The 'Instant' Pathology

The first question:

Question 1:

Every age has its own special pathology. Too much time-consciousness is the special pathology of this age. The modern mind is very conscious of time and wants everything to be done instantly.

There are reasons for it. First, the modern mind is West-oriented. The East has disappeared from consciousness. Even in the East it is the West that has become the reality. The East exists no more.

The East had the consciousness for eternity, timelessness. The West is too time-conscious.

The reason is Christianity. Christianity thinks that there is only one life. That creates anxiety. If there is only one life then everything has to be done in this life, there is no other.

The East has a very, very long span - millions of lives. There Is no hurry. Patience is possible. One can wait Even if this life is lost, nothing is lost. You will be coming back again and again. There is no need to rush.

This was a totally different world view, the world view of timelessness. The East has never been worried about time, about lack of time. The East has never said that time is money. The whole idea that time is money is just stupid.

Time as such exists not. Time exists in your desire, in your mind. That which really exists is eternity.

It is always there, it has always been there. So the East has lived in a kind of absolute patience.

But the East has disappeared from the world. The Western outlook says there is only one life and even that is no longer certain. Because of the Third World War, because of the atomic energy, the H-bomb, it is not even certain that you will be able to live your whole life. Any moment.... These mad politicians cannot be depended upon. They are so mad that any moment the world can simply disappear. More fear has arisen.

That's why in the younger generation, the people who have come upon the earth after the Second World War, there is much anxiety for instant enlightenment. It should be soon. If it is going to be at all, it should be soon. One never knows. The people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not even dreamed about the atom bomb, not even in their nightmares, and within a few seconds they all disappeared. One hundred thousand people in Hiroshima disappeared within five minutes. They were people just like you. You can disappear within five minutes. The politicians have the power to destroy the earth.

For the first time in human history the politician is immensely powerful, tremendously powerful. The politician has always been dangerous. The politician is the insanest person possible. But he has never been so powerful. He has been always mad but this time the mad man has the H-bomb.

Hence the children who were born after the Second World War are very conscious that something has to be done soon and fast, immediately. Hence the word instant' has become very, very important - instant coffee and instant sex and instant enlightenment. Everything has to be just now - now or never. Who knows about tomorrow? You cannot trust. Tomorrow has never been so uncertain as it is today.

That's why. First, the Western idea of one life, then second, the Western invention of the H-bomb, the possibility of the whole world disappearing in flames, have created an intense desire to know, to love, to be.

Time-consciousness, too much time-Consciousness, is a tension in the being. It does not allow you to relax. And now comes the dilemma. If you really want to be enlightened, the most necessary requirement is not to be tense. And if you want enlightenment instantly then it is impossible because you are so tense. That's why you ask for it to be right now.

If you want enlightenment to happen ever, you have to be ready to wait for it. Even if it comes in eternity you are ready to accept it, you are not in a hurry. Then it can come instantly too. A man who is ready to wait forever is very relaxed, knows no tension, no anxiety, no anguish. In that relaxed moment, satori, samadhi, enlightenment is possible.

I will tell you an ancient Hindu parable.

A great saint, Narada, was going to paradise. He used to travel between paradise and earth. He used to function like a postman between that world and this world. He was a bridge.

He came across an ancient sage, very old, doing his transcendental meditation - TM - under a tree, repeating his mantra. He had been repeating that mantra for many years and many lives. Narada asked him, 'Would you like to enquire about something? Would you like some message to be given to the Lord?' The of man opened his eyes and said, 'Just you enquire about one thing: how much longer do I have to wait? How long? Tell him it is too much. For many lives I have been doing this mantra, now how long am I expected to do it? Just ask this. I am tired of it. I am bored with it.'

Just by the side of the ancient sage underneath another tree was a young man with an EKTARA, a one stringed instrument, play-ing it and dancing. Must have been a kind of BAUL.

Narada asked him jokingly, 'Would you also like to enquire about how long it will take for your enlightenment to happen?' But the young man did not even bother to answer. He continued his dance. Narada asked again, 'I am going to the Lord. Have you some message?' But the young man laughed and continued to dance.

Narada went. when he came back after a few days he told the old man, 'I enquired and God said that you will have to wait at least three lives more.' The old man became so angry that he threw down his beads. He was almost ready to hit Narada. And he said, 'This is nonsense! I have been waiting and waiting and I have been doing all kinds of austerities - chanting, fasting, all forms of rituals. I have fulfilled all the requirements. Now this is too much! Three lives - this is unjust.'

Then Narada became very much afraid to tell to the young man because although the young man had not asked him to enquire, he had enquired. The young man was still dancing under his tree, very joyously. Narada was afraid but still he went and told the young man, 'Although you did not ask, out of my own curiosity I enquired. When God said that that old man would have to wait three lives, I enquired about the young man just by the side of the tree who is dancing there with his EKTARA.

