There's No God Till You've Met Him

The first question

Question 1:

Prabuddha,

PRAYER IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE DONE. Prayer is not something that can be thought either. Prayer is a state of silent being, of utter silence. One simply is...

then one is in prayer. If you do prayer, you miss the whole point. Doing remains on the circumference; doing cannot enter to the center of your being.

If you are saying your prayer, you again miss - because in saying it you are thinking of yourself as separate from God, you are relating to God as if he is separate from you. And that is the basic illusion: God is not separate from you.

Hence, prayer cannot be a dialogue between I and thou. I is thou - there is no possibility of any dialogue. The moment you say your prayer, you have accepted a hypothesis which is basically wrong - that God is there, far away from you, separate. You have reduced God to an object. And God is your very subjectivity, he is your very center.

The Upanishads say, "TAT-TVAM-ASI: thou art that."

The only way to be in prayer is to be in utter silence. In that silence there is an overflowing of gratitude, but it is not verbalized. There is a tremendous thankfulness, but it is not said, it is not spoken. There is great love, but it is a pure presence.

Yes, Prabuddha, no-mind is the ultimate prayer. And it is the state of no-mind where prayer and meditation meet. Meditation takes you to the no-mind, prayer takes you to the no-mind. No-mind is the peak where the path of the mind and the path of the heart meet, where Zen and Sufism are one.

The path of Zen starts by dropping thoughts, becoming more and more alert to the thought process - becoming so aware that in that awareness, in that heat of awareness, thoughts start evaporating and you are left in your total nudity and aloneness. That is the path of meditation; it works through the mind. It is against mind, it transcends mind, but the path goes through the mind.

The path of the lover, the devotee, the Sufi, goes directly through the heart. It simply leaves the mind aside; it doesn't work on the mind at all, it works on the feelings.

Feelings are silent, non-verbal - you cannot communicate, you can only commune.

In Zen, thoughts are reduced. And as thoughts are reduced, your energy is released to become no-mind. In Sufism, feelings are strengthened, you pour your energy into feelings. As feelings gain more and more strength, thoughts disappear of their own accord.

But from both the ways you reach the shrine of no-mind. It is the ultimate in prayer and it is the ultimate in meditation. That is where the Sufi is a Zenist, and a Zen follower is a Sufi where Buddha and Bahauddin meet, where all the religions enter into the ocean of oneness.

Religions are like rivers: no-mind is the ocean. Come from anywhere, come from any direction, follow any path - but the day you come to the state of no-mind is the day of rejoicing. You have arrived home.

The second question

Question 2:

Margret,

THE IDEA OF BECOMING DEPENDENT, the desire to become dependent, AND the idea and the fear of becoming dependent, are the same; they are not different. If you are afraid of becoming dependent, that simply shows you are not yet independent.

The fear is a negative state. And the desire to become dependent, to find an omnipotent father, somebody to lean upon, is a positive desire. Both are the same; the positive and the negative make the whole.

There are people who cannot stand on their own. They are not strong people, they have not yet attained their individuality. And there are people who are always afraid they may become dependent; they are not strong people either - they are also weak. Their fear shows their weakness.

The really independent person is capable of surrendering.

The REALLY strong person is capable of falling in love - because he knows that his individuality is intact, that there is no way he can ever lose it.

Margret, your fear shows that you don't have your individuality yet - hence the fear.

Otherwise, why should one be afraid? Remember, the individuality is your inner core: it cannot be taken away, nobody can take it away - not even God. It is your essential being:

it cannot be taken away from you. And whatsoever can be taken away from you is not your essential being. One is very willing to give it, because it is burdensome; he wants to give that burden to somebody so that he can be relieved of responsibility. The other is very much afraid to give it.

Why is the other very much afraid to give it? The other is also feeling it as a burden, would like to give it - but there is great fear because of the idea that "This is me. If it is gone, I am gone."

To be with a Master is to learn the secret that surrender brings you individuality. That is the paradox to be learnt, and that is a great liberation once you have learnt it.

Margret, have you ever been in love or not? If you have loved a person you will know:

love will make you more alone than anything else in the world. Love will make you so utterly alone that you will be surprised - because you think in love you dissolve yourself.

Certainly, all that is non-essential dissolves. But because the non-essential dissolves, the essential comes very clear and loud. And your aloneness is your essential being.

Lovers become individuals - only lovers become individuals. And to fall in love with a Master is the ultimate in love. The relationship between a disciple and a Master is a love relationship. It is eros at the very peak. It is the highest form of love, the purest form of love. All other loves have certain other motives in them; they are motivated. And because they have certain motives in them, they are not pure. They are impure, polluted. There is some desire lurking, hence they remain crawling on the earth.

To fall in love with a Buddha, with a Christ, is to start flying into the sky. The disciples soar upwards, they enter into the world of the second law, the law of power, the law of grace. They are freed from the law of necessity, cause and effect. They are freed from gravitation; they start levitating in a metaphoric way, in a symbolic way. Their life enters into a totally new territory.

