ordinary woman; she has become divine. She is a beloved. Now suddenly she has come close to you; your heart has called.

Or a man. You know him, as one of so many men - just a statistic, just a number in millions of men; he has no particular face for you, is unrelated to you... if that man disappears and is replaced by another, you will not even notice the difference; he is only a number, is not yet a person to you; unprovoked, uncalled, he remains anonymous, he has no name.... Then suddenly one day love arises. He is no more an ordinary man; he has become a god.

Provoked, called, related, you have become... a communion has happened. And not only that the man has changed; you are also changed simultaneously. Something of the beyond has entered.

Yes, there is a function of the word 'god' - life provoked, life become a thou, life become a person.

You are no more indifferent to it. You feel for it - a communion has happened. Then life becomes god. Then life is no more with a lower case 'I'; now it is with a capital 'L' - Life.

But there is no way to understand god through intellect, because there is no way to understand love through intellect.

God is love provoked. And in that light of love, everything is transformed. It is alchemical, magical.

Give a little of god to you. That's my whole effort. When I say life is god, I am meaning to say don't see god in the temples and the mosques and the churches. There you will find the god of the philosophers, theologians - which is a bogus god, a false coin, a counterfeit. Look in the trees, in the flowers, in the stars, in humanity, in animals, in birds. Wherever there is life, look deep down there. Provoke god there. Pray there. Pray before a tree. Pray before an animal. Pray before the stars. Provoke god there. There is the real temple.

When I say life is god, I mean this - don't be confined in temples and don't be confined in churches and don't be confined by bibles and gitas and korans. Don't be confined at all. Life is infinite. Meet life as it is. Meet the infinite. Don't be afraid of the infinite.

Where is the fear of the infinite? The fear is that with the infinite you will disappear. In a church you cannot disappear. You can manage. A church is your construction. It is arbitrary. It is artificial. It is a plastic flower. You can control it, manipulate it. Behind the curtain are your hands. The god in the church is your creation.

The real god is totally different. If you come to the real god - the life - then you are god's creation.

Then god is behind everything. In the church you are behind everything. The church is a deception.

So when I say life is god, I simply mean don't create substitute gods, don't create substitute temples.

This vast space is the temple and this infinitely moving life is the god. Give a little of god to you and then you will understand. And that understanding will not be of the intellect; that will be more of your total being. It will be more of the blood and the guts.

I was-reading an anecdote:

"A man was brooding over his beer at the bar-room, and said to his friend, 'I tell you, Mulligan, I don't know what I am going to do about my wife."

'What is it now?"

'The same old thing - money. She is always asking for money. Only last Thursday she wanted ten dollars, yesterday she was around asking for twenty, and this morning, if you please, she demanded fifty dollars!"

'What does she do with all the money, for heaven's sake?' asked the friend.

'There is no way of finding out. I never give her any."

Give a little of god to you, then you will stop asking what god is. You don't give yourself a little of god and then you go on asking.

Nobody else can give you god, remember. You will have to come to terms with god on your own.

I cannot give god to you. God is not a commodity, it is not a thing. It is such an experience that only you can have it.

You will have to move alone. You will have to go totally alone, naked of all thoughts, totally naked, naked of all philosophies, naked of all scriptures. And once you have tasted a little, you will understand.

Love life, and by and by a light will arise in your being. Through deep love of life one comes to understand what god is.

The last part of the question is: THEY SAY GOD IS THE ONE WHO CREATED THE WORLD.

God is the world. The mind goes on creating dualisms. It says god is the one who created the world.

Then the world is separate and god is separate. God is not separate. He cannot be separate from his world. If he is separate, the world cannot exist for a single moment without him. He is the very life of life.

So don't imagine god as a painter who paints on a canvas and then the canvas is separate and god is separate. The painter can die but the painting can continue.

Because of this duality, Nietzsche could say, 'God is dead.' What is the need of him? He created the world - finished! Why go on carrying the load? What is the need of god? Once he created the world then what is the need? The world is there, you are there. This god can only be a hindrance.

He will come between you and your life - be finished with him!

And Nietzsche was right in a way: that is the logical conclusion of duality. The world is perfectly right without him. Why bring him in? In fact, the more you bring him in, the more trouble arises.

