A Holiday from Sanity

The first question:

Question 1:

The question is from Krishna Priya.

The first thing: you don't yet have a centre. That which you feel as a centre is just the ego. It is not your true centre. It is a pseudo feeling, very illusory. So when you fall in love, ego has to disappear.

In love, the ego cannot exist. Love is something far more true, far more authentic than you are.

That's why you will always feel that things start getting a little bit crazy - because you cannot control them. The controller is no more. When the ego is not there, who is there to control or to discipline?

Then you are in a chaos.

But that chaos is far more beautiful than the ugly ego. Out of that chaos all the stars are born. Out of that chaos you are born anew. It is a rebirth. Each love affair is a new birth.

So don't take it negatively. Don't think that you are losing something in love - you have nothing to lose. If you have something then there is no way to lose it. If you have the real centre then love supports that centre, integrates it, makes it more crystallised. Truth helps truth.

For example, if there is darkness in the room and you bring a lamp, the darkness is destroyed. But if there is light - there is a lamp - then the room has more light than before. The light is doubled.

The ego is like darkness, a false entity. It only appears to be there, it has no positive reality.

When the light of love comes, darkness goes out. If you have the real centre - what Gurdjieff calls crystallisation or what Hindus call ATMAN or what Sufis call ROOH, spirit - if you really have it then each love will make it more and more clear, more and more transparent, more and more available. Each love affair will be a step - and you will be moving higher in crystallisation.

So this is the first thing to be understood: don't choose the ego, always choose love. When it is a question between the real and the unreal, choose the real, even if sometimes the real brings inconvenience. It does bring inconvenience. We have chosen the unreal because it is convenient - for no other reason have we chosen it. There is just one reason: it is convenient. You will have to go through inconvenience. That inconvenience is what I call TAPASHCHARYA, austerity, SADHANA.

That's what it means to be initiated into a path.

Always choose the real, howsoever bad and howsoever painful and howsoever destructive it looks.

Even if it feels like death, choose it - and you will be benefitted by it. Never choose the comfortable the convenient, the bourgeois, other-wise you will live the life of a hostile - if you are fortunate - or the life of a phony if you are not so fortunate, or, if you are not fortunate at all, the life of a zombie.

Love brings you out of your ego, out of your past, out of your patterned life. Hence it appears to be a confusion.

Priya's observation is right. She says: EVERY TIME I FALL IN LOVE, THINGS START TO CRASH ALL AROUND ME. She really falls in love. I have been watching her love affairs. When she falls, she really falls! It is never so-so, it is never lukewarm. She really goes mad, berserk. And it is happening again, that's why she has put this question.

But that's good. There is nothing to be worried about. Lose the ego. Sometimes to be mad is a basic necessity to remain sane. If you are always sane then your sanity is suspect. Then you must be carrying a great neurosis hidden behind you, and any day it can explode, it can erupt. You are sitting on a volcano. It is good to have a few holidays from sanity. Sunday is good. Sometimes forget all about your sanity, all about your rules, discipline, controlled behaviour, and all that nonsense.

Sometimes be on a holiday, relax, and go berserk.

If you go berserk deliberately, consciously, fully aware, it is going to be an incredible experience.

and you are never in danger. When you go berserk consciously you can come back. You know how you entered into it and you know how to get out of it.

When you don't go consciously, when you are thrown by a volcano inside you, when it is not your choice, but just an accident, when it is not that you have chosen the holiday but you have been forced to go on a holiday, then it is not within your capacity to come back. That's what happens to mad people. They become mad only when they have accumulated so much madness that now it is not possible for them to control it. It overwhelms them. And then they cannot come back.

Here, living with me, I am teaching you one basic principle of remaining sane - that is, deliberately, consciously, with ef-fort, to sometimes go mad. It is a good experience. You remain available to both polarities - sanity/insanity. You swing. You have freedom.

The person who is always sane is not free and the person who is always insane is not free either.

But the person who can swing from sanity to insanity, and can easily swing, smoothly, with no barrier, has great freedom. These are the people who have known what life is. All the mystics are mad and all the mad people could have become mystics, but they missed. And when you go on your own you can come back. That is my basic teaching here. I teach you to be mad consciously.

So Priya, go into it. Don't be afraid. All that you lose is not worth keeping.

The second thing. She says: I GUESS I LOSE MY CENTRE BUT IN THAT STATE I DON'T KNOW IF I HAVE A CENTRE OR NOT. That too is good observation. You don't have one yet. The ego has to go utterly, only then will the real centre be seen. When the clouds have disappeared you will see the sun.

Only after you have moved in deep love and the ego has really been dropped - there is something very valuable which can be got only if you drop the ego, and that price has to be paid - when you have really loved deeply, then a new kind of integration will arise in you.

Love does two things: first it takes the ego away, then it gives you the centre. Love is a great alchemy.

There are three kinds of love - I call them love one, love two, love three. The first love is object- oriented; there is an object of love. You see a beautiful woman, really graceful, with a proportionate body. You are thrilled. You think you are falling in love. Love has arisen in you because the woman is beautiful, because the woman is nice, because the woman is good. Something from the object has stirred love in you. You are not really the master of it; the love is coming from the outside. You may be a very unloving person, you may not have the quality, you may not have that benediction, but because the woman is beautiful you think love is arising in you. It is object-oriented.

