You cannot avoid what you are

Question 1:

Niskriya, your question is very special. You are asking, "Why can I not just fall in love with any woman and be blind like every man?" It is simple, Niskriya: because you are not a blind man.

And as far as women are concerned, they like blind men! They don't fall in love with buddhas. You are so alert and aware and meditative - women don't like these things at all. Just seeing you once, they will never come close to you.

Falling in love is possible only when the woman understands that the other is also going to fall.

Looking at you, it does not seem possible. You may stand in love, but you cannot fall. Nothing can be done about it. This is your type, and I don't think it is good to make any effort to change your type. You are a unique person in this unique community.

Everyone here is falling in love and falling out of love, and Niskriya is standing, watching the whole scene and wondering, "Why am I not falling?" You are not just another man; you are yourself. And it is a great quality not to fall, particularly in love, because then you have to fall out. It is an unnecessary exercise. A few people like doing exercise, a few people don't like. You are a silent man - beyond all these exercises.

Only this woman seems to be interested in you! So find out later on - she will come to you by herself - but it will last only one night. In the morning you will find you are standing again. This is your destiny.

Moishe Finkelstein pays his bill and starts to get up from the table.

"By the way, sir," says the anxious-looking waiter, "do you believe that history repeats itself?"

"I certainly do," exclaims Moishe, "I know of a number of cases."

"Well, sir," replies the waiter, rubbing his hands together, "one gentleman who was in here yesterday left me a five dollar tip."

"Amazing," says Moishe, reaching for his hat, "perhaps he will be here again tomorrow."

Everybody understands things in his own way and everybody has to be himself. History may be repeating, but no individual repeats.

Paddy has been suffering from chest pains, and although the tests have been inconclusive, the doctor tells him that if he wants to live much longer, he will have to lead a quiet life - no late nights, no exercise, and no sex.

"Okay," says Maureen when she hears the news. "From now on I will sleep downstairs on the sofa, then he won't be tempted."

They live like this for three weeks. Then one night they bump into each other on the stairs.

"What are you doing out of bed?" asks Maureen.

"I can't stay upstairs on my own anymore," replies Paddy. "I'm coming downstairs to die."

"Thank God for that," says Maureen, "because I was just coming upstairs to kill you!"

Big Chief Running Bear walks into the drugstore and starts complaining to the druggist.

"Rubbers you give me no good!" he says, "Chief go, UGH! Squaw go, UGH! Rubbers go, BOOM!"

The druggist is very sorry and gives the Indian a new package.

"These are the strongest rubbers made," he says.

The next day, the chief is back.

"Rubber no good!" He explains, "Chief go, UGH! Squaw go, UGH! Rubbers go, BOOM!"

The frustrated druggist goes into the back of his shop, cuts a piece from a bicycle tire, and glues one end shut. He then goes back into the shop and hands it to the chief.

Next morning, the squaw comes into the drugstore.

"Rubber you sell chief too good," she says, "Chief go, UGH! Squaw go, UGH! Chief's ball go, BOOM!"

This is a world where a variety of people exist. You are a special case. But this woman... just wait; she is going to torture you! Beware of this woman, otherwise tomorrow will come the question of how to get rid of a woman - and everything has gone, BOOM!

It is better, Niskriya, to be silent. You are here to meditate. But that woman is too much for you, absolutely determined... unafraid, not knowing you. A few others are also becoming interested.

Have you asked the question or is it a kind of advertisement?

Question 2:

Dolma, I know what is missing in you and that is a trust, and you have not been able to get rid of your guilt that you are carrying within yourself. I have been asked if Dolma should be allowed in the commune or not - because you were part of that company who destroyed the commune in America.

But I could not say that you should be stopped from entering the commune.

It would have been tremendously helpful if you had revealed in what ways you participated in destructive things, because you were very intimately part of the gang - but you are hiding all that.

That is making you hollow; otherwise, in this place, nobody is hollow, and everybody who goes in does not find emptiness, but finds nothingness which is totally different from emptiness.

Emptiness is something sad. Nothingness is another name of fullness; it is overflowing. You don't find love arising because the guilt is heavy. It is still time: if you confess everything that you have done, you will be relieved of it.

Just a few days ago, Patipada was here and she wrote asking to be in the commune. I asked her first for an apology, because she was also like you, although not that deep in the destructiveness.

She replied, "I don't feel that I have done anything wrong, and I don't feel like apologizing."

I said, "Then it is up to you, but you cannot be part - it is better you leave."

After two months she came again and with tears wrote a letter saying, "I am very sorry. I know I have done wrong things and I know I have been part of many things which culminated in helping the government to destroy the commune. I was wrong to say that I have nothing to be sorry for. I am sorry and I ask for forgiveness."

I said, "If it is coming from your deepest heart - not just a political, diplomatic strategy - then you will find your home again amongst my people. I will not prevent you. I will give you another chance."

But I was hoping Dolma would express by herself her guilt and her apology - but she has not done that. She is here but she cannot be part because of that guilty feeling, "I have misbehaved, I have misused the trust and love and compassion..." She will find herself alone in the thousands of people who are here, surrounded by a wall of her own guilt.

If she wants to be free, she has to confess it and the confession has not to be diplomatic. If it is diplomatic, it is not going to help. If it is authentic, it will immediately transform your sadness into laughter, your aloneness into a meaningful meeting and merging in the commune.

You have not even asked the real thing in your question. It is very strange: people have problems, but they ask something else; they don't expose themselves. You are asking about meditation as if you are a meditator. And you are saying, "The more empty I get inside," and I know you have never been inside.

If even for once you have been inside, your first realization would have been that you owe something to the commune - an apology at least.