Look at the religions. How many wars, murders, violence?... What has not happened in the name of religion? The world has suffered tremendously.

Be finished with the god. He created the world; give him a last thank you and be finished. Now he is no more needed. Already too old, almost a ruin....

Nietzsche said, 'God is dead, and man is free now.' This is the logical conclusion of dualistic thinking.

In the East we have never thought of god as a painter. We have thought of god as a dancer. The dance cannot be separated from the dancer; the painting can be separated. That's why dance is alive and painting is dead. Howsoever beautiful a painting, it is dead. It is separate from the creator.

The moment it is separate it is dead. It may have lived a life in the mind of the painter, it may have been alive when it was not painted. The moment it is painted it is finished; it is already a dead product. But a dance....

In India we call god 'nataraj' - the god of dancers. You must have seen Shiva dancing. That is the eastern concept about god - a non-dual concept. When the dancer stops, the dancing stops. You cannot separate the dancing from the dancer. And dancing comes to a culmination, to a crescendo, when the dancer is completely lost in it - when there is neither a dancer nor a dancing; both are one... one movement of sheer energy and delight.

That's why nothing can be compared with dancing - poetry, painting, sculpture; nothing comes close to it. Dancing remains the supreme art. And that is the first art that was born and that will remain the last art also, because dancing has some quality in it of life itself.

God is a dancer. He is not a creator in the sense of a painter; he is a creator in the sense of a dancer.

Then let me say it in another way. God is not a creator but creativity... a dynamic energy. The moment you say creator, he is dead. The very word 'creator' has a full-stop in it. Creativity with an open end, tremendously moving and moving and reaching to higher and higher peaks....

The animals are a dance of god. The trees are also a dance of god. Humanity is also a dance of god, reaching higher and higher. God is moving faster and faster - more mad, more fast, getting dissolved into his dance.

A buddha or a jesus is the ultimate of his dance... where the dancer is so completely drunk and mad that he has become the dance.

That's why I say that if you live life in its dynamism you will come closer to god - because he is still dancing. Don't say that he created the world - he is still creating. Otherwise how do the trees go on growing? How do the flowers go on blooming? Every moment the world is being renewed. Every morning fresh life is released.

No, the christian god is false - the god who created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh. It doesn't seem true - a holiday for a god will be a death. Just think of it. A holiday for a god will be a death to his creation. The dancer cannot go for a holiday otherwise the dance will disappear. And the very idea that god got tired is stupid. He is still creating. He is nothing but creativity.

Think in terms of energy; don't think in terms of things. Think in terms of energy. The wild ocean....

God is a wild ocean of energy - goes on and on, waves upon waves, nonending. There has never been a beginning. The very idea of a beginning is of the mind. How can the world begin?

Before Darwin, christians used to believe that god created the world on a particular date. One foolish theologian even decided the date and the day - four thousand and four years before Jesus, exactly on a Monday he started... it must have been the first of January.

Then the question arises - what was he doing before that? Don't ask christians; they will get angry.

Even a man like Saint Augustine became very very angry. One man asked - the question seems to be relevant and innocent - he asked, 'I can understand that god created the world four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ was born, but what was he doing before that?"

Of course there is no answer to it in christian theology. Saint Augustine became very angry and he said, 'He was brooding and thinking about punishments for people like you who ask such questions."

This is not very saintly. The question was very innocent; this anger is irrelevant. But the man raised a question which topples down the whole christian theology. No, there has never been a beginning. There cannot be, because then the question will always arise - what was there before the beginning? And there is never going to be any end, because the. question will arise - then what will be after the end? If you can conceive anything before the beginning, then that was not the beginning. If you can conceive anything after the end, then that is not the end.

The world is an ongoing process. God is creativity - creating and creating and creating. In fact the moment I say creating, I don't feel very happy. Language is not exactly capable of expressing it. The moment I say 'creating', again it seems that he is separate.

No, he is the creator and he is the created. He is the same energy which becomes a rock, becomes a tree, becomes a man... the same energy which becomes a sinner and becomes a saint... the same energy which weeps and cries and laughs... the same energy which becomes the day and the night, life and death, summer and winter - non-dual.

