Judge Ye Not

JESUS says, 'Judge ye not.' His statement is absolute, with no qualifications. It is categorical.

He does not say, 'Don't judge wrongly,' he simply says, 'Judge ye not.' Don't judge at all. He makes no distinction between right judgement and wrong judgement. His statement declares that all judgement is wrong. Judgement as such is wrong.

This is a tremendously powerful statement - and the same is the attitude of Sufism about life. A real man of God has no judgement. He can't judge. It is impossible for him to judge. Firstly, to judge you need to be an egoist. The ego is a must. Judgement is possible only if you are standing egocentrically. If you have no ego left, who is going to judge? And how? And in comparison to what?

The real man of God exists as a nothing. He is emptiness - what Buddha calls SHOONYATA. He is non-being. Inside, in him, there is no one except God. He is one with the all. He cannot make a distinction of 'I' and 'thou'. He cannot stand against the 'thou' in any way. Because there is no 'I' left, there cannot be any 'thou'. He is one with all. With a thief he is a thief; with a saint he is a saint. He cannot stand against, he cannot even stand for - because to stand against or to stand for, you need an ego. That is a basic requirement. He cannot judge because he is not.

When Jesus says, 'Judge ye not' he is saying, 'Please, disappear.' The judgement won't allow your ego to disappear, it will keep feeding it, will keep strengthening it. So those who judge become very, very egoistic. They are not the religious people, not the people of the path.

The second thing: to judge, you need criteria, rules, paradigms. Rules come from the past, rules come from history - and life always go on transcending history. History is where it once was, but it is no longer there. So all rules are inadequate. They belong to the dead past, they have nothing to say about the alive present.

Martin Luther has said that faith is based in history. That is an utterly absurd statement and very unchristian. Faith is not based in history, faith is based in your own experience of life herenow. It has nothing to do with the past. The past is no more. The past is nothing but footprints on the banks of time. Life has moved from there just as sometimes a snake moves out of its old skin. To judge the alive snake by the dead skin would be foolish; to judge man by history is nonsense.

But without history there is no other criterion. You cannot judge from the past because it is no more, you cannot judge from the future because it is not yet, and by the time you find a criterion to judge man in the present, the present will have become past. It is changing each moment.

Life is a process, a flux. Life is unpredictable. No rule contains it. No rule can contain it. It is uncontainable. It has an absolute freedom. It goes on moving in new directions, new ways. It goes on finding new pastures of joy and bliss and ecstasy.

Rules come from the past, that's why every society has different rules - because every society has a different history. Hindus have lived in one way, in one kind of climate, in one country; Mohammedans have lived in another way and in another kind of climate: Tibetans have lived in a totally different way. Their histories are different, that's why their moralities are different, that's why their rules are different. Those rules are all arbitrary. They are utilitarian. They have nothing of reality in them. Yes, they help, at a certain moment in time, but once life has moved beyond that moment they become just hangovers, ugly, burdening, heavy. They make you dull.

Martin Luther is not right. He was not really a man of God, he was more of a politician, more of a protestant - protesting, fighting - more of a revolutionary. He did not have a religious consciousness.

Faith is not based in any history, faith is based in experience. And when I say experience I mean 'experiencing' - because once one experience has become complete, it is past. While you are in it, pulsating, alive, throbbing, dancing, only then, only then and there can you contact God. And with that contact arises faith. Faith is not a conditioning, it is your own experience of the divine in life.

So remember, faith does not have a base in the history of the race. It does not even have a base in your own autobiography, it is not autobiographical. The real man of faith has no autobiography.

That's why in the East we have a tradition that the sannyasin should not write his autobiography - because he should not think in terms of autobiography. If you ask a sannyasin from where he comes, he will laugh; to what society he belongs, he will laugh; what his old name was, he will laugh. He will not give you any clue about his past. Yogananda is the first Hindu sannyasin who has written an autobiography - THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI - otherwise, the sannyasins have always insisted that they don't have any past. They efface their past. They have only the present; the now is all that they have - hence the freedom, the absolute freedom, of the sannyasin. Because he has no past he is not imprisoned anywhere. He has no autobiography.

Just think - if you can drop your autobiography completely, how free you will become in that very instant.

And that is the meaning of my sannyas too. When I give you sannyas, what I am in fact telling you is to drop your history, drop your autobiography. Now be connected with your past no more, become discontinuous with it. Now live the moment, and live the moment with clarity, intelligence, awareness, love, but not according to rules. Rules come from the past; love arises herenow. Intelligence is herenow; rules come from the past.

And always remember, a person who lives through rules is bound to be unintelligent. In fact, to live according to rule is just a way to avoid intelligence. Then you can afford to be stupid. There is no problem. The rule takes care. You don't feel responsible. You are simply following a certain dead rule, you are following it perfectly. Then you need not be intelligent. What is the point of being intelligent?

When you go to the church ever Sunday you don't go out of your own inspiration, you simply go as a rule. You say a certain prayer that has been given by tradition down the ages - you simply repeat it.

You are a gramophone record. It is not in any way connected with you and your heart, it is not your pulsation, it is not your vibe. It is not you, it is tradition speaking through you. It is other people's voices ringing through you, resounding through you. You are just an echo - how can the echo be intelligent?

People who don't want to be intelligent become followers - followers of tradition, followers of scriptures, followers of rules and regulations, rituals.

An intelligent person has no rules, no rituals - and I don't mean that he is insane and I don't mean that he is irresponsible and I don't mean that he will hurt others, no, not at all. In fact, just the contrary is the case. Because he lives intelligently he cannot hurt anybody. The people who follow the rules are always violent people. Violence comes out of stupidity; non-violence is a flowering of intelligence. Intelligence and love always go together. The more intelligent you are, the more loving you are; the more loving you are, the more intelligent you are. They are two aspects of the same coin.