This is the ordinary love. This is what is known as eros. It is lust. How to possess this beautiful object? How to exploit this beautiful object? How to make her your own? But remember, if the woman is beautiful she is not only beautiful for you, she is beautiful for many. So there will be many people falling in love with her. And there is going to be great jealousy, competition, and all kinds of uglinesses that come in love, in so called love.

Mulla Nasruddin married a very ugly woman, the ugliest possible. Naturally the friends were puzzled and they asked Mulla, 'You have money, you have prestige, you could have got any beautiful woman that you wanted, why have you chosen this ugly woman?'

He said, 'There is a reason for it. I will never suffer from jealousy. This woman will always be faithful to me. I cannot believe anybody falling in love with her. In fact, even I am not in love with her. It is impossible. So I know nobody can love her.'

With Mohammedans it is a tradition that when the wife comes for the first time she asks the husband - because the Mohammedan woman has to remain behind a purdah, behind a curtain, she cannot show her face to everybody - so the woman asks the husband, 'To whom can I show my face and to whom am I not allowed to show my face?'

So when the woman asked Mulla, 'To whom can I show my face and to whom am I not allowed to show it?' Mulla said, 'You can show it to everybody except me!'

If you are falling in love with a beautiful woman or a beautiful man, you are getting into trouble.

There is going to be jealousy, there is going to be murder, there is going to be something. You are in trouble. And from the very beginning you will start possessing so that there is no possibility of anything going wrong or beyond your control. You will start destroying the woman or the man. You will stop giving freedom. You will encroach on the woman from all sides and close all the doors.

Now the woman was beautiful because she was free. Freedom is such an ingredient in beauty that when you see a bird on the wing in the sky, it is one kind of bird, but if you see the same bird in a cage, it is no longer the same. The bird on the wing in the sky has a beauty of its own. It is alive.

It is free. The whole sky is his. The same bird in a cage is ugly. The freedom is gone, the sky is gone. Those wings are just meaningless now, a kind of burden. They remain from the past and they create misery. Now this is not the same bird.

When you fell in love with the woman, she was free; you fell in love with freedom. When you bring her home you destroy all possibilities of being free, but in that very destruction you are destroying the beauty. Then one day suddenly you find that you don't love the woman at all - because she is beautiful no more. This happens every time. Then you start searching for another woman and you don't see what has happened; you don't look at the mechanism, at how you destroyed the beauty of the woman.

This is the first kind of love - love one. Beware of it. It is not of much value, it is not very significant, it has no value. And if you are not aware you will remain trapped in love one.

Love two is: the object is not important, your subjectivity is. You are loving so you bestow your love on somebody. But love is your quality, it is not object-oriented. The subject is overflowing with the quality of love, the very being is loving. Even if you are alone you are loving. Love is a kind of flavour to your being.

When you fall in love, the second kind of love, there is going to be greater joy than the first. And you will know - because this love will know - how to keep the other free. Love means to give all that is beautiful to the beloved. Freedom is the most beautiful, the most cherished goal of human consciousness, how can you take it away? If you love a woman really, or a man, the first present, the first gift, will be the gift of freedom. How can you take it away? You are not the enemy, you are the friend.

This the second kind of love will not be against freedom, it will not be possessive. And you will not be worried very much that somebody else also appreciates your woman or your man. In fact, you will be happy that you have a woman whom others also appreciate, that you have chosen a woman whom others also desire. Their desire simply proves that you have chosen a diamond, a valuable being, who has intrinsic value. You will not be jealous. Each time you see someone looking at your woman with loving eyes you will be thrilled again. You will fall in love with your woman again through those eyes.

This second kind of love will be more a friendship than a lust and it will be more enriching to your soul.

And this second kind of love will have one more difference. In the first kind of love, the object- oriented, there will be many lovers surrounding the object, and there will be fear. In the second kind of love there will be no fear and you will be free not to bestow your love only on your beloved, you will be free to bestow your love on others too.

In the first, the object will be one and many will be the lovers. In the second, the subject will be one and it will be flowing in many directions, bestowing its love in many ways on many people - because the more you love, the more love grows. If you love one person then naturally your love is not very rich; if you love two, it is doubly rich; if you love many, or if you can Love the whole humanity, or you can love even the animal kingdom, or you can love even trees, the vegetable kingdom - then your love goes on growing. And as your love grows, you grow, you expand. This is real expansion of consciousness. Drugs only give you a false idea of expansion; love is the basic ultimate drug that gives you the real idea of expansion.

And there is a possibility.... Albert Schweitzer has said 'reverence for life' - all that lives has to be loved. Mahavira in India has said the same thing. His philosophy of AHIMSA, non-violence, says love all that lives. But one man, one contemporary in america, Bugbee, has gone even one step further than Mahavira and Schweitzer. He says, 'Have reverence for things too.' That is the ultimate in love. You don't only love that which lives, you love even that which is. You love the chair, you love the pillars, you love things too - because they are also there. They also have a kind of being.