But if the fear is there, that simply means you have never tasted love yet. And because you are afraid, whatsoever you think about others is going to be wrong. Out of fear you cannot see; fear clouds the eyes, perception, clarity.

And there are only two ways: life can either be lived as eros, love, or as phobos, fear.

And those who live life as phobos are unfortunate, because they will never know what life is. Only those who live life as eros will be able to know the innermost mysteries of existence. But eros demands surrender. In phobos no surrender is demanded.

Margret, you are not yet an individual - otherwise you would have seen a totally different quality in my sannyasins. My sannyasins are not dependent on me, not at all.

Certainly they are learning, certainly they are imbibing me, but they are not dependent at all. In fact, they love me because I am making them more and more independent. Their love goes on growing as they become independent, as they are freed from all kinds of conditioning. As I go on throwing them upon themselves, their love becomes deeper and deeper, their gratitude becomes deeper and deeper.

You can never be grateful to a person who makes you dependent - you will hate the person. That's why children hate their parents. I am not a father figure. At the most I am just a friend. From your side, in the beginning, you may be in search of a father figure.

And if you fall into my trap, sooner or later you will recognize that you have misunderstood the whole thing - but now it is too late.

I am not a father figure at all! I am here to destroy all kinds of slavery. And it is true that nobody likes slavery - even if you are forced into paradise, you will hate it. Just the idea of being forced is enough to create hatred.

It is not accidental that Friedrich Nietzsche declared that "God is dead and man is free." It was bound to happen - if Nietzsche had not declared it, somebody else would have declared it. After all, enough is enough. Twenty centuries of Christian conditioning created Friedrich Nietzsche; he is the outcome of Christianity. Twenty centuries of dependence on God and humanity accumulated so much hatred for God - it was bound to happen, it is very logical. It could have been predicted that man could not tolerate God any more. One has to be free.

Nietzsche simply declared what was in the unconscious of millions of people. He became the voice of this century. Nobody else represents this century as truly as Friedrich Nietzsche. He declared. "God is dead." And immediately the second declaration is, "Now man is free." That means God was a slavery, was a burden. God was crushing humanity, God was not allowing man to be himself. He had to die.

There is a beautiful parable in Nietzsche's great work, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA:

A madman comes into the marketplace, starts looking here and there and searching with a lamp in the full light of the day. And people start laughing and they ask, "What are you searching for? Are you mad or something? Why are you carrying a lit lamp in the daylight?"

And he said, "I am searching for God. Have you seen him? Has anybody seen him anywhere?"

And people started laughing more. And the crowd started ridiculing the madman, and somebody asked, "Is he a small child who has got lost? Who is this God? What do you mean by God?" And the crowd was laughing hilariously.

And the madman then threw the lamp on the ground. For a moment there was silence, and then he said, "It seems you have not yet heard the news. God is dead! And one more thing: it is we who have murdered him. But it seems the news has not yet reached you - it takes time."

It is a tremendously significant, meaningful parable. Man has murdered God in the unconscious, and the news has not yet reached the conscious. Maybe the conscious is repressing the news, maybe the conscious is feeling guilty.

Even when you rebel against your parents, you go far away from your parents, a deep guilt goes on lurking in your heart. And through that guilt your parents go on remaining great influences on you - maybe in a negative way. Maybe your mother used to say, "Cleanliness is next to God" - and now you are living AS dirtily as possible, and you have to live this way because you are rebelling against your mother. But this is not rebellion, this is simply reaction. Your mother is still immensely powerful over you; she is still deciding your lifestyle. Your dirtiness, your lousiness... she is still in control.

If you remain clean and you believe in your mother's idea then she dominates you positively. If you go against her and start remaining unclean, again your mother is dominating you, in a negative way. And you can find a thousand and one reasons for it, but those will not be really reasons - they will only be rationalizations.

You can say, "Using soap hurts the skin. Using soap is unnatural - no animal uses it, and I am a natural being. Cleaning your teeth is not right because no animal does it. Too much cleaning of the teeth, and the toothpaste and the toothbrush, destroy the teeth."

You can find rationalizations - but if you look deep down in the unconscious, you will simply see it is your mother still telling you, "Clean your teeth! And unless you clean your teeth you will not be given your breakfast." And you are crying and cleaning your teeth.

That scene is still there somewhere in your unconscious. You may have become very educated, sophisticated, and you may talk great philosophy - but that is all rubbish. If you look deep down, it is only a reaction. Your mother remains immensely powerful over you, so does your father.

Now, Margret, you must have been very much dependent on your parents. This is a reaction: now you are afraid of falling in love, you are afraid of communing. You are constantly afraid that if you come very close to somebody you may disappear. You are not certain about yourself, you don't trust yourself. You don't know that your innermost core is always independent, that there is no way to take it.

But you are not aware of your inner core, you are aware only of your personality. And your personality is created by your parents, and it is rooted in phobia - in fear. And, certainly, out of fear a man can only die but cannot live.

Hence millions of people's lives are nothing but slow suicide. They slowly slowly die.

They never live - because wherever life comes on their way they are afraid to lose themselves. They are not yet in such trust about their being that they can take the jump, that they can plunge into life and yet be able to come back - they are not certain about it.