Existence is god called through love, provoked through love. The moment you become capable of prayer, existence becomes god. The moment you become capable of deep love, life becomes god.

It is a transfiguration of the same energy.

So, god is not something which exists there like an object. If I have experienced him, I cannot show him to you. Unless you provoke him, unless you. come to terms with him, unless you kneel down in prayer, unless you call him, you cannot know him.

And the dilemma is that first you want to be perfectly certain whether he is, then you can pray. And only through prayer he is; only through trust he is. And you want first to be certain about the very hypothesis that god is, then you can trust.

Now this the dilemma. If you choose that first you need certainty, then you will never be able to know what god is.

It is only for gamblers to know god... who are not worried about certainty, who are ready to move in danger, who are ready to move in insecurity, who are ready to move into the unknown, who are ready to leave the comfortable past, the convenient past, who are like small children - always wondering and always wandering.

God is only for those who are courageous. It is the greatest courage there is.

Because it is the most difficult thing - almost impossible for the mind to do. First comes trust and then arises god. You create god through your trust. Here you open the eyes of trust and suddenly life takes a change, is transformed - it becomes godly, it becomes divine.

God is your subjectivity, your innermost rest, coming at home.

God has nothing to do with theology; it has something to do with the way you live your life - whether you live through the mind or you live through the heart.

If you live through the heart, forget all about god; he will take care himself. He will come, he will knock at your heart. Sooner or later you will hear the sound of his footsteps coming closer and closer. Your very heartbeats will become the footsteps... the sound of his footsteps. Your very breathing will be his coming in and his going out.

Question 2:

The first thing, and the most basic to be understood, is that whatsoever you do, it should not be a reaction. If it is an act then there is no problem.

If Muso's disciple had acted out of his spontaneity, Muso would have certainly blessed him, but he started saying, that he would like to do this, he cannot allow this man to live any more, he has insulted his master.... If he had acted rather than brooding about it, rather than bringing the mind in; if he had acted with no-mind, the master would have certainly blessed him.

Action is always good; reaction always bad.

So try first to understand this term 'reaction'. It means you are acting unconsciously. Somebody is manipulating you. Somebody says something, does something, and you react. The real master of the situation is somebody else. Somebody comes and insults you and you react, you become angry.

Somebody comes and praises you and you smile and you become happy. Both are the same. You are a slave and the other knows how to push your buttons. You are behaving like a mechanism. You are an automaton, not a man yet.

Act, don't react. Don't be a plaything in the hands of others.

And you cannot predict a man who acts out of no-mind; only mind is predictable. If the disciple was a realized man, a man alert, nobody can say what turn the story would have taken - nobody can say. Nobody can say; a thousand and one alternatives open for consciousness.

The story would have been totally different, that much is certain. He may have thrown the samurai out of the boat, or he himself may have jumped out of the boat, or he may have even thrown Muso, his master, out of the boat. Nobody knows.

Consciousness is total freedom. But one thing is certain: whatsoever would have happened, the master would have blessed it - if it was out of no-mind, spontaneous, an act totally in the present, not controlled by anybody else, coming out of his own being....

We react according to our conditionings. If you have been born in a vegetarian family and non- vegetarian food is placed on your table, you will feel nausea, vomiting, sickness. Not because of the non-vegetarian food, but because of your conditioning. Somebody else who has been conditioned for non-vegetarian food will relish the very sight of it, will feel appetite not nausea, will feel happy, will be thrilled. That too is a conditioning.

We react because we have been conditioned in a certain way. You can be conditioned to be very polite. You can be conditioned to be always in control. You can be conditioned to be silent. You can be conditioned to remain still in situations where people ordinarily become disturbed and distracted.

But if it is a conditioning then it has nothing to do with religion; then it has something to do with psychology. And Buddha or Jesus are not masters there - B.F. Skinner and Pavlov, they are the masters there. It is a conditioned reflex.

I have heard a story. In B. F. Skinner's lab, a new mouse was introduced.

They go on working with mice because they don't give any more credit to man. They think that if they can understand the mind of a mouse, they have understood humanity.