By intelligent I don't mean intellectual, remember. The intellectual is not the intelligent person, the intellectual is again living in the past. He can recite the Vedas but he cannot create a single RICHA, a single poetry of the quality of the Vedas. He can recite the Geeta or the Koran or the Bible but he cannot sing a single song of the quality of the Geeta. He cannot express himself in any creative way - the way Mohammed did. His utterances are borrowed, his utterances have no life in them; his utterances have no heart to beat, they don't breathe. They don't have that aliveness that Jesus' utterances have. He will be intellectual, he will be a pundit, a scholar.

And through being intellectual you can deceive yourself and others that you are intelligent.

Intelligence has nothing to do with intellect. Intellect is part of memory, intelligence is part of your heart. They are totally different phenomena.

Sometimes you can find a farmer, a woodcutter, a fisherman, who is very intelligent - but not intellectual, certainly not intellectual. He may not know anything about the scriptures and the theories and the philosophies.

All Jesus' apostles were non-intellectual people, but they were immensely intelligent. To be with Jesus one needs intelligence not intellect. Those people were simple people but they had clarity, they could see the radiance of Jesus, what had happened. The professors could not see it; the fisherman, the woodcutter, the gardener, could.

The rabbis could not see it. They thought that this man was mad, they thought that this man was dangerous. They compared notes with the past and they thought that this man was not fulfilling the old law. In fact, they thought this man was against all laws, all regulations, all rules; this man was a danger to society.

And yes, this man was a danger to society - because the society that has existed up to now is not worth calling a society. It is an ant heap. It is an anonymous mass. People are lost in it, drowned in it. People have lost their souls in it, drowned in it. People have lost their souls in it.

When a man becomes part of the mass he has forgotten himself completely. A man has to be a man; a man has to be an individual; a man has to have his own life, his own life-style; a man has to have his own way of doing things, his own uniqueness - only then does he fulfil himself, only then does he come closer to God. God loves the creators, not the people who are lost in the anonymous mass and have become part of society, of history, of race, of religion, of church. God would like you to see, to be yourself.

A Hassid Master, Joshua, was dying and somebody told him, 'Remember Moses so that he can help you. You are going to die, remember Moses.'

Joshua opened his eyes, laughed, and said, 'Stop all this nonsense! Sooner or later I am going to be encountering God. It is a question of a few minutes or a few hours at the most. I am on my death-bed. Stop all this nonsense. I will be standing before God and God will not ask me, "Joshua, why are you not a Moses?" He will ask me, "Joshua, why are you not a Joshua?"'

Yes, God will ask you why you are not you. Why are you somebody else? By being somebody else you remain unfulfilled. By being somebody else you are a traitor to God.

So the real man of God lives his own life, lives intelligently, lives lovingly, lives understandingly, with great compassion - but he has no fixed rules. He is liquid. He is not frozen. How can he judge?

Against what? And how?

Just think of it in this way.... If you are a born Jaina or a Buddhist - born, I am saying, not one who has really attained to Buddhahood, not one who has tasted something of Buddhahood or Jainahood - if you are born a Jaina or a Buddhist and you see Jesus sitting with his friends, drinking wine, what are you going to think? Won't you judge? You will immediately judge that this man can't be the Son of God. Mahavira never drank wine, Buddha never drank - not even in his dreams - and this man is drinking wine.

If you are a Christian, born a Christian, and you see Mahavira standing naked you will think he is crazy or something. 'Jesus was never naked. This man has gone neurotic. This is not the way a man of God should be. Never in the history of Christianity has there been a naked mystic. So what is he doing, this man Mahavira? He must be wrong.'

This is how we go on judging. We have a certain pattern, a certain idea, transferred to us by our history, by our race, Church, religion, and then with that idea we are prejudiced, with that idea we think we have a PRIORI knowledge of what should be the case. Then we can judge.

A man of God has no fixed rules and ideas. He belongs to no history, to no race, to no religion, to no church. He belongs only to his innermost core. He has nothing there as a fixed idea so that he can judge. A real man of God will be able to see Jesus and recognise Jesus even when he is drinking wine with his friends. And he will be able to recognise Buddha and he will be able to recognise Mahavira in his nakedness and he will be able to recognise Krishna playing on his flute with his girlfriend dancing around him. Now if you are too much of a Christian you think the man of God has to be always on the cross. That is just one instance; it happened once that Jesus was on the cross.

But that is not the rule. There is another possibility also - Krishna playing on his flute, arrayed in beautiful clothes, decorated beautifully, dancing. Now you cannot conceive of Christ dancing.

If you are too fixated upon Christ you will not be able to see what is happening in Krishna. Or, if you are too fixated on Krishna you will not be able to see what is happening in Christ. God manifests in millions of ways - in Christ and Mahavira and Buddha and Mohammed and Zarathustra and Lao Tzu - millions of ways. And all ways are his.

But to recognise that you will need great intelligence. and the first step towards intelligence is to drop all a priori ideas, prejudices, to drop all that has been given by others to you, to drop all the dust from your mind so that you can become a pure mirror and you can reflect.

First, the man of God has disappeared as an ego; there is no 'I' to say anything against or for.

Second, he has no fixed rules so he cannot weigh who is doing right and who is doing wrong. Third, a great acceptance has arisen in his soul, total acceptance has arisen in his being. All is good because all is from God. Yes, he can bless the whole because he is so blessed by the whole. He has no judgement. That is the meaning when Jesus says, 'Judge ye not. '

So remember, there are no right judgements and no wrong judgements - judging as such is wrong.

Drop judging. And if you can drop judging you will be surprised how many burdens, how many rocks from your heart have been dropped. You will feel weightless. You will almost feel like flying. You are chained by your prejudices, you are chained by your past - that's why you feel life as being so heavy. Life is not heavy, it is your carrying of the past that is making it heavy.

