Save me from the Pillar!

The first question:

Question 1:

Prem Vishva,

There is only one thing wrong with everybody, not only with you. That is a universal problem; it has nothing to do with individuals. It is the mind - the mind keeps your vision closed. Mind means your past, your memories, your prejudices, your conditionings; whatsoever you have been told, taught, educated - all that functions as a barrier. It does not allow you to see clearly, it does not allow you even to listen what is being said. The moment you hear something, immediately it turns into something else; passing through your mind it is distorted. Unless you put your mind aside you cannot see. And that is a universal problem: it cannot be avoided.

Each society has to give a certain mind to the children. The children cannot be left without minds, otherwise they will not be able to cope with life, they will not be able to survive. It is absolutely necessary that a certain kind of education should be given to them, but whatsoever education is given to them becomes a barrier to their inner vision. It is a necessary evil.

The function of religion is to undo what the society has to do out of sheer necessity.

I am not telling you not to use your mind. Use it when it is needed, but remain capable of putting it aside when it is not needed. Being here with me, being a sannyasin being in this Buddhafield you can put the mind aside, you can face me in total nudity. And only then there is a possibility to hear that which is said and to see that which is shown to you.

It is difficult, arduous, because we have become so identified with the mind; we are so close to the mind that there seems to be no space between us and the mind. We don't know what is what, where our consciousness begins and the mind ends. They have got mixed into each other, intertwined, intermingled; their boundaries have become confused. There is no definite, clear-cut separation between consciousness and mind.

Learning to watch your thought processes will help you to create the space. Watching creates distance from your mind. The watcher becomes slowly slowly distant from the watched; the observer and the observed start moving farther and farther away from each other. Soon the watcher is on the hilltop and the watched is in the dark valley far below, and the distinction is so clear, then there is no problem at all.

Education is a necessity, unavoidable; mind is a necessity, unavoidable. But there comes a moment in your life when something higher than the mind is needed, when you need to transcend the mind, when you go beyond it. That is the whole process of meditation.

Listening to me THROUGH the mind is bound to create more problems for you rather than solving them, because whatsoever I say will be heard with so many prejudices that by the time it reaches to you it is no more the thing that was said.

A little boy and his father are in front of the lion's cage at the zoo. Suddenly the little boy comes too close to the cage and the lion is almost on the boy.

A man standing by with a swift movement grabs the boy and saves him.

A journalist happens to be among the crowd, so he decides to write an article about it. Among other questions he asks the man, "What party do you belong to?"

"I am a Nazi," replies the man.

The next day the newspaper carries the following headline: "A dirty Nazi snatches the lunch of a hungry African immigrant."

That's the way how prejudices function. Prejudices create immediate interpretations in you, and they are so quick, they don't give you any time to ponder over. You understand only that which you CAN understand, but that is not understanding at all; you are moving in circles.

What I am saying to you is something that you have never known before, is something absolutely unknown to you. It is something mysterious; you cannot figure it out by your own calculations. You have to be more aware so that your prejudices don't interfere, so that your old ideas don't come in, otherwise you will immediately jump upon conclusions.

And mind is very stupid, it is never intelligent. Mind is never original - it cannot be by its very nature - it only goes on and on repeating the old junk that it knows already; it cannot see anything new. If you come across something absolutely new you will simply miss it; you will not be able to see it or you will see something which is not there at all.

Gilliardi arrived in the United States and after a few weeks found he had great need of a woman. He tried flirting with a few at a nearby bar but was unsuccessful because he spoke very little English.

Finally one night he picked up a streetwalker and she took him to her apartment. They were in bed making violent love when suddenly Gilliardi realized that he had not spoken a single word to her.

"Miss-a," he said, "I come-a from-a the other side."

"Oh?" said the girl. "This I gotta see!"

Vishva, you will have to forget your language if you want to understand my language. You will have to forget yourself if you want to be in tune with me. That much risk you will have to take.

That's why people who are very knowledgeable when they come here are absolutely incapable to understand anything, not because they are ignorant but because they are knowledgeable. The Hindu comes here to listen me quote the Vedas; instead I quote a joke. He is shocked. He wanted to hear RICHAS to be repeated from the Vedas and the Upanishadas: that's what he has been expecting. His expectation is so much that he cannot understand what is happening here. If I had quoted from the scriptures he would have relaxed, he would have felt that he has understood, simply because he would have thought that I am supporting his ideas. He comes here not to understand something new, he comes here to be strengthened, supported, nourished in his own beliefs. He will go very happy if I am supporting his ideas. And one thing is absolutely certain: his ideas have not helped him at all, otherwise there was no need to come here. To come here and still hanker to be supported simply shows the stupidity.

