Choicelessness

The first question:

Question 1:

The first thing. Small Siddhartha is not so small, he is one of the ancient ones. His words may be that of a child but his wisdom is not. Watching small Siddhartha, you can understand why Lao Tzu was thought to have been born old. Siddhartha is born old. When he says something he knows something exactly, that's why he says it.

He is right. The final showdown is always of a woman, the form of the body does not matter. The form of the inner being is always that of woman - whether it is Buddha, Zarathustra Christ or Lao Tzu, it makes no difference, the final showdown is always that of the feminine being, the feminine mystique. All aggression disappears, all violence disappears, one becomes total receptivity - that's what a woman is.

One becomes a womb, one becomes such an infinite womb that one can contain the whole universe.

That's why Hindu concepts of God are more of the mother than of the father. They are meaningful.

IF CHOICE WAS POSSIBLE, WHY DID YOU ASSUME A MALE FORM? In fact choice is always male: to choose is to be male, not to choose is to be female. To accept whatsoever happens is to be female, to receive whatsoever is given with gratefulness is to be female. To complain, to grumble, to grudge, to choose, to have one's own say is to be male; whenever you want something to be according to you, you are male, the ego has entered. The ego is male. So choice is not in fact possible. Femininity means surrender - one moves like a white cloud with no mind of one's own, one accepts and one accepts joyfully, one delights because all directions are His, all forms are His.

How to choose? What to choose? Choice means rejection also: in choosing something you reject something. In every choice there is a rejection. If you want to be the whole how can you choose?

You have to be choiceless.

Remember that the more your choose, the more the male mind enters into you; the less you choose and remain in choicelessness just leaving all to existence itself, the more feminine you become. And the mystery is this that when you become feminine, all happens to you, not part. You are no longer living as a fragment, you live as the whole. That's why there was no choice for me.

Soon there will be no choice for you also. Prepare yourself. Prepare for choicelessness. If you want the whole to shower on you as a whole, then don't choose. If you choose you will remain a beggar; if you don't choose you become the emperor.

The second question:

Question 2:

If I say yes, it won't mean a thing to you, if I say no, it will be wrong. So now you can understand. I will repeat: If I say yes, it won't mean a thing to you, if I say no, it will be wrong.

The third question:

Question 3:

This is a complex question and comes out of a very complex mind. The question seems to be very simple, direct, straight. It is not. In the beginning the questioner says: I KNOW NOTHING. If that is really true, the latter part cannot come, then would come a full stop. If you really feel you know nothing then what is there to say? Full stop. It would have been enough. But no, then knowledge comes in.

I KNOW NOTHING - I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO ASK. WHAT QUESTION IS THERE? AND WHAT WORDS CAN ANSWER THE PROBLEMS OF A SLEEPING SOUL WHEN THE ONLY ANSWER IS ALREADY SO PRONOUNCED: BE AWAKE, BE TOTAL. All this is your knowledge.

If you have really heard as you say you have, - that the only answer is so pronounced - if you have really heard it, you cannot be ignorant. If you have really heard it, then how can you say that you are sleeping? In sleep you cannot hear it.

BE AWAKE, BE TOTAL. For it to be understood you will have to come out of your sleep. You must be dreaming that you have heard the answer.

In the beginning you say: I KNOW NOTHING. Do you think something more is needed to explain it?

It is completely explanatory in itself. Nothing more is needed, nothing more is to be added to make it more clear. In fact whatsoever you add will make it more murky and puzzled. I KNOW NOTHING is so simple. But no, you know well that this is just a trick. You know that you are playing a game of ignorance to appear wise because you have heard that people who are wise say that they don't know anything at all. You are being clever. This cleverness will kill you, this cleverness is not going to help.

If you know nothing you know nothing, and if you know nothing and you can remain with your ignorance, you will feel my presence because when someone is ignorant, that someone is vast, infinite. Ignorance has no boundaries, only knowledge has boundaries, only knowledge has limitations. Ignorance has no limitations, ignorance is infinite. Knowledge is closed, ignorance is an opening, an infinite opening. Knowledge is noisy, ignorance is silent - there is nothing to be noisy about, there is nothing to fuss about. One is ignorant - finished!