And he said, 'That young man - he will have to wait as many lives as there are leaves on the tree under which he is dancing."'

And the young man started dancing even faster and he said, 'Then it is not very far. Just as many leaves as are on this tree? then it is not very far, then I have already arrived - because just think how many trees there are on the whole earth. Compare! So it is very close. Thank you, sir, that you enquired.' And he started dancing fast.

And the story says that the young man became instantly enlightened that very moment.

The story has not said anything about the old sage. I think he must be somewhere here now. He cannot become enlightened. His very approach is wrong. His very approach is that of a tense mind.

His very approach is that of a demanding ego.

You attain to enlightenment only when there is no ego to demand - there is no demand, there is no demander.

Time creates the ego. The ego does not exist in animals because they are not conscious of time.

The ego does not exist in children because they are also not conscious of time. When you become conscious of time you become conscious of many things. First, the consciousness of time creates the fear of death. You immediately become conscious of death.

That's why in Sanskrit we have the same name for both - we call time KAL and we also call death KAL. We have the same name for both because they are tWo aspects of the same phenomenon.

Time and death, they are not separate at all. The moment you become alert about time you become alert about death because time is running out fast, death is coming, death is there and you have to do something before death grabs you. Then fear, anxiety....

In that fear and anxiety, in that impatience, you can go on searching but you will not find. It is not that you have to find God, it is that you have to allow him to find you. So you have to be in a receptive mood, in a non-desiring, non-demanding mood, utterly at ease, as if it has already happened. There is no need for it to happen, it is as if it has already happened. With this silence, this peace, with this non-tense state, it happens.

You ask: SO MANY PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR INSTANT ENLIGHTENMENT THESE DAYS AND THERE ARE ALL THESE GURUS RUNNING AROUND SAYING 'FOLLOW ME' AND YET IT IS QUESTIONABLE WHETHER THE ANSWER IS THERE. The answer is in you, it is nowhere else. So if you want to follow a man, follow the man who throws you back to yourself - because the answer is in you. The outer guru's function is to help you to find your inner guru.

If the outer guru wants you to cling to him and hang around him and if he wants you to remain always dependent on him, then he is dangerous. Avoid him. Then he is not a Master. Then he has need of followers but he is not a Master. Then through followers he is fulfilling his own ego. He feels good because he has so many followers. His feeling good has nothing to do with enlightenment, his feeling good is almost as political as any politician's when he is in power. It gives a kind of power when you know that you have so many disciples, many followers - thousands of followers. It gives power. It is a power trip.

But if somebody is on a power trip he will not help you to go into your innermost core. He will be the last person to help you. He will hinder you. He will create all kinds of barriers so that you cannot reach into your own core, because if you reach into your own core you will be free of that so-called guru. There will be no need. Yes, you will thank him and you will move on your own way. You will be grateful that he helped you, that he guided you to your own innermost being, but that's all. You are ready to move on your own, you are ready to be your own being.

So remember, this has to be the criterion: if you feel that a certain guru is enjoying the idea of having so many disciples and is creating barriers for you to enter into your own being and is desirous that you should go on clinging to him and makes you more and more helpless and makes you more and more dependent, makes you more and more afraid and creates guilt in you, and goes on saying, 'It is only through me that your salvation is possible,' takes away your freedom, destroys you - then escape from that man, he is the devil incarnate. Avoid him.

Search out somebody who is not in any need of having followers, who has no need of having a big crowd around him, who is utterly satisfied with himself even when he is alone, who is absolutely contented with his own self. Then he can be of tremendous help.

But remember again, the answer is not anywhere else, the answer is within you. The kingdom of God is within you. You are already carrying the answer within yourself. Maybe you have not looked and read it, maybe you don't know how to decode it, maybe you have lost the key to your own innermost shrine. Somebody can be of help. One who has come to his innermost being can show you the path.

Buddha has said, 'Buddhas only show the path. You have to travel.' They cannot travel for you.

Nobody can create your salvation. It is only your responsibility because it is you who have created the bondage and it is you who can drop it. Yes, somebody can be of immense help to make you aware, to make you alert about the situation.

One thing more about this age. The old supports have disappeared. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, don't have the kind of hold on you that they used to have in the past. The church, the temple, the mosque are only decorative now, formal. Nobody's heart is there.

Friedrich Nietzsche is the prophet of this age. He declared that God is dead and man is free. True, I support half his statement, the beginning part: God IS dead - at least, the God that people used to believe in is no more there, it is dead. The God of believers is dead, the God of Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans is dead. Of course, the real God can never be dead because the real God simply means life eternal, nothing else. The real God cannot be dead if existence is existing; the real God simply means the existence, life, this cosmos. But the God of the believers is dead.

