The seeker was the search

Question 1:

Yogendra, in the first place a spiritual journey is only symbolic. You don't go anywhere. You simply reveal yourself, wherever you are and whatever you are. It is not a journey from one point to another point, not horizontal. It is a journey... if you can be down within yourself right now, the journey will be complete without ever being begun. But the mystic has a problem: language is not made to express the inner truths of life. It is mundane and of the marketplace. And the problem of the mystic is that he has to use the same language. But don't take it seriously.

A spiritual journey is no journey. There is no spiritual goal. In fact, you are already there but simply not aware. If you can become just a little alert, you will be surprised that you were seeking unnecessarily, searching here and there - and the seeker was the search.

I have told you that I don't agree with Jesus Christ on the point when he says, "Seek and ye shall find."

I say unto you, "Seek not - because you are already there. Seek, and you shall miss."

Jesus says, "Ask and the answer will be given to you."

You are the answer.

The asking has to be dropped - not asked.

When there is no question in you, that silence, that tranquility, that peace, that music of the eternal is the answer. Nobody gives it to you, it is your inheritance.

And Jesus finally says, "Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you."

The doors are always open and there is no need for knocking. In fact, a person who is knocking is certainly blind because he cannot see that the door is open.

My approach is totally different. There is no need to postpone either in seeking or searching or questioning. All postponement is unspiritual. A man of integrity does not postpone the most important thing of his life: knowing himself. Hence I say unto you, "Enter, the doors are open."

If you are so much in love with knocking, you can knock later on.

A few people have strange kinds of fixations....

The great English linguist, Johnson, had a very strange and weird habit. He could not go for a walk without knocking on every lamp post.

His friends were tired of it saying, "This is absolutely meaningless." He said, "I know, but what I can do? If I don't knock, that lamp post haunts me. I'll go on thinking that something is missing.

Sometimes I have tried with great courage to go straight on without knocking, but then I have to come back and knock it. Unless I knock all the lamp posts on the morning walk, I am not satisfied.

But it takes unnecessary time and people think I am mad."

He was not mad, just a little eccentric. So if you are in love with knocking, you cannot accept the open door. You can knock from the other side, but first enter.

You are quoting an old Spanish mystic, San Juan, describing the spiritual journey as a mountain which he named Monte Carmelo. Man's mind is very interested in things which are too far away.

It becomes a little fidgety if things can be done right now. If there is some mountain far away - Carmelo... you are at ease that there is no hurry. And what can you do? It will take time, preparation, discipline - and who knows where that mountain is? We will need guides and maps and the whole theology, Christian and Hindu and Mohammedan and all kinds of nonsense just because San Juan could not find - and nobody can find - expressions about the ultimate, without using ordinary words.

The words are like stones lying on the ground and the experiences are like birds flying high in the sky. It is very difficult to tell the bird about the stones, but it is even more difficult to tell the stones about the birds, because the stones cannot believe that you can fly into the sky: "What nonsense are you talking?"

Then you have to give some symbols and those symbols have become a hindrance rather than a help, because people have got caught in those symbols as if they are reality. There is no mountain and there is no journey. In your intrinsic being you are all that you need to be. But you never look inwards; your eyes are always searching far away.

The mind is extrovert - but there is nothing wrong in it.

There are many things in the outside world that only the mind can explore: science, technology, the faraway stars... all that is the contribution of the extrovert mind. But the difficulty is that behind the mind there is another possibility - of meditation.

Meditation is introvert; hence in the East, we could not create technology, we could not create great science, we could not create riches, comforts, luxuries. The East has remained poor because we have never bothered about the extrovert mind, knowing that whatever it accumulates, inside you remain empty - and finally, a frustration sets in.

Just as mind is the extroversion, meditation is an arrow entering within yourself. There is no mountain and there is no journey - just an understanding. Never be caught into symbols. They can be helpful if you understand. If you do not understand then you start looking and searching for symbols which are just words. They were used to provoke you, to challenge you. But rather than being challenged by them and entering into your own being, you go even further away from yourself.

It is very difficult for the mind, almost impossible, to go inside. Outside, the whole sky is available, but the mind has no root going inside. That's why meditation first silences the mind, puts it aside as if it does not exist. Only then, a new consciousness arises in you which moves inwards.

It is not a journey because it happens on its own accord. It is spontaneous - not something that you are doing, but something that you are being.

Your question goes on, "The trail before the summit suddenly disappears and he specifies: 'Here there is no trail because for the right man there is no law.'" Now if you start thinking about it, you are bound to go crazy. First, the search for the mountain, then the mountain disappears; even the trail to the mountain disappears. Now, you are hanging in a very precarious condition.

The old is lost, the new has not arrived, and you are standing in the middle. Neither can you go back nor can you go forward. But that is very significant because that's where the whole world of mysticism wants you to be: in a place where you cannot go back and you cannot go forward - where you cannot go anywhere but within yourself.