Then one is really ignorant and then your other words that follow, could not follow, they simply could not exist with ignorance. No, you are trying to be wise. You say: I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO ASK. WHAT QUESTION IS THERE? From where are these words coming? Out of your ignorance?

AND WHAT WORDS CAN ANSWER THE PROBLEMS OF A SLEEPING SOUL... You already know everything. You are a sleeping soul, no words can answer your questions.... WHEN THE ONLY ANSWER IS ALREADY SO PRONOUNCED. You have already heard the answer as well and you know the answer: BE AWAKE, BE TOTAL.

IT IS YOUR PRESENCE THAT MY QUESTION SEEKS - NOT YOUR RESPONSE. If you are ignorant there is no need to seek my presence, it is already there. In your infinite ignorance, without boundaries, you meet me, you meet the whole, you meet God, you meet Tao.

You have not known the beauty of ignorance, no. You are trying to pretend to be ignorant but your knowledge won't allow you to. It comes in between, it is always there surrounding you. Even if you say that you are ignorant you will make that ignorance appear very knowledgeable, you will decorate that ignorance with knowledge. Ignorance is naked, nude, you cannot decorate it; only knowledge is decorated, polished. Knowledge is like a whore, always on the market, for sale. Ignorance? Who will purchase ignorance? To whom can you sell it? Nobody needs it, in fact everybody has already got it within him. There is no need to decorate it. It is like night: dark, silent, not even a single movement. Words cannot exist with ignorance. So whatsoever you say in the first part you destroy in the latter part, and by the end of your question you have destroyed it completely.

Don't play the game with yourself because nobody else is going to be deceived by it except yourself.

It happened that a disciple was with a Zen master for many years and nothing happened. He tried to do whatsoever the master said but still nothing happened because in fact he was not trying, he was pretending to try. He was just showing that he was trying; he was playing a game, he was not sincere. Then he started asking others: What to do? I do everything, whatsoever the master says, and nothing happens. Somebody said: It will not happen, it is difficult, it is almost impossible. If you really want it to happen the only way is to die. The man had by this time become such a practitioner of pretensions that he said: I will do it. He went to the master to see him.

Suddenly when the master looked at him, he fell on the ground, closed his eyes and pretended that he was dead. The master had a hearty laugh, because you can pretend many things but how can you pretend that you are dead? It is the last of absurdities. The master said: Right, you did well, but one question before you disappear completely. What about the koan, the problem I have given you to solve?

The master had given him a problem to meditate upon, the very basic problem that if you want to create sound with one hand, how will the sound of one hand sound?

The pretender opened his one eye and said: Master, that I haven't solved yet. The master hit him hard, kicked him, and said: You hypocrite, don't you know this much, don't you know that dead men don't answer any questions? You are dead, but immediately you answer a question.

If you are really ignorant then all the other words that you have written are false, useless, futile, meaningless, gibberish. But if they are meaningful then whatsoever you have said in the beginning is a pretension. That's why I say the question is complex.

And then you want my presence. A presence cannot be desired. You have to wait for it, you cannot want it. It is a free gift; whenever you are ready it is given. And your knowledge won't allow you to receive my response. The man is saying that he is not in any way interested in my answers - because he knows the answers already, he is a man of knowledge. He wants my presence. But what have you done to earn it? Just by desiring do you think you become capable?

Then why are these others trying to get my response? Are they fools except you? In fact, to pass through response is a training to reach to the presence. You ask a question, I respond to you, and by and by your questions will drop. Not that you will become more knowledgeable - if you become more knowledgeable then more questions will arise. No, if you really listen to me, if you try to understand me - not the words, but the space between the words, not the lines, but the space between the lines, not what I say, but that which I mean - if you understand it, you will become ready, and by and by questions will drop. And when a non-questioning mind arises, suddenly my presence will burst upon you. These answers are to make you ignorant; these answers are to bring your knowledge out, to help you to unlearn it, but it all depends on you. You can gather my answers without listening to the meaning, you can gather the words, but they will become more and more of a burden of knowledge on you, on your head. Then more questions will arise, because every answer is capable of creating a thousand and one questions. Then you miss the point. Then you were not in fact here with me, you have been on your own trip, your own ego-trip. It is not my trip, it was your trip, you were not with me.