When one has come to this point - that you love the whole existence irrespective of what it is, that love becomes unconditional - it is turning into prayer, it is becoming a meditation.

The first love is good in the sense that if you have lived a loveless life it is better than no love. But the second love is far better than the first and will have less anxiety, less anguish, less turmoil, conflict, aggression, violence. The second kind of love will be more of a love than the first kind, it will be more pure. In the first, the lust is too much and spoils the whole game - but even the second love is not the last. There is love three - when subject and object disappear. In the first the object is important, in the second the subject is important, in the third there is transcendence - one is neither a subject nor an object and one is not dividing reality in any way: subject, object, knower, known, lover, loved.

All division has disappeared. One is simply love.

Up to the second you are a lover. When you are a lover something will hang around you like a boundary, like a definition. With the third, all definition disappears. There is only love; you are not.

This is what Jesus means when he says. 'God is love' - love three. If you misunderstand the first, you will never be able to interpret rightly what Jesus' meaning is. It is not even the second, it is the third. God is love. One is simply Love. It is not that one loves, it is not an act, it is one's very quality.

It is not that in the morning you are loving and in the afternoon you are not loving - you are love, it is your state. It is not a HAL, it is a MAGAMA. You have arrived home. You have become love. Now there is no division. All duality has disappeared.

The first kind of love is 'I-it'; the other is taken as a thing. That's what Martin Buber says 'I-it'.

The other is like a thing. You have to possess. My wife, my husband, my child... and in that very possession you kill the spirit of the other.

The second kind of love Martin Buber calls 'I-thou'. The other is a person. You have respect for the other. How can you possess somebody you respect? But Martin Buber stops at the second; he has no understanding about the third love. Martin Buber cannot understand Jesus. He remains a Jew.

He goes up to 'I-thou'. It is a great step from 'I-it' to 'I-thou' but it is nothing compared to the step that happens from 'I-thou' to no dualism, to ADVARTA, to oneness, where only love remains.

Even 'I-thou' is a bit of a tension-creating phenomenon - you are separate and the beloved is separate. And all separation brings misery. Unless one becomes totally one with the beloved, with the loved one, some kind of misery is bound to remain lurking by the side. In the first the misery is very clear, in the second the misery is not so clear; in the first it is very close, in the second it is not so close, it is far away - but it is there. In the third it is no more.

So Priya, I would like you to learn more of love. Move from the first to the second and keep it in your consciousness that the third is the goal. And don't be worried about losing yourself. Lose yourself - because that is the only way to find yourself.

The second question:

Question 2:

Anurag, once is more than enough!

The third question:

Question 3:

Because I cannot tell it to men sannyasins!

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Are you mad or masochistic or something? Is not one woman enough for you?

I have overheard....

Mulla Nasruddin's son was asking, 'Mulla, why does the law not allow men to marry two women or more?'

And Mulla said, 'If a man cannot protect himself the law protects him!'

Even to manage one will be difficult for you right now. The question is unsigned. The person must have been afraid to ask it. The very fear shows that you have a kind of alertness about what you are asking.

If you are still in love one then you will be in great trouble. You will be disrupted, torn apart between two women. With love one, one woman is more than enough.

With love two there is no problem - but then it is not a question of two women. Then the question about the object of love is not relevant. Then it depends on you - how much love you have and how much you can share.

But the questioner must be somewhere in the first kind of love where one wants to grab as many women as possible because it is an 'I-it' relationship. Just as you would like to have two houses, three houses, just as you would like to have more money in the bank, so you want to have many more women. In the ancient days it was the only way to know whether a man was rich or not - to see how many women he had. Kings used to have hundreds. Just thirty years ago the Nijam of Hyderabad had five hundred women. In fact, he was not capable of recognising all of the women.

But it was a kind of prestige. He could afford them.

But women are not things, they are persons. They are souls as much as you are.

The question must have been asked by a man. You would like to possess as many women as you can. This very possessiveness shows an unloving heart. You must be somewhere in the first kind of love, where love is an 'I-it' relationship. Move from there. Even one woman will be enough of a misery to you. Two will be too much.

But you may be a masochist. Then it will be a different matter altogether. A masochist is one who wants to suffer, who loves being miserable, who is happy only when he is miserable. A masochist is one who wants to torture himself. If you are a masochist then it is okay. But to be a masochist is not a good thing, it is a neurosis. You will need psychiatric treatment.

But if your love has moved from the first then the question will not be relevant at all. Then it is not a question of having two women or one - it is not a question of having at all. With the second kind of love it is a question of being. You love. You love as many people as are available. And you love in different ways: somebody you love as your wife, somebody you love as your friend, somebody you love as your daughter, somebody you love as your sister, somebody as your mother. and it is possible also that you can share one kind of love with many people. But first attain to the second kind of love. Then it is not a problem at all.

And problems utterly disappear with the third kind of love - you are simply love. Then you can go on loving, there is no end to it. You have infinite energy. But right now you will not be able to go on loving, and never do anything beyond your capacity otherwise you will become more miserable.