If your ideas are right you need not come here; you live your ideas, you practice them. You have lived according to your ideas and you have reached nowhere. Your Vedas have failed. Your Upanishads have become just a parrot-like phenomenon in you. You go on repeating beautiful words. If you have come here to get some support, some props for your falling ego, for your disintegrating ego, then you have come to a wrong place. Then listening to me he will be shocked; he will immediately close himself. He will become almost blind and deaf.

Jesus says again and again to his disciples, "If you have ears, listen. If you have eyes, see." Was he talking to blind people and deaf people? He was just talking to ordinary people like you who were able to see and hear perfectly well. Then what does he mean? He simply means your ears are so much full of noise and your eyes are already so full of ideas that it is impossible to reach you, to touch your heart, to move your heart.

Every day I receive many letters, many questions from Christians, from Mohammedans, from Hindus, from all kinds of people who have come with a certain idea. If by chance they feel that I am saying things according to them they are immensely happy and they write to me great letters of thankfulness, gratitude. And all that is nonsense; it is neither gratitude nor thankfulness, because in their letters it is very clear: they are not agreeing with me, they are happy that they are finding

me agreeing with them. But that is just a coincidence. Now, here are three thousand people - I am bound to say something which will support somebody's idea.

And the next day the same person writes an angry letter - because once I receive somebody's letter of gratitude I know what has been the cause; immediately the other day I am bound to say something specially for him. And without fail he writes an angry letter, that "I used to think that you are enlightened, but you are not! I am sorry to say, but I have to say the truth. "Just the other day the truth was totally different. Truth changes so easily; if it fits with you it is absolutely okay.

I am not here to support you, I am here to dismantle your mind. You need hammering in many ways.

A follower of Gurdjieff was here few months before Nirvana's father, old man, and he had come with great love and great respect - and he has been writing letters to me that "I want to come before I die, I want to see you. I could not see Gurdjieff; at least I don't want to miss this opportunity of seeing you." And then he found an opportunity - some money came by and he immediately rushed... And he was very happy because whatsoever I was saying was fulfilling his expectations.

And then Pradeepa disturbed him. She asked a question to me about him, that "Why he is not taking sannyas? When he is so much in tune with you, why he is not taking sannyas?" And just few words I told and all his joy disappeared. The next day in anger he left - immediately wrote a letter that, "I am very much disillusioned. I had never expected that you will say such things."

If I was saying nice things about Gurdjieff or things which were fitting with his idea of Gurdjieff - they may fit with Gurdjieff or not, that was not the point - if they were fitting with HIS idea of Gurdjieff...

He had never been to Gurdjieff; if he had been to Gurdjieff the same would happen there - he would have gone angry. If he had not come here he would have remained loving and respectful towards me his whole life; he would have died with great love towards me. But what kind of love is this? This is not true love.

True love has courage enough. It is ready even to die, what to say about dropping few prejudices?

But people cling to their prejudices as if they are carrying a great treasure.

Knowledgeable people are the most ignorant people in the world; the ignorant people are not so ignorant.

Vishva, you must be carrying some knowledge within you - drop your knowledge. This is not a place to carry your knowledge. This is not a place where you can gather more information, where you can become more learned. This is a place to become more innocent, and then things will start happening very easily. If you are carrying some subtle ideas deep down in your unconscious, then you are always looking - maybe not consciously, maybe not very deliberately, but always looking - to be supported, nourished. And if something is not supporting, it hurts, it wounds, and immediately you shrink back, you withdraw from me.

And this thing goes on happening every day. People come close to me, they withdraw; they come close to me, they withdraw again. This game goes on happening until finally they realize the whole stupidity and wastage of time.

An aboriginal, working at a sheep station in the outback of Australia, rides into the homestead on his horse, obviously upset, dismounts and runs over to the boss. "Hey, boss, my wife - she just hadum one plenty white baby!"

"Hold on there, Jacky," replies the cocky, "these things happen. You know we have hundreds of white sheep and occasionally we get a black one... it's just one of those things."