If you really listen, just through listening questions will disappear. And whenever one day it happens that in your mind there is not a single question, that is the point when you can say: I know nothing.

You will not even know enough to ask a question because to ask a question is to know something.

How can you ask a question without knowing anything? Even to ask a question a certain knowledge is needed, otherwise how will you ask? If you ask, 'Who is God? What is God?' at least you know something about God, otherwise the question cannot arise. A child cannot suddenly ask: Where is God? No, first he has to learn that God is, that God created the world; then through this learning the question will arise. Questions are not out of ignorance, questions are out of knowledge. When questions drop, you have the infinity of ignorance, a dark night, beautiful, velvet-like, infinite. You are in it, dissolved as completely as a drop in the ocean. Then you feel my presence. Knowledge is the barrier.

And you say that you are not interested in my response - then you are destroying the very bridge; then you will not be able to feel my presence - that will become impossible. First you have to allow me to kill all that you know, to destroy it, to demolish something which has gone wrong within you.

Only then can I be creative. Presence is a creative phenomenon. My answers are just destructive, they are to destroy something. They are to rediscover your ignorance and with it, the infinity. If you can become totally ignorant you have taken the first step to becoming totally wise. Totality is the bridge. If you are totally ignorant, then totality has already happened, and totality is the bridge.

Then to reach wisdom from ignorance is not much of a problem, the bridge is open, the bridge is ready. So be total. At this moment you can be total only in ignorance - the next happening will be to be total in wisdom. But you go on clinging with small bits of knowledge.

Don't try to be clever with me. Be sincere. If you are ignorant, then be ignorant, and you will touch my presence, you will enter me and you will allow me to enter you. But if you are not capable of feeling my presence then try first to feel my response; then let me demolish you, destroy you, for the creative explosion to happen.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Many things have to be understood. The problem is very delicate. First, if you no longer have the desire to do anything, how will you desire suicide? It is a desire. How can you commit suicide without desiring it? In fact it is the utmost in desire.

NOTHING SEEMS TO MATTER TO ME ANY MORE. If nothing seems to matter anymore suicide also cannot mean anything. How will you choose? How will you choose between life and death?

It will be an escape, an escape from life; and somebody who is escaping from life is also escaping from death. That's why I say it is very delicate. If you are fed up with life, if you are really tired of life, if you don't desire anything, you are bored, then your suicide will have a negative quality to it. It will be just boredom, a 'fed-upness,' it will not be a real suicide. It will be negative, it will be futile and you will be thrown back into life again because life is a discipline, you are here to learn something. If you are ecstatic, if you are celebrating life and you are so fulfilled that dancing you move into death, then it is no longer suicide, it is SAMADHI, it is NIRVANA. Buddha also moved into death, but he was not tired of life, he was fulfilled. Try to understand the difference.

There is only one religion in the world which has given permission to commit suicide - that is Jainism.

Mahavir, who is the greatest propounder of non-violence, has given permission to his disciples to commit suicide - but only to those who are not fed up with life, who are not bored, not tired, but who have lived life completely, perfectly, totally, who have known everything that life can give and who have experienced it. Now they are fulfilled. They are not destroying themselves against life, they are fulfilled, the work is done. They are returning to the source.

Mahavir is really very courageous. No other religious teacher has been courageous enough to allow suicide. But he has made conditions for it: it should not be committed in any negative mood, because then you miss the point and you will be thrown back. It should be absolutely positive.

Another condition is that one should not take poison or jump from a hill or into the river or into the ocean. No, that can be done in a single moment. One should fast, fast unto death - it takes seventy, eighty, ninety, sometimes a hundred days. Millions of times there will be a possibility for you to think again and again and again.