First learn how to love one woman - at least learn how to love one woman. Let it become an 'I- thou' relationship. If you create a conflict with two women around you, you will not be able to move smoothly from 'I-it' to 'I-thou'.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

I say, 'Wait, and if you receive, it shall surely be a miracle.' Just because you wait there is no obligation on existence's part to give it to you - because you may be asking for the wrong thing.

As I know people, out of a hundred, ninety-nine point nine per cent of them ask for the wrong thing.

If God is compassionate he cannot give those things to you. Your desire is your desire; it is part of your mind, it is part of your ego. God cannot fulfil it, should not fulfil it. If he fulfils it you will be going more and more astray, far away. You will be moving in the dark night and you will be losing all possibilities of re-entering the source of light.

No, all your desires cannot be fulfilled. In fact, your desire as such cannot be fulfilled. Your desire is going to be a wrong desire. You are wrong, how can your desire become right? There are no right desires and wrong desires, there are only right persons and wrong persons. The wrong person is the one who has desires and the right person is the one who has no desires. When there are no desires everything is fulfilled.

Now this will look like a paradox. When you don't have any desire, everything is fulfilled. Then you get that which is needed, then you get that which is beneficial. And you are always happy because it is always a gift.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

WHY DO YOU CALL MEN MONKEYS? ISN'T IT INSULTING TO THE DIGNITY OF NAN?

Monkeys think otherwise. They don't like to be compared with men; they think it is against the dignity of monkeys. When Darwin said that man has come out of the monkeys, has evolved out of the monkeys, monkeys were very angry. Great treatises have been written by the monkeys proving that man is a fall and not an evolution.

And there are arguments for it. Man has fallen from the tree to the earth. It is a fall. And man has become less than he was. Ask any monkey. Just try to follow a monkey and it will be impossible.

How strong a monkey is! Man is no longer strong. Man is almost impotent in comparison to the monkey. See the joy of the monkeys. Man is so sad.

In the first place why should man think that his dignity is insulted or he is humiliated? Monkeys are beautiful people. Yes, I know they have not produced Buddha, Rumi, Junaid - that's true - but they have not produced Genghis Khan, Tamburlaine, Alexander, Adolf Hitler, either. They have not been creating wars and killing and murdering. Monkeys are vegetarians. Monkeys are very good people.

And they are always happy and always in the mood of fun and always celebrating.

Yes, man can rise very high - beyond humanity - but man can fall very low - below animals. And up to now, the record of going higher than humanity is not great. Once in a while, out of millions, one person rises to become a Buddha, a Junaid, or a Mohammed. But the others remain lurking in the darkest, muddiest consciousness.

I am reminded of a beautiful story. It happened just a few months ago. It happened in the election days. A few things sell very well in the election days. One of those things is the white hand-spun Gandhi cap. It sells only when there are elections. Everybody becomes a Gandhian. Once the election is over, people forget all about Gandhi - and it is good that they forget all about Gandhi because whatsoever he has taught is almost nonsensical. But when there is an election, everybody is a Gandhian; even those who are suspected of murdering him, even they become Gandhians.

So Gandhi caps were in great demand and a man was doing great business. He was rushing from one town to another selling Gandhi caps. One day he was coming home from another neighbouring town. He was very tired; business had been really great. He had sold almost one thousand caps.

Just a few - fifty, sixty - caps were left in his bag. And he was very tired.

So underneath a Banyan tree he rested for a while. He fell asleep. When he woke up he saw that the bag was empty and all the caps were gone. He could not believe it because he could not see anybody around. Then he looked up - and it was really a beautiful scene! All t he monkeys were sitting and enjoying the Gandhi caps. You could have found Morarji Desai and Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram - all kinds of people were there. And they were really grinning and smiling. It was a trip!

At first the man also enjoyed. But then he thought, 'Sixty caps are gone. What to do now? How to get these sixty caps back?' Then he remembered that monkeys are imitators. Only one cap was left on his head. So he shouted, 'Abracadabra!' just to catch the attention of the monkeys. And they all looked at what was going on. Then he threw away his cap. The moment he threw away his cap, all the monkeys threw away their caps. They are imitators.

He collected the caps, laughed loudly, and came home. The next day he had a fever and could not go selling. So he sent his young son. He told him the story - 'If by chance, something like this happens, remember: first shout the mantra "Abracadabra!" and then throw away your cap and you will get all your caps back. In case something like this happens, I am telling you - just to be safe.'

So the son went and it was a good day and he sold many, many caps. When he was coming back, by a coincidence it happened that as he came near the Banyan tree he also felt very tired. And it was so shady, with such beautiful foliage, and it was such a beautiful place to rest. So he put down his bag and went to sleep. When he opened his eyes exactly the same thing had happened. It was a miracle! The bag was empty. He looked up - Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Jagjivan Ram were, all sitting there, all the great Gandhians with their Gandhi caps. And they were really enjoying and thumping and they looked more hilarious than the father had told in the story.

But the son was not puzzled. He knew the secret. So he shouted, 'Abracadabra!' and threw his cap. And monkeys almost went crazy. They went crazy with laughter and shook the tree as if it was an earthquake. And do you know what happened? One monkey who had not got a cap came down and took the son's cap. They had learned a lesson!