That's why children are light and old people become very heavy - because the children have no autobiographies yet. As they grow up they will start gathering, accumulating junk - experiences, knowledge, this and that - and sooner or later they will be drowned in their own past.

Judgement is moral and morality has nothing to do with religion. That misunderstanding has to be dropped. People always confuse morality with religion. Morality has nothing to do with religion; a moral man is not necessarily a religious man. An atheist can be moral, perfectly moral. You can find the moral man in Soviet Russia - there is no need for the moral man to be religious.

A religious man is a new dimension.

Morality is a need of the society. The society needs rules and regulations, the society needs distinctions between what is right and what is wrong and what is good and what is bad. It certainly needs them - because people are so asleep. To manage these sleepy people you need some demarcations. You have to give them some fixed rules otherwise there will be chaos.

The religious man can drop his morality because now he has his own eyes; he need not have any other guides. His eyes are enough. It is as if you were blind and you used to have a stick with which to walk around, to grope your way, to find your way... then one day your eyes open. Will you still carry the stick? You will throw it away. Now it is meaningless, now you don't need to grope. Now the walking stick is no longer a help, it will be a burden.

So is morality - it is a walking stick for a blind man. For those who have decided to remain stupid, morality is needed, but tor those who have decided to stake everything and become alert and aware, morality is no longer needed. A person who is aware is spontaneously moral. He need not carry any morality around him, he is simply moral. Not that he tries to do good, no, not at all, but whatsoever he does is good.

See the distinction. It is of immense import. The religious man is one who is not concerned with doing good but whatsoever happens through him is good because he has surrendered himself to God and all is good through God, through surrender to him. He cannot do wrong. It is not possible.

It is impossible to do wrong when you are alert. It is as impossible as to walk through the wall or to try to walk through the wall when your eyes are open. You will find the door! It is as simple as that.

But a blind man sometimes tries to get out through the wall. He cannot. There is no possibility. But a blind man is a blind man; he cannot see where the wall is and where the door is. The religious man is one whose eyes are open and he sees where the door is. Then there is no need to carry any idea that one should always go through the door - one simply goes through the door. When you know, that very knowing becomes your virtue.

Socrates says, 'Knowledge is virtue' - a very pregnant statement. To know is to be right, to know is to do right. Through knowing, right comes on its own like a shadow. Virtue is a by-product of right knowing. It need not be practised. If you practise it, it is false. The practised morality is a false morality, it creates only hypocrites. Morality is that which is not practised at all - it happens simply because you know, your eyes are open, you can feel, you are sensitive, so the wrong cannot happen any more. The religious person is neither moral nor immoral, he is simply religious. Religion is a higher standpoint than morality. Morality is an effort to pretend to be religious.

With no morality, judgement goes. When morality goes, judgement goes. If morality is there you will always be judging: that's why the moralists, the puritans, are continuously judging. Their whole day and night - twenty-four hours - is of judgement. They are comparing, always looking. They are Peeping Toms. They are looking into everybody's life - what are you doing and who is doing wrong? Their whole life is that of continuous inspection. These are ugly people. It is very difficult to live with a moralist, he is utterly boring. He is dull and dead and he creates a dull and dead atmosphere around himself Unfortunate are those who have to live with moralistic people, because those moralistic people sooner or later will poison them too.

The moralist creates guilt and guilt is the cancer of the soul. Once you become guilty you are ill and it will be very difficult for you to regain your health again. But all the so-called religions - which are not religions but only moral standpoints - have done that harm.

Jesus' statement 'Judge ye not', when looked at meditatively, is one of the most revolutionary statements ever made.

Judging takes it for granted that man exists for the rules. That is putting things upside down, that is putting things into complete disorder. Man does not exist for the morals, the morals exist for man.

Man is not the means, man is the end. But the moralist always thinks that the rule is more important than the man. The man can be sacrificed for the rule but the rule cannot be sacrificed for the man.

The rule becomes more important.

This is a very sorry state of affairs. The rule cannot be more important than the man. The rule exists to help man, otherwise it is as if you sacrifice the blind man for the walking stick. Yes, the walking stick is helpful but it is not the end or the goal.

Watch how you judge people. When you judge people, are you not making the moral principle the end? Are you not condemning the man and praising the principle? Things should be put in the right order. Principles are there to be used. They are arbitrary. They are only conveniences. They have no intrinsic value. When times change, when circumstances change, when man attains to new ways of being in life, they have to be dropped. They should be dropped, they should be dropped immediately. They should not become a burden on humanity.

Rules go on living - but times have changed. The Hindu code of life was written five thousand years ago. It is still the ideal. In these five thousand years, how much water has flowed down the Ganges?

Everything has changed. Nothing remains the same as it was in the days of Manu - Manu wrote the code and it is still being followed. It is utter nonsense to follow it now. It has nothing to say to this age and to this man and to this time. And Manu is not responsible because whatsoever he wrote was meaningful - meaningful in his time. If he comes back he will not be able to believe how foolish people can be. 'Why are you following these rules now?' he will say. 'Who told you to follow them? Life has changed. Life is no more the same. Nothing is the same anymore.' But those rules continue.

Moses has given a certain pattern of life to be lived, hut it is point. It is irrelevant. But people go on following it. We are worshippers of the dead, we are worshippers of all that becomes irrelevant. We don't look into life. Each and every moment one has to look into life and find a way through it. One has to respond to life, not to dead codes.

Jesus is two thousand years old, Buddha is two thousand, five hundred years old, and the Jaina code of life is one of the most ancient codes, nearabout five thousand or seven thousand years old.... Modern man is burdened. If you follow it, it is inadequate; it makes it impossible for you to live.