If you have remained a little unfulfilled you will come back. To remain with a decision for a hundred days is difficult for the mind; only one who has no mind can remain with a decision for a hundred days continuously. Otherwise any moment, after three or four or five days of fasting, the whole body and mind will say: You fool! Start eating! What are you doing? Life is so valuable and you have not done this and that, you have not lived this and that. Live it! Who knows? You may not come back to life again. If you are not really fulfilled you will come back.

To remain with the conclusion for a hundred days and to move towards death happily, you need absolutely no mind.

To commit suicide in a single moment won't do because in a single moment you can be deluded, you can be in an illusion. If you take poison, it can be done in a single moment. It is my feeling that if people who commit suicide are delayed for even a single moment, they will never do it; if delayed for even a single moment, they will change their mind.

They commit suicide in a sort of madness. They are so fed up, they do it in a single moment, and they don't have any chance to go back on their own decision. There is no time left. They jump. They may suffer in the ocean and they may start crying and weeping and shouting, 'Save me!' but now it is too late. Their whole being would like to come back to life. And soon they will be back in a womb.

This is no suicide, a temporary suicide is no suicide. You will be back again in another womb, and, worse than that, the committing of suicide will hang around you, it will become a karma. It will be like a dark shadow, a gloominess around your face, around your being. You will move in life shrouded in death. That will not be good.

I can allow you and I can admit you to total suicide: that's what I am all about, that's what I am doing here - preaching total suicide. Total means no coming back, and that is possible only through deep meditation. A point comes when all desires really disappear.

You say: I NO LONGER HAVE THE DESIRE TO DO ANYTHING.

That's not true. If somebody offers you the post of the president of the USA - without any effort on your part, with no election campaign, with no struggle, just an offer - you will accept it. You are not fed up with life, you are fed up with struggle. It is not that you are in a state of desirelessness, you are in a state of frustration. You desired and you couldn't reach, so now you feel frustrated.

If somehow it were possible that an angel could appear from God and say to you: 'Now I am here ready, whatsoever desire you have will be fulfilled, simply tell me,' a thousand and one desires will struggle to come into your mind. And if he says that you can choose only three desires you will be at a loss as to what to choose and what to leave. You will go mad.

Frustration is not desirelessness - always remember that anything negative is dangerous.

Everybody feels frustration. You cannot come across a man who has not sometime or other contemplated committing suicide - life is such a struggle. Love is a struggle, life is a struggle, everything is a struggle: one thinks many times about suicide, it gives a temporary relief.

Psychologists say that every man - every man of intelligence, I am not talking about idiots - every man of average intelligence thinks about committing suicide at least ten times in his life... thinks sincerely and seriously, contemplates it at least ten times, that is the minimum. Why? Because life is such a struggle that many times you would like to drop out of it, return the ticket, go back home. But that is a temporary phase. It helps. Just thinking that you can commit suicide, that if all other ways are closed at least one way is open, it helps. It relaxes the mind, you go to sleep, and in the morning when you are again going to the shop, you have forgotten all about it. Just the feeling that if everything fails there is one thing always left for you, you can at least commit suicide, was a temporary relief. If everything has become a bondage, there is the hope that you can commit suicide, that is your freedom.

Man is free to commit suicide. No other animal can commit suicide, no other animal is so free You are not free to be born but you are free to die.

In India there is a higher stage - the stage of DEVAS. DEVAS are not parallel to angels in Christianity, no, angels belong to fairy tales. DEVAS are in a higher stage of consciousness. Animals are absolutely in bondage, they cannot commit suicide; man is a little freer - he is not free to be born, he is not free to come into life, but he is free to go out of it; DEVAS are free both ways - free to be born, free to die. Animals exist with both ways closed, man exists with only one way open, and DEVAS are in a higher state of consciousness where both the ways are open. They can enter into life, they can go out of it - entrance and exit are both open. They have more freedom, a little more freedom.