They cannot dive deep into any experience because - who knows? - they may not be able to come back.

This is living your life out of fear. And when you live out of fear, you start thinking that everybody else is living out of fear - you project it on others too.

That's why these beautiful people who are around me, yoU misunderstood them. They are not dependent on me. Sannyas is rebellion - it is not reaction, it is rebellion. It is living with a new understanding; it is living with your inner light.

I am just a mirror to help you so that you can see your face in me, so that you can see your future in me, so that you can see your inner core reflected in me. I am just a mirror.

Looking into the mirror, you don't become dependent on the mirror - or do you? The mirror simply reflects you.

I have no idea to impose on you, I have no morality to teach you, I am not here to help you to create a character. Those are ALL ugly words: character, morality, ideology.

Character means you live surrounded by an armour; character means you live out of the past, you don't live in the present. And the present is the only existence there is.

I teach you to live characterlessly - without any armour, without any past dominating you, without any ready-made answers. To live moment-to-moment - not out of character but out of consciousness, not out of a moral sense but out of awareness. And that is true morality and that is true character.

And you will be surprised - because I am calling characterlessness true character; amorality, true morality. But if you understand what I mean by awareness then there will be no trouble; it will be very simple. One lives spontaneously each moment fully aware of what one is doing. There is never any repentance for the past, there is never any guilt. I teach you a guiltless life - how can you become dependent on me? You may be grateful, but you are not dependent. You may be in love, but you are not dependent.

And remember, I don't force you, even for your own good - because that is an old strategy, the old politics to dominate people. "Force them, destroy them - for their own sake, for their own good." But this is my fundamental understanding, that if you choose hell you will be happy there; and if you are forced into heaven, against your choice, you will be unhappy there.

It is always freedom that brings joy. Joy is the fragrance of freedom.

The Reverend Optimus Poke was an awful golfer. One day he shot a powerful drive from the green which disappeared into a large tree. The ball dropped down, then bounced and rolled towards the green; as if drawn by a magnet, it continued rolling two hundred yards towards the flag, and finally dropped right into the hole.

"Hole in one!" cried all the other golfers.

The Reverend Poke lifted his eyes towards heaven. "Please, Father," he whispered, "I would rather do it myself."

Nobody who has any sense, any intelligence, would like to be forced - even if that forcing brings great blessings.

I am not here to force you in any way, Margret.

You say: SINCE I HAVE BEEN HERE, I COULD NOT STOP THINKING THAT ALL THESE SANNYASINS ARE WITH YOU BECAUSE THEY CANNOT STAND ON THEIR OWN FEET.

THEY ARE STANDING ON THEIR OWN FEET Just look again, watch my people again, not with a prejudiced mind. They listen to my advice, but they are not obliged to follow it. They listen silently to whatsoever I am saying and whatsoever I am - but it is not a commandment, it is not an order. It is just simple advice; they are free to take it or not to take it. If they take it, they are responsible for taking it; if they don't take it, they are responsible for not taking it.

I never ask anybody whether they are following what I am saying or not. I don't give any details to you. You would like to be given a detailed program: when to get up, what to eat, what not to eat, when to go to sleep. You would like everything decided by me for you. In fact, that is the most baffling thing that my sannyasins have to encounter, that I don't decide any details. I simply give a general vision. I share my vision with you, then you have to find out your own way. I don't give you a map to follow. I simply share my light and then you are free with that light to move on any path.

This is a totally strange phenomenon, Margret. That's why many people misunderstand - it is not you alone. Down the ages, the religious people have been giving detailed instructions to be followed absolutely. If you don't follow, it is a sin and you will suffer in hell. If you follow, it is virtue and you will be rewarded in heaven.

To imitate, to follow, has been a virtue for centuries. And to be on your own has been a sin for centuries. This is a totally new phenomenon, this is something very new. I am not giving you any commandments, there are no 'shoulds', no 'oughts'. I simply share my experience, then you are left alone. Then you have to choose - but it has always to be your own choice.

I teach my people to live out of eros, love, and not to live out of phobos. And it is good that your prejudice is dropping.

You say: THEN TODAY I FELT A VERY STRONG SADNESS AND JOY WHEN I LISTENED TO YOU. WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN? I AM AFRAID TO BECOME DEPENDENT ON YOU.

You need not be afraid - even if you want to become dependent on me, I am not going to accept it. Because I know one thing: that you cannot make anybody dependent on you unless you also become dependent on him or on her. Dependence is not one-way traffic.

The person you become dependent upon becomes dependent on you. Slavery is always mutual. And I don't want to be a slave, I don't want to be dependent on anybody. Hence I cannot in any way support you if you want to become dependent on me. It is not possible with me, it is impossible - because this truth is so fundamental that there are no exceptions to it.

You can watch your own life. If you become dependent on your wife, see, the wife has become dependent on you. If you become dependent on a friend, the friend has become dependent on you. It is a double-edged sword.

If you want to be independent, you will need to help everybody else who is around you to be independent. That's the only way to be independent. If the husband wants. to be independent, he has to help the wife to be independent. If the wife wants to be independent she has to help the husband to be independent.