The old mouse, who had been there with Skinner for a very long time, initiated the new and said, 'Look. This professor B. F. Skinner is a very good man, but you have to condition him first. Push this button and immediately breakfast comes in. I have conditioned him perfectly."

B. F. Skinner thinks he has conditioned his lab mice, and they think they have conditioned him.

Conditioning is a murder; the spontaneity is killed. The mind is fed with certain ideas and you are not allowed to respond; you are only allowed to react. In small things or great things, it is the same.

If you have been brought up in a religious family, the word 'god' is so beautiful, so holy. But if you have been brought up in a communist family in Soviet Russia, then the very word is ugly, nauseating.

One feels as if it would leave a bad taste in the mouth to utter the word.

Small or big is not the question. If you go on behaving the way you have been conditioned, you are functioning as a machine; the man has not been born yet.

"It is said that when you tell an englishman a joke, he will laugh three times. He will laugh the first time - when you tell it - to be polite. He will laugh a second time - when you explain it - again to be polite. (That is the training of the englishman - continuously being polite.) Finally he will laugh a third time in the middle of the night when he wakes from a sound sleep and suddenly gets it.

When you tell a german the same joke, he will laugh twice. He will laugh first - when you tell it - to he polite. He will laugh a second time - when you explain it - to be polite. He will never laugh a third time, because he will never get it.

When you tell an american the same joke, he will laugh once - when you tell it - for he will get it.

And when you tell a jew the same joke, he won't laugh at all. Instead he will say, 'It's an old joke, and besides, you are telling it all wrong."

It may be a joke, or it may be a great philosophy. It may be trivia or god himself - it makes no difference. People behave the way they are conditioned to behave, the way they are brought up to behave, the way they are expected to behave. Nature is not allowed to function; only nurture is allowed to function. This is the man whom we call a slave.

When you become free, when you drop all conditioning and for the first time you look at life with fresh eyes, with no clouds of conditioning in between, then you become unpredictable. Then nobody knows, then nobody can imagine what is going to happen. Because then you are no more there; god acts through you. Right now only society goes on acting through you.

Once you are simply alert, ready to respond, with no fixed idea, with no prejudice, with no plan, whatsoever happens in the moment, you become true and authentic.

Remember two words - authority and authenticity. Ordinarily you behave according to the authority that has conditioned you - the priest, the politician, the parents. You behave according to the authority.

A religious man behaves not according to the authority; he behaves through his own authenticity.

He responds. A situation arises there, a challenge is there - he responds with his total being. Even he himself cannot predict it.

When you ask a question, even I don't know what answer I am going to give to you. When I give it, only then I also know; only then I say, so, this was the answer. Your question is there, I am here - a response is bound to happen.

Response is responsibility. Response is authenticity. Response is living in the moment.

So, if the disciple was a little more aware, I don't know what would have happened. What would have happened I don't know; nobody can say.

You can always predict for unconscious people. I can say that if you were there instead of that disciple, the same would have happened - the same. Only two possibilities are there: either you would have been a coward or you would have been a brave man. If you were strong, you would have behaved in the same way the disciple behaved. If you were a weakling, you would have found some rationalizations to hide behind. These are the two alternatives.

But for a real man of understanding there are no alternatives - all possibilities are always open; no door is closed. And each moment decides. He does not carry a decision beforehand; he has no ready-made decisions. Fresh, virgin, he moves. That is the virginity of an enlightened man...

uncorrupted by the past.

Listening to this story, you can do two things. One: you can try to be patient, as the master said to his disciple. If you try to be patient, that will be a suppression. It is not going to help. That patience is not going to be true; deep down there will be turmoil, a crowd, impatience, and on the surface you will pretend that you are patient.

The second possibility is that you understand that the reaction was just a reaction, a mechanical reaction, and you become more alert. Not that you suppress your impatience; you become more alert, you become more aware, and patience follows like a shadow.

Awareness is the key. If you become aware, everything follows.

Don't try to become anything - patient, loving, non-violent, peaceful. Don't try. If you try, you will force yourself and you will become a hypocrite. That's how the whole religion has turned into hypocrisy. Inside you are different; on the outside painted. You smile, and inside you would have liked to kill. Inside you car;y on all rubbish and on the outside you go on sprinkling perfume. Inside you stink; on the outside you create an illusion as if you are a roseflower.