True, I absolutely support half Friedrich Nietzsche's statement - but man is not free. god is dead, man is not free. In fact, man is in great chaos.

Man has always depended on beliefs, churches, organisations, scriptures - they have all disappeared. And man has not yet become grown-up. He still needs somebody to depend upon - hence he goes on searching for gurus.

In the old days the Christian had his priest and the Hindu had his guru and the Mohammedan had his MOULANA, now they are no more relevant. But deep down in man there is a kind of helplessness.

Man is not yet capable of being on his own, he cannot stand on his own. He is afraid. He wants somebody to lean on. So he is ready to fall into the trap of whoever can claim that 'I am going to support you.'

You ask me: WHAT DO YOU ATTRIBUTE THIS TO? Why are there so many people seeking for instant enlightenment and why are there so many people claiming that they can deliver the goods?

It is a simple law of economics: when there is a demand, there is a supply. If you ask for instant enlightenment, there must be somebody cunning and clever enough to start claiming that he can supply it. You simply demand and you will find the supplier. Anything demanded will be produced.

The producers are always there.

Just the other night I was reading a book. I was surprised. Such books can be written only in this age and only in America, nowhere else. The author says in the introduction: 'Are you unemployed?

Are you ill? Are you without a woman or without a man? Are you poor? Would you like to have better health, more money? Would you like to win over a woman or a man? Would you like to defeat your enemy? Or anything? Then here is the key.' And this man is pretending to be a spiritual Master.

'Here is the key.' And as a proof he says, 'Look at me. Just three years ago I was poor, my life with my wife was a constant conflict. I was unhappy and was thinking of committing suicide. I was one of the most miserable men in the world. But I found this secret from a guru in Tibet.

Now this 'Tibet' is beautiful. You can always find something from Tibet! 'And that secret worked.

Now I have a Cadillac car, a beautiful house to live in, a bank balance of five figures; my life has become absolutely beautiful, love has flowered between me and my wife. I have become famous.'

And he gives his address. He says, 'You can come any time.' He lives in Montreal. 'You can come any time and you can see yourself what miracles have happened through my guru and his blessing.

And I can give you the secret too.'

People would have laughed at this kind of spirituality in the ancient days. But these kind of people are available, these kind of people have become very prominent. Whatsoever you demand they are ready to give - at least, they promise to give. There is no need really to give. The promise is enough.

You go to one guru and if you fail, if you don't attain, you start moving to another. And somebody else comes to the first guru, and this way people go on moving from one guru to another guru with the desire that somewhere it is going to happen.

First be alert that this world is a market, a supermarket. All kinds of claimers are there. They listen to your desires and they claim. They speak the language of your desires.

A real Master does not speak the language of your desire and your demand. A real Master only promises one thing - death. A real Master says, 'I am going to be your cross. I can help you to die and disappear.' A real Master can only promise you crucifixion because only through crucifixion is resurrection. Only when you disappear as man is God born in you. Only when you are not, God is.

So whenever you find a dangerous Master who is ready to throw you into flames, who is ready to destroy you utterly and who is not in any need of your being a follower, who does not care a bit whether you follow him or not - only that Master can be of some help.

But always remember, the answer is within you. He will only direct you within yourself. Because you are not capable of going into your own self, a kind of help is needed - somebody who knows the way; somebody who has gone into his own being and is fully aware of the path and the possibilities of going astray; who is aware of how many pitfalls there are; who is aware of how many wrong turns there are; who is aware of how many false doors there are and who is aware of the arduous work that one has to do.

And a real Master will not promise you instant enlightenment - that is just stupid. There are no short cuts. One has to grow slowly, patiently. Money may be possible instantly - you can become a thief - but you cannot steal God, you cannot become that kind of thief. Money is possible - you can deceive the income tax officer, or the income tax department - but how are you going to deceive God?

Money is possible instantly if you use wrong means, but if you use wrong means in your spiritual growth you will be self-destructive. Wrong means are not possible there. In the spiritual world the means and the end are-the same. You cannot use wrong means for right ends in the spiritual world.

In the ordinary world you can. The ordinary world is perfectly available to those who want to exploit it, oppress it, but God is not available to the exploiters. God is available only to the true, the innocent.

God is available only to the authentic. There means and ends are not separate, they are the same.

Only the right means will lead you to the right end.

If somebody promises you instant enlightenment, that is a certainty that he is going to deceive you.

And if you fall into his trap you are responsible - because in the first place you wanted enlightenment instantly. That was stupid. That has led you to this stupidity and to this imprisonment. God cannot be demanded on order. You have to prepare yourself. you have to become worthy. And it is a long journey. You will be fortunate if you can ever attain it. You will be blessed if it ever happens.