That's why I say the women's liberation movement is a great boon to men. If the women REALLY become independent, that will be the greatest thing that has EVER HAPPENED TO MEN - because the liberation of the woman will be the liberation of man.

Those who are alert, they will help it to happen. The woman has to be freed, utterly freed, only then can man be free. This fundamental law has not been understood up to now.

Man has tried to make the woman a slave, and he himself has become a slave in the process - in fact, more so.

It is very difficult to find a husband who is not henpecked - almost impossible. Why has this happened? Because you have reduced the woman to such slavery that she HAS to do the same to you. It is always the same that will happen to you. Life bounces back upon you; life echoes whatsoever you do, goes on falling on you.

If you love, love will flow from everywhere towards you. If you hate, hate will flow from everywhere towards you. If you create slavery around you - the wife is a slave and the children are slaves - then you will be a slave your whole life. You alone cannot be free.

Freedom happens only in a certain milieu of freedom; it needs a certain atmosphere of freedom.

I am creating here an atmosphere of freedom. You cannot be dependent on me, even if you want to.

And deep down, Margret, there seems to be a desire in you to be dependent - hence the fear. You are afraid of your own unconscious.

You say: WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN? I AM AFRAID TO BECOME DEPENDENT ON YOU.

If you really want to become independent, really want to taste what independence is, then take a plunge into this commune - and experience how surrender can help you to become yourself. Experience the greatest paradox of life - because that which can be surrendered is not you. And whatsoever you can surrender is not you, is a non-essential part of your being.

And when all non-essential parts have been dropped - and they are like mountains crushing you, and in those mountains the small diamond of your being is utterly lost - when all those mountains have disappeared you will see the crystal-clear light of your own inner diamond. For the first time you will see: in surrender you are born.

Surrender is a death, death of all that is non-essential, and a resurrection, a resurrection of all that is essential, authentic, true.

The third question

Question 3:

Ferrero,

THE FIRST STEP WENT WRONG And once the first step goes wrong, your whole journey goes wrong. You started searching for somebody who will really love you - that's where you went wrong.

The basic thing is to love yourself. If you love yourself you will find many many people who love you - because a person who loves himself becomes lovely, lovable; he attains to a grace and dignity. The person who does not love himself remains ugly - because if you DON'T love yourself, you hate. There is no other choice; you can't be just neutral.

Neutrality does not exist in life - either you are this or you are that. If you don't love yourself, you hate yourself. And in that very hate you cripple yourself, you poison yourself - how can you expect somebody to love you? If even you are not willing to love yourself, who is going to love you?

Remember the famous statement of the Jewish mystic, Hillel: "If you are NOT for yourself, then who is going to be for you?" And the other part of the statement is also beautiful: "If you are ONLY for yourself, then what is the meaning of your life?"

This is the polarity. You have to love yourself, that is your first obligation towards yourself. And the second thing is not to get lost in that self-love, otherwise your life will not have significance, it will not have meaning. When you are able to love yourself, then seek the other, then search for the other. And you will find! The whole earth is full of loving people, beautiful people. Just you were not beautiful, you were not flowing with love, you were not full of love; that's why you could not find anybody to love you.

And that happens to many people - it is not only the case with you. Almost the majority suffers from the same problem. Everybody wants to be loved and nobody knows what love is, and nobody knows how to love himself.

Love is a great art! People learn how to paint, people learn how to play music; for years people practise playing music. Then slowly slowly they become capable of creating something beautiful. Love is the GREATEST beauty and the greatest phenomenon, and you never learn it. Everybody thinks that by just being born, you are capable of love.

That is nonsense. Life is an opportunity to learn what love is. The potential is there, but the potential has to be transmuted into the actual.

It is like everybody is potentially capable of swimming, but that does not mean that you know what swimming is - you will have to learn.

It may look paradoxical, but it is not. Meditate on this statement: One has to learn to be that which one is. Love is there! - unrefined, like a diamond just found from the mines.

The greatest diamond in the world is the Kohinoor. When it was found, for months the person who had found it was not aware that he had become the richest man on the earth.

He gave the diamond to the children to play with, because he thought it only a beautiful stone, not even semi-precious.

The children played with it; for months it remained with the children. And then only was it discovered: it was discovered by someone who knew what diamonds are - a jeweller.

Could not believe his eyes! He had never seen such a big stone, such a big diamond - it is the biggest.

And then for centuries it has been refined and refined. Now it is only one third of the original weight. But the more it has been refined and polished, cut and polished, the more and more valuable it has become. Now the weight is one third, but the value is millions of times more.

That's what happens to love too: love is a diamond - uncut, unpolished. You have to learn, and it is a great art. It is like playing music on your own heart. It is like learning a dance in your innermost soul - a dance of energy. And only when you are dancing with great energy, and your heart is full of songs, and your soul is a symphony, will you be able to find somebody to love you.

When you are capable of sharing your energy, you will find somebody to love you.

You say: I HAVE SPENT ALL MY LIFE TRYING TO MEET SOMEBODY WHO WILL REALLY LOVE ME...