Never repress. Repression is the greatest calamity that has happened to man. And it has happened for very beautiful reasons. You look at a buddha or a muso - so silent, undisturbed. A greed arises:

you would also like to be like them. What to do? You start trying to be a stone statue. Whenever there is a situation and you can be disturbed, you hold yourself. You control yourself.

Control is a dirty word. It has not four letters in it, but it is a four-letter word.

Freedom.... And when I say freedom I don't mean licence. You may understand... when I say freedom you may understand licence, because that's how things go. A controlled mind, whenever it hears about freedom immediately understands it as licence. Licence is the opposite pole of control.

Freedom is just in between, just exactly in the middle, where there is no control and no licence.

Freedom has its own discipline, but it is not forced by any authority. It comes out of your awareness, out of authenticity. Freedom should never be misunderstood as licence, otherwise you will again miss.

Awareness brings freedom. In freedom there is no need for control, because there is no possibility for licence. It is because of licence that you have been forced to control, and if you remain licentious the society will go on controlling you.

It is because of your licentiousness that the policeman exists and the judge and the politician and the courts, and they go on forcing you to control yourself. And in controlling yourself you miss the whole point of being alive, because you miss celebration. How can you celebrate if you are too controlled?

It happens almost every day. When people come to see me who are very much controlled and disciplined, it is almost impossible to penetrate their skull; they are too thick... walls of stone around them. They have become stoney, they have become ice-cold, the warmth is lost. Because if you are warm, there is fear - you may do something. So they have killed themselves, completely poisoned themselves. To remain in control, they have found only one solution and that is not to live at all. So be a stone buddha. Then you will be able to pretend that you are patient, silent, disciplined.

But that is not what I am teaching here. Control has to be dropped as much as licence. Now you will be puzzled. You can choose either control or licence. You say, 'If I drop control, I will become licentious. If I drop licence then I have to become controlled.' But I tell you, if you become aware, control and licence both go down the same drain. They are two aspects of the same coin, and in awareness they are not needed.

It happened:

"An eighteen year-old boy, who had always been somewhat shy and retiring, one evening decided to change himself. He came down from his bedroom, all slicked up, and snapped at his father, 'Look, I'm going out on the town - I'm going to find some beautiful girls. I'm going to get blind drunk and have a great time. I'm going to do all the things a fellow of my age should be doing in the prime of life and get a bit of adventure and excitement, so just don't try and stop me!"

His old man said, 'Try and stop you? Hold on, my son, I'm coming with you."

All controlled people are in that state - bubbling inside to explode into licentiousness.

Go and see your monks in the monasteries. In India we have that type of neurosis very much. They are all neurotics. This is something to be understood - either you become erotic or you become neurotic. If you repress your eros, eroticness, you become neurotic. If you drop your neurosis, you become erotic.

And both are sorts of madnesses. One should be simply oneself - neither neurotic nor erotic, available to all situations, ready to face whatsoever life brings, ready to accept and live - but always alert, conscious, aware, mindful.

So the only thing to be constantly remembered is selfremembrance. You should not forget yourself.

And always move from the innermost core of your being. Let actions flow from there, from your very center of being, and whatsoever you do will be virtuous.

Virtue is a function of awareness.

If you do something from the periphery, it may not look like a sin, but it is sin. The society may be happy with you, but you cannot be happy with yourself. The society may praise you, but you deep down will go on condemning yourself because you will know you have missed life - and missed for nothing.

What is it - the praise of the society? If people call you a saint, what is it? Nothing but gossip. How does it matter? You have missed god for gossip. You have missed life for these foolish people who are all around, for their good opinion.

Live life from your very center. This is all that meditation is about. And by and by you will come to feel a discipline that is not forced, not cultivated, which arises spontaneously. arises naturally like a flower blooms. Then you will have the whole life available, and you will have your whole being available. And when your whole being and the whole life meet, between the two arises that which is god, between the two arises that which is nirvana.

Question 3:

THIS HAPPENED TO MY MOTHER WHEN SHE WAS A CHILD. A very beautiful question; listen to it carefully.

There you miss. You are the cart. Ask who is the horse.