If you don't follow it, you start feeling guilty. So both ways it is destructive. If you follow Manu, Moses, Mahavira, you will be a museum piece; you will not be herenow, you will not be relevant at all. You can go and see the Jaina munis, the Jaina monks. They are irrelevant. They should be discarded.

They belong to the dustbin. They are no longer relevant to the time. They are just corpses.

If you follow the rule this is bound to happen. You will not be contemporary. You will be a contemporary of Manu or Mahavira or Moses but you will not be a contemporary of mine, you will not be contemporary to the society and world you are living in, you will not belong to this twentieth century. To belong to this century all the past centuries have to be dropped. And if you cannot do it....

It is impossible to do it. It is so difficult to do it that nobody can do it perfectly. How can you belong to a five-thousand-year old code and live in the twentieth century? It is such a feat that although you can try your best you will always remain imperfect and will always feel as if you are falling short. And the guilt... you are not being as good as you should be, you are not a really religious person. It will be like a wound and it will make your life a misery.

Very few people try to follow these rules. People have simply found a way to pay lip-service to them.

This is just to protect themselves. But even the lip-service to them. This is just to protect themselves.

But even the lip-service does harm because deep down you think that they are right and you are wrong - if you are not following them then you are wrong. And the idea that you are wrong will make you shrink, will make you close, will not make you open and will not give you the thrill and the joy that is needed to grow.

One has to accept one's reality so totally that there is no guilt, not even a shadow of guilt. Only then does one flower and bloom. Only a guiltless person blooms. And when I say 'be guiltless' I don't mean follow these rules and don't commit any sin then you will be guiltless. Nobody can do that.

When I say 'be guiltless' I mean drop all the rules which create guilt. Be without rules. Trees are existing perfectly without rules; they are guiltless. Stars are existing without rules; they are guiltless.

Be natural, be guiltless - with only one difference.

That difference is that you have to be aware. Trees cannot be aware; they are guiltless but not aware. That's why they are in God but they cannot know that they are in God. Stars are guiltless but not aware. So they move in God, they move far more smoothly, far more totally in God than we do, but they cannot know it. They remain unconscious.

This is man's dignity and man's potential - to be in God and to be fully aware, to be in God, consciously. This brings the greatest joy, the celebration.

'Judge ye not.' And this statement of Jesus is not only concerned about others - this is the last thing I would like to remind you of. A few people start thinking, 'Okay, we will not judge others. If somebody is passing and doing something we will say, "We are not concerned. This is his business.

Who am I to judge?"' Yes, it is possible not to judge others, but if you go on judging yourself it is the same game being played on another plane. First you were judging others, now you start judging yourself - 'I have done this wrong. I should not have done this. Tomorrow I will improve upon myself.

I have to evolve and become spiritual....' and this and that. You have ideals and you think you have to fulfil them. So you may not judge others but you judge yourself. It is the same. Now you will be destructive to yourself.

'Judge ye not' simply means 'judge ye not' - neither the other nor oneself. Judgement has to disappear. Be without judgement and see what great joy comes to you, what great ecstasy starts exploding in you.

Before we enter this beautiful story a few things that will help you to understand it....

There are three possibilities between the subject and the object, between the inner and the outer.

The first possibility is that of the politician, the moralist. the priest. The politician is only interested in how to manipulate people. His only interest in the other is how to manipulate him, how to dominate him, how to become powerful over him. He is not concerned with anything else. His trip is that of power - how to control people. If he says something he says it with that idea. He is not concerned about truth.

That's why politicians have to go on telling lies, to go on promising things which they know they cannot fulfil, which they know are not possible to fulfil; but they go on promising because that's what you need, that's what you desire. And if they want to manipulate you they have to tickle your desire, they have to buttress you, they have to show you beautiful dreams. The politician talks in order to manipulate the other, the other person. His whole concern is exploitative.

And so is the priest's. It is not very different. He also tries to manipulate the other. His idea of power is not of this world, his idea of power is of that world - but it is of power. He also wants to dominate...

in the name of God.

The politician and the priest are not very different, that's why they have always been together. There has been a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to dominate people In the old days it was so and today it is so. The politician and the priest have always been conspiring together against people. The priest used to say to people that the king was from God and the king in his turn would go and touch the feet of the priest. This is the conspiracy. They have a mutual understanding. They decided long before that their goal is the same. And they have a line of demarcation - the priest should rule the peoples' souls and the politicians should rule the peoples' bodies. The politicians should not interfere as far as soul matters are concerned and the priests should not interfere as far as body matters are concerned. This was an understanding and a conspiracy.

This is one way of relating to people. The other way of relating is the way of the poet, the painter, the artist, the singer, the dancer. He is not concerned with manipulating, dominating - not at all. In fact, he is not much concerned with the other. His expression is subjective; it is an outpouring of his being. The politician, the priest, are objective. Their goal is the other. The artist, the poet, the painter, the dancer, is not objective. He is subjective.

He talks, relates, but his talking and relating is an inspired ejaculation, his explosion. If he wants the other there, he only wants the other to be an audience so that the other can also enjoy. The poet wants to share. The dancer dances. If he wants you to be there it is only so that the dance can be shared with you. He has some joy and he would like to relate it. He would like it to be spread to everybody. He has some fragrance and he wants to give it to the winds so they can take it to the farthest comer of the world.

But he is not interested in dominating - that's why the poet has remained very poor, the painter has remained poor. They have remained powerless. They don't have any power. They are the most non-violent people, and powerless.

I have heard that a man went to his physician and he said, 'For many days I have been suffering from constipation.' The physician prescribed some medicine. The man was so poor that he said, 'I cannot purchase it.' So the physician gave him the medicines from his own money.