And what do you mean by 'really love me'? You must have an idea - that is the second thing that went wrong. You have some idea of what real love is. You must be a perfectionist, and in life nothing is perfect. That's why things are beautiful! If in life things were perfect, life would have been utter boredom.

Bertrand Russell seems to be right when he says, "I would not like to go to heaven if there is any heaven, because there you will find only perfect people, and life will be utterly boring."

Just think of living with perfect people... everybody is perfect. That means there will be no growth any more, no evolution; nothing new will ever happen now. The people who live in heaven, if there is any heaven, must be STUCK with each other, bored, utterly bored, and there is no way to go anywhere else. Once you enter into heaven, you cannot escape; there is no exit.

Perfection creates a neurotic mind; the very idea of perfection is neurosis-creating.

Now, you must have some idea of real love. What do you mean by 'real love'? Love is love! There is no unreal love and there is no real love - love is SIMPLY love. And love is enough unto itself; it need not be real, it need not be unreal. But people have ideas...

For example, somebody has the idea: if love is eternal then it is real - that means you are in search of a roseflower which will never fade, will never wither. You will not find it.

Or, if you ever find it, it will be a plastic rose. It cannot be alive.

The alive flower is there in the morning, dancing with the wind, whispering with the sun, playing with the butterflies... all joy! By the evening it is gone. The petals have fallen....

And tomorrow you will not find even a trace of where it came from and where it has gone. It came from nowhere, and into nowhere it has disappeared. And it was an alive flower.

Now people have very stupid ideas about love. One is that it has to be eternal; that prevents them. First they want to make everything sure - whether this love is going to stay? Now how can you be sure? Nobody can guarantee it; there is no insurance for it.

Today it may be there, and tomorrow it may be gone. And when tomorrow it is gone, DON'T say it was unreal, otherwise you have misunderstood the whole point.

The real is CONSTANTLY changing. Only the unreal stays; the real goes on changing.

Reality is growth, continuous growth, non-ending growth. If there is anything permanent in life and existence, it is change. Except change, everything changes.

So don't say when your love disappears that it was unreal. You have a criterion, a very nonsense criterion, that things have to be permanent to be real.

This idea has tortured millions of people down the ages. And millions of people could not love because of this foolish idea. And I am not saying that love HAS to disappear tomorrow - I am not saying that. It may disappear, it may not disappear. You have to be open about tomorrow.

There are roseflowers which may stay a little longer, and there are roseflowers which go very fast. And then it depends on the gardeners, it depends tremendously on the gardeners - how you take care of it. It may stay a little while more. You need to have a green thumb, like Mukta. Mukta has a green thumb.

You have to be very alert; NOT serious - very playful but yet alert. Love is a delicate phenomenon, very delicate. It is difficult to create it; it is very easy to destroy it. It is a VERY delicate note - only a few guitar players can create it. It is a really delicate note. It is more silence than sound.

And if there is any sound in it, it is only to function as a backdrop for the silence, just to function as a contact.

You never learnt what love is - you never learnt how to love yourself. And you started expecting somebody who will REALLY love you, and will accept you. Have you accepted yourself? It is very rare to come across a person who really accepts himself.

People go on improving upon themselves, doing this and that; they are never satisfied with themselves.

And that's what you are being taught every day, from all the preachers of the world:

Improve! Improve! But the idea of improvement means: never accept yourself, never feel contented with yourself, never enjoy yourself - go on improving. So people become ladder-climbers. They know only one thing: how to go on climbing the ladder, and then when they reach the end of the ladder, they look very foolish and silly, because now the only art they know is how to go on climbing - and the ladder is finished. They don't know anything else; they know only how to climb ladders. So they feel very stuck.

It always happens to people. Somebody has learnt how to accumulate wealth, and he goes on and on... and finally he has more than he had ever dreamt, and now he does not know what to do. He knows only one thing: how to accumulate.

Somebody goes on a power trip, becomes the prime minister of a country, and then he is stuck and looks very silly. Just look into the eyes of the successful politicians: they look very silly, stuck. The ladder is finished! They have become the prime minister or the president of the country; now there are no more rungs to the ladder. They know only one thing: how to go on climbing. They have climbed the whole ladder... now what to do?

They are like dogs who run after every car, and when they overtake they look very foolish; then they don't know what to do....

Then suddenly they have arrived! and their whole life they have been thinking of arriving. Now they have arrived; they look very puzzled. They can't think a thing; their whole mind simply goes fuzzy, cloudy. Now the only thing that they do is to try to remain on this highest ladder - because there are other climbers who are coming and pulling their legs and doing all kinds of things. So they cling to their chairs.

This happens to lovers too. You are in search of a beautiful woman or a beautiful man, and then one day you have found... and suddenly you are at a loss. You know only one art: how to search for a beautiful woman. You have searched... now there seems to be nothing else left.

Unless you know how to play on the inner heart the music whose name is love, the melody which is love, even if you find a beautiful person, nothing is going to happen.

Immediately relationships turn sour; before the honeymoon ends, they are finished.