Jacky considers thoughtfully for a moment and then says, "Okay, boss, I won't make trouble for you about the white picaninny and you don't say nothing about them black sheep!"

You ask me, Vishva: WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME THAT I CANNOT SEE WHAT YOU ARE SHOWING TO ME?

Nothing specially wrong with you, just the same human problem: the problem of the mind. If you are intelligent you can put it aside immediately, right now. All that is needed is an intelligent grasp, just a single moment's glimpse, and you are out of it - because the mind is not holding you, you are holding the mind.

It happened:

A man came to Sheik Farid, a Sufi mystic, a great Sufi mystic and a very strange man. The man said, "How can I get out of my chains, my attachment, my ideas, my prejudices?"

Farid had his own way of answering things. Rather than answering to the person he simply ran to a pillar which was nearby, clung to the pillar and started shouting, "Save me from the pillar!"

The man could not believe what is happening - is he mad or something? And he was shouting so loudly that people started coming from the street in. A crowd gathered and they asked, "What is the matter with you? Have you gone crazy? You are holding the pillar, not the pillar holding you. You can leave it!"

And the man also said, "I had thought that this man is a man of great understanding and he seems to be just a madman! I had asked a very subtle question, a very spiritual question which has always been asked by seekers: how to get out of my attachments with ideas things people? And rather than answering me he simply jumped and clung to the pillar and started shouting, 'Save me from the pillar!'"

Farid looked at the man and he said, "If you can understand this, then you don't need any answer.

Go home and ponder over it. If the pillar is not holding me, neither your chains are holding you - you are holding them. I can leave the pillar - look I am leaving the pillar and I am saved! You also leave..."

The man must have been really intelligent - he understood. There was a shock for a moment, the way the question was answered, but in that very shock he could see the point. It penetrated to his very heart.

He touched the feet of Farid and said, "It is finished! I have asked the same question to many mahatmas, to many saints, and they gave me great discourses on it, and nothing happened. And your mad effort to answer me has immediately transformed something in me. Now I am not going back to my old world, I am going to be with you. I have found the man I was searching all my life. I needed a man like you who can hit me so hard, who could show me my stupidity."

Vishva, you can drop your mind this very moment because the mind cannot hold you. Mind is just a mechanism, a machine; you can get out of it any moment. But you have invested so much in it that YOU cling to IT, and then you go on asking how to get out of it. The doors are open; there is nobody preventing you. You can come out of it! But rather than coming out of it you simply go on asking, "How to come out of it?" There is no question of "how".

Whenever anybody asked Gautam Buddha, "How to come out of my misery?" he always used to say that, "If your house is on fire, will you ask anybody how to come out of it? Will you wait for some learned answer? Will you consult scriptures? Or you will jump? If the door is not open, if the door is also aflame, you will jump from the window. You will not even bother that jumping out from the window will look a little odd. If you are in your bath room taking a bath and you are naked, you will not even bother to wrap around a towel; you will simply run out naked. And you will not think that this is not mannerly, against etiquette, running out naked; you won't bother at all. If you understand that the house is on fire you will find the way. But you are simply talking, talking how to get out of misery; you are not aware of the misery."

If one is really aware of the misery, nobody can prevent you. And there is no need to postpone.

Postponement means that you have a very mediocre mind. The intelligent person acts immediately because who knows about the next moment? The tomorrow never comes.

The second question:

Question 2:

Sunderam,

MARRIAGE IS a great institution. Without marriage life will be very empty. Without marriage you will be all Buddhas! It is marriage that keeps the world going on; it keeps things running. It keeps all kinds of things moving, alive. In fact, without marriage there will be no religion at all.

Religion exists not because of God or for God; it is because of marriage. Marriage creates so much misery that one has to meditate; meditation is a byproduct. Without marriage, who will bother to meditate? For what? You will be already blissful! Without marriage there will be no renunciation, Buddha would not have left the world - for what? His wife, Yashodhara, must have created the situation - Mahavira would not have escaped to the mountains. Without marriage there would have been no Buddha, no Mahavira. Just think: the history would have been very flat, without any salt, tasteless. Marriage keeps this whole "sorry-go-round" on and on. People call it "merry-go-round"...

I am not against marriage - without marriage, ninety-nine percent jokes will disappear from the world. How I can be against marriage? I am all for it.

Sunderam, marriage makes many things possible.

"Marriage is the process of finding what kind of man your wife would have preferred!" It is a mirror.