If you want to commit suicide, think whether it is because of desirelessness or not. If it is because of desirelessness, then from where is the desire to commit suicide arising? And if it is because of desirelessness you will not ask me, you will simply do it. If you have really lived, then you are fulfilled; then will you take the trouble to come here and ask me? For what? Maybe you are frustrated and you would like something to console you or somebody to console you. Maybe you are afraid of the very idea of committing suicide so you want me to say, 'No, don't do it,' so the responsibility is with me, not with you. But I am not that type of man. I say: If you really want to commit suicide then do it - but then why are you here to ask me?

A young man came to ask me whether he should get married or remain unmarried. That is just like suicide, the same problem. Should one commit suicide or should one remain in life? To remain a bachelor is a sort of suicide because half of life is cut, you have decided to remain half. Marriage is a whole life. So I asked the young man: Why are you asking me? If there arises no desire for the woman, from where does this question arise? Drop out of it! It's okay, there is no need to go into marriage. But if the desire arises, then go and get married.

Then he asked: Then why didn't you get married? I told him: Because I decided. But I never asked anybody about it. I have never asked anybody about anything. One should be responsible. I have never asked anybody a single question about life. What is the point? If I have the clarity I move through it, and even if I err that's how my life has to go - through mistakes, through trial and error.

But I never throw the responsibility onto anybody else.

If you want to commit suicide, do it. No, you don't want to commit suicide - you want me to say: This is very bad, this is a great sin. Don't commit suicide. Then you can hang on me, on my shoulders.

You are frustrated, everybody is frustrated, but if you escape from life through frustration you will be thrown back. If you really want to escape then understand life, live it, live it to the very end, so that the whole illusion is known and you discover that the whole of life and its hopes are just like dreams.

Then you can come out of the dream; then suicide will not be suicide, it will be SAMADHI. Then you don't commit only the body to death, you commit your mind to death as well. You become mindless.

Then there is nothing to come back.

I NO LONGER HAVE THE DESIRE TO DO ANYTHING. NOTHING SEEMS TO MATTER TO ME ANYMORE. LIFE IS SO MUCH EFFORT. It is, but it is good because through effort you grow, you become mature. If life is not any effort how will you mature, how will you grow? You will be just a lump of earth, dead. Life gives you shape, tone; life gives you sharpness. In fact everything is as it should be: the struggle is needed to make you more alive. If the struggle is not there you will be dead before death; that's why it happens that you will always see that the faces of people who have everything in their life are pale, dead, sad, unintelligent - because they have nothing to struggle for.

Rich men's sons are almost always idiotic, rich people don't give genius to the world, no. Because genius needs struggle; struggle gives sharpness. If you are rich and your father has everything, you have nothing to worry about - so you simply live and vegetate. How will you grow, how will you become mature? LIFE IS SO MUCH EFFORT. Don't say that. Life has to be effort.

THE BODY REQUIRES FOOD AND SUFFERS CONSTANT PHYSICAL DISCOMFORT. What is wrong in that? Would you like to have a body which doesn't need any food? Yes, sooner or later science is going to have that - plastic bodies. But can you imagine the nightmare of it - a plastic body with all parts replaceable? If you have something wrong, you go to the petrol pump and they simply change it. Out comes the cleaner and cleans you; somebody pumps you, puts some petrol inside, replaces something, or says that the whole thing has gone rotten and you have to replace the whole body, so you will have to go to the garage.

In a plastic body of course there will be no need for food, and no discomfort, no discomfort at all.

If your hand is cut off you will not feel any pain. But when you embrace your lover you will not feel any pleasure also, remember. It is a plastic body meeting another plastic body - it'll be more like a collision than like an embrace. An accident.

Discomfort can disappear but with it all comforts will disappear. Pain can disappear - now that is almost within reach, and I think scientists are going to do it because the mind has a tendency, an obsession, to complete a certain thing. Now it is almost within reach. Man can be freed completely from pain, discomfort, illness, disease, even death - because a plastic body will never die. When you can go on replacing it, the very point of death is lost.

Just contemplate about it a little - just think that you have a plastic body. How will you become a Buddha in a plastic body? You will remain an idiot, because the opposites will disappear - and the opposites give you the opportunity to grow. Pain and pleasure, comfort and discomfort, frustration and fulfillment - they give you the opportunity to grow. Don't try to escape.