You say: I HAVE SPENT ALL MY LIFE TRYING TO MEET SOMEBODY WHO WILL REALLY LOVE ME, AND WHO WILL ACCEPT TO BE REALLY LOVED BY ME.

FIRST ONE HAS TO LEARN TO ACCEPT ONESELF And don't demand perfection in the other. Be human! Don't ask for inhuman perfections. You have been given very romantic ideas about love, and that has been the calamity. You are looking for romantic, poetic ideas. People are not ideas of some dreamer, poet; people are REAL people. And you are living on poetry! You think of the other in such ways that nobody can fulfill; everybody will fall short.

And just think: you wanted somebody to accept your love - but did you accept somebody's love? No, you were looking for a perfect lover. But when you are looking for the perfect lover, remember the other is also looking for the perfect lover. You both have been conditioned by the same society.

I have heard, Ferrero, somebody just like you went to a Master and said, "I have been looking for a perfect woman - my whole life."

And the Master said, "And did you find her or not?"

The man looked very sad; he said, "Yes, I did."

"Then what happened?" the Master asked. "Then why are you looking so sad?"

And the man said, "But she was looking for a perfect man."

You are conditioned by the same society, by the same romantic ideas. You have been fed on foolish poetry which has no relationship with reality. In fact, my own experience is this: that poets are the last people from whom you can learn about love - the last persons.

Your so-called poets have nothing to do with love. They have not known love themselves; their poetry is simply a substitute for the love that has been missed by them; their poetry is their dreams, their poetry is NOT based on their experience.

And we have been fed continuously on this poetry.

My own experience of the poets is that they have become poets because they could not be lovers. So whatsoever they could not do, they write about. Their poetry is really nothing but the dreams of people who are hungry. Just as if you go on a fast, in the night you will dream about delicious foods. Their poetry is nothing but the dreams of people who have never tasted love. And, naturally, to compensate they go on creating better and better dreams.

Their poetry is sick, it is pornographic. It triggers your imagination, it gives you fantasies.

And real people are real people! - nobody is here to fulfill your fantasies. Drop your fantasies, and you will see the world is FULL of beautiful people.

And if you want to be accepted, first accept yourself, and then accept somebody's love.

Fulfill these conditions - and you will be accepted. And don't ask for the impossible.

You must have lived in a very negative mind; this is the mind of negativity. Be a little more positive.

A New England village once boasted of two characters - an official mean man who never did a good deed if it was possible to do a mean one, and an official optimist who never had been heard to speak evil of any human.

In the fullness of time the bad man died. On the day of his funeral the usual crowd gathered at the post office to await the distribution of the mail. Naturally, the life and works of the late lamented came under discussion.

The deceased was painted as a miser, a liar, a thief, a scandal-monger, and a backbiter.

The optimist, who was present, listened in silence. At length one of the group turned to him.

"Say, Gid," demanded the other man, "ain't everything we've said about that old scoundrel the truth? Can you name one deserving trait he ever showed?"

"Well," said the optimist, "you boys will have to admit that he certainly could play a harmonica."

Be a little more positive and you will find something beautiful even in the meanest person. Be negative, and you will find something ugly even in the most beautiful person.

Now, if you want to live in a world of ugly people, be negative, and you will make the whole world ugly. It is your mind that will create ugliness all around, because you will be looking only for the ugly, only for the negative, only for the wrong. You will live in hell - - this is what hell is. The negative mind creates hell: the positive mind creates heaven.

With the positive mind... THIS VERY EARTH THE PARADISE, THIS VERY BODY THE BUDDHA.

It ALL depends on you, how you look, with what eyes you look.

The Yankee farmer was being examined by the doctors preparatory to taking out an insurance policy.

"Ever had a serious illness?" asked the examiner.

"No," was the reply.

"Ever had an accident?"

"No."

"Never had a single accident in your life?"

"Well, no, I ain't . But last spring when I was out in the meadow, a bull tossed me over a fence."

"Well, don't you call that an accident?"

"No, I don't. That damn bull did it on purpose."

It depends on you how you look at life; it totally depends on you. You are the creator of your life. It can have tremendous meaning, beauty, joy - but you will have to create it in your heart, and you will have to spread it all over the place. You will have to create something in yourself, only then will you find it in existence.

Existence echoes you....

The fifth question

Question 4:

Deva Suli,

THAT is THE ONLY WAY TO BE A LIGHT UNTO YOURSELF to surrender. Life is paradoxical: day/night, birth/death, summer/winter, love/hate, and so on ad infinitum.

If a person thoroughly understands this, he will agree and not worry. In other words, he knows when he loves that soon he will hate; therefore, he will laugh when he is going uphill, and weep when he is going downhill. He will realize the paradox of life, that he cannot be perfect and he cannot be consistent either. Our idea is to be consistent and to have absolutely clear situations, but it is impossible - it is too one-sided, and we are not one-sided. We are infinite; we contain both the poles in our being, and both the poles have to be lived.

Hence, if you surrender you become a light unto yourself. If you become a light unto yourself, you become capable of surrendering.