After two or three days the man came again and he said, 'Nothing has happened. Still the constipation continues.' The physician was puzzled. He said, 'This medicine functions absolutely.'

And the man was looking so poor, so exhausted that he asked, 'What kind of work do you do?' He said, 'I am a poet.' And the physician laughed. He said, 'Why didn't you say so before? Now take this money - first go and eat.'

This has been the situation. The poet is poor, the painter is poor. When somebody wants to become a poet, the family thinks a calamity has happened. They are neither priests nor politicians. They are not concerned with the other in order to dominate them, to be powerful over them. If they invite you it is an invitation. If you come to them they are very happy and grateful to you. They have some gift.

They want it to be shared. But they are subjective.

The politician is interested in the other, the poet is interested in himself. Both are half half, unbalanced. Both are part, not the whole.

The third possibility is the mystic, the saint, the sage. He is whole. He is neither subjective nor objective. Subject and object meet in him. 'I' and 'thou' meet and become one. He is not interested in manipulating, in overpowering, and he is not interested in sharing some poetry with you, no. He has some truth - not only poetry, not only a dream, not only a beautiful painting. He has God himself to be shared. But his sharing is such that it can be shared only when you become one with him and he becomes one with you.

The poet can share his poetry, there is no need to become one with him. Only one requirement is there - that you should be sympathetic, en rapport, that's all; that you should be able to listen, that's all; that for a moment you should not judge. Who bothers to judge poetry or music? If one enjoys it one remains there. Otherwise one leaves.

The poet requires only momentary participation with him, the mystic wants you to come so close to him that your boundaries start disappearing, melting. That is the relationship between a Master and a disciple. By and by they become one. Only when they become one can the truth be shared. Then that which has happened in the innermost core of the Master can be delivered to the disciple. But it is not a thing so it cannot be delivered if you are separate. It is a feeling. It can be delivered only when you be-come one, when there is an inner contact.

It is not possible to deliver it in relationship, it is only possible to deliver it when there is a unity - not only a relationship. The poet needs relationship, the politician does not need even relationship. The Master, the mystic, needs unity.

The politician does not even want relationship - politicians don't have friendships, they only pretend.

They don't allow people to come very close; it is dangerous to allow people to become very close.

The politician remains far away, aloof. He never comes close and he will not allow anybody to come close. He has to be constantly defensive. When people come close you cannot dominate them so easily. Politicians don't like to fall in love.

Adolf Hitler never allowed a single woman to sleep with him in his room. He was so afraid. There was not a single man in the whole of Germany who had any friendship with Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler could not afford it. The distance had to be main-tained. He was far away. And people were just people, masses.

The politician needs no relationship, the poet needs relationship. But the poet and the admirer remain separate. The mystic needs unity - the Master and the disciple become one.

The politician is always judging, continuously judging. He is a moralist. Whatsoever your morality is he will follow it, he will fulfil it. And sometimes beautiful games are played.

In India it happens every day. India is a very, very ancient country with a long history of morality and moral ideas. In India politicians still try to fulfil those moral ideas. If some politician fulfils it he becomes a great saint and a mahatma. He is not going to solve any problem of the country but if he can just show gimmicks.... For example, the president of India just now has decided that because the country is so poor he will move into a smaller house. A beautiful gesture! But how is the country going to become rich by your moving into a smaller house? And the whole country is happy. This is how people are stupid. The whole country is happy. They are saying, 'This is how the leader should be.' Now the real problem is not touched at all. The real problem is how people should get more food. Just the president moving into a smaller house is not going to help anybody. But that's how people are - so stupid they will praise it like anything. Now this man is almost like a mahatma.

They will reduce their salaries and they will be praised like mahatmas. And not a single problem is solved. What does it matter? The president receives ten thousand rupees per month, now he has decided that he will receive only three thousand rupees per month. Perfectly good. But just by giving seven thousand rupees to the country - a country of six hundred million people - what are you doing? But the country feels good, the country feels perfectly at ease that this is how things should be done.

These are tricks to manipulate. Ugly, basically ugly. But on the surface they look beautiful.

The politician goes on pretending that he is a moralist because the people follow a certain kind of morality. He has to show at least. There are other ways to get the money - through the back door - so there is no trouble. You can drop seven thousand rupees from here and you can get seventy thousand from other sources. And nobody will suspect because a mahatma who is living in a small house and has reduced his salary and moves in a smaller car... and like this. Nobody will ever suspect that through the back door something totally different is going on. If you really want your back door functioning then you have to show a great moralistic mask at your front door.

India is poor and the politicians have been doing these tricks for thirty years, the same tricks. One prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, seeing that the country was very poor, used to fast one day every week. But how is this going to help? Impotent gestures. Just befooling people. Just putting people's minds to some other non-essential things. Just diverting their minds from the real problems.

And people are not interested in solving the real problems either, because to solve the real problems they will have to change their minds. They don't want to change their minds, they want to remain as they are. They want to solve their problems and they want to remain as they are. And the problems arise out of being as they are, so the problems cannot be solved unless they change, unless their minds start taking new ways of being. But that is hard, and it hurts.

The politician lives through a mask, he never relates. He never relates to people, he never relates to real problems. He only creates false problems and false challenges and he starts showing that he is fighting hard and he is doing great good to people - and the good never happens.

The poet is not concerned with the other at all. His only concern is like a flower - he is a flower, he blooms. Yes, good, whatsoever he has he shares; it is better to be a poet than to be a politician. To be a poet is far better, it is higher, spiritually higher.

The real thing happens through the mystic because he is ready to dissolve himself into the other and he is ready to absorb the other into himself. He is ready to stake all. He really changes people's minds because he gives them a new quality of consciousness, a new dimension. But he is not a moralist.