THE EGO WANTS ATTENTION, THE MIND CONTINUES ITS CONSTANT MOVEMENT. Then let the ego die. Why are you going to die? You cling to the ego - you are ready to destroy the body, but you are not ready to destroy the ego. If the ego is the problem then drop the ego. The body has not done anything to you, the body is a beautiful thing. The body is just like a temple, it is one of the greatest miracles that exist in existence. Enjoy it, celebrate it, because through it all celebration is possible. Without it you will be ghosts in machines.

I OFTEN THINK ABOUT HOW NICE IT WILL BE TO DIE. Nice! Then your desire is there. In fact, you want a nice life - 'nice' means a life of vegetation, doing nothing and getting everything, receiving everything without making any effort. How ungrateful you are. You have received so much without doing anything for it, but gratitude never arises; rather on the contrary the idea of suicide arises. Suicide is the greatest complaint against God. Have you ever thought about it in that way?

Suicide means: Your our life is not worth living. Take it back. Suicide means: What a rotten life you have given to me! I am ready to leave it.

Suicide is the greatest complaint that you can lodge against existence and God.

No, that is not the way, that will not help. And if you are in search of a NICE phenomenon, suicide won't help, it is one of the most painful, ugliest phenomena possible. It is not nice. You think that it will end within a minute. So you think: Even if it is hell, it will end within a second. But you don't know anything about time. Within a second you can suffer eternity because within a second you can enjoy eternity also.

Time is relative. I am not talking about clock time, because on the clock maybe only one second is recorded between the man being alive and being dead. But within that second you don't know what he suffered. You can understand a little this way. Sometimes you are sitting at the table and sleep comes. When you awake, only one minute has passed, according to your watch or to the clock, but you had a long dream. You could not even tell that dream within a minute; you would take an hour to tell the whole dream in detail. You may have lived a whole life, from the very birth to the very death, got married, had children, saw them married and everything - and only one minute has passed by clock time. Dream time moves on a separate level.

It is true that people who die by drowning themselves - accidentally or knowingly - come to see their whole life in a single second span. Their whole life, millions of details, from the very beginning to the very end, to this very moment when they are drowning, they see in a single flash.

How is it possible in a single flash, in a single moment? It is possible. Watch nature. There are flies which are born and within an hour they are dead. In your mind you may think: Poor flies. You don't know anything about time. They move in a different time level. In one hour they live the same as you live in seventy years; they are born, they fall in love, get married, have children, and all the misery and frustration and everything happens - fights, courts, elections, everything - and they are dead within an hour... and your dinner is not finished.

You started your dinner and it is not finished but their whole life is finished, and they lived the same as you live in seventy years. A very compact, compressed life. In fact, if you can live the whole of seventy years of life in one hour it seems a waste of time to live it in seventy years. It is man that should be called the poor man, not the fly. The fly seems to be more intelligent: it lives its whole life within one hour. But for that life YOU need seventy years. You are not so intelligent, so clever.

In a single moment of suicide you suffer the whole of hell; in a single moment of SAMADHI you celebrate the whole of heaven. Time is not a question because time has many layers.

Suicide can never be nice if it is out of frustration. If it is a flowering, if you have simply grown out of life, you have reached a point where life has nothing else to offer you, you have learned the whole thing, then your schooling is complete, your training is over. Then there is a possibility, as in Mahavir's discipline. He allows - but even then I will not allow, because my feeling is that if you have really learned everything what is the point in committing suicide, why can't you wait? What is the hurry? If you are so fulfilled what is the hurry to finish yourself? Why can't you wait? If you can't wait, you have not learned at least one thing - that is patience.

So I'm not for Mahavir. Those people who are trying to commit suicide lack at least patience. They will have to be thrown back to life because that is one of the very greatest points to be learned - patience, awaiting. They lack that quality, otherwise what is the hurry? If you become enlightened at the age of forty and you will die at the age of seventy, can't you wait for thirty years? What type of enlightenment is it if you can't wait for it?