Drinking in a bar, two friends are chatting about life.

"Who introduced you to your wife?" asks one.

The other says, "We met casually. I can't blame anyone else."

Two women are chatting at the hairdresser.

One says, "My husband travels a lot. He spent one month at home out of the whole year!"

"One month?" exclaims the other. "That must be very annoying to you."

"No... a month goes by fast!"

The doctor and his wife are walking down the street when they are passed by an incredibly beautiful woman. She has big tits, a nice body and a beautiful face. She seems a little selfconscious of her beauty and as she passes by the doctor she smiles a familiar smile.

"Who is that lady?" asks the wife.

A little shy, the doctor answers, "A client."

"I know," the wife replies, "but is she your client or are you hers?"

In a small city in the interior of Brazil, a couple is sitting on a bench outside the house enjoying the moonlight. Maria turns to Ze and says, "Ze, do you know something? Tomorrow it is going to be twenty-five years that we have been married!"

And Ze answers, "Yeah!"

"Twenty-five years... Uau! Ze, it is a lot!"

"Yeah!"

"Look, Ze, why don't we catch some of the chickens in the yard and kill them for tomorrow?"

"Why, Maria? Poor chickens... it is not their fault!"

"Hey!" cried Satan to the arrival. "You act as if you own the place."

"I do," came the reply. "My wife gave it to me before I died."

Now, without marriage all these jokes will disappear. without marriage there will be no misery - and no laughter either. There will be so much silence... it will be NIRVana on the earth! Marriage keeps thousands of things going on: the religion, the state, the nations, the wars, the literature, the movies, the science; everything, in fact, depends on the institution of marriage.

I am not AGAINST marriage; I simply want you to be aware that there is a possibility of going beyond it too. But that possibility also open up only because marriage creates so much misery for you, so much anguish and anxiety for you, that you have to learn how to transcend it. It is a great push for transcendence. Marriage is not unnecessary; it is needed to bring you to your senses, to bring you to your sanity. Marriage is necessary and yet there comes a point when you have to transcend it too. It is like a ladder. You go up the ladder, it takes you up, but there comes a moment when you have to leave the ladder behind. If you go on clinging to the ladder, then there is danger.

Learn something from marriage. Marriage represents the whole world in a miniature form: it teaches you many things. It is only the mediocre ones who learn nothing. Otherwise it will teach you that you don't know what love is, that you don't know how to relate, that you don't know how to communicate, that you don't know how to commune, that you don't know how to live with another. It is a mirror: it shows your face to you in all its different aspects. And it is all needed for your maturity. But a person who remains clinging to it forever remains immature. One has to go beyond it too.

Marriage basically means that you are not able yet to be alone; you need the other. Without the other you feel meaningless and with the other you feel miserable. Marriage is really a dilemma! If you are alone you are miserable; if you are together you are miserable. It teaches you your reality, that something deep inside you needs transformation so that you can be blissful alone and you can be blissful together. Then marriage is no more marriage because then it is no more bondage. Then it is sharing, then it is love. Then it gives YOU freedom and you give the freedom needed for the other's growth.

The ordinary marriage is an unconscious bondage: you cannot live alone so you become dependent on the other; the other cannot live alone so he or she becomes dependent on you. And we hate the person on which we are dependent; nobody likes to depend on anybody. Our deepest desire is to have freedom, total freedom - and dependence is against freedom. Everybody hates dependence, and that's why couples are continuously fighting, not knowing why they are fighting. They have to meditate over it, they have to contemplate over it, why they are fighting. Everything is just an excuse to fight. If you change one excuse, another excuse will be found; if no excuse is left then excuses will be invented, but somehow the fight has to be there.

The fight has a fundamental reason which has nothing to do with anything else. The fundamental reason is you hate the person you have to depend upon. You don't want to recognize it - you don't want to recognize the fact that you hate the person you believe you love. You hate simply because it is the other that hinders, defines your territories, keeps you confined, makes you feel limited from every side. Your freedom is crippled and paralyzed. How can you love the other person? And the same you are doing to the other. How can the other person love you?

Marriage is a great teaching; it is an opportunity to learn something: to learn that dependence is not love, that to depend means conflict, anger, rage, hatred, jealousy, possessiveness, domination. And one has to learn not to depend. But for that you will need great meditativeness so that you can be so

blissful on your own that you don't need the other. When you don't need the other, the dependence disappears. once you don't need the other you can share your joy - and sharing is beautiful.

