Conquering the World by Inaction

What is knowledge? And why are all those who have become awakened deeply against it?

Knowledge is a device to fight with existence. Knowledge is a tool in the hands of the ego.

Knowledge is a conflict: the part is trying to conquer the whole by knowing the secrets of the whole.

Knowledge is the basic ego trip.

Just as money is, power is, knowledge is also - but more dangerous than money, more dangerous than power, because knowledge is more subtle. I must tell you the old biblical story OF Adam's expulsion from paradise. That parable has multi dimensional meanings. One of the meanings is Lao Tzuan: God created the world, and he told Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge - but why particularly the tree of knowledge? In fact it seems absurd. Had he prohibited Adam from murder, we could have understood; had he prohibited Adam from moving in sex, then all the world religions would have understood. But God prohibited neither sex nor violence but knowledge.

Knowledge seems to be the original sin.

But why should God prohibit it? Why is knowledge dangerous? Because the very effort to know the secrets is aggression. The deepest aggression. The very effort to unveil mysteries is violence.

And the very effort to know means you are getting ready to fight. Otherwise what will you do with knowledge?

Knowledge is a device of aggression, fight and conflict. The part is trying to rebel; the part is trying to have its own centre of being separate from the whole. The part is trying to become the centre of the world itself!

Not that there is a God who prohibited. Yesterday I told you that God loves stories. Now I must tell you that God himself is part of a beautiful story. God is the most beautiful parable. There is nothing like God anywhere. Don't search for him otherwise you will search for him in vain. You will never come across him. God is a parable - but beautiful! It says many things, and you will miss if you think that God is a person. God is not a person.

It happened, once I heard a great philosophical dialogue. I was sitting in a rich man's house, in his beautiful drawing-room; he was chattering constantly, but then the phone rang in the other room and he had to leave me. It was good that he left otherwise I would have missed this great dialogue.

Just by my side there was a big bowl, and two goldfish were swimming in it. The younger one suddenly stopped and asked the other: Do you believe in God? The younger fish looked very philosophic - a seeker. The old one said in a guru-like way: Yes, otherwise who do you suppose changes our water every day? If there is no God who do you suppose changes our water every day?

All concepts of God are like this - Who do you suppose created the world? Who do you suppose goes on controlling the world, managing the world? Just small minds, small concepts. God is not a concept, it is a parable.

So remember when I say 'God prohibited' I don't mean that there is somebody who prohibited. I simply mean that this is a way of saying something. EXISTENCE prohibits knowledge. Existence allows innocence and prohibits knowledge because in innocence the part merges with the whole, remains with the whole, remains one with the whole - and the moment it starts knowing ego arises, ego crystallizes. The part is no more flowing with the whole now, now it has its own mind - to do certain things, not to do certain things; now it has its own choices, now it has its own likes and dislikes.

This is the meaning of the story: suddenly Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise.

You must have wondered where that paradise is. It is not a geographical place, it is a psychological state of mind. Innocence is paradise, knowledge is expulsion.

Every child is born as Adam or Eve and remains in paradise. But then we start teaching him, we start conditioning him. All these teachers and people who condition, all these people who try to make a child knowledgeable, are the serpent who convinced Eve that if you eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge you will become like God, you will have your own centre as God has his centre. If you know, you will become something other than you are.

The whole of knowledge is a seduction to become something which you are not. All knowledge is creating future, all knowledge is creating desire to become something which you are not.

Innocence is to enjoy that which you are, knowledge is to make the effort for that which you are not.

That serpent was the first teacher of the world. That serpent created a rift, and the rift was between being and becoming. All knowledge creates this rift between your being and your becoming. It creates a DREAM. It creates an allurement, an illusion that you can become like gods. But - you are not gods, you can become like gods. Innocence says you ARE, there is no need to become.

Otherwise is not possible - you are part of the whole, you have the same quality as the whole has, you are HOLY. Innocence says you are already that. Nothing is to be done. You have simply to enjoy it and celebrate it and delight in it. Knowledge says: As you are you are condemned, you are nothing; you will have to become like gods. Try! Make effort! Do things! Discipline yourself!

Remember, the day a child starts thinking of the future he loses innocence. Only up to that moment, while he goes on enjoying the present, is he a child, innocent; uncorrupted is his being. Becoming has not entered in, he