This is a tense state of affairs, you seem to be very anxiety-ridden. You don't seem to be really happy and flowering. A man of enlightened consciousness accepts life, accepts death. When it comes he does not ask death to wait one minute more; when it does not come he does not invite her to come a single minute before. What is the point? Whether death comes today or tomorrow, it is the same to him.

This patience is the final flowering. And I think that Mahavir's attitude may be courageous but it is wrong. Courage is not always right. Just courage, in itself, is not right. No, more things are implied and have to be understood.

IS COMMITTING SUICIDE JUST AN ESCAPE FROM LIFE? Yes. IS THERE ANY REASON WHY ONE SHOULD NOT COMMIT SUICIDE? There is no reason, but there is also no reason why one SHOULD commit suicide. Life is irrational. There is no reason to live, there is no reason to die. Life is not a cause-effect phenomenon, it is a mystery. There is no reason to live and to continue to live but that is not reason enough to die. There is no reason to commit suicide.

So what to do? Float. You have no reason either way, so don't choose, remain choiceless. If you choose you will be thrown back again and again into the whole wheel of life and death. If you remain choiceless you will simply disappear from the wheel into the cosmos. That is the real suicide. That is the real phenomenon. Then you cannot be forced back into the material life, into the body. Then you live a bodiless existence. That's what MOKSHA means - total liberation.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

Now at least have the courage to wear those beautiful orange things. I'm not against beauty and I'm not for rags - but I'm not against rags either. If you enjoy rags it is for you to decide, if you enjoy beautiful things it is for you to decide - one should be left totally free about it.

For these small things also society does not allow you freedom. If I were to decide, I would give you total freedom - if you want to move naked you should. If I had the decision in my hand I would make only one rule - you should not interfere in anybody else's freedom. That's all. When you interfere in anybody's freedom, then only do you commit a crime. If you are doing a thing by your own self and it is nobody else's business, you should be completely free.

The state should only be there to guarantee everybody his own freedom - freedom to do his own thing. The state should not be a positive phenomenon, it should be just a negative phenomenon - negative in the sense that you should enjoy your life but there are others also and they have to enjoy their life. You should not interfere in their life and they should not interfere in your life. That's all the state is meant to do. It is not to create order, it is only to create a situation in which the disorder is to be prevented. That's all.

So if somebody is enjoying rags, and rags are beautiful for him, nobody should interfere. And if you enjoy beautiful clothes, why not? Why do you feel afraid to enjoy beautiful clothes? It is for you to decide.

Be courageous. There is only one courage I support and that is the courage to be oneself. Be courageous, have the courage to be oneself; and don't bother about anybody else unless you are interfering in their life and freedom - only then prevent yourself.

Now, if you are wearing beautiful clothes you are not interfering in anybody's life. It is for you to decide. But the mind has become such a conditioned phenomenon that it always looks at society, at what others are doing. If you live in the world of the establishment, the square world you have to follow certain rules. In fact nobody ever tells you to follow them but you follow, just because of tradition, a certain conformity. You have to use a certain type of dress, you have to cut your hair in a certain way, you have to use this and that. You follow a pattern. Then if you become a hippy, again the mind starts following another pattern. Now you have to have long hair. If you don't, people will laugh, they will say you are a square. Then you have to wear rags. If you don't, they will say: What are you doing here? You belong to us no more, you are an outsider, an intruder.

So there are two types of conformity: the conformity of the establishment and the conformity of the rebel - but both are conformities. Some have short hair, some have long hair but both are the same, not a bit of difference exists.

If you live in a hippy world and don't smell like hell you are not a hippy, not a true hippy. You will be rejected. You have to be dirty, you have to be unclean, otherwise you are not rebellious. If you move in the established world, the establishment, then you have to use perfume and shaving lotion and this and that. If you go there unclean you will not be accepted.

The mind is a conformist. So I know of only one rebellion and that is the rebellion of a meditative mind, the rebellion in which you drop the mind and move on your own. But always remember that you should not interfere in anybody else's life.