And I am not saying it cannot happen now, remember. If you are ready, if you are ready to wait forever, it can happen now, because this moment is as potential as any other moment. At this time God's door is as open as ever. But you will need eyes to see, you will need wings to fly, you will need a womb-like receptivity to receive, you will need an innocent mind, thoughtless, aware, loving, compassionate. These things are not seasonal flowers; they take time to grow roots into the earth.

The second question:

Question 2:

First, even if you do, you will not be able to push it. For a moment you may feel powerful - that you are pushing the river - but finally you will be defeated by it. The river is huge, the energy is huge, it will take you. Finally you will onLy feel defeated, frustrated.

That's what people are doing and that's why people look so frustrated and sad, so defeated, so depressed. They are pushing the river, fighting with life - not trusting life but fighting with life.

A very poisonous idea has entered into the human mind - that life is a struggle, that one has to fight, that it is a struggle to survive, that everybody is your enemy. Treat everybody as your enemy and beware. Everybody is going to destroy you. So before somebody else destroys you, it is better that you should jump on him.

Just the other day I was reading a new commandment: Do to others before they do it to you. This is a poisonous idea, very irreligious.

Religion means trust, surrender, going with the river, going with God. We belong to this universe, we are not alien, nobody is your enemy. Even the enemy is not your enemy - that's why Jesus says 'Love your enemies.' He means that even the enemy is not your enemy, you must have misinterpreted him. In the final reckoning even your enemies are your friends. They were giving you challenges, they were creating situations for you to grow.

Don't fight with life. If you fight, you will never win. Let me give you this paradox - and all great statements are paradoxical: If you want to win, don't try to win; if you want to be defeated, try to win.

I was reading about Alexander the Great and about his last words. The last words that he uttered are tremendously significant. Remember them. The last words that he uttered do not look like Alexander's, but he has come to an understanding - of course, very late. But even then it is never too late. Even if you come home when the sun is setting, then, too, it is not too late.

The sun was setting, Alexander was dying. He was dying in his golden palace. He had the most beautiful palace that anybody has ever had before or since. He had all the power that a man can have and all the riches and all the beautiful women. He had all the greatest physicians of the world to take care of him and he was not very old, but he was dying.

And the physicians said, 'Now we are helpless. ' He wanted to be alive at least twenty-four hours more, just twenty-four hours, because he wanted to see his mother. He had promised his mother that he would come back. He had to go and conquer the world, but when he was leaving he promised his mother that he would come back. And the distance was very little but at least twenty-four hours were needed to reach there, or for the mother to be brought to him. and he only wanted to live for twenty-four hours more - with all the wealth of the world and all the power of the world - but the physician said, 'It is impossible. You cannot live for even twenty-four minutes. Life is disappearing, slipping away. We are sorry but we cannot do anything.'

Lying on a golden couch studded with valuable diamonds, how helpless Alexander must have felt.

He was just asking for twenty-four hours - not much. Not much at least for an Alexander. He was not a beggar. Twenty four hours for a man like Alexander was not too much but even that was not possible.

And when the last flicker of life was disappearing he opened his eyes, looked-at his gold palace, his generals standing around him, his immensely costly couch on which he was dying - a poor man, a beggar - and he laughed at the whole ridiculousness of it. And he wanted only twenty-four hours!

These were his last words. He said, 'All is vanity,' closed his eyes and died.

'All is vanity.' And he struggled his whole life for this vanity. He died a poor man, empty, exhausted, utterly disillusioned.

He was a conqueror. He was pushing the river of life according to his desires. He wanted to impose himself on existence.

Please, flow with the river. You are a part, you cannot impose yourself on the whole; the whole is infinite. It is as foolish as a small wave trying to direct the whole ocean, trying to dominate the whole ocean, trying to pull the ocean in a certain direction, to certain goals. It is not possible. How can a small wave be in control of the vast ocean? And we are not even waves, we are just ripples. For one moment we are there, another moment we are gone.

With this momentary life the only thing that you can learn is to surrender, to be in a let-go, not to push. Pushing, you will be moving in a wrong direction, the direction of the ego. Surrender Fight, all fight, is out of the ego. Don't even swim, just float with the river wherever it takes you.

Finally it takes you to the ocean. If a man is courageous enough to surrender, then God takes possession of him.

Then you are directed by infinite sources of understanding, love, energy. Then you are to decide on your own no longer. And when you are not to decide on your own, all anxiety disappears - obviously.

I have heard about a man who was a great philosopher. He was robbed - he was coming from one town to another and he was robbed on the way. And he did not have a single PAI.