Monkeys are intelligent people. Now even the cap that was Left had gone.

Man learns more slowly than monkeys. Man goes on repeating the same mistakes again and again.

What kind of dignity are you talking about? If you look at the history of man it is the same mistakes being repeated again and again. It is almost mechanical - the same wars, the same violence, the same rape on nature, the same destructiveness. Down the ages it is the same story.

Only once in a while is there an oasis in this desert of so-called humanity - a Buddha, a Mansoor.

But they are so rare and so exceptional they can be counted out. They need not be counted in. They are so exceptional that we cannot believe they really existed - they look like metaphors, they look like myths, maybe inventions of the human mind. Just to keep his dignity, just to keep the idea of his dignity, man has created Buddhas and Mahaviras and Krishnas and Christs. Many people suspect that they ever existed.

And their suspicion has a reason. If you look around, you see man in such a state, in such an ugly and neurotic state, it is impossible to believe that a Buddha is possible. Buddha is such an exception and the ordinary neurotic man is the rule. That's why people suspect that they may be wish-fulfilments. That's what Sigmund Freud says - that all these great people are just wish fulfilments. Man wants to be like that so he creates mythologies.

What dignity are you talking about? Without man the earth will be far more beautiful. It will be less poisoned. The rivers will be again pure, the air will be again unpolluted, trees will again grow, animals will again start roaming, birds will again fly. Do you think that without man the earth will miss much? Yes, it will miss your poisoning, your pollution, your destruction, your wars, your blood. It will miss these things but it will be far more beautiful. Things will be far more silent and musical; in more harmony.

And I am not saying that man has no dignity. I never agree with people like B. F. Skinner. Skinner has written a book, BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY, in which he says man is not free and has no dignity either. No, I am not saying that. Man can have dignity, but one should not accept it as a given fact. It has to be created. It is potential but not actual. It is possible, but that possibility is only a perhaps. It has not already happened; you cannot take it for granted. Just by being born as a man you don't have any dignity; you just have the face of a man and all kinds of animality inside.

You will be surprised to know that the English word 'beast' comes from a Sanskrit word PASHU.

On the surface they don't seem to be related at all - PASHU, beast. But in Egypt PASHU became PASHT, and then it became BAST, and then it became 'beast'. And your English word 'bastard' also comes from PASHU - PASHT, BAST, 'bastard'. Bastard means not knowing your father. That is the situation with animals. Who the father is no animal can say. When a man cannot show his father, cannot identify his father, we call him a bastard.

'Beast' and 'bastard' come from a Sanskrit word PASHU, and PASHU IS tremendously important.

PASHU comes from another root PASH - PASH means bondage. One who is in bondage is a PASHU, IS an animal. One who is still in the bondage of the ego, still in the bondage of the mind, still in the bondage of desire, lust, thoughts, is a PASHU, IS an animal.

So man is man only on the surface. Only a Buddha is a real man in the depth. If Buddha is standing by your side, you will both look alike - but only on the surface. Your faces resemble each other but deep down you are utterly different, radically different. You live at the lowest rung and he lives at the highest rung. The difference is vast, almost infinite.

Man has dignity in the sense that man can become a Buddha, but not just by being a man. Nobody is born as a man. Humanity has to be searched for, discovered, created. So don't think that because you are born like a human animal you are a man. No, not yet. You can become one, that is your dignity, but you are not it already. It is your dignity, it is your freedom, to choose to become or not to become - and millions choose not to become. Very rarely, few and far between, does somebody choose to become. So millions live in a kind of disgrace, in a kind of state of sin, a state of fallen consciousness. People live at the minimum.

And unless you live at the maximum you don't have any dignity. You CAN have it, but you don't have it. Strive for it, make effort for it. Before death comes become really a man.

The seventh question:

Question 7:

I will not agree - because man is born with the capacity to live. Everybody is born with the capacity to live - that's what birth means: the capacity to live. Then somewhere on the way man loses the capacity to live, becomes non-orgasmic, becomes sad, serious, dull, stupid.

Each child is born intelligent, full of joy, wonder, adventure, enquiry; each child is born open-ended.

But somewhere, some where near the age of three or four, between three and four, the child is distracted by the society, loses all contact with his original capacities, and becomes a false entity.

Up to the age of three the child remains a part of nature, flowing, happy about nothing at all, happy for no reason, just happy. Just watch a child. What has he got to be happy about? But he looks like he is on the top of the world. With small things he can be so happy - just collecting pebbles on the seashore and he can be more happy than you are ever going to be. Even if you collect KOHINOORS YOU will not be as happy. Just with pebbles, coloured stones, or rushing after a butterfly, a child seems to be so joyous.

Somewhere near the age of three the child becomes civilised. We force him. We initiate him into civilisation - and civilisation up to now has been a kind of insanity, a madhouse. We force the child to become more and more intellectual and less and less intelligent. We force the child to be more and more prosaic and less and less poetic. We force the child to become more and more concerned about the non-essential - money, prestige, power, ambition - and more and more uninterested in the real joys of life. We turn the child from a playful being into a worker. The work ethic enters.

Now duty becomes more important than love; formality becomes more important than informal flow; manners become more important than truth; policy becomes more important than authenticity.