You have not yet known who the horse is within you. All that you know about yourself is the cart. If you think 'I am the horse', from the very beginning you have taken a wrong step. Now there will be no freedom.

This I is your bondage. This I is your slavery. This I consists of nothing but blinkers. This I is your blindness.

And you ask: I AM THE HORSE. WHAT IS THE CART? Of course you cannot see the cart because you are misunderstanding the cart for yourself. You are misunderstanding. You are thinking you are the horse; that's why you cannot see where the cart is. You are the cart. Look for the horse.

And if you start looking for the horse, suddenly you will see your whole I consists of imprisonments, bondages, chains.

But the mind is very cunning and goes on and on deceiving. The story is beautiful, the incident beautiful, can almost become a situation for a satori. If your mother had been a little more aware, that moment would have become a moment of breakthrough. But you are also missing the point, and that's how mind deceives.

I was reading a story:

"The fires of hell are occasionally banked for individual sinners for a longer or shorter period of time, depending on the egregiousness of their particular sins. At one time, three inmates of the hot place, their brief vacations happening to coincide, met and engaged in conversation.

One said, 'I was jewish when I was on earth, but my weakness, frankly, was ham sandwiches. So you see what happened."

'We could eat ham freely,' said the second, 'because I was a catholic. Unfortunately I was too free with the ladies. Adultery was my chief sin and that is the reason I am here."

The third remained silent and the other two turned to him. 'Well,' they asked, 'why are you in the hot place?"

And the third said firmly, 'I am a christian scientist. This place is not hot and I am not here."

Now, even in hell you can remain a christian scientist. You can deny. Because christian scientists go on saying that it is a question of mind: if you say it is, it is; if you say it is not, it is not. Had it been so easy.... It is not so easy.

"One man met a christian scientist and the christian scientist asked him, 'How is your uncle?"

The man said, 'He is very weak and ill."

The christian scientist said, 'He simply thinks. He is not ill and he is not weak. This is just mind. He thinks it."

After seven days they met again and the christian scientist again asked, 'How is your uncle?"

The man said, 'Now he is in more trouble. Now for two days he thinks that he is dead."

The mind can continue playing new games. First you try to escape. If you cannot escape then you create the idea that you are not here. Beware of it.

You are the cart. Don't say, 'I am not the cart, I am the horse.' This is the trick of the mind. Once you accept it, you will look in vain. You will never find where the cart is and you will never find who the horse is. Then everything becomes confused.

All that you know about yourself is not you. It is not your reality. All that you think about yourself is others' opinions that you have collected. Just look at what you think about yourself and you will find bits collected from here and there.

Somebody says you are beautiful; then go and stand before the mirror and you will find yourself a little more beautiful. Somebody says you have never been so beautiful. You must be, otherwise why should he bother? People say you are clever; you start thinking you are clever.

People go on saying things around you and you go on collecting opinions... cuttings from newspapers... and that is your whole being. Just have a look and you will find - this bit comes from your mother, this bit comes from your father, this bit comes from your brother, this bit from the teacher, this bit from the priest. Just go on looking how the whole cart has accumulated around you.

And once you see that it is borrowed from others then there is no difficulty in dropping it. In that very seeing, it drops - and then awareness will arise. That awareness is the horse, and there you will not find any I AM. At the most it is AMNESS, isness, but there is no I in it.

The ego is the most false thing in the world. But if you accept it, it goes on creating more and more illusions. It is very productive. It does not believe in birth-control. It goes on producing more illusions, more illusions. The ego is the mother of all illusions.

Question 4:

Who has told to watch? I am not saying to go on watching. I am saying be alert - and they are totally different. When you watch, you watch through the mind. When you are alert, you are simply alert; there is no watching. When I say 'alert', I simply mean don't fall asleep.

Alertness has nothing to do with the mind. Watching has everything to do with the mind. Watching means you are trying from outside the situation. Being alert means being in the situation but not asleep.

Of course, you will miss the whole thing, the whole beauty of love, if you are watching. But people go on doing that; they have become watchers. And that's why when I say 'witness', inside, you immediately think 'watching'.