So he went to a farmer - he was a man of pride - and he said, 'I am hungry and I have been robbed.

I would like to work for you - any work you can give me - so that you can give me something to eat and a shelter for the night. In the morning I will start moving again.'

The farmer took pity on him. He was a poor man and he had no work really but he could see this man's pride. So he said, 'Okay.' He took him into his house where there was a big pile of Irish potatoes and he told him, 'You have to sort them out. Make one pile of the biggest, another of the smallest, and just in the middle, of those which are between the two - neither big nor small.' He left.

After four, five hours he came back. Not even a single potato had been moved. And the philosopher was perspiring and was very anxious. The farmer asked, 'What has happened? You look so tired and so exhausted and I don't see that any work has been done.' The philosopher said, 'What you are talking about? The deciding, all this deciding, is driving me mad. Which one is the bigger and which one is the smaller and which one is just in the middle.... All this deciding is driving me mad. I have not been able to decide.'

If your life is becoming insane just look deep down - you will find that all this deciding is driving you mad too. What to do? What not to do? Where to go? Where not to go? All is unknown and mysterious. And whatsoever you do, there is doubt about whether this is right or not. If you don't do it there is doubt - maybe it was right. All this deciding.... If you want to push the river you will become insane.

Relax. Let God do it. Don't be a doer. This is one of the most fundamental principles of Sufism - don't be a doer, let God do it.

I have heard....

A Baptist minister rushed down to the train station every single day to watch the Sunset Limited go by. There was no chore he wouldn't interrupt to carry out this ritual.

Members of his congregation considered this eccentricity rather juvenile and asked him to give it up.

'No, gentlemen,' he said firmly. 'I preach your sermons, teach your Sunday school, bury your dead, marry you, run your charities, act as chairman for every drive you conduct. I won't give up seeing that Southern Pacific train every day. I love it! It's the only thing in this town I don't have to push!'

You need not push anything. You can just relax and let God do. You can become a vehicle, you can become an instrument - what in India we call nimitta. You can become instrumental.

That's what Krishna goes on teaching to Arjuna in SRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA. The whole teaching can be condensed into one thing, into one essential point - that you need not be a doer. Let God do it.

Arjuna was worried, naturally, because he was thinking that it was a decision to be made by him - whether to fight or not, whether to kill or not, whether to go into this massacre or not. It was going to be a great war, many would be killed, it was going to be murderous. And he started thinking, and he became worried whether it was worth it. A great religious idea arose in his mind that this was too violent and meaningless and what was one going to gain by it? It was not worth it. He became very, very depressed by the whole idea. He fell into despair.

Krishna, his friend, his Master, his charioteer, argued long to convince him, 'Whatsoever is going to happen is going to happen. God has already decided it. It does not make any difference whether you do it or not - somebody else will do it. These people you are seeing alive are already dead.

Their death has already happened. You are not the one to decide whether they should live or die.

Who are you? You cannot even decide about your own life, how can you decide about somebody else's life? God has decided it already. He has chosen you as an instrument. If he wants you to kill, relax, if he wants you to renounce, renounce, but leave the decision to him. Don't you decide - because through decision comes the ego.'

Krishna was not saying that you necessarily have to go into war, remember. That is a fallacy. Many people have thought that Krishna was forcing him to go into war. On the surface it looked like Arjuna was a pacifist and Krishna was a warmonger. It was not the case. Krishna was not saying anything about war in fact - and nobody knows whether this war ever happened. It may be just a parable...

that is more of a possibility. It may be a metaphor.

But the message is immensely significant. The message is that you don't decide, you don't stand in the way, you disappear. If God decides that you renounce and go to the Himalayas, then you go, but let it be God's decision, not your own. Or if he wants you to fight, then it is perfectly okay. You are not responsible when you don't decide.

This is the life of a sannyasin. The life of a sannyasin is the life of one who has dropped deciding, who has relaxed, and who says, 'Let God do. I will function as an instrument. I will be a hollow bamboo. If he Wants to sing a song, he will make a flute of me; if he does not, I will remain a hollow bamboo. But I will be a hollow bamboo.'

You cannot sing any song on your own. All songs are his. And whenever you dance it is he that dances, and whenever you celebrate it is he that celebrates. Your life is not really yours, it is his life.

All life is his.

So please, don't push the river. Relax in the rivet. The river is already going to the ultimate goal. It will take you with it.

The third question:

Question 3:

It creates trouble because it is hetero. It creates trouble because it is between two opposite polarities.

It creates trouble because it is between two different kinds of species - man and woman.