I would like a different kind of relationship in the world. I call it relating just to make it different from your old kind of relationship. I would like a different kind of marriage in the world. I will not call it marriage because that word has become poisoned. I would like to call it just a friendship; no legal bondage, just a loving togetherness; no promise for tomorrow - this moment is enough. And if you love each other this moment and if you enjoy each other this moment, if you can share with each other this moment. the next moment will be born out of it; it will become more and more enriched.

As time passes by, your love will become deeper, it will start having new dimensions, but it will not create any bondage.

Hence MY vision of a new humanity does not have any place for the old kind of marriage or old kind of family because we have suffered enough. I know perfectly well that man and woman will need to be together, but not out of need, but out of overflowing joy; not out of poverty but out of richness - because you have so much that you have to give. Just like when a flower opens, its fragrance is released to the winds because it is so full of fragrance it HAS to release it. Or when a cloud comes in the sky it showers; it has to shower - it is so full of rain water it has to share.

Up to now we have not helped man to know what love is; on the contrary we have been forcing him to get married. Marriage has to be the first thing and then love will come on its own accord. That whole idea has proved totally wrong. Man has lived in hell for centuries. He has become accustomed, that is true, in fact so much accustomed that the very idea of a world without marriage shocks him.

Just the other day I received a letter that, "If marriage disappears and the family disappears, what will happen to children?" What has happened to children with the marriage and with the family? All children are born so beautiful, so innocent, so intelligent, and the family and the marriage destroy them. They start seeing their mothers and fathers continuously quarreling, nagging. They become accustomed of it and they will repeat the same pattern in their life.

I would like marriage to be replaced by relating and family to be replaced by small communes. For example, this commune: a few hundred people living together, working together, producing together, creating together. The children will not be confined to the small families, the children will belong to the whole commune. Not that they will not get affection from their father and mother - they will get MORE affection from their father and mother, because father and mother will also not feel burdened with the children, and they will also get affection from everybody else.

This whole idea of "my child" is also egoistic. Children should belong to the commune. And the commune should decide how many children are needed; it cannot be left now to individual families, otherwise the world will become more and more of a hell. And the commune should also decide that who are the right persons to parent children, to give birth to children. It will decide scientifically the man who can become a father, the woman who can become a mother. All men need not be fathers, all women need not be mothers, but they can mother the children of the whole commune, they can father the children of the whole commune.

We can have better children, more healthy, more intelligent, more talented, more beautiful, if we use a little science, which is available now. Now, going on producing like animals is very primitive, it

is absolutely absurd. And there is no need also that two persons who are in love should produce the child, because now there are scientific ways. If you can get your son to be as intelligent as Albert Einstein then why bother that you should give birth from your own chromosomes? Why not he can be given birth through Albert Einstein's cells? Just as people dying donate their eyes they can donate their chromosomes, which will be beautiful. Those chromosomes can be preserved for thousands of years; there is no problem in it. And we can go on improving on human race. We are doing it as far as animals are concerned; you can see the difference.

In India, you look at the cows.. . and the foolish Indians think that they respect the cows. Just they call them mothers, that's all; otherwise the poorest cows in the world are the Indian cows, starving, ill, giving so little milk that it is uneconomical, absolutely uneconomical, to preserve them. But all over the world wherever science has entered, better cows, better bulls, better dogs, better animals have become available.

The same is possible with man. There is no need to go on hanging around old ideas. We can stop people like Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Nadir Shah from being born because the first cell of the father is decisive, the egg of the mother is decisive. Now it can be decided that what kind of child will be born. Will he be an Adolf Hitler or an Albert Einstein? His whole future can be read - it can almost be predicted.

Only one thing will remain unpredictable forever, that is his enlightenment; that will remain unpredictable. Otherwise everything will be predictable. But we can give birth to people who are more intelligent, more healthy. Of course then there is more possibility of their becoming enlightened, of their becoming Buddhas.

We have to change the whole structure of humanity from the very roots. Marriage has to go the way it has existed up to now and a totally new concept has to be introduced. Only then a new man can be born on the earth.

The fourth question:

Question 3:

Michael Potato,

I Don't know much Italian language, but the little bit that I know is so beautiful that I would like to know it more. But I am a lazy person - I cannot learn anything. In fact, whatsoever I am, I am because I have learned only one thing: how to go on unlearning. Whatsoever I am, I am through the process of unlearning. I would have loved to know Italian language; it seems to be beautiful. But now there is no possibility. Just a little bit - which is not much...

