Buddhas And Fools

The first question:

Question 1:

They are not the same to me but they are both meeting in you right now, shaking hands within you.

Your past is the fool, your future is the buddha, and at this moment they are both within you.

The buddha is your destiny, the fool is your reality; something is actual in you and something is potential. When I talk about your actuality I call you 'the fools', when I talk about your potentiality I call you 'the buddhas' - they are not the same but they can exist in the same person. In fact the fool is nothing but the buddha confused, and the buddha is nothing but the fool integrated, rooted, centered. The fool can become the buddha - the possibility is there but a re-arrangement is needed; nothing is lacking, just a re-arrangement is needed. You have all that is needed within you but it is in a deeply disarranged state, a chaos; a crowd of noises exists. The harmony has not happened.

The crowd of noises I call 'the fool'; but when the crowd of noises has disappeared and the notes, different and even opposite, have fallen into a deep pattern, the chaos becomes a cosmos, the disorder, an order, the crowd is no longer there, only one exists. When the harmony has happened, you have become a buddha.

The fool and the buddha are not the same, they are two phases of your growth. The fool is the lowest rung of the ladder and the buddha is the highest rung of the ladder. The ladder is the same, but the dimensions are totally different, and unless you become aware of the fool you will never become a buddha.

In India we have very parallel terms for both: the fool is called the BUDDHU and the enlightened man is called the BUDDHA. The word 'BUDDHA' comes from Buddha himself, they have the same roots. A BUDDHU is an inverted buddha, standing on his head; a buddha is one who has come back home.

Sometimes I call you 'you fools' to make you aware of your actuality, but immediately I contradict myself and I call you 'you buddhas' so that you do not get identified - you might get identified with the actuality. No, you are a potential being, you have to grow, you have to become that which in the innermost core of your being you are already.

Your center is the buddha, your periphery is the fool, and I have to talk to both - the fool has to be persuaded to go, the buddha has to be persuaded to come. So when I call you 'fools', don't get hurt, and when I call you 'buddhas', don't get high. When I call you 'the fools', remember that I also call you 'the buddhas'; and when I call you 'the buddhas' never forget that I also call you 'the fools'.

Between these two remembrances something will crystallize within you.

The second question:

Question 2:

It is beautiful to be filled with the sense of wonder, but remain alert because immediately you will lose it. If you start thinking from where the thoughts come and to where they go, the sense of wonder is already lost. To remain with the sense of wonder without allowing thinking to enter, is what meditation is all about.

Jesus says again and again: Only those who are like children, will be able to enter into the kingdom of my God. What does he mean? What does he mean by 'like children'? He means the sense of wonder. Children remain with the sense of wonder. Remember the word 'remain' - they don't move from it; they move from one wonder to another, but they remain with the sense of wonder. Your mind distorts wonder immediately. For a single fragment of a moment you were in a state of wonder but the next moment the thinking has entered, you have started to think: From where do these thoughts come? Where do they go? Now there is no sense of wonder. Questions kill the sense of wonder because questions are already on the way towards answers. A question is an arrow, the target is the answer, and if you can receive the answer it will be the death of wonder. If you question, you have already moved, moved towards the answer, and if you get the answer the wonder is lost. That's why the more humanity becomes trained and disciplined in scientific answers, the more the sense of wonder is lost.

In fact to find a man of wonder is now almost impossible. Even if you think that you are wondering it may be that you are thinking that you are wondering. The greater possibility is that you think about the wonder also. The sense of wonder is a totally different dimension, it has a totally different quality - the sense of wonder is to remain with a wondering eye, a wondering heart, with no questions arising.

The flower is there, the butterfly is there, the trees are there, the clouds move, the whole world is wonderful, only you have lost the sense of wonder. Just look with the eyes absolutely silent, with no questions roaming inside the mind - that means that you are not seeking any answer. If you are seeking an answer what are you doing? You are trying to kill the sense of wonder.

You are not at ease with wonder, that is the meaning of the question. You would like to know.