People have turned into watchers. Particularly in the West, the whole humanity has become watchers. Either watch the movie or the TV or the football match or somebody dancing or somebody making love. You are just a watcher. In the film somebody else is making love and you are sitting in your chair and watching. What foolishness! Either make love or go home. Why go on watching?

The whole society seems to have turned into a voyeur. That's the only thing - go on watching. What are you going to gain out of watching?

I have heard about people who cannot make love in darkness because they would like to watch.

They would like to watch themselves making love. Flooded with light, they make love. Something is missed. Love is a mystery and only happens in deep darkness. The moment you start watching, there love disappears. You have become a voyeur.

Women are more instinctively alert of the phenomenon. They always close their eyes when they make love. And if they don't close their eyes you can be certain they belong to the lib. movement.

They are trying to be like men, as foolish as men are. A woman always closes her eyes because it is so tremendously beautiful to be inside and alert. So much is happening inside... such a flow of energy, such a deep resonance, such music, such silence, such a great dance of orgasmic feelings - who bothers to watch? One enjoys, one delights in it, one dances in it, one is bathed in it. Who bothers to watch?

I have heard about people who not on4 need light in their bedroom; they fix mirrors all over so that from every side they can watch themselves making love. Love is not important; the watching is important. Peeping toms... Looking into others' bathroom doors and keyholes. You would like to even look at yourself through your keyhole. But it is impossible - either you can be in the bathroom or you can be at the keyhole. So people have created many devices.

I have heard about people who have fixed automatic cameras in their bedrooms so they can make love at ease and the camera can go on taking photos and later on they can review the whole thing.

The thing in itself is not important - the reviewing....

This is a disease. If you pull a tree up to see the roots, the tree will die. The roots have to be left in darkness. God works more in darkness than in light, because light is a little violating. A child is born in the deep womb of the mother... dark, no light enters. There he grows. A seed grows in the earth, in the dark womb of the earth - there it sprouts, comes up. All that is beautiful is born in the dark.

Never be a watcher.

Witnessing is totally different. These words create trouble, because witnessing also means watching. But try to understand me. Alertness simply means that you are making love and you are not asleep, that's all. Move into it as deeply as possible. Be merged into it. Let the orgasm take over. Be possessed by the god of love. Tremble like a small leaf in the strong wind. Let the god of love come to you from all over, from all directions. Let yourself be drowned - but don't fall asleep.

Remain alert.

I'm not saying watch, because the moment you watch you have become the eyes and the whole being is lost. When you are alert, you are alert as a whole totality. Every cell of your body is alert.

The whole body is alert. Alertness has a totally different quality.

But words create trouble. And we have become so knowledgeable; we can always find ways in words. We can always go on playing games.

It happened:

"In a museum, Muskovitch, having spent considerable time tramping the corridors, paused for a refreshing cigar. He had not been smoking long when a museum guard appeared, approached him angrily and said, 'Do you see that!' He was pointing to a sign on the wall which said in glaring red letters: NO SMOKING.

Muskovitch regarded it for a moment, then said to the guard, 'It doesn't say positively."

You can always find ways, means, through words. I say 'alert'. I never said 'watch'. Watching is a tense activity. You become narrowed. Alertness is a very broad consciousness. You are not narrowed; you are widely open.

Watching is concentration. You concentrate - as if you want to hit a target with an arrow. Then you concentrate. Then you exclude everything from your vision; only the target, only the target remains in your eyes. You forget everything. Now everything has to be excluded and your whole consciousness has to become pinpointed. This is what watching is.

Alertness is meditation. You are wide open, all doors open; not narrow, absolutely vulnerable.

Everything is allowed.

You can listen to me in two ways. You can concentrate. Then the singing of the birds will be a distraction because you have to exclude it. You can meditate with me. Listening to me meditatively, then birds become part of it; they are not to be excluded. They are saying the same thing in their way and they are not enemies and you are wide open. Everything is allowed: all windows open, all doors open, winds from every direction allowed. No distraction is there, because you are not trying to concentrate.

People come to me and they say, 'We feel very distracted. How to avoid distraction?"

I tell them, 'Avoid concentration. Don't avoid distraction. You are creating the problem of distraction because you are trying to concentrate."