So people are never for the mystic, they are against the mystic. They are always for the politician because the politician is a moralist. The politician looks as if he is their leader and the mystic always looks dangerous. Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, they are all dangerous people - because the mystic is really ready to change and through that revolution all your problems will disappear.

Your problems are created by you, and unless you change they cannot be solved. Your misery is created by you, it cannot be changed unless you are radically changed. A radical change is needed.

But the mystic is not a moralist. Sometimes he may look like an immoral person because he will not follow the old morality. He will have his own morality that comes out of a moment-to-moment response to reality. He will look into reality and from there his life will arise. He may look immoral.

Jesus looked immoral, Sufis have always looked immoral.

This has to be understood. The politician looks perfectly moral, the mystic looks perfectly immoral and the poet is amoral - he has nothing to do with morality or immorality. He is neither orthodox nor revolutionary, he is a flower. You can enjoy or not enjoy. He is not there to solve any of your problems. He neither promises nor solves. The politician promises but never solves, the mystic never promises and solves, and the poet is just in-between the two.

These are the three approaches.

Now this small story.

HASAN OF BASRA RELATES:

'I HAD CONVINCED MYSELF THAT I WAS A MAN OF HUMILITY AND LESS THAN HUMBLE IN MY THOUGHTS AND CONDUCT TOWARDS OTHERS.'

'I HAD CONVINCED MYSELF,' says Hasan, 'THAT I WAS A MAN OF HUMILITY.'

He was a man of morality not a man of humility. A man of humility cannot know that he is humble.

Humility never becomes self-conscious, otherwise it is not humility at all. Once the self has entered into it, how can you call it humility? If you start thinking that 'I am the most humble man in the world' then you are still pretending to be the first in the world. It is again an ego trip.

'I HAD CONVINCED MYSELF THAT I WAS A MAN OF HUMILITY.'

YOU can convince yourself. If you follow dead, rotten rules you can convince yourself that 'I am now following all the rules. And I am suffering so much and I am torturing myself so much and I am being so much of an ascetic and I am sacrificing so much life that I am a man of humility.'

Sufis have great respect for humbleness, but a true humbleness is unaware of itself. It knows not. It has no idea. How can you know your humbleness? To know, you will have to compare with others and to compare with others you will need an ego. Only ego can be compared.

I can say that I am a man of knowledge if I compare my knowledge with somebody. If I am left alone in the world I cannot claim that I am a man of knowledge. If I say I am a man of morality, a moral man, but I am alone - then? If the whole world disappears and I am left alone, then how can I claim that I am a moral man? There will be nobody to be compared with.

Real humbleness is non-comparative. You can be humble even if there is nobody. A humble man is simply humble.

Whether somebody is there or not makes no difference. If somebody is needed for you to be humble then your humbleness depends on him. It is a dependence. And if that man tries to become more humble than you - then what will happen? He can do that. If you can be humble, he can be more humble than you. If he becomes more humble than you, then again.... It is relative.

I have heard....

The young fellow was a chronic speed offender who picked up two tickets a day from the motorcycle cop, one going to work and the other returning home.

Finally he bought a 'souped up' foreign car, capable of travelling a hundred and fifty miles per hour.

Travelling home in it, at a speed of around seventy miles per hour, he was again accosted by the speed cop who pulled up along side of him to flag him down. Quickly stepping on the gas he pulled away from the motorcyclist and started travelling at a hundred miles per hour. Eventually he slowed down, waiting for the motorcycle cop to catch up with him again. As the motorcycle pulled alongside, he pushed the pedal all the way down and took off at a hundred and forty miles per hour.

Becoming worried because he couldn't see the cop following him, he turned the car around and went back to look for him. To his surprise he found the cop crawling out from under his machine in the ditch.

'What happened to you, officer?' he asked the bruised and bleeding cop.

'Well,' explained the police officer, 'when you pulled away from me the last time, I thought my motorcycle had stopped, so I stepped off.'

It is relative. If your humbleness is relative it is not true humbleness, it is still egoistic. All comparison is of the ego.

Hasan says, 'I HAD CONVINCED MYSELF....' It is very easy to convince yourself. You can convince yourself of anything.

That's how people go on living. Somebody has convinced himself that he is a lover and somebody has convinced himself that he is humble and somebody has convinced himself that he is a meditator - and so on, so forth. That's why you are constantly coming in conflict with reality. You have convinced yourself that you are a lover but every day there is a problem. And you cannot convince your woman that you are a lover, that's why there is conflict.

It is very easy to convince yourself - and to convince yourself about good things is naturally more easy. Who does not want to be humble, pure, innocent? Who does not want to be a saint, a sage?

This Hasan says, 'I HAD CONVINCED MYSELF THAT I WAS A MAN OF HUMILITY AND LESS THAN HUMBLE IN MY THOUGHTS AND CONDUCT TOWARDS OTHERS.

'THEN ONE DAY I WAS STANDING ON THE BANK OF A RIVER WHEN I SAW A MAN SITTING THERE. BESIDE HIM WAS A WOMAN AND BEFORE THEM WAS A WINE-FLASK.

'I THOUGHT, "IF ONLY I COULD REFORM THIS MAN AND MAKE HIM LIKE I AM INSTEAD OF THE DEGENERATE CREATURE WHICH HE IS."'

Now this is what goes on happening in everybody's mind. You have a certain idea of yourself and with that idea you go on looking at others - and you are continuously condemning, judging, continuously throwing thoughts around yourself, interpreting. And it feels very good whenever you see somebody who is degenerate; it feels very good. On the surface you show much concern but deep down you feel very good, because that degenerate man makes you feel bigger than you are.

Now Hasan is even more convinced that he is the man of humbleness, morality, purity. He is pious.

Remember, a real man of God has no condemnation. If he sometimes finds you doing something wrong he has no condemnation. And if he tells you that this is wrong, his statement is concerned only with the act, not with you. If he says that something is wrong, he is only saying something about the action and nothing about you. You remain untouched by your action.