An old Italian and a young Italian are sitting in an outdoor cafe watching the women go by.

The old Italian asks the young one, "Hey, Giuseppe, you like big-a fat-a ass-a?"

The young man answers, "No, I like nice small-a ass-a!"

Some time goes by and the old Italian asks, "You like big-a saggy tits-a?"

"No," answers the young Italian, "I like nice little tits-a"

Some time passes again and the old man asks, "You like garlic-a breath-a?"

"No, I like nice sweet-a breath-a."

Then the old Italian says, "If you don't-a like-a big-a, fat-a ass-a, you don't-a like-a big-a saggy tits-a, and you don't-a like-a garlic-a breath-a, then how come you keep-a fucking my wife-a?"

This much Italian.. . not more than that! But this is enough for my purposes.

The fifth question:

Question 4:

Reverend Banana,

ONCE, FOR A CHANGE, you are right, sir. It is not philosophy, it is not religion, it is a totally different phenomenon. I am not interested in philosophy at all because philosophy has not done any service to humanity, it has only filled people's minds with unnecessary chattering and noise.

It has not given man any radical transformation, it gives you only a false feeling of knowing. It is a pseudo phenomenon and it prevents you from searching the real truth because you become so addicted with words, you forget totally that truth is not a word, that God is not a word, that love is not a word. The philosopher becomes more and more wordy. He becomes so full of words, he forgets completely his being. He is surrounded with the crowds of words, clouds of theories, hypotheses, which all pretend to be conclusive, but none of them is conclusive.

Philosophy has not reached to any conclusion and it will never reach - it is an exercise in utter futility. It is a good game if you want to play an intellectual game, an intellectual gymnastics; it is hair splitting.

But I am not interested in it at all - and I know it from the inside: I have been a student of philosophy and a professor of philosophy too. I know it as an insider that the most useless activity in the world is philosophy, the most uncreative, the most pretentious - but very ego-fulfilling, gives you great ideas of knowledgeability without making you wise at all.

When P.D. Ouspensky met George Gurdjieff for the first time he was already a world-famous philosopher, mathematician. He has written his most important book, TERTIUM ORGANUM. The

book is really tremendously beautiful; if you are interested in philosophy, then it is unique. A man who is interested in philosophy, if he misses P.D. Ouspensky's TERTIUM ORGANUM, he misses something very significant.

Ouspensky presented his book, TERTIUM ORGANUM, to Gurdjieff. He just looked for five minutes here and there, threw the book and said to Ouspensky, "You take this piece of paper, go in the other room. On the one side you write what you exactly know and on the other side what you exactly don't know. If you know God, write it on the one side; if you don't know God, write it on the other side.

And so about truth, love, enlightenment, immortality."

Ouspensky was a little puzzled, a little shocked, offended too, because his great book was thrown as if it was just disgusting. And I can understand: he must have felt very wounded. But now that he had come to see this strange man he wanted to try what he was asking. He went into the other room with a pencil and the paper. For the first time in his life, he says, "I became aware that I don't know anything at all. It was a cold Russian night; snow was falling outside. Even inside the room it was below zero..." But he started perspiring. A man of world fame could not write a single word - love, enlightenment, truth, God - on the side that Gurdjieff has told, "Write on this side if you know"

- not a single word!

After one hour he came out with the empty paper, gave it back to Gurdjieff and said, "I am sorry, but you are really a strange man! You have already done a miracle! It is for the first time that I realize I know nothing."

Gurdjieff started laughing and he said, "How you have been writing such beautiful books? It is easy to write a beautiful book, it is easy to philosophize; it is far more easy if you don't know. If you know, it becomes more difficult."

Ouspensky became a disciple of Gurdjieff, accepting his ignorance.

Gurdjieff said that is the first condition to be fulfilled by a disciple: that he should accept his ignorance; only then things can be done, only then there is any possibility of inner growth. The false has to be known as false; only then the real can be understood as reaL I am not a philosopher. My people here are not philosophers either. Yes, once in a while we joke about philosophy, that's all...

A man walked into a pub, crossed the room, walked up the far wall, then across the ceiling, back down the wall by the door and left again without saying a word.

"Did you see that? It was incredible!" said the stupefied bartender to a local philosopher.