From wonder arises two possibilities: one is of philosophy, another is of religion. If the wonder becomes a questioning you move into the dimension of philosophy and then you will be lost because it reaches nowhere, it simply destroys you. One question will lead you to one answer, one answer will lead you to a thousand questions, and so on and so forth; and the more you question and the more answers you have, the more divided and fragmentary you become. The one is lost, the one becomes many.

From the same point goes another path, that of religion. You remain with the sense of wonder, you don't enquire, you don't turn and convert the energy of wonder into a question; you allow the wonder to be there, you are at ease with it, absolutely at home with it. You remain with the wonder and it becomes your friend, your companion. You move with it, you sleep with it, you open your eyes in the morning and the wonder is there, you close your eyes in the night and the wonder is there. You breathe in and you breathe in wonder, you breathe out and you breathe out wonder - it becomes your whole being. Then you are a religious man. A religious man is one who lives with wonder, who is at home with wonder, who is not in any hurry to destroy it. That's how he comes to know not the answers, but the mystery everywhere. The mystery is not an answer. You come face to face with the mystery only when you have stopped questioning. Wonder leads to mystery, the sense of wonder grows and grows and grows and the whole of life becomes a mysterious romance. If you want a religious term for it, then it is God.

If you are not on good terms with the term 'God', forget about it, mystery will do. Because God is not a person, God is a mystery that cannot be solved, it is something which you can be in. You can know it in a certain sense, in a sense totally diametrically opposite to ordinary knowledge. Your heart can know it, you can love it, and through love you can know it, but not through questioning.

You live in it and you allow it to live in you - then everything is mysterious, even the leaves of grass are mysterious, everywhere is the signature of mystery, you cannot move without coming across God.

Then you don't ask where God is, then you don't ask what God is - you know.

Remain with the sense of wonder. It is difficult, almost impossible, because your mind has been trained to enquire, to question. It is like an itch - you cannot remain with it, you want to scratch. But try. Start with itching. If someday you find that your foot is itching, don't scratch it, just wait, remain with the itch. How long can it persist? By and by it subsides, dissolves, and leaves no marks, no scars behind.

Remain with the sense of wonder, even if a deep patience is needed - because the whole mind will feel restless and will say: Ask, enquire. Why this wonder? From where does it come? To where does it go? How is it? Why is it? A thousand questions will arise, but remain with the sense of wonder, don't allow these questions to disturb you. Even if they are there, remain indifferent to them: be attentive to the sense of the wonder and non-attentive to the questions, and soon you will see that the sense of wonder has disappeared into a sense of mystery. The sense of wonder is just like a small wave and the sense of mystery is oceanic, it is the whole ocean. The wave disappears, subsides.

With the sense of wonder YOU are there. When the sense of wonder subsides into mystery you are no longer there, only an oceanic feeling, a oneness with totality remains. The separateness has disappeared.

This is beautiful. The questioner says: AS I WATCH MY THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS I AM LEFT WITH A SENSE OF WONDER. Remain! Remain with it, make it a constant companion. There is no better friend in the world to be found, there is no greater guide to be found - wonder leads to mystery. Wonder is the door to the mystery and the mystery leads you to the infinite, to the Divine, to God - or you name it. But don't start thinking immediately. I know it is arduous, but I also know it can be done - I have done it so I know both. It is arduous, it is almost impossible - you struggle and again and again the questioning comes and you forget. And you are so fast asleep that to remember a certain thing is very difficult.

Just the other night I was telling a Sufi story. A great king who had been successful in all the ways of life finally started feeling frustrated.

It happens, it is natural. When you have succeeded in everything suddenly you feel that you have failed, because when you were not a successful man there was a certain hope that when you succeed everything will be okay, everything will be beautiful. But when you succeed completely, you fail absolutely because now there is no hope. You become hopeless. Everything that you wanted is there, but something within you remains unfulfilled. Now what to do with this unfulfilment?

A man who is a failure can hope that someday when he succeeds, this constant emptiness, this hollowness within, will be fulfilled. He can hope, he can dream. A poor man can hope, a poor man can dream, but for a rich man all dreams are fulfilled. He becomes hopeless.