For example, if you want to be dirty then go to the Himalayas, because to be dirty can interfere in other people's life. When you are dirty and smelling bad you may not be attacking with your hands but you are attacking with your smell, it is aggression. If the other feels that this is a disturbance to him, then you are aggressive. If you want to be dirty - and nothing is wrong in being dirty - then you move to the Himalayas, to the farthest end, so nobody comes in contact with you. Then you can enjoy your bad odor, and enjoy it blissfully. You have no right to throw your smell and dirt on others, no, that's not good.

Nobody should in any way interfere in anybody else's life and nobody should allow anybody else to interfere in his life. This is how a man should be: not trying to enslave others and not allowing anybody to enslave him. One should live a life of freedom and one should allow others to live freely.

Don't be afraid, if you love beautiful orange material, use it, it is good. Whatsoever you love is good.

There is only one condition: if it doesn't interfere it is beautiful, it is moral.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

I have the answer also but unless you figure it out I will not figure it out. Right?

The seventh question:

Question 7:

You miss the whole point. The soul is the nothingness. It is not related. The soul is the nothingness.

The body is something, the soul is nothing.

The body is filled, the soul is empty. That's why the body has form and the soul is formless, but the very word 'nothingness' makes you afraid and scared. If the soul is nothing, then where will your ego be standing? Then no foothold is left. In fact there is no foothold. The ego exists as a dream exists, with no foothold, with no substance to it. The ego exists like a mirage.

If you move inwards you will come to feel more and more that there is nothingness, vast space. You will not encounter anybody, you will not find anybody there, you will not find the thing called ATMA, the self, no. They are just other names for the ego - religious names, spiritual names, but names for the ego. You will not find anybody there. Nobody is there, and that is the beauty of it. When you encounter that nothingness you become absolutely silent, you become that nothingness.

That is the fear of going inwards, that's why you go out and out and out. You go on the farthest journeys, but you never go on the nearest journey - from New York to Kabul, from Kabul to Delhi, from Delhi to Poona, from Poona to Goa, from Goa to Katmandu, you go around the world, but you don't go in.

That is the nearest beach and the nearest mountain, the nearest Mecca and the nearest Kasi, the nearest temple, the GURUDWARA. But there you never go because if you go there you become scared. It is a death, you die there.

You ask about suicide? Go in, and the suicide will happen without you committing it. Go in and you will not find yourself: you disappear, you evaporate. In that absence all is present. In that nothingness is the whole.

The eighth question:

Question 8:

That is the meaning of dropping it; if you can use the ego it has dropped already. Right now the ego is using you. The ego has become the master and you have become the servant, the slave.

Things are upside-down in you. Dropping the ego simply means dropping the ego from the throne.

Of course one has to use it, even I have to use the word 'I' continuously. One has to use it.

If you use it, it has dropped, but if you are being used by it, then that is the problem. Dropping the ego does not mean that you drop the very word 'I', but when you use it there is no ego in it. The ego can be ego only when it is enthroned, when it sits on high, when it becomes the center of your whole life. Use it - it will be dropped; drop it - you will become capable of using it.

The ninth question:

Question 9:

Do you think my lecture is something else? Then you have been missing the tea that I am offering to you. The tea is a symbol of awareness, because it doesn't allow you to sleep. That's all I am offering to you. You come to me and I say to you: Have a cup of tea. That is the whole meaning of whatsoever I have been telling you - a cup of tea.

And the last question:

Question 10:

Why should we wait for my death to come? I give you a standing invitation, I give it to you right now!

Remember that if you are with me this moment you will be with me forever. Why postpone it to the time of my death? If you postpone it today tomorrow will be my death, and again you will postpone it. So the thing to remember is that if you want to be with me be here and now don't bother about death and tomorrow - that is not the point. It is all irrelevant. Be here with me, you have received the invitation. You can then be with me forever.

That is not the point to be discussed at all. If you are here with me this moment, you will be with me forever because this moment contains eternity. There is no other moment except this. There is no other time than the present.