"Sure, I saw it - it was really horrible!" said the philosopher. "He was wearing yellow shoes with pink socks!"

The corporal calls his soldiers to attention and asks for a volunteer to accomplish a dangerous mission.

After a few moments he goes up to a soldier and says, "Congratulations, my brave man! I have heard about you, that you are a great philosopher. You are the only one who has stepped forward!

Now you have proved your courage and your mettle to me."

The philosopher-soldier looks around in surprise, then answers, "Well, the truth is - the others have all taken a step backwards!"

The philosophers live in a kind of deep sleep, a slumber. He was not aware that everybody has moved back. He must not have been there; he must have been somewhere else.

Wendel Holmes, a Justice of the Supreme Court of America, was known, very much well known in America for his philosophic attitude towards life. One day he left his courtroom and made his way to the railway station where he boarded an express train. An hour later, as the train crossed the Maryland countryside, the ticket inspector entered his compartment and asked to see his ticket.

Holmes searched through all his pockets and his wallet, but was unable to find the ticket. A look of anxiety passed across his face.

The ticket inspector, who had recognized Holmes from newspaper reports, said, "Well, there is no need to worry about the ticket, Mr. Holmes. I am sure you forgot to buy one at the station. I can issue you one now."

Holmes' look of worry had deepened. In a perplexed voice he said, "It is not the ticket that worries me. I just realized I don't know where I am going."

Philosophers have never known where they are going.

Reverend Banana, I can understand your concern that things here don't seem to be philosophical - they are not. It is an existential commune. We trust in existence, not in philosophy.

And you say it does not seem religion, too.

That too is true. It is not religion in the sense Christianity is, it is not religion in the sense Hinduism is, it is not religion in the sense Mohammedanism is. It is not fanaticism: there is no dogma, there is no belief It is religion in the sense Buddha is religious, it is religion in the sense Jesus is religious, it is religion in the sense Ko Hsuan is religious. It is not religion but a religiousness, not a question of belief but a question of living.

Religion to me is not ritual. If you are looking for any ritual, no ritual exists here. To me religion is an insight, insight into the beauty of existence, insight into the tremendous mystery that surrounds us, insight into your own being and into the beings of others. It has nothing to do with any dogma, any belief, any creed, any cult - it is not a cult at all - it is just a totally different phenomenon.

We are trying to live a meditative life, working in the ordinary way but working it with a different quality.

People are working in the kitchen, cleaning the toilets, or in the carpentry shop or in the boutique or in the bakery or in the garden - just the ordinary kind of activities, but with a different quality: with a joy, with silence, with love, with bliss, with a dance in their heart, with celebration.

To me, that is true religion: to be able to celebrate life is religion. In that very celebration you come close to God. If one is able to celebrate, God is not far away; if one is not able to celebrate life, then God does not exist for him. God appears only in deep celebration, when you are so full of joy that all misery has left you, all darkness has left you. When you are so full that there is no emptiness in you, that you have started feeling the significance of the ordinary, day-to-day existence, when moment to moment you live totally, intensely, passionately, then God is available.

God is not a person but just an experience, an experience of overwhelming mystery, unfathomable mystery. It is not philosophy in the ordinary sense, it is not religion in the ordinary sense either. It is philosophy in the truest sense of the word - philosophy means love for wisdom; then it is philosophy.

Religion, the word, very word, means to be in tune. It comes from RELIGERE: to be in deep harmony with the whole, to be married with the whole, to be related with the whole, to forget your ego and your separation. Then it is religion.

The last question:

Question 5:

Masta,

Okay.

It is a little known fact that Jesus Christ was nearly called Manny shortly after his birth. Just before he was, however, someone walking past the stable peeked a look inside to see what was going on.

Hitting his toe on a sharp stone he cried out, "Jesus!"

"oh, that's a good name," said Mary. "We will call him that."

Jesus walks into a hotel, throws some nails onto the counter and says, "Can you put me up for the night?"

Jesus was resting on the shores of Lake Galilee. A group of children nearby were laughing, throwing water at him and making a lot of noise.

Peter, annoyed, shouted at them, but Jesus stopped him and said, "Let the children come to me..."

The noise, the throwing of water, etcetera, continued even more than before. Finally, Peter, tired and very annoyed, tried to shove them away, but again Jesus stopped him and said, "Peter, I told you to let the children come close to me - so that I can kick them in the ass!"