The king was feeling very frustrated, as only kings can feel. That's why I say: Nothing fails like success. It fails absolutely. He started searching and he came across a Sufi master. When he went to see him he said: I am ready to do anything, and you must know that I am a man who has never been a failure in anything; whatsoever I have done, I have done it and I have succeeded. The Sufi said: You may have succeeded in the world but that very success proves that you may not succeed here, because different laws apply to the world about which you are enquiring. A man succeeds in the world if he forgets himself completely. That is the rule. A politician succeeds if he forgets himself completely - then you cannot compete with him. If he is obsessive and almost mad, he succeeds.

A man succeeds in getting riches if he is completely mad, obsessed, neurotic. You cannot compete with a neurotic man. If you have any sense left you will not be able to succeed in the world: in the market only madness succeeds. One has to forget oneself completely, that is the rule, the law.

'But,' said the Sufi, 'here, in our world, just the opposite is applicable: one has to remember oneself.'

The king laughed. He said: Whatsoever the rule is, I have never failed anything. You say and I will do. The Sufi said: Okay, then this is the examination you must pass, just five minutes are needed.

If for five minutes, only for five minutes, you can remember a certain thing that I will say to you, you can become my disciple.

The king said: What is to be done? The Sufi said: Whatsoever I say for these coming five minutes, you have to say, 'Yes sir, I believe you.' The king said: Okay, start! The fakir said:. I am the greatest man in the world. A little suspicion arose in the mind of the king but he said outwardly: Yes sir, I believe you. Then the fakir said: When you were born I was present there. This was even more doubtful, because the king was older than the fakir, who was a young man. Now it was certain that he was lying, but still he tried to remember. It was hard. Now he was losing the track, but still he said: Yes sir, I believe you. Then the fakir said: And your father was a beggar. The king forgot completely and he said: You liar! I don't believe a single thing you are saying!

Five minutes were too long, only one minute had passed, and the fakir said: You have forgotten. You couldn't remember even for five minutes?

Remembrance, even for a single minute, is difficult, I know, but if you can remember even for a single minute it pays tremendously. So when next time you feel the sense of wonder remain with it, retain it. It will be difficult, but if even for a single minute you can retain it, it will give you much. A deep silence will surround you, and by and by, the more you taste, the more you allow it to happen, the more possibilities will open. A day comes when the sense of wonder dissolves into mystery - and with that sense of wonder you also dissolve.

Yes, Jesus is right: Only children, those who have a sense of wonder, childlike people, only they will be able to enter into the kingdom of God.

There will be a temptation to think, your mind would like to reduce your wonder into thinking, but resist that temptation. If you can do it you have the key.

The third question:

Question 3:

This is a metaphysical question, a very logical question, but if you become a little existential the question dissolves. If you can be here without the 'I', why can't you be in other lives without the 'I'? If you can exist for seventy years without an 'I', an ego, why can't you exist for many lives, what is the problem? The problem arises in the mind that without the 'I' who will go to enter into another womb when the body dies?

This is just a cluster of thoughts, nothing else. Thoughts are things. Thoughts are not nothings. Your being is a non-being; thoughts are material, they are things. That's why thoughts can be recorded - they are things; and thoughts can be read - they are things. Even if you have not asserted a thought it can be read from the outside. It is a thing inside your head, alive, substantial.

A thought is a thing. The cluster of thoughts is the ego. When you die just a cluster of thoughts is released, and that cluster of thoughts and desires and emotions and everything that you have done and thought that you have done, and the dreams and the hopes and the frustrations - that cluster moves into another womb.

This cluster has a center, this center is the ego. If you want not to be born again you will have to know while alive in this life that the cluster of thoughts is not a 'one-phenomenon', it is just a crowd and it has no center in it. You will have to know atomic thoughts. Thoughts are like atoms:

if you watch them with alertness you can see every thought is separate from the other. Between two thoughts there is an interval, a space, they are not joined together. They appear joined together because you are not very alert. It is just like when a man has a torch in his hand and moves his hand fast, round and round and round - you will see a circle of fire. The circle doesn't exist because the torch is only at one point at one time, then at another point at another time. The circle of fire doesn't exist, but the torch moves so fast that you cannot see the gaps, you see a circle.