All trails and all mountains disappear, and this is the point when you need the right man. That right man is not somebody else. You are that right man for whom all desires, all ambitions, all goals, all greed, in fact all time has disappeared. Just a single point of existence, of utter purity and blissfulness... You are the right man and for the right man there is no law.

That has puzzled many people, and many mystics have been condemned for this - not only condemned, Socrates was poisoned. The reason was the same, that he was teaching people to attain a situation where you are no longer under any law.

But the society thinks that a man who is above the law is dangerous. You cannot dictate to him what is right and what is wrong. Your courts and your constitutions and your legalities are all futile.

The right man knows exactly what is right.

The law exists for the wrong man, not for the right man. And because this whole world lives in a wrong psychology, whenever a right man appears, he seems to be such a stranger, an outsider that people start thinking he is going to corrupt us.

The charge against Socrates was, "He is going to corrupt people because he teaches a lawlessness, a freedom." The same was the crime of Jesus - that he was a right man. The same was the case about Al-Hillaj Mansoor - that he was a right man.

Al-Hillaj Mansoor was the disciple of a great master, Junnaid. He realized his own spirituality and divinity, his own luminosity - which has been realized in the East as aham brahmasmi - even to the point of declaring: "I am the ultimate, I am the God." It is not out of any ego. These people who were saying these things were very humble.

When Mansoor realized the point, the right point where you are, he said, ana'l haq which means, I am the right, I am the law; in other words, I am God and there is nothing above me.

Junnaid said, "Be quiet. I know it is true, but you are too young and you don't know that the whole world is full of wrong people. They will not understand you. They will kill you because you are corrupting their youth, their minds. They are continuously afraid that nobody should touch their beliefs."

Junnaid said, "I also experienced the same, but being an older man, much more experienced of the world, I don't want to create unnecessary trouble for myself."

But Mansoor was young, he could not resist.... In the marketplaces he would shout, "Ana'l haq!" - I am the truth.

And the same was the charge against him, that he is corrupting people: "If everybody starts saying, 'I am the God, I am the truth, I am the law...' then the whole society will collapse."

Yes, if people start saying such things without experiencing the innermost being, the society will collapse. But if people assert their understanding of being, this society will rise in consciousness to heights which have rarely been known by man, only by a very few mystics.

I was in Greece and the archbishop of Greece started creating a protest against me. I was just a tourist for four weeks. He would send telegrams to the prime minister and the president and the home ministry. And he would give interviews to television and to the newspapers saying, "This man's staying in Greece is dangerous. His influence is going to be corruptive. He will corrupt our tradition, our morality."

And I wondered how a morality that has been established for twenty centuries can be corrupted by a man who is only a tourist for four weeks? In fact, that morality is trembling inside and afraid because it is based on the wrong man and the wrong man's perception.

The right man is not worried.

I have been around the world. Twenty-one countries have stopped me from entering into their lands because my influence is going to corrupt their younger generation. Not a single one, any archbishop, any shankaracharya, any imam or any pope has been able to say exactly what it is that I am going to corrupt. But this is enough; the very word 'corruption' is enough.

To help people to enter into their own being seems to be the greatest sin in the world. They have behaved more brutally with Socrates and Jesus and Al-Hillaj and others than they have ever behaved with criminals.

For the right man, the man who is centered in himself, a man who is conscious of his being, that very consciousness is enough. Whatever he will do, will be right. He does not need any law imposed upon him from outside, and imposed by people who are utterly rotten. Gutter politicians making laws - and they themselves are absolutely corrupt according to their own laws....

But whenever they are in power, you cannot say that you are against the law. They will change the law, they will manipulate the law, they will find loopholes in the law, and they will manage to do whatever they want to do. These are the people who should be crucified, but on the contrary, simple people like Mansoor and Socrates are crucified.

Up to now truth has been crucified and untruth has ruled over the world. But the mystics are absolutely right that for the right man there is no law.

Now, you are asking Yogendra, "Beloved Master, who is the right man?" I am sitting in front of you. I don't have any law - there is no need. Glasses are needed if your eyes cannot see. Blind men need a staff to find out their way. But if your eyes are right, you don't need any glasses. You don't go on tapping with your staff finding your way. The right man is certainly beyond the law.

And you are asking, "Beloved Master, who is the right man?" Have you not recognized me? And have you not seen that the same behavior has been done to me on a vast scale? Jesus was crucified in a very small part of the world, almost unknown to the other parts of the world - Judea. He was neither known all over the world nor condemned all over the world, just by the Jews. Socrates was condemned only by a city, Athens, because at that time Greece had only city-states, there was no nation as such.

But I sometimes wonder....