Man is one kind of species and woman is a different kind of species. They exist in opposite directions - hence the attraction. Opposites attract. The negative electricity is attracted by the positive electricity; the positive electricity is attracted by the negative electricity. If you put two positive poles of magnetism together they repel each other. They don't attract. The similar repels, the contrary attracts.

The woman is attracted to the man, the man is attracted to the woman, because they are opposite - yin, yang, day, night, life, death, earth, sky - they attract. But remember, the very attraction is because of the opposition. They are opposite so they attract. When you come closer there are bound to be difficulties because you will be speaking different languages, you will be functioning from different parts of your being.

The woman functions illogically, the man functions logically. Logic and illogic don't meet. The woman is more poetic, the man is more prosaic. Their approaches towards life are different.

The woman is more interested in the immediate, the man is more interested in the far away. You can watch it in everything. The woman cannot believe why man is so interested in the moon and Mars. It looks stupid. What is the point? The woman is interested only in the neighbourhood; the neighbourhood gos-sip is her gospel. Man talks about great things, faraway things. The woman never raises those questions, those questions are irrelevant. She is interested in the immediate, the close by. The man talks about what is happening in Vietnam and what is happening in Korea and what is happening in Israel, and the woman talks about what is happening with the neighbour's wife, whom she is fooling around with, what is happening in the close-by world.

The man functions from the left hemisphere of his mind and the woman functions from the right hemisphere of her mind. They don't meet, they can't understand each other. They are attracted by each other but they can't understand each other. So there is a constant game of coming closer and going farther away. That is the problem - relating and being distant. Both continue.

You come close to a woman to a certain point where a meeting happens and then you start going away. You move like two pendulums - you come close and then you go far away, come close, go far away.

And this is nothing new - because man and woman are nothing new.

Listen to this small story.

The Lord called Adam from the Garden of Eden and spoke to him. 'I am going to teach you to kiss.'

'What is kiss?' asked Adam.

'You go to Eve and you place your lips on hers.'

Adam did this and returned shortly.

Now, said the Lord, 'i will teach you to make love.'

'What is love?'

And the Almighty explained to Adam, and Adam left to try what he had learned. Very soon he came back.

'Lord,' said Adam, 'What is a headache?'

That's how it goes. So when your woman says that she has a headache, don't bother her. It is not something new. It started with Eve - and the very first day Adam made love to her.

Then there is a constant effort to dominate. That too is natural - natural as long as man remains man and woman remains woman. The man wants to dominate the woman in his own way, in his muscular way; the woman wants to dominate the man in her own feminine way - by tears, by crying, weeping. Those are her strategies. Just as you have muscles, she has tears. And it almost always happens that muscles are defeated by tears - because the softer wins over the harder.

This is bound to be so because whenever two persons are there, fear arises that the other may dominate. So before the other starts dominating you have to plan. This is very unconscious. This is not done deliberately, it is instinctive, it is natural, biological. It is built-in. One remains afraid the other may start dominating - and then? So it is better to dominate before the other starts any kind of domination. There is bound to be a constant conflict.

Unless a woman and a man understand the whole structure of this polarity very deeply; unless they become meditators; unless they meditate on their own innermost desires, power trips, egos; unless they understand how their minds function; unless they understand how their minds function mechanically - it is not possible to remain in silence and peace. Conflict will continue.

Man and woman are intimate enemies - enemies and yet intimate. There is great pull and great attraction - because of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the uncharted, the mysterious. But for the same reason, there is conflict.

If your woman is with you then you start feeling: how to be alone? When you are alone, after a few days you start a great thirst and hunger for your woman - how to be with her? If you are alone, appetite arises for love; if you are with somebody, the appetite disappears and you start thinking, 'Why not go to the Himalayas and sit silently in a cave? Why go on bothering with this nonsense?'

Just a few days ago Ramananda wrote a letter to me. First he used to live alone, then he got tired of aloneness - naturally. Everybody gets tired of aloneness, gets fed up with oneself. Nothing else to do, nowhere to go, nobody to look at, nobody to be with, nobody to hug, nobody to care for you or to care about. He got tired and started looking for a woman - and when you look for trouble it comes!

So then came Vani from faraway Germany, and they were both happy - as stories go. They were both happy. Then things started getting entangled, and there was conflict and fight and nagging - all natural things. Then for two days Vani was ill and Ramananda was alone again. He enjoyed those two days like anything! He wrote me a letter: 'Osho, to be alone is so incredible, so beautiful, I have never known that aloneness is so beautiful.' I told him, 'Wait, Ramananda! Just a few more days and you will start hankering.'

And this goes on and on, again and again.

One has to understand. One has to understand how one functions, man or woman, and how the other functions. And don't be too personal about it. It has nothing to do with you. It is just the man's mind and the woman's mind, it has nothing to do with Ramananda and Vani. It is basically biological. You have to understand it very impersonally, only then can you go beyond it, only then can you transcend it.