Thoughts move fast. Their fastness creates the feeling that they are joined together, that a circle is created, but this is just a feeling. There are only two ways to go beyond it. One is to bring thoughts down to a slow movement so they don't move too fast. Let them slow down a little. That's why I insist: Don't be in a hurry, don't be tense. Move at a slow pace, move non-tense, unhurried, because if you are unhurried, thoughts cannot go against you, they are part of you. If you are deeply patient thoughts cannot move faster than you, they become slower. When thoughts are slower, the torch moves slow, you can see that the circle doesn't exist - it was an appearance only. When thoughts move slowly you can see that there are gaps, that thoughts are atoms and nothing joins them together.

So one way is to slow down and another way is to become more aware. If you are more aware you have a more penetrating vision, a more penetrating insight. Work both ways. Become more alert, don't move like a sleeping man, don't be a somnambulist. Everybody is. You are moving in life as if you are asleep; you do things but only a part is awake, ninety-nine per cent of you is asleep. You don't know what you are doing, why you are doing it, why it is happening. You go on and on as if hypnotized by something. It is a great hypnosis.

Nobody else has hypnotized you, it is an auto-hypnosis. You have hypnotized yourself. You can do it easily - just sit before the mirror and look into your own eyes and you will be hypnotized by yourself. You will fall asleep, you will fall into a coma. The same has happened through millions of lives: unalert, impatient, running faster and faster and becoming more and more asleep - you cannot see.

Just become a little patient. That's why coming to the East helps. In the West it is difficult to slow down, the whole of life is moving at such a speed that you cannot slow down - otherwise you will be out of life, you will be a misfit. In the East, if you go to the villages, life moves so slowly that if you move fast you will be a misfit, you will find yourself alone, nobody is going with you. Life moves slowly. In the old days when life was moving slowly on the whole of the earth, to understand oneself was very easy because you could see easily. You could close your eyes and you could see vast spaces between two thoughts - just as there is a vast space between two atoms.

I have heard a story about the future. A man was travelling and he came to a station where he tried to get down. He called many porters. The other passengers were simply wondering why he was calling the porters because they had not seen any luggage with him. He had only a matchbox and a packet of cigarettes, that's all. They had not seen anything else, so why was he calling?

He called a dozen porters and then said: Carry this matchbox. People started laughing - but in that matchbox was a complete car, compressed.

Scientists say that an elephant can be compressed, because in the elephant atoms are few and vast spaces are more. Just as you can compress cotton, an elephant can be compressed, and it can fit into a matchbox. A whole railway train can be compressed. Space has to be taken out, then it can be put into a matchbox and that will be a very easy transportation of things.

A man can also be compressed. Someday they will do it because if you want to travel to the moon or to Mars it will be difficult to carry so many people because it will be very costly. The only way will be to first compress the passengers, and then, when they have reached the moon, to puff them up again.

Much space exists. Much space exists, not only in Sushila, in everybody - much space It can be got out. You can be compressed. All the stars and all the planets can be compressed into a small room, if all the space is taken out. The whole world is full of space, atoms are few.

Then there is another problem: if you move into the atom, there are again spaces. Between two atoms there is space, vast space, and if you move into the atom, then there is space between electrons, vast spaces again.

Now scientists have become a little scared about the whole thing. Matter has completely disappeared. Just at the beginning of this century they were declaring that God is dead - but God is not dead. All that has happened within fifty years is that matter is dead. They chased matter hard, they chased matter from molecules to atoms, from atoms to electrons, and suddenly they are standing in a nothingness - no matter.

The same has happened in the East: we never bothered about matter, we bothered about the soul, and we chased the soul from the body to the mind, from the mind to the being. Then a moment came when everything disappeared - there was only nothingness. That is what I mean when I say:

You are a non-being, ANATTA. That's what Buddha says: Nothing exists within you, just an infinite nothingness.