Just the other day I received the news that the second biggest party, the opposition party in Germany, has been fighting the ruling party so that they cannot make a law against me entering into their country. A few days ago they had their party convention. In the party convention they said, "We are going to fight because of something absolutely absurd and ridiculous." The German law passed by the parliament is that not only can I not enter their land, but my airplane cannot land on any airport in Germany even for refueling.

In fifteen minutes I don't think that I will be able to destroy their long tradition, great religion, all the morality... and from the airport! I would not be coming out of the airplane because I cannot land on their land according to their parliamentary law.

This Green Party, which is the second major party, has a future. Soon it might be the ruling party, and because this is becoming a possibility, now they themselves have become afraid. It was good to give fight to the ruling party - any excuse is enough to fight with the ruling party. Now they have become aware of what they are doing. When they become the ruling party, what are they going to do?

..."This man is certainly dangerous!"

So they have made an amendment in their fight: "We are against making laws against a single man who has never entered Germany and who has no intention either, but we want to make it clear that we don't agree with this man. It is a question of legal parliamentarianism. It doesn't look right so we will withdraw it, but that does not mean that we agree with this man."

This amendment was very amazing. It means that the moment they come into power, they will do the same, perhaps in a different way. Twenty-one countries have made laws that I cannot enter into their countries. And the Indian government has been pressured by American, British, German and other governments that I should not even be allowed to move out of Poona - they cannot deport me from this country - and that people who want to come to see me should be prevented and returned from the airport. Hundreds of sannyasins have been deported. They have never entered the country.

From the airport they have been forced to return on the next plane going to their country.

What is the crime that I have committed?

To think, to be - to be authentic perhaps is the worst crime. Down the centuries the right man has always been in the same trouble, stoned, killed. And these few right men... all the truth and the beauty and the dignity that they have spread around into humanity.... Even by their deaths they have raised human consciousness. Their lives could have raised human consciousness to unknown heights.

You are asking who is the right man? If you cannot recognize me, you will not recognize the right man anywhere. I am the most corrupt man in the eyes of all those who are blind.

My only crime is that I am trying to sell glasses to the blind. Naturally, they don't want. I persuade them, but they don't want....

And finally you ask, "And what does it mean 'there is no law'?"

There is no law for the man of consciousness, because the man of consciousness cannot do anything wrong. What law is needed for a Gautam Buddha? His own light is enough, more than enough to show him the right path. His consciousness is enough to create his actions as beautiful and graceful as possible. His understanding of himself is enough to be compassionate and to be loving.

One beautiful morning like this...

Gautam Buddha is passing by a town and the people of the town are all against him because they say he is corrupting people. He is telling them what is not right. He is telling them not to worship but to meditate, not to bow down to stone statues but to "enter into your own being, your own life source." He is destroying people's religion.

The people of the town had gathered to condemn him, to insult him. He silently listened. Their words were ugly. Even Gautam Buddha's nearest disciples became angry. But in Buddha's presence of course they had to be silent and not speak; otherwise they would have killed those people.

But Buddha finally said, "I have to reach to another town and the people there must be waiting. The sun is rising and becoming hotter. You will have to excuse me. I have heard whatever you wanted to say. If you are still in need of saying something more, on my return trip you can fulfill that desire too. But I just want to ask you one question."

They said, "But we are enemies - and it is not a conversation. We have not come here to ask questions or to talk to you, or to listen to you."

Buddha said, "No, that is not a problem. Just a small question: In the other town before, people who love me came with flowers and sweets to offer to me. But we eat only one time a day so we told them, 'We are sorry, we are thankful to you, but you will have to take them back. It is too early for us to eat...'"

Buddhists eat only one time in the middle of the day. And the Buddhist cannot carry food or anything edible with him.

"I want to ask you," he said to the people, "what should they have done with the sweets and the flowers?"

One man from the crowd said, "They must have distributed them to the children, who must have eaten and enjoyed them."

Buddha said, "That's all. Just as I rejected what they brought I reject what you have brought. Now go back home and enjoy. Distribute whatever you have brought to your children, your friends, your wife.

"If you had come ten years ago, none of you would have gone back alive. I am a warrior" - and he was a prince, well trained in swordsmanship. He could have finished them all. "But," he said, "you came too late. Now I have only compassion for you and love for you and a prayer that existence may bring you some light so that you see that I am not the problem. The real problem is that you are not certain of your religion, not certain of your beliefs. You have repressed many doubts inside and my presence brings those doubts. It is not my problem. Now what can I do? I had not even entered in your town. I was going from the outside, not to disturb you."

They were stunned. They could not believe that you can insult somebody and he says I don't accept it; it is not natural. You are insulting and the other man is silently saying, "You can keep it, I don't want it. It is your problem, it is not my problem. You are angry: burn into your anger, but why harass me?"