Watch every move that you make and watch every move that the woman makes. Listen to the deepest instinct, to what is happening. Don't throw the responsibility on the other and don't start feeling guilty that you are doing something wrong. Nobody is doing wrong. It is simply natural.

But one can go beyond nature because there is a super-nature too. I am not saying that you are condemned to be natural, that you will remain always natural, no. With understanding one becomes wiser, wiser than nature. One becomes more meditative than nature allows. And through that understanding there comes a liberation.

But that liberation is so alchemical that it transforms you totally, radically. Then you are no more a man and your woman is no more a woman. Then you both become more like two spirits - man, woman, seem irrelevant. And when a man is no more a man and a woman is no more a woman that means they are no more confined to their biologies, no more confined to their bodies - because the difference is only in the body. Beyond the body there is no difference. Hidden behind, you are the same. It is just the body, the medium, that makes the difference. Once you have started learning how to go beyond the medium, how to transcend biology, physiology, then you have become only two spirits.

And only two spirits can live in communion forever. Then there arises a new kind of love which I call friendship. Friendship is higher than your so-called love. Your so-called love is full of hate; friendship is pure love. All hate has disappeared. All conflict, nagging, fighting has disappeared. All desire to dominate, possess, be jealous, has disappeared. Friendship is pure love. All that was not needed is no more there. All that was non-essential has, been left behind. Only the essential fragrance.

Friendship is the fragrance of love. And remember that unless you and your wife become friends, you will never be at peace.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

I have not told you to reject them. How can you reject something which is not? I have been telling you only to see, to look into them. I am not telling you to reject them - rejected they will remain, rejected they will remain deep in your unconscious, repressed. They will remain. Rejection means repression. What will you do? Rejected they will not disappear, they will move into the dark corner of your soul and they will function from there.

No, I am the last person to tell you to reject. I don't say 'reject the darkness', I only say 'bring light'.

Bring a lamp and see around - where is darkness? It disappears. It is not to be rejected, it cannot be rejected.

Look into your ego and it starts disappearing. Not that you reject it, not that you do anything to it - with just a deep insight into it, it disappears. It exists only because you have not looked into it.

It is like a shadow. You are walking and the shadow follows you. Now, if you are alone and in a desert, or in a cemetery, and you become afraid that somebody is following you, you start running.

And the more you run, the more the shadow runs with you. Then you become even more afraid and the logical mind will say 'Run faster.' This way you will not be able to win. Go faster and faster! But how are you going to win? You can go as fast as you can but the shadow will be with you.

All that is needed is to stand and turn around - a hundred and eighty degree about-turn - and look into the shadow. There is nobody. it is your shadow. It is just a shadow. A shadow means nothing.

It exists not. That very moment the shadow has disappeared.

By disappearance I mean it will not affect you any more. It will not be powerful over you any more. It will not make you frightened any more.

You say: CAN WE NOT LOVE AND ACCEPT OUR HEAD, OUR MIND, OUR EGO, AS PART OF THE WHOLE LIFE? It is impossible because the very mechanism of the ego is that the part tries to pretend, the part tries to claim that it is the whole. That is the whole problem. The ego says 'I am the whole. ' The ego is not ready to accept that it is only a part. The ego says 'I am the king and I am the whole. '

How can you love the ego and accept it as a part? That is the very thing the ego denies. It says 'I am not the part, I am the whole.' The part claiming to be the whole is what the ego is all about. The head claims 'I am the whole.'

CAN WE NOT LOVE AND ACCEPT OUR HEAD, OUR MIND, OUR EGO, AS PART OF THE WHOLE LIFE? No, there is no way. You will have to look into the ego. When the ego disappears you will know what the whole is - otherwise the ego goes on pretending that it is the whole. And you will never know the whole.

When the ego has disappeared, when no part claims to be the whole, then the whole comes into existence, starts functioning on its own. Then there is great accord, great harmony.

And you cannot love the ego because who are you? The ego says that you are not separate. The ego claims your totality. The ego is your identity. When you say 'Can I not love my ego?' do you think you have two 'I's? 'I' and the ego? Who is going to love whom? It is a trick of the ego. The question is from the ego. The ego is trying to befool you. The ego is saying, 'Why destroy me? Can't you love me?' But who are you? If you know yourself as separate from the ego then the question will not arise. Then you have come to be your soul, you have attained to your centre. And in that very attainment there is no ego, there is nobody left to love.

And if you think that you can love the ego then you are not. This is the dilemma. If the ego is, you are not. If you are, the ego disappears. They cannot both exist together, just like darkness and light cannot exist together.