Physics has reached the same point that metaphysics had reached before it - nothingness. And it seems that nothingness is not absolutely nothing; on the contrary, we can now understand that nothingness is a state of 'everythingness', non-being is a state of being - unmanifest and manifest.

When a thing becomes manifest, then it is matter, when it becomes unmanifest it is space. When something becomes manifest, it is the ego, and when something becomes unmanifest it is non- being, ANATTA.

Matter is clusters of atoms and ego is clusters of thoughts. If you go deep into matter, matter disappears, if you go deep into thoughts, ego disappears. Then who moves? Nobody, but the movement is there. From one life to another the movement is there, but nobody is there as the mover, just a cluster of thoughts.

Have you ever watched a man dying? You must have. Next time you hear that somebody is dying or somebody is dead, go there immediately and sit, and just try to feel what is happening. If you watch the man dying you will feel many things happening in you because the dying man releases all his thoughts. Now this house is no longer safe; the thoughts start leaving as if the nest is no longer safe, the birds are on the wing. This house is no longer useful, it is dangerous to be in it, it can collapse, any moment it is going to collapse, so everybody is leaving. All thoughts are on the wing. If a good man is dying, sitting nearby him you will feel a sudden awakening of goodness within you; if a bad man is dying, you will feel suddenly an awakening of badness in you. If a very evil man is dying, you will feel that you are becoming evil; if a saint is dying, suddenly you feel an innocence arising in you that you have never known before. The dead man will create the whole atmosphere around you - his thoughts are moving; a cluster of thoughts are moving, like a cluster of birds. Soon they will descend into another womb - somewhere a couple will be making love. All over the world, every single moment, millions of people are making love. They are the opportunities for this cluster of thoughts to enter a womb, to get a new house. If you have understood before your death that thoughts are separate, that they have infinite spaces within them, intervals; if while you were alive the ego has been dissolved, and you have come to know that there is no ego, nothing like 'me' inside; then you will die without the desire to be born again because you know it is futile.

All desires disappear when you know that there is no ego. You don't desire, you simply die. Without the gluing force of desire, thoughts are released, but they can't make a cluster.

The gluing force is desire, it glues every thought to another and makes a whole of them. If desire is not there thoughts will disappear, they will move into the infinite sky but not as a cluster, as separate atoms, and you have disappeared completely.

This disappearance is NIRVANA; but one has to know it before death. One has to die before death.

The whole art of religion is how to die - but then how to live is implied because you can die rightly only if you have lived rightly. When I say rightly, I don't mean a good life, When I say rightly, I mean a meditative life. When I say a right life, I don't mean a moral life, I mean a very, very understanding life, aware, alert.

It is difficult, unless you come inside yourself and know that nobody exists there. It will not be possible to understand how you have been passing through many lives without anybody being there; unless you come inside yourself.

Have you ever seen a fire catching a town? Have you seen that from one house the fire jumps to another house? How does it jump from one house to another house? Just because of the wind.

If the wind is not there it cannot jump to another house. Just a flame without any fuel jumps from one house to another. Only wind is needed, flowing wind is needed, and on the wings of the wind the flame is carried. A flame is absolutely non-material, within a second it will be there no more. It jumps and catches another house, and the whole house is burnt.

In the same way, whatsoever you call your soul is nothing but a flame of desire. When a man dies, the desire to be born again, the desire not to die is the wind; and the cluster of thoughts on the wings of this wind of desire jumps into another womb, another house.

If you have understood it while alive, then there is no wind to take you anywhere, the desire is no longer there. The thoughts will disappear into existence as individual atoms and you will not be born again. Then, then you are one with existence; then there is no need to be separate again and again and no need to suffer again and again - separation is the suffering.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

It does not depend on the question, it depends on the questioner. The question is irrelevant. You can ask a playful, joking, naughty question with deep respect. There is no problem about it. In fact without deep respect how can you ask such a question? If you love the master and you love him so deeply, you respect him and you respect him so deeply, then you are free to ask anything.

It depends on the questioner, not on the question. If the questioner is in a deep love and trust with the master, then everything is allowed. He can ask any sort of question. But if the trust doesn't exist in the questioner you can ask a very serious and respectful question but it is just formal respect - deep down there is no respect.