It was constantly a question before Buddha - constantly, because he used to say to his people: Be a light unto yourself. That is his statement: APPO DIPO BHAVA - be a light unto yourself. That was his constant teaching, the undercurrent of all his teachings. And still he was teaching people surrender.

When people came to be initiated they would have to declare a triple surrender:

BUDDHAM SHARNAM GACHCHHAMI - I come, I surrender myself to Buddha's feet; SANGHAM SHARNAM GACHCHHAMI - I surrender to the commune of the sannyasins; DHAMMAM SHARNAM GACHCHHAMI - I surrender to the fundamental law of life, LOGOS, TAO, DHAMMA.

These three surrenders would make a person a disciple - and Buddha's whole teaching was: Be a light unto yourself. So he was asked again and again, "There is a contradiction!

On the one hand people surrender to you, on the other hand you go on saying to them: Be a light unto yourself." And yet there is no contradiction - they are complementaries.

This is how life works. Life is so vast that it CONTAINS contradictions, and yet those contradictions are not enemies, not opposites. They are complementaries and they help each other. In fact, without the one the other will not be possible.

Suli, surrender will help freedom, and freedom will make you capable of surrender. Don't choose one, otherwise you will remain half. Never choose one pole, otherwise you will always remain half - and to remain half is to remain split.

You have to be a whole, you have to be one piece. Always remember to choose the whole paradox, and then you will be at ease. Then great silence and great bliss will arise out of your totality. The total is musical, it is a symphony.

The sixth question

Question 5:

Veerendra,

THE STATEMENT is DRAMATIC AND APPEALING but true too - not only dramatic and appealing. It is utterly true, tremendously true: There is NO God until you have met him. How can there be a God? How can you believe if you have not known? All your beliefs will be false, they will be borrowed. And whenever something is borrowed, it is ugly - it falsifies you; it does not help, it hinders. It is not a help to your growth: it is a block.

Belief is a burden, it does not liberate. Truth liberates, but truth is not a belief - it is an experience. How can you say God is if you have not known him?

Just because of this statement, Gurdjieff used to say another thing which is also true, and also VERY dramatic, even MORE dramatic than this statement. He used to say that you don't have any soul - unless you have created it. This is even more dramatic, because all the religions have always believed that you have a soul, whether you know it or not. The soul is there in you - you have to discover it.

Gurdjieff said: "There is no soul unless you have created it." How can there be a soul unless you have known it? How can you say that you have a soul? You have to KNOW yourself first: only then you are. To be, you have to know first.

Hence the Socratic dictum: Know thyself - because only by knowing can you be yourself. There is no other way. It is just to deny belief that these statements have been made, so that you don't start being contented with believing. You have to search on your own. Buddha may have found! Mohammed may have found, Pythagoras may have found. But what does that have to do with you? His vision, anybody's vision, cannot be your vision.

There are millions of people with eyes, and they all know light and all know colours, and they all know form and beauty - but even millions of people with eyes cannot help a blind man to know light. And in the world of truth it is just the opposite: one man has eyes and millions are blind. If millions of people who have eyes cannot help a single person who is blind to know about light, what to say when the situation is just the opposite? Once in a while a man becomes a Buddha or a Pythagoras, and millions and millions are blind about light, about God, about truth - how can one man's experience become your experience?

You can believe! Belief is a way to avoid search. Belief is a way of escape. Belief is a way which helps the coward to remain always cowardly. Belief is really shrinking from going on the pilgrimage, from going into the exploration, of truth. The exploration is arduous, hazardous, dangerous. The journey may be long. And who knows? You are going into the unknown.... It is safer to believe. That's why people believe and nobody searches.

People go to the temples, to the priest, to the scriptures, they carry their Bibles - but nobody looks where God is. And God is all around, but your eyes are full of belief, hence you cannot see him. Your eyes are full of prejudice, hence you cannot see him. Only empty eyes can see him, can discover him - only the eyes of a child.

And remember, that at the deepest core of your being you still have those eyes of a child - - wondering, inquiring, full of the mystery of life, surprised at each and everything, surprised at ordinary things... pebbles on the shore, seashells on the shore. And the child starts collecting as if they are diamonds. For the child there is nothing ordinary; everything is extraordinary. That child has not died in you! It never dies. It has been only covered with knowledge, belief; it has been lost in words. Just search and you will find your childhood again in you.

And this will be far more important than it was when you were really a child, because now you have known the ways of the world and the ways of the mind and you are frustrated. You have seen a thousand and one things and nothing satisfies. You have known many things and yet you don't know a thing. Now going back to your childhood, to the source of wonder, joy, mystery, and awe, you will again be able to look around...

and then trees will be more green, and the songs of the birds will be more poetic, and the people around you will have auras - they have! just you cannot see. You yourself will become radiant in your own vision.

God is not a person: it is a vision of life in its utter radiance. God is not a person: it is an experience, a psychedelic experience of the beauty, of the tremendous, incredible beauty, of life.