Meditation is not a concentration. It doesn't exclude anything. It includes all. Just look at the difference. Not just a slit is open in you; you are completely open. Everything is allowed. Then the birds enrich. Then a dog barks somewhere - that too enriches. Nothing distracts if you are not concentrating. You create the problem by concentration.

Being alert means being open, alive, not sleepy, not unconscious. But it is not a question of watching; otherwise you will become tense. If you are trying to watch then you are divided. Then one part of you is making love; another is patrolling like a policeman. Then you will never be totally in it. There will be no love to be watched. Dissolve.

If you dissolve totally in love, you will find a certain quality of awareness in you; not like a torch-light - the torch-light is concentrated, pin-pointed, narrow - but like a lamp, the light falling in all directions.

Let love be total and awareness will come out of it. Don't create problems for yourself.

I know you go on misunderstanding because you go on interpreting. Whatsoever I say, you interpret it according to your conditionings and thoughts and ideology, and then you destroy everything. Listen to me and don't try to interpret it. Leave it as pure as possible.

And I am not saying difficult things to you. I am saying very simple truths. You make them difficult, you make them complex. You are addicted to complexity. Once the mind makes trouble then the mind becomes the master in solving it.

If you listen to me rightly, alert, aware, you can feel what I am trying to say. It is difficult to say, but if you are sympathetic, in love, in trust, you will have the feel of it.

That's why trust is so much needed. That's why I go on insisting that you become part of my family.

You can be here as an outsider, you can be here as a visitor, you can be here without being a sannyasin: you will miss much. I will be talking to you the same, but you will miss much, because the doubt, the untrusting mind will be standing there and destroying and corrupting everything..

Once you relax, once you accept, once you surrender, once you trust, then whatsoever I am saying has a totally different quality to it. Only then understanding arises.

Question 5:

If you have really listened in love, then for years and years and lives I can go on talking and every morning you will be again excited. Love makes everything new, because love never accumulates the past. Love never becomes a burden; it never collects dust. The mirror remains clean.

If you are listening through the mind then it will be difficult. Then even one year is too much. Then you will have collected. so much head you will have become heavy, and you will start getting restless and the excitement will be lost - because the mind becomes always old. Mind is old because it accumulates past.

If you have heard me through the heart then there is no accumulation. Every morning you come as a morning - fresh like the morning dew, a newly-opened bud of a flower.

And what I am doing here is not really saying something. Rather, I am playing on your innermost core of being. The words are just excuses. The words are just to keep you engaged somewhere so that I can go on penetrating deeper in you. The words simply create a climate in which I can penetrate deep in you and reach to your innermost core.

If you listen from the heart, then this can go on and on and you will always be excited. Love is always excited because love is always new. The heart is always excited - never bored, never burdened.

Mind is always bored and burdened.

Feel happy and blessed. It is a benediction - rarely happens... to very few people. These birds have been singing here continuously, but when they sing again, it is again new. Because that singing does not mean anything.

If I have some meaning to convey to you, then sooner or later the mind will feel, 'Now, it is enough."

I have nothing to convey. I have no message. On the contrary, I am the message.

I have nothing to convey to you except myself. I am not giving you a doctrine. I am not a teacher.

Remember me as a singer, as a poet, as a dancer - that will be truer.

Question 6:

Since I became enlightened I have not uttered a single word. You must have been listening to somebody else, not to me. I am keeping silence. Try to listen again and you will not find a single word uttered. Somewhere there has been a mistake. In your dream you may have heard me talking.

I have not talked.

When you are unconscious you talk. When you become conscious you become silent.

An anecdote:

"George Johnson, a hard-bitten man of early middle-age, had evaded many a marital trap, but was now helplessly in love with a pretty young girl. Finally he said, 'Will you marry me, Nancy?"

She smiled and said, 'Oh yes, George.' There followed a long silence until Nancy said, 'Well, say something more, George."

And Johnson said hollowly, 'I think I have said too much as it is."

In your unconsciousness, even if you don't say much, you say much. And you are caught in whatsoever you say. If people who are unconscious remain silent, the world will be very much better.

When you become conscious, you can go on saying - it is never enough. And people who have attained, if they remain silent, the world will be very much poorer.