Try to understand the quality of the questioning heart.

If there is trust, then whatsoever you ask is good; if there is no trust, then whatsoever you ask is no good. You can ask anything you feel like asking, but before you ask, just try to see within yourself why you are asking it. If there is trust, trust makes everything holy. In the East, trust has been such a deep-rooted phenomenon that disciples have asked questions which in the West you could not even imagine. Nobody can imagine asking such questions about Jesus as people in the East have asked about Buddha.

A Zen master, Mumon, asked his master: What do you say about the Buddha-nature in a dog? Is a dog also a Buddha? Is there any possibility of a dog being a Buddha ever? And what did the master do? You know? He started walking on all fours and he barked. This was his answer: Yes, a dog is also Buddha, the possibility is there always, howsoever far away from Buddha he is now someday he will also reach the goal.

You can ask any question, but before you ask it always find out from where it comes - from your love, trust? Then everything is good. You may be simply formal, serious, asking your question in a very soft and gentlemanly way, but if the heart is not there, it is dead.

In fact, that is disrespect.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

The first thing is to understand what acceptance means. You say: CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT ACCEPTANCE AND HOW TO LEARN TO ACCEPT, BECAUSE I FEEL A PART IN ME THAT DOESN'T WANT TO ACCEPT. Accept that part also, otherwise you have not understood. A part in you goes on rejecting - accept that rejecting part also, otherwise you have not understood. Don't try to reject that part, accept it, that is what total acceptance is. You have to accept that also which rejects.

You say you would like to know who that part of you is that is so stupid. The moment you call it stupid you have rejected it. Why do you call it stupid? Who are you to call it stupid? It is your part. Why are you dividing yourself into two? You are a whole. All these tricks that you have learned about division have to be dropped. You have learned to divide yourself into the godly part and the devilish part, the good and the bad, the high and the low. Drop all divisions - that is what acceptance means. If you have something, you have something - why call it stupid? Who are you to call it stupid?

No, in the very calling it stupid you have rejected it, you have condemned it. Acceptance means that there is no question of condemnation, whatsoever is the case you accept it - and suddenly there comes a transformation in your being. Don't call it stupid, don't call it names, don't divide yourself, because this is how the ego exists. It is ego which is saying the other part is stupid. The ego is always intelligent, understanding, great - and it goes on rejecting. It teaches you to reject the body because the body is material and you are spiritual; it teaches you to reject this and that. All this has been done for centuries; religious people have been doing this continuously and they have not reached anywhere. In fact they have made the whole of humanity schizophrenic, they have divided everybody completely into parts. You have compartments within you: this is good and that is bad, love is good and hate is bad, compassion is good and anger is bad.

When I say accept, I say accept all and drop all these compartments. You become one. Everything is good: anger also has its part to play and hate is also needed. In fact whatsoever you have got, everything is needed - maybe in a different arrangement, that's all. But nothing is to be denied, rejected; don't call anything stupid in yourself.

And then you ask: IS THERE A WAY TO MAKE THAT PART OF ME MORE CLEAR TO MYSELF?

Why? Can't you accept something hidden within you? Can't you accept something dark within you?

You are also like day and night; something is in the light, something is in the dark. It has to be so, otherwise you will just be on the surface, you will not have any depth. The depth has to be in darkness. If a tree says: I would like to bring my roots to my knowledge, then the tree will die because roots can exist only in deep darkness, hidden in the earth. There is no need to bring them up. If you bring them up, the tree will be dead. You need a dark part as much as you need a light part.

But religious people have been doing dangerous things: they have taught you that God is light. I tell you that God is both, light and darkness, because a God who is simply light will not be very rich. He will be a tree without roots; he will be only a porch, not the interior of a house; a house needs the porch and it needs the interior also.