Sufis are right when they say: There is no God until you have met him. So, please, don't hide yourself behind a curtain of belief. Don't hide yourself behind your so-called, borrowed knowledge. Drop all beliefs, all knowledge, and start searching. Immediately, when you are empty, you will start being filled by something unknown... a light from the beyond. That is God. A love that goes on growing and starts overflowing - that is God. A great music is born in you, and a sharing with it. And it goes on growing and there is no end to it... that is God.

God is not a person but the experience of ultimate ecstasy, the orgasmic experience of dissolving oneself into the whole.

We are living in a kind of unconsciousness. That's why we cannot see. Our eyes are open and yet closed. We look awake, yet we are somnambulists.

A Scottish minister, taking his walk early in the morning, found one of his parishioners recumbent in a ditch.

"Where have ye been the night, Andrew?" asked the minister.

"Well, I dinna rightly ken," answered the prostrate one, "whether it was a funeral or a wedding - but whichever it was was a most extraordinary success."

Just watch yourself, and you will find yourself moving in a kind of drunkenness, unconscious. You don't know what life is. You don't know who you are. You don't know from where, to where... and still you go on in a drunken state, just like a driftwood, accidental.

You will not find God this way. You will have to become alert, you will have to bring the quality of awareness to your whole life. Each moment has to be of tremendous attentiveness - only then will you be able to know what is. God means THAT WHICH IS.

But we go on moving, doing things...

A well-known physician, particularly expeditious in examining and prescribing for his patients, was sought out by an army man whom he 'polished off' in almost less than no time. As the patient was leaving, he shook hands heartily with the doctor and said, "I am especially glad to have you prescribe for me, because I have often heard my father, Colonel Blank, speak of you.

"What!" exclaimed the physician, "are you old Torn's son?"

"Certainly."

"My dear fellow," cried the doctor, "throw that infernal prescription in the fire and sit down and tell me what is the matter with you."

So the first time he had not heard, and he had prescribed. He had not listened. Now the prescription is infernal, and he says, "Throw that infernal prescription in the fire and sit down and tell me what is the matter with you."

But this how we go on acting. This is our life... Lived in a kind of sleep, with many many dreams in the eyes, lethargy all around, dullness, unintelligent. This is not the way to know God.

God is available only when you are at the peak of your intelligence, when you are as sharp as you can be. God is not for the stupid: God is only for the intelligent, because life becomes available only through intelligence. And remember, by 'intelligence' I don't mean intellectuality. Intellectuality is a camouflaged stupidity; intellectuality is just a deception of intelligence, it is phony. Your so-called intelligentsia has nothing to do with intelligence. Maybe they are people who are very clever, but not intelligent; cunning, but not intelligent.

Intelligence means awareness, alertness. When you have cleaned all the dust from your mind, the dust of knowledge and belief, and your mind is just a pure mirror, that is intelligence. Meditation is intelligence.

The last question

Question 6:

IT IS REALLY TRUE It is my own experience. I say it as an eye-witness to it. I say it with absolute authority. I am not saying it because Lao Tzu has said it - I am saying it because I have known it, this way, to happen to me. Truth is something that happens of its own accord. All that is needed from your side, from your end, is receptivity, a relaxed receptivity.

There are things which happen through effort, and there are things which happen only through effortlessness. There are things which will never happen through effort, and there are things which will never happen through effortlessness. All that is mundane happens through effort; all that is worldly happens through effort. And all that is sacred, other- worldly, happens through effortlessness.

That which is outside you has to be reached through action, and that which is inside you has to be reached through inaction. And this statement is about the inner. I am not saying sit silently, doing nothing, the spring comes - and you become the richest man in the world. I am not saying that. You will NOT become. You may become the poorest, but you cannot become the richest man in the world. I am not saying the spring comes and you become the President of America - that I am not saying. But God comes only when you are sitting silently, doing nothing.

I have heard a beautiful story:

Benson had been with prostitutes everywhere in the world, but in Hong Kong he met his undoing. He made love to a very sick Chinese whore and picked up so many venereal diseases that the doctors had difficulty separating and identifying them all.

He went to a prominent gynaecologist in the American quarter who examined him and shook his head. "Bad news, Benson. You must have immediate surgery and we have got to cut your cock off."

Benson went into traumatic shock at the prognosis. Gathering himself together, he went across the street to another American doctor. There he was told the same thing.

He went out into the street in a daze. Stumbling along, he found himself in the Chinese quarter, where he saw a sign identifying the office of a Taoist Chinese surgeon.

Deciding to have one more medical opinion, Benson went in. He told the Chinese doctor that he had been to two American doctors and both of them wanted to perform immediate surgery to cut off his cock.

The Chinese surgeon examined Benson. He consulted large medical books. Then he examined him again.

"Is there any hope, doc?" Benson asked plaintively.

"Sure is hope!" the doctor said. "I make complete examination. I know just what is wrong. You play with Chinese girl, but she very sick. You make mistake and go to American doctor. Trouble with American doctors, they always think money, money, money."

Benson brightened up. "You mean I don't need surgery? My cock does not have to be cut off?"

"Forget what they say. Go home," the Chinese doctor repeated. "No surgery. Go home.

Wait two, maybe three weeks. Pecker fall off all by himself."

There ARE things which happen of their own accord!