And if he says something is wrong, he is concerned because he loves you not because he loves a moral principle. It is not that drinking is bad, but if he says 'Don't drink,' he is concerned with your health, not with any principle that drinking is bad. It may not be bad in all cases. Sometimes it may function as a medicine, then it is perfectly good. Sometimes it may be needed, it may be a requirement, then it is good.

His condemnation does not exist, there is no condemnation. If he sometimes says that something is wrong, he does not make it look like a sin. It is wrong only in the sense of a mistake, an error.

You think two and two make five and I say, 'No, this is wrong.' But I am not saying that you are a sinner, I am simply saying that your mathematics has to be put right. You are perfectly good, you are just committing a mistake. See the difference. In fact, for a religious man there are no sins, only mistakes.

And then too he will not enforce it on you. He will simply tell it to you - it will be an advice, not a commandment. If you don't follow it you don't become a criminal and you won't be thrown into hell.

You are not to be punished for it. Your freedom remains intact.

I would like my sannyasins to remember: whatsoever I say to you, remember always that it is not to destroy your freedom, not even to touch it. If you feel it to be right, you can do it; if you don't feel it to be right, you need not do it. And never feel guilty because of not doing it. I am the last person in the world to make you feel guilty in any way. I respect you. My respect is absolute. And simply saying that it is an error. But still you remain free to follow my advice or not to follow it.

Sometimes it happens that a sannyasin will come to me and he will say, 'I have not followed your advice and I am feeling very guilty.' That is wrong, that is absolutely wrong. Then you are doing something to yourself unnecessarily.

You need not feel guilty - it is worse than the wrong thing you have done. Guilt is the last wrong that one can do to oneself. There is no need. If you decided to do otherwise you are perfectly free to do otherwise.

And don't be worried that you will go far away from me because you are not following my advice. no.

You will go far away from me only if you start feeling guilty. My love is unconditional - whether you follow me or not does not matter. It has no relevance to my love. In fact, you will be closer to me the more free you are from me.

Let it be remembered always - my whole interest in you is to make you free, as free as a human being can possibly become. My whole interest is to liberate you. So the more liberated you are, the closer you are to me.

If you find that my advice is good - not because I have given it to you but because you find that it is good - then follow it. Then you are not following me. That's what Buddha said to his disciples - 'Don't follow me. Don't follow because Buddha has said so, because it is written in the scriptures, because all the sages are agreed upon it, no. Unless your intelligence says "Yes, this is right" don't follow it.'

And the same I would like to say to you.

'I THOUGHT, "IF ONLY I COULD REFORM THIS MAN AND MAKE HIM LIKE I AM INSTEAD OF THE DEGENERATE CREATURE HE IS."'

Now this is not a spiritual standpoint at all. A spiritual person never wants you to become like him, never. How can he desire to make you like him? Then you will be false, then you will be a replica, a carbon copy. A spiritual person wants you to be yourself - an original, not a carbon. His whole effort is to help you become yourself, his whole effort is to help you to attain to your destiny. If you are a rose flower you have to become a rose flower; if you are a lotus you have to become a lotus; and if you are a marigold you have to become a marigold. The concern of the spiritual Master is that you should flower, not that you should become a rose or a lotus or a marigold - that is not his concern.

You should flower, you should bloom. See the difference.

The moralist always wants you to become a replica. If he is a rose flower he would like everybody to become a rose flower. Then what will he do with the marigold? He will paint the marigold like the rose, he will cut the marigold like the rose, he will destroy a natural beauty. A marigold is as beautiful as any rose. Or, if you are a lotus and he wants a rose flower just like himself he will cut you utterly.

He will destroy you. Or, if he is a lotus and you are a rose flower, he will try to extend you, pull you apart. He will force you. And whatsoever happens will be wrong. You will become a false thing.

The real Master helps people to bloom - to bloom in their own way, to bloom into whatsoever they can become, into whatsoever they are carrying in themselves. Their hearts should become open, their petals should open; they should not die like seeds or buds, they should bloom.

'I THOUGHT, "IF ONLY I COULD REFORM THIS MAN AND MAKE HIM LIKE I AM INSTEAD OF THE DEGENERATE CREATURE WHICH HE IS."'

In fact, the people who try to make you like themselves are great egoists. They want their carbon copies. The more carbon copies they have, the more joyful they feel. Then they become the criterion, the ideal.

And, of course, nobody can fulfil that ideal, so they are always on the top, remember. Nobody can fulfil that. Even if I want to become like you I cannot fulfil it. It is impossible. It is not in the nature of things to be like somebody else. So if I try to be like you I will always remain lower and you will always remain higher. If you want to be always higher, then the best trick is to help people to be like yourself.

That's what parents do to the children. They try to make the children be like themselves. They can never be. So parents can always feel good that they are higher, superior beings, and these degenerate children, this generation, has gone wrong.

Nobody has gone wrong. All parents have always felt about their children that something has gone wrong - and they are the culprits, they are the real criminals because they forced the child to be like the father. And it is impossible. It is not possible in the very nature of things. So the child cannot do it wholeheartedly. Even if he tries he will never succeed and he will never become like his father. So the father can always feel good; he is something so superior that nobody can become like him.

And that's what your so-called gurus go on doing. Beware of such gurus. The real Master is one who is interested in you as you are and as you should be or you could be. He helps you. He only helps you. His work is that of support. He does not reform you, remember. He neither reforms you nor informs you, he simply supports you. Information is knowledge, reformation is trying to manipulate your character. He never informs, never reforms, he simply supports. And his support is unconditional. He says, 'Be thyself. My whole support is there, unconditional support is there.'