A man of truth behaves so totally differently from the common masses that it becomes very difficult for the crowd to accept him. Only very intelligent people, very alert people can understand that there cannot be any law for a man of understanding.

Laws are made for criminals. A man of understanding cannot commit a crime. He cannot even dream of committing a crime. His meditation cleanses his whole being of all possibilities of the poisons that can erupt any moment. His eyes become pure clarity, perceptivity. He can see far away to each action and its consequence.

There have been people like Prince Kropotkin who imagined that sometime in a future... perhaps millions of years after we are gone, there would be human beings who will not need governments, who will not need constitutions. Looking at the people all around, it looks dreamlike. Looking at the politicians of the world, it does not seem that even after millions of years the dream will be realized.

Most probably that day will never come before humanity will be destroyed, life will be erased from the earth. But one feels a deep love for people like Prince Kropotkin who at least can conceive of a world... They give dignity to man - maybe you are not right, now, but one day you will be. They trust you.

Others have called their ideas utopia. 'Utopia' by its roots means that which never comes. It would be very sad if utopia never comes.

If it can happen to one man that there is no law, if it can happen to thousands of mystics that there is no law, it shows our potential. We are also made of the same stuff, the same consciousness. We are just fast asleep. We can also rise up beyond the ugly world of laws and courts. They show our barbarity, our animality.

It is very strange that we make our courts very big, very palatial. Our judges are almost superhuman beings. Millions of people are in jails. And millions of people are trying to make their whole living from them. Millions of people are judging, millions of people are fighting with each other. This is really a lawless world because people don't have an inner insight.

Yogendra, don't just go on thinking about it, become the right man. It is not a journey. You don't have to go to the Kaaba, or to Carmelo or to Kashi....

You have to go to your own being.

You are the only temple.

All other temples are man-made.

The way humanity is - just watch it and witness it - is hilarious.

Mendel Kravitz meets a gorgeous young woman at a cocktail party and soon they strike up a friendly conversation about human nature.

"Would you sleep with a complete stranger for a million dollars?" asks Mendel.

"Yes," the girl declares, "I think I would."

"I see," says Mendel. "Would you sleep with me for twenty-five dollars?"

"My God," cries the girl, "what do you think I am?"

"We have already established that," replies Mendel. "Now we are just haggling over the price."

Abraham Grossman meets his old friend, Moishe Finkelstein, in the street one day.

"Abe, old pal!" begins Moishe, "How are things going? I hear you married an Italian girl. What is the matter - a Jewish girl won't do for you?"

"Well," says Abe, "it is like this. You marry a Jewish girl and the next thing you know she has to get her teeth fixed - dentist bills like you would not believe. Then she has got women's trouble - more doctor's bills. Then there is the psychiatrist - she needs to see him three times a week."

"I understand," says Moishe. "But this can all happen to an Italian girl too."

"I know," says Abe, "but with an Italian girl, who cares?"

Two Jews arrive at the pearly gates of heaven and ask Saint Peter if they can come in.

"Certainly not!" says Saint Peter, "We don't allow your sort in here. Get lost!"

He then goes to tell Jesus proudly what he has done. Jesus becomes furious.

"Peter!" he shouts, "You can't do that! Quick, go and get them back." Saint Peter runs off and comes back a few minutes later, puffing.

"They have gone!" he says.

"Who? The Jews?" asks Jesus.

"No," gasps Saint Peter, "the pearly gates."

A nervous young man walks into the drugstore and is very embarrassed when a prim, middle-aged woman comes to serve him.

"Can I see the druggist?" he stammers.

"I am the druggist," she replies cheerfully. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, it is nothing important," says the man, and turns to leave.

"Young man," says the woman, "my sister and I have been running this drugstore for thirty years.

There is nothing you can tell us that will embarrass us."

"Well, alright," says the man. "I have this awful sexual hunger that nothing will satisfy. No matter how many times I make love, I still want to make love again. Is there anything you can give me for it?"

"Just a moment," says the little lady, "I will have to discuss this with my sister."

A few moments later she returns.

"The best we can offer," she says, "is five hundred dollars a week."

And the last...

Bernie Bernstein is in the urinal standing next to a very large black man. Looking over, Bernie is astonished and very jealous to notice the huge size of his neighbor's equipment.

"Excuse me, mister," he says, "but could you tell me how you managed to get such a magnificent member?"

"Simple, man," says the black guy. "When I was a boy, my mamma tied a brick to it and for a whole month I walked around like that."

Bernie runs home and tells Sara, his wife. "Sara," he shouts, "cancel all visits and engagements. I'm not even going to work. I'm going to get myself a wonderful big prick!"

So Bernie ties a brick to his prick and does not go out of the house for a month.

Eventually, Sara says, "So, let us take a look and see how it is growing."

So Bernie opens his pants, takes a good look and says, "Well, we are halfway there, it has turned black already!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.