Once the child has learned these strategies he is no longer happy, and when a child is no longer happy then he needs some reason for why he is unhappy. First we make him unhappy, then naturally one day he is going to ask, 'Why am I unhappy?' Then you have to find reasons. Hindus say it is because in your past lives you have committed bad karmas. Christians say it is because of the original sin - because Adam committed a sin of disobedience to God: that's why. And so on, so forth.

Now look at the whole stupidity of it. First you destroy the capacity to enjoy, then naturally, when the child becomes non-enjoying, when he asks, 'Why am I miserable? Why am I unhappy? Why can't I be happy? What has gone wrong?' Naturally you cannot say what has gone wrong. You may not even be aware of it. You cannot say that you have put him on the wrong track. You may not have put him on the wrong track knowingly, you may have simply given it as a heritage. Your fathers, your mothers, your society, have given it to you; you have given it to your children. Each generation gives its neurosis to the new generation. Madnesses go on living. People go on changing, madnesses go on living.

You may not be aware that each child is born with infinite potentiality to be happy. Each child is orgasmic. But one day or other he is going to ask and you have to provide answers. So you create guilt. You say, 'Because you have committed sins in your past life.' You or Adam and Eve, that doesn't matter, anybody, X,Y,Z, will do - you just have to give an explanation that something has gone wrong in the past. And the past is beyond your capacity, you cannot do anything. What can I or you do about Adam and Eve? How can we manage him not eating the apple? It is impossible. He has eaten it. It has already happened. We cannot undo it. And it is not a drama that is happening right now.

One day I heard two small children - a boy and a girl, a brother and a sister - playing. The boy hit the girl very hard and she started screaming. The mother came and asked, 'What is the matter?

Why have you hit your sister?' And the boy said, 'We were playing Adam and Eve and rather than giving me the apple she ate it herself.'

Now this is not a drama. We cannot change it any more. It has already happened. Adam has eaten the fruit of knowledge. You cannot do anything; you simply feel guilty.

Hindus look more rational. They are. But that doesn't make much difference. Hindus say it looks absurd that you should suffer for Adam's sin. They make it more rational. They are rational people; they have been philosophising for centuries. They say it is your past karmas. In your past life you have done wrong. Now who is going to suffer? You are the one to suffer for your wrong. It looks more logical.

But it is not. You go on asking a Hindu pundit, 'Then okay, in my previous life I did wrong. What about if I was also suffering in my previous life? How far back can you go? There must be a first life somewhere. Why did I do something wrong in my first life? There is no other life to precede it so you cannot throw the responsibility on the previous life. Why did it happen in the first place?' It is absurd. Nobody has the answer.

In fact, it has not happened in the Garden of Eden and it has not happened in your past life; It has happened in your present life and it has happened in your parents' house and it has happened in your school and it has happened in your society, in your country, and it has been done by the parents and the priests and the politicians. These are the culprits, these are the criminals.

They have taken your joy and they have given you wrong things. They have taken real, nutritious food from you and they have given you lollipops. Even if it tastes good, it does not satisfy hunger.

Even if it tastes good, it does not fulfil, it does not make you strong. Yes, ambition tastes good. It is a lollipop. Fame, success, taste good, but deep down you remain poor.

Look at your so-called rich people, look a little deeper into them, and they are beggars, worse than beggars. Sometimes it is possible that a beggar may have something inside him - a luminous being.

Buddha was a beggar, so was Mahavira. But look at your kings and your rich people - dull and dead.

No joy surrounds them. They just go on dragging somehow.

And you have been put on the same track. Somebody is needed to take you out of this conditioning.

That's the function of a Master - to uncondition you, to take all the conditioning that your parents have given you. The Master is basically against your parents and against your society and against your politicians, hence it is not accidental that the politicians and the parents and the society and the priests are always against a real Master whenever he happens. That is where the conflict is.

That's what I am doing here - taking your wrong conditioning so that your joy can erupt again. It is there, that spring is there, nobody can destroy it. It is existential, it is part of your being, nobody can take it away - it has just been blocked. The spring is there and the fresh water is still running there - but rocks have been put around you. You have been blocked. Once those rocks have been taken away again you will become a child. It will be a rebirth. Again you will start flowing. Again your eyes will have lustre and your face will have joy. Again you will become luminous. That's what Jesus means when he goes on saying, 'Only those who are like children will be able to enter into the kingdom of my God.'

You ask: BROWN HAS SAID: 'THE ULTIMATE PROBLEM IS NOT GUILT BUT THE INCAPACITY TO LIVE. THE ILLUSION OF GUILT IS NECESSARY FOR AN ANIMAL THAT CANNOT ENJOY LIFE, IN ORDER TO ORGANISE A LIFE OF NON-ENJOYMENT.'

How have you been destroyed in your childhood? That has to be looked into. You were born capable of living - everybody is - then your capacity to live was taken away. And the way, the trick, that was used to take it away was to give you false ideals, pseudo ideals; to move you in directions which are futile, meaningless; to put you on tracks which go nowhere, which always end in a cul-de-sac. And naturally when you are in a cul-de sac and your life is not going anywhere - or running in circles - an explanation is needed. 'Why has this happened to me? Why has this happened to ME and not to others?'