And you ask, 'Why can't one love the ego?' The ego is the destroyer of all possibilities of love. It kills the heart. It makes it impossible to love. Love disappears. You become a desert, a wasteland.

Love no longer grows in you. How are you going to love the ego? Love is not there. If you start being loving you will find the ego disappearing. If love starts flowing in you, you will not find any ego in yourself. Then the heart will become your centre.

That's what Sufis call heart-wakefulness. Then the heart wakes. And the moment the heart wakes, the head disappears. The head can function only while the heart is asleep.

It is - as Gurdjieff used to say - as if the master of the house is asleep and the watchman pretends to be the master. If somebody comes, the watchman talks as if he is the master. And the master is asleep. Then the master awakes and he comes out - the watchman again becomes a servant. He is no more a master. He cannot pretend. The master is present.

Have you not seen it happening in a class of small children? The master is not there, the teacher is not there, and they are all shouting and screaming and doing a thousand and one things. And then comes the master. Suddenly they are sitting at their desks. Everybody is reading very concentratedly, as if there had been no noise, no chaos. What has happened? His very presence has been a transformation.

It happens exactly like that inside you. When you are awake, ego disappears. Then your head and your mind become your servants. You cannot accept them, you cannot reject them, you have only to understand them. And then all happens of its own accord.

The last question:

Question 5:

What are you talking about? Path? You are on the path just by studying books?

It is not possible. Through books one never comes to the path. Through books one only hears rumours about the path - just rumours that the path exists, that the path is, that the path is possible, perhaps somewhere the path exists - that's all. Books can only give you rumours, they cannot put you on the path.

And that's what I go on saying to you every morning - that knowledge is a barrier, that one never comes to God by learning. One comes by unlearning; by not becoming knowledgeable but by becoming innocent. One has to burn one's scriptures, my books included. One has to burn all language, verbalisation, thinking. Only then does one come to the path, not before it.

And you are asking: I HAVE PROGRESSED A LOT ON THE PATH. WHAT NEXT? You have not even dreamed about the path.

A woman was seriously ill. Her husband summoned the doctor, who dashed inside the sickroom and came out a minute later asking for a chisel. The stunned but anxious husband didn't ask questions.

He found a chisel.

Minutes later the doctor poked his head out and asked, 'You got a hammer?'

The husband was puzzled, but not wanting to doubt the doctor, gave him a hammer. Five minutes later out came the doctor asking for a hacksaw.

By now the husband was completely upset and screamed hysterically, 'Doctor, you asked for a hammer, a chisel and a hacksaw. What are you doing to my wife?'

'What wife?' asked the doctor. 'I'm trying to open my satchel!'

You have not even opened your satchel yet. What path are you talking about? The doctor is just opening his box. Scriptures can't help you more than that. And there is every possibility that whatsoever you read in the scriptures may not be in the scriptures at all.

How can you read something that you don't know already? You can read only that which you know.

So people go on reading themselves in their books. They don't read the books. When you read my books you cannot read them. You will be reading only something about your o. n mind into it. You will interpret it in your own way. You will be the interpreter.

To understand what I say, you will have to enter with that state of mind from where it is said. To understand Christ you will have to attain to Christ consciousness. To understand Krishna you will have to attain Krishna consciousness. Just by learning, you will not be able to understand - you will misunderstand. All your interpretations are going to be wrong. They will be your interpretationS out of your ignorance and out of all your kinds of stupidities.

Parson Sloan, with a nervous habit of winking his eye, was sent by his parish to New York City.

Sloan asked the taxi driver for a good hotel - as he winked - and the cabbie mistook the wink and took him to a bawdy-house.

The parson asked the madam for a nice room - as he winked - and she took him by the hand to a room filled with her girls, telling him to take his pick.

But Parson Sloan said - as he winked - that he didn't want any girls.

The madam went to the head of the stairs and shouted, 'Oh, Clarence, here's one for you!'

People understand only according to their state of mind. And that is natural. It has to be forgiven.

But listening to me, reading my hooks, you have not even understood a simple fundamental that I go on repeating: that through knowledge knowing is not possible, through knowledge wisdom is not possible.

Your question reminds me of this small anecdote....

Farthington and Smythe, two Englishmen, went on holiday to Ireland. Farthington had a reputation for tactlessness, so Smythe warned him not to say anything disparaging about the Catholic Church.

One evening they were playing darts in the local pub when news came over the radio that the pope was ill. Immediately everyone crowded around the radio to listen.

'Oh, to hell with the pope,' said Farthington. 'Let's get on with the game.'

He woke up in the hospital to find Smythe sitting next to him. 'I warned you not to say anything about their religion,' said Smythe.

'Yes, I know,' said Farthington. 'But you didn't tell me the pope was a Catholic.'