You are saying, "I had an idea that when one meditates, one slowly is transformed into being more laughing and loving." Do you understand what you are writing in your question, "I had an idea that when one meditates..."? Certainly it is not your experience, it is just "an idea, that when one meditates one slowly is transformed into being more laughing and loving, but I just get hollow and empty and start withdrawing myself from others." But this is not because you are meditating.

Just face the reality, look in the mirror and remove your masks. And what is only your idea will be found just phony.

Meditate, but right now, the condition in which you are, you cannot meditate. And because you cannot meditate, the guilt does not allow you to mix with people because these are the same people you have betrayed...

It is so easy to accept, because it is very human to err. It is more human to realize that one has erred, that one has committed a mistake. It is not something that one has to be afraid of. I am not sending you into hell, but if you don't accept and realize what has been done by you or by the company in which you were an intrinsic part, you will remain empty and you will start withdrawing from people. And finally you will create the hell.

The hell is not somewhere else. It is not geographical. It is your psychology: a psychology which is messed up, confused, and has become ugly and is afraid to expose itself to the sun and to the wind... Dolma, just do that.

Search out within yourself - because nobody knows more than you what has been happening in the group you were part of - what kind of power trip, and in that power trip what kind of blindness, the things that you did in that blindness or supported or you did not object to.

Unless you unburden your heart it is very difficult for me to help you. And you will feel deep sorrow. I feel compassion for you, because I don't have any condemnation for anyone. People are unconscious, they go on doing things and they don't know where it will lead them, what will be the consequences.

So it is not just you; everybody is in the same boat. And one should always be alert that whenever he finds that he has done something wrong - although there was a certain feeling that this is not the thing to do - still one went on doing it because it was giving power, prestige, respectability.

The group to which you belonged in the commune in America - none of that group were meditators; they had no time to meditate - but they were conspiring to do all kinds of things, even trying to murder people. You may not have done anything, but if you were part of the group and you remained silent, you are as much responsible as the person who did it.

There is no problem: you simply confess everything. Just write a letter in THE RAJNEESH TIMES confessing everything that you did, that you knew was being done by other people and that you never objected to, but on the contrary, you supported. You will be free of this guilt, this hollowness - and happiness is not very far away, and meditation is your birthright. And one who goes in meditation, always goes into fullness, into nothingness.

But nothingness is not emptiness. Nothingness is simply no thing-ness, a space, pure, unobstructed.

The whole sky becomes available to you within your own being.

Kowalski's son has been acting strangely, so Kowalski takes him to the psychiatrist.

"Tell me, son," asks the psychiatrist, "how many wheels are there on a car?"

"Four," replies the boy.

"Very good," says the shrink. "And what is it that a cow has four of that a woman has two of?"

"Legs," answers the kid.

"Good," says the shrink. "And what does your father have that your mother likes the most?"

"Money," replies the boy.

The psychiatrist turns to Kowalski and says, "You don't have to worry about your son, he is smart."

"He sure is!" says Kowalski. "I missed the last two questions myself!"

Just accept what you have missed and you will feel unburdened, happy, and you will be accepted back - nobody is going to reject you. But in the commune in America, you had become part of a group which separated itself from the whole commune of five thousand people. Just twenty women and the desire is to dominate? It is very human.

Because I was silent and I was in isolation, and I was not talking to anyone, not meeting with anyone, this power group became superior to others, starting the egoist trip.

The simple thing for you is to accept that you have been wrong and that you deeply feel sorry for it, and nobody is going to be angry about it. I don't teach people to be judgmental. They will all feel sympathetic towards you, loving towards you. What happened, happened, but we can change the future. The past is already gone, but if you go on carrying the past inside yourself, then it is not gone. It is present and it will remain your future also. This will be like a cancer which will kill you.

Paddy is driving along a winding mountain road in his old Ford car.

Suddenly a sleek sports car going in the opposite direction almost runs him off the road. And to make things worse, a young woman driving the sports car sticks her head out of the window and yells at him, "Pig!"

Paddy immediately reacts angrily by sticking his head out of his car and yelling back at her, "Bitch!"

He then rounds the next bend in the road and smashes straight into a huge pig!

You cannot avoid what you are. You will meet yourself again and again. On some other bend of the road, you will meet yourself.

Old man Finkelstein comes to the doctor's office.

"Doc," he says, "you have got to give me something to pep me up. I have got a date tonight with my twenty-five-year-old secretary and I want to be sure that I am able to perform."

The physician smiles and gives him some pills. Later that night, out of curiosity, he telephones Finkelstein.

"Did the medicine help any?" asks the doctor.

"It was great!" replies Finkelstein, "I have managed three times already."

"And how about the girl?" chuckles the doctor.

"Oh," replies Finkelstein, "She has not got here yet."

Question 3:

Aneesha, what do you think my jokes are for? I know that you will fall asleep. If I talk great theology you will enjoy a good evening, but I don't let you enjoy. My jokes are the alarm clock. So many people laughing, how can you relax and fall asleep? Impossible!

I have to tell these jokes; otherwise I may fall asleep also... because you are so many and I am alone! Just think.

Now before I fall asleep...

After Fagin and Rosa Finkelstein get married, they soon establish a household routine that includes having sex every evening at nine-fifteen.

(THE MASTER PAUSES, LOOKS AT HIS WATCH AND DECLARES...) There is still time!

After several weeks of this, Rosa catches flu and gets an injection that kills all but three of the germs in her body.

The trio of surviving germs holds an emergency meeting to discuss how they might escape.

"I am moving up to the tip of her ear," says the first germ. "That flu shot will never get me up there!"

The second germ says, "I am going to the tip of her toe!"

"You guys can go and do what you want," says the third, "but when that old 'nine-fifteen' pulls out tonight, I am going to be on top of it!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.