That too is in the mind of everybody - 'Everybody else is happy, only I am miserable' - because you look only at the faces. And people manage their faces. They have masks. They don't want to show their misery - what is the point? They keep it hidden. So when you look around you may see that everybody seems to be happy - only you are miserable. And that's how everybody is thinking - 'Everybody else seems to be happy, only I am miserable.' All are miserable.

Misery is there because the society has distracted you. It is not that man is born with an incapacity to live, no, that is not the problem. That's why I don't agree. The problem is not that man has no capacity for joy - man has - the problem is that man is not allowed to grow in a natural way.

There are vested interests which don't allow man to go into joyous ways. They need a miserable man. For their own purposes the miserable man is more suitable than a happy man, because a happy man is a rebel and a miserable man is never a rebel. A miserable man is always ready to obey, always ready to submit. A miserable man is so miserable that he cannot stand on his own; he knows that on his own he is just miserable. So he is ready to fall into anybody's trap.

Any politician can become the leader if people are miserable. Then any stupid person can become your leader, your prime minister, your president - because he can promise you things, he can promise you great things. And you are so miserable that you trust the promises. If you are happy, nobody can deceive you by promising - because you need not have any promise, you are already happy. With a happy world politicians will disappear.

When you are unhappy you start thinking, 'Maybe this life is wasted, maybe I could not manage this life, but if I can manage the next one, the coming one, that is more than enough to ask.' You go to the priest. The priest promises you good in the other life. The politician promises something good in the future in this life, and the priest promises you something good in the other life beyond death.

Both go on promising. Promises are needed by miserable people. If you are happy, you will not go to the politician and you will not go to the priest. For what? You are already happy, you are already in paradise. Then the whole profession of the priest and the politician disappears.

These are the exploiters. These are the people who are sitting on your heart and blocking your energies. They can remain in power only if you are miserable. Remember it. By being miserable you are helping a gang of exploiters. Be happy and you bring the greatest revolution in the world.

Sometimes people come to me and they ask, 'Why don't you teach something so that the society can be changed?' That's what I am doing - but I am doing it very fundamentally. I don't teach you any social revolution. I don't say to you, 'Go and overthrow this government.' That is meaningless because those who will overthrow the government will become your exploiters. It never changes anything. Down the ages man has been changing the government and the social structure and the economic structure but basically nothing ever changes. Again and again the same thing happens.

Man is caught. All hopes are hopeless.

But I am doing something really revolutionary. radical - I am trying to make you happy. It may not be very obvious to you how it is concerned with the revolution of the society - it is. A happy person is beyond being oppressed, exploited, because a happy person needs no promises. A happy person is already happy so he is not worried about paradise or after-life. That is all nonsense A happy person is not worried about tomorrow; the morrow takes care of itself. Jesus says: Look at the lilies in the field They don't think of the morrow, they don't toil, they don't labour. They live an unworried existence. They are just there. But I say unto you that even Solomon attired in all his beautiful, valuable dresses was not so beautiful as these lily-flowers.

That's what sannyas is all about. I would like you to become a lily, a flower, unconcerned about the future, unconcerned about the past. The past is no more and the future is not yet. Only the present is there. Bloom in it, be happy in it, rejoice in it, celebrate in it, and you bring a great revolution in the world - because you will be getting out of all the traps of the priests and the politicians.

The priests and politicians create guilt in you. They do the harm and then they make you feel guilty.

They destroy your capacity to live, to love, to delight, and then they throw the responsibility on you - 'It is your sin, it is your wrong-doing that has made you so miserable.' Then they create guilt.

But the basic problem is conditioning. Man should be helped to live a natural life, man should not be conditioned to live an unnatural life. The basic problem is not an incapacity to live - you are born with the capacity to live - the basic problem is how not to allow others to destroy that capacity. Once they destroy, they bring guilt in also. Guilt is their protection. They protect themselves behind the garb of guilt. First they kill you and then they make you guilty that you have committed suicide.

The seventh question:

Question 8:

It is the same thing. Fear has been put very deep down into you. You have been made afraid, you have been frightened, you have been put into a very, very fearful state of consciousness.

The child is born helpless but the child is not fearful, remember. He is helpless but not fearful. The child can go and play with a snake and the child can go and try to ride on a lion. The child is not fearful. The child is helpless, that is true. He is delicate, vulnerable. He needs your help to grow.

But you exploit his helplessness; you start changing the colour of his helplessness you make it, you turn it into fearfulness; you reduce it to fearfulness. And it is very easy to change helplessness into fearfulness.

Because the child is helpless you can always make him feel fear. You can say to him, 'We are not going to give you food today,' or 'We are going to lock you in the bathroom,' or 'We will give you a good beating if you do this.' Or the mother can say, 'I am going to leave,' or 'I am going to renounce you.' Or the father can say, 'I will never come home if you do this again.' You can make the child very afraid. He is so helpless he cannot live without you. He does not even know how to survive without you. And it is not possible for him to survive without you.

Because of this you can exploit him, you can make him afraid. When he is afraid you are powerful.