A house needs one place hidden completely - because your deepest part lives there. So understanding doesn't mean that you bring everything into the light; understanding means that you become so understanding that you allow everything to be as it is. Understanding is not an effort to change anything, no. Understanding is the understanding of the whole as it is and through that understanding of things as they are there is transformation, there is revolution, there is mutation - you change completely. Once you understand that everything has a reason for being there you don't bother to interfere with nature, you start floating with it.

You don't push the river, you simply float with it; that is what Tao is. The whole teaching of Lao Tzu is that there is not a single need to do anything on your part, everything has already been done for you, you simply accept it and float. Let things be as they are. Don't make any effort for any change whatsoever, because the very effort to change brings tension into the mind; the very effort to change brings the future into the mind; the very effort to change is a denial of God because then you say:

We are wiser than you, we are trying to improve upon you. There is no need - just be in a deep let-go and float.

It will be difficult because the ego will say: What are you doing? In this way you will never reach anywhere. But where do you want to reach? You are already there. The ego will say: In this way you will never grow. But what is the point of growing? Every moment is perfect. Where do you want to go and grow, and for what? The ego goes on pushing you into the future, into desire, do this, do that - it never allows you to rest a little. And the whole of Tao, the attitude, the vision of Tao, is to relax and enjoy and through enjoyment things start settling on their own. If the whole existence goes on living in such a beautiful way why is only man in trouble? Because no dog is trying to become anything else; no rose is trying to become a lotus; no lotus is trying to become anything else - everything is as it is, content, celebrating. Only man is mad. He wants to become something, he wants to prove something.

Can't you see the celebration that goes on silently all around? You only are not part of it because you can think. Thinking brings the division.

Don't say 'stupid' to any part of you. You are calling God names. Don't condemn, because every condemnation is a condemnation of God. You have come out of the whole, the whole knows better than you; allow the wisdom of the whole to work. Don't you bring your tiny mind in to fight. There is no need to go upstream, you will not reach anywhere, you will simply be tired. Don't fight, allow things. That's what acceptance is - it is let-go.

You live as if you are completely retired. You live, you do, but you do things naturally, spontaneously.

They happen. If you feel like doing, you do, if you don't feel like doing, you don't do. You by and by fall into line with nature, you become more and more natural... the more natural, the more religious.

Gurdjieff used to say a very beautiful thing. He used to say that up to now all religions have been against God. I can see what he means. This has been the misery - all religions have been against God. They have been puffing up your egos, making you superior, higher, supermen, spiritual - all nonsense! You have to be just ordinary and enjoy. To be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing that can happen to you; but the desire to be extraordinary, to be spiritual, supermen, not of this world but of the other world, is a mania. Only Tao is a natural religion. All other religions are in subtle ways unnatural. Lao Tzu is the future of the whole of humanity and all possibilities of bliss and benediction lie through him, pass through him.

Why can't you just be? Try for a few days - just be. Once you have the taste it will not be difficult.

Once a small window of being opens you will laugh about the whole effort you have always been doing. 'Just be' is the message.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

Yes, it is true. whenever one leaves the body one feels very, very hungry on coming back, and after entering the body again food functions as a paperweight and helps the inner space to settle in the body again easily. Some day you will feel it, some day it will happen suddenly in your meditations, that you are standing outside the body and watching your own body lying there. Don't be afraid and don't be afraid about how you will now enter it. With just the idea of entering, you will find yourself in it. No effort is needed, just the very idea that you would like to enter, and you will, the very desire will lead you in. But then you will feel a very unnatural hunger, as if you have not eaten for many days.

The body has lost much physical energy while you were out of it. There is a point beyond which you cannot be out of it, otherwise the body will be dead. To a certain limit you can be out of it, but in that time, in that interval, the body is losing energy continuously and very fast because you are not in it to hold the energy. The body is almost dead.

When you enter it you will feel as if you have not eaten for many days. So that's true - but about the exact number of chapattis you will have to ask Vivek. Sixteen or not - that I cannot be the right authority about.

The last question:

Question 7:

It always happens, it is natural, not vicious. Whenever you are happy, very happy, you are at a peak, suddenly the valley will follow. There are always valleys with peaks, you cannot be on the peak forever - soon you will fall into the valley, in a deep depression. If you are feeling very, very energetic, soon a tiredness will settle in.