He is like a gardener who goes on watering the rose plant, the marigold, the lotus - he goes on watering every plant. When the lotus blooms he is happy, when the rose blooms he is happy, when the marigold has bloomed he is happy. But he is not trying to force any pattern on anybody.

'AT THAT MOMENT I SAW A BOAT IN THE RIVER BEGINNING TO SINK. THE OTHER MAN AT ONCE THREW HIMSELF INTO THE WATER WHERE SEVEN PEOPLE WERE STRUGGLING, AND BROUGHT SIX OF THEM SAFELY TO THE BANK.'

Hasan is standing on the bank and seven people are dying - but his compassion has not arisen.

And he thinks he is a man of humility, religiousness, morality. And he wanted to reform this man.

This man has compassion.

Compassion is the criterion. When you act in compassion you show who you are. Hasan has not even thought about it. Those people are dying. That idea had not occurred to him. And this man saved six men.

'THEN THE MAN CAME UP TO ME AND SAID, "HASAN, IF YOU ARE A BETTER MAN THAN ME, IN THE NAME OF GOD SAVE THAT OTHER MAN, THE LAST REMAINING ONE."'

The other man is no ordinary man. It is a special Sufi idea. Sufis say that there is a messenger of God, Khijra, who goes on working on people. He is a Master of Masters. He goes on coming to the earth - like Jesus comes, like Krishna comes, an AVATARA - but in a different way. Wherever he is needed, wherever he sees that something is potential and has to be helped he appears. Down the ages he appears.

This is a very beautiful idea. The meaning has to be under-stood. It is just a symbol. It simply means that whenever a man is really ready to grow, hankers to grow, God comes and helps - that's all. this man is Khijra.

He comes to Hasan and he says, HASAN, IF YOU ARE A BETTER MAN THAN ME' - he has read the thought - 'IN THE NAME OF GOD SAVE THE OTHER MAN, THE LAST REMAINING ONE.

What are you doing standing here? People are dying and you don't have any compassion for them.

Now one is left. You go and save him. In the name of God, try.'

Sufis have another idea - that when a man who has any glimpse of God does anything, he always succeeds. It has to be so. God has to succeed. If you are a man of God you have to succeed. It is not your success, it is God's success through you. If you are instrumental then it will happen.

Says Hasan, 'I FOUND THAT I COULD NOT EVEN SAVE ONE MAN.'

He was drowned. This was just to show Hasan - 'You are not vet an instrument of God. What kind of humbleness is this? A humble man is a hollow bamboo. God flows through him. What kind of humbleness is this? You are too full of your own ego. You could not save a dying man, you could not be used as God's instrument.'

'NOW THIS MAN SAID TO ME, "THIS WOMAN HERE IS MY MOTHER AND THIS WINE-FLASK HAS ONLY WATER IN IT."'

'This is how you judge and this is what you are like.' Now he says, 'Don't judge from appearances.

Appearance is not the reality. Don't be deceived by appearances.'

The meaning is that whenever you see somebody, what you see is only the outer core, the behaviour.

You never see the inner man. Please don't judge. The inner man may be totally different. Never judge a man by his behaviour - and there is no other thing to judge by. You only see the behaviour.

Hasan has seen this man sitting with a woman. In Mohammedan countries the faces of the women are covered, so it is very difficult to see whether the woman is old, young, beautiful, ugly. It is difficult.

Whether the woman is a woman, that too is difficult. And Khijra has thrown the cloth away from the woman's face and says, 'Look, this is my mother. But just by seeing me sitting alone on this bank with a woman, the idea flashed into your mind that I am womanising. And look, this flask has only water in it. The flask gave you the idea that there must be wine in it - "What is this man doing here?

Whose woman has he got? What kind of debauchee is he?" A drunkard, a womaniser... all kinds of ideas flashed into your mind. Just seeing something from the outside - is this the way to judge?'

And this is what you are like. Never judge, because all that you can see is only the appearance. You only see the surface, the inner man remains hidden. Unless you are capable of seeing the inner man, don't judge. And remember, those who are capable of seeing the inner man never judge. They never judge - because the inner man is always pure. The inner man is purity itself, it is innocence.

The inner man has never been impure. So when you can't see the inner, don't judge; and when you can see the inner, there is no way to judge. Judge ye not.

'I THREW MYSELF AT HIS FEET AND CRIED OUT, "AS YOU HAVE SAVED SIX OUT OF THESE SEVEN IN PERIL, SAVE ME FROM DROWNING IN PRIDE DISGUISED AS MERIT."'

'THE STRANGER SAID, "I PRAY THAT GOD MAY FULFIL YOUR AIM."'

This is how a real Master is. He has not even pretended that he will help you. He says, 'Okay, I pray that God may fulfil your aim.' A real Master functions only as an instrument. A real Master effaces himself completely. It is only God that functions through him.

Hasan has thrown himself at the feet of this strange man. Hasan is a seeker - that's why Khijra has appeared to help him. Hasan is a sincere seeker but on the wrong path, a sincere seeker but has got clouded with erroneous ideas - hence the appearance of Khijra. When there is sincerity, even if you are wrong, you will find a Master. And if there is no sincerity and you are right, then you will not find a Master because the Master can contact only a sincere man.

This man is a seeker, Hasan is a great seeker. He went from one Master to another, he roamed all over the Sufi countries trying to find out.... And he was ready. When somebody said something, he was ready to understand. He could immediately see the point that 'This man has saved six and I could not save even a single one. God has given his statement about me, that I am not yet instrumental.' Then he didn't resist. He fell down at Khijra's feet and said. 'Save me. You have saved six and I am drowning in my pride. Save me also otherwise I will be drowned.' Khijra said, I PRAY THAT GOD MAY FULFIL YOUR AIM.'

And this is what I say to you too. I pray that God may fulfil your aim.