When he is afraid, you know his buttons. Then you can manage whatsoever you want him to do and whatsoever you don't want him to do. Then you can force your ideas, yoUr religions, your ideologies, your patterns, on him. You have been miserable and you know that you have been miserable; now you will be forcing the same thing on him and you will make him miserable. If you really love your child there is one thing you will never do - you will never make him like you. But every father and every mother always wants the child to be just like him. People feel very happy.

Once a child was born. The father was my colleague in the university. He invited me to see the child. He was thrilled. And on the way to his home he said, 'Somebody has said that the child looks like me and many people are saying that the child looks exactly like me.'

When I went to see I told the father, 'He looks like you but please remember not to make him like you.' He said, 'What are you saying? What else can I do? My child has to be like me.'

Now this father is on an ego trip - as all fathers are. Why does the child have to be like you? Maybe the face looks like you, that is okay. The face does not matter. What matters is his spirit. He has his own spirit. If you try to make it like you it will be a good ego trip for you. People try to be immortal in this way. They will die but their child will live - and he will be just like them, just as fucked-up as they are, just as miserable as they are, just as neurotic as they are.

I told the father, 'As far as I know, you have been coming to me many times, for many years, and you have been coming to me because you are miserable. And you want this small child to be just like you? Then he will be miserable. If you really love the child then make a decision, an absolute decision and commitment, that you will avoid one thing - that is that the child should be like you. He can be anybody else - in being somebody else there is some chance of being happy - but at least one thing is certain: if he is like you he will be as miserable as you are.

But that's what goes on. You ask me: WHY DO I ALWAYS ACT OUT OF FEAR? Because you are still not free of your parents. All fear is from your parents. You may have grown in age but you have not grown in consciousness. Drop your parents.

And I am not saying anything against your parents. I have all compassion for them. Their parents have done the same thing to them. They have suffered a lot. I am not saying be angry with them, I am saying just get rid of them. Drop the conditioning that they have unknowingly put into you. Be free of them, and then you will also have a great compassion and love for them. You will feel sorry for them.

This new collection box has some new features. When you drop in a quarter or more it doesn't make a sound. Drop in a dime and it tinkles a bell. A nickel blows a whistle and a penny fires a shot, arid when you don't drop anything in, the box takes your picture.

Now that's how religion creates fear in you.

I have heard....

A minister went hunting up in the mountains. Suddenly a big bear went for him. He took off so fast you could play checkers on his coat tail, but he couldn't find any place to hide.

Suddenly he saw a tree - but the lowest limb was twenty feet from the ground. He made a frantic leap for it, but missed it. However, he grabbed it on the way down.

You are full of fear. You are just fear and trembling and nothing else. And everybody else lives on your fear. So nobody is going to help you to drop it because everybody lives on it.

Your wife will not help you to drop it because she lives on it. Wives make their husbands very afraid.

Your husband will not help you to drop it, because once you drop fear you may drop the husband himself. It may be just because of fear that you go on staying with this ugly man. Your children will not like you to drop fear. Because you are afraid, your children have some power over you. Your parents will not like you to drop fear. Nobody will like you to drop fear. You have to decide to drop it - because it is against you and in favour of all. It is destructive for you and a good opportunity for everybody to exploit you.

And the last question:

Question 9:

It happens, Maneesha. The more you feel for me, the more you will feel incapable of expressing it.

Superficial feelings can be expressed easily; words are adequate for them. Deeper feelings cannot be expressed adequately words are not adequate for them. Words are too superficial. When the feeling goes very deep, it goes beyond words. You can feel it, you can be thrilled by it, you can feel the pulsation all over your body and being, but you cannot put it into words. You can try and you can feel that you have failed. When you put it into words something very tiny comes up - and it was so huge when you were experiencing it, so enormous. It was so overwhelming. Now you put it in a word and it is just a drop - and it was an ocean when you were feeling it.

I can understand Maneesha's problem. She is my bard and the deeper she goes into me and into herself, the more and more difficult it will be for her, the more and more incapable she will feel: But that's a good sign. That's a sign that something really tremendous is happening.

Go on trying to express - because even if it cannot be expressed, it has to be expressed. Even if you cannot put the ocean of your heart into the words, don't be worried. If even only a few drops get into them, that's good - because even those few drops will lead people towards me, even those few drops will give them a taste, a taste of the ocean.

And remember one thing, even a single drop of the ocean is as salty as the whole ocean. And even a single drop of the ocean is as much water as the whole ocean. It may be small but it has the same flavour. It may be very small but it has the same secret. If you can understand a single drop of water you have understood all the water that exists on the earth or other planets. Even if water exists on some unknown planet, it will be H20. We don't know, but if water exists on some unknown planet, it will be H20 and nothing else. We know the secret. A single drop of water has the secret.

So don't be worried. The song is going to become and more difficult. The deeper you go. the more you will feel dumb. The deeper you go, the more you will feel that silence is needed, the more you will want to sing the song in silence. But silence will not be understood by people. And Maneesha is my bard so she cannot be allowed.

So let the writer's block be there. I will go on hammering on it and destroying it. And you go on singing your song.