The opposite is always round the corner. It has to be so because the opposite is not the opposite, it is the complementary. If you are happy continuously for a long time it will be too much excitement, it will be moving to the extreme - and that can be dangerous to life. You have to be thrown back into sadness. Sadness is relaxing, it is not an excitement; it is like night following day - tired, you fall asleep.

It is not vicious, it is natural, and nature has its own economy. So what to do? Don't disturb the circle. The only thing that you have to do is that when you are high, don't get identified with that highness. When you feel very, very happy, remember always that it is only a mood, not you; a climate surrounding you, but not you. When it is raining you don't think that you are the rain. When the rains have stopped and the sun has come out and it is very sunny, you don't think that you are the sun or the sunniness... it is something happening around you. It is the same inside - remember.

Happiness is just like rains or the sunniness, it is a climate, a mood around you, an environment - but not you. You are the watcher, you are the witness who knows that now everything is very beautiful. If you are the watcher you will always remember that sooner or later the other opposite will follow. You are already ready for it.

If you are ready for it, it will not be so depressing: the height will not be such an excitement, and the sadness will not be so sad. And by and by, by and by, the peak and the valley will start coming nearer and nearer and nearer and a moment comes when the peak disappears, the valley disappears, and you are on plain ground. That plain ground is neither happiness nor unhappiness, we have given it a different name, we call it bliss, ANAND. It is not happiness. A man of bliss is not happy in the ordinary sense, because he is not excited at all. He is absolutely calm and quiet without any excitement. It is not sadness either, because a man of bliss is silent but not sad. In a man of bliss, sadness and happiness have met, they have come to a harmony. All that is beautiful in sadness - and remember, there is much that is beautiful in sadness - and all that is beautiful in happiness, is there together.

And all that is bad in happiness - there is much that is bad - and all that is bad in sadness - of course you know that much badness is there - both are gone. What is good in happiness? The feeling of euphoria. What is bad in happiness? The excitement, because every excitement is tiring.

Excitement is a dissipation of energy; excitement is fever, excitement is feverish, it is an ill state of affairs. That feverishness will not be there in a man of bliss. He will be happy but not feverish. There will be no excitement, you will not even be able to see whether he is happy or not. If you come across a Buddha you will not be able to feel whether he is happy or not he is so unexcitedly happy that on the surface nothing shows, he is so deeply happy that on the surface nothing shows. His happiness is not the happiness of a storm, with excitement and fever, his happiness is of a silent lake.

In sadness the bad thing is that you feel dull, you feel heavy. In a man of bliss there is no dullness.

He's weightless, he is not heavy at all. He does not walk on the earth in fact, he flies, he has wings.

He has no weight, gravitation doesn't affect him. He is like a feather.

And what is good in sadness? The depth. Sadness is very deep, no laughter can be as deep as sadness. No laughter can be as deep as sadness, because laughter is always superficial, a little profane, a little vulgar. Sadness has a sobriety of its own, sadness has a depth of its own, sadness has a deep feeling - the feeling of the valley, very deep and penetrating. It has something sacred about it, holy about it. A man of bliss is in that depth, in that holiness, in that sacredness.

He is both, and is not both; he transcends both and he is a harmony of both. A man of bliss is a miracle, a rare combination of opposites, a rare synthesis of opposites.

So don't think that this is vicious, it is natural. All that you have to do is to remember that you are separate. When happy, know that happiness is around you, bubbling everywhere; laughter is all around, shaking you to your very roots - but remain alert. Don't get identified with the mood.

Don't become the mood, remain a watcher because the watcher always knows the other is coming, following. Soon you will see the day is disappearing and the night is coming. Remain a watcher.

When you have become sad, again go on watching. As the day has passed, the night will also pass, everything passes. After a few alert moments you will remember that you are completely separate - you are neither, neither this nor that. This is how for the first time you will feel blissful. Now you know unhappiness cannot disturb you, and happiness cannot disturb you. You have attained to an unperturbable state, the state of bliss. That is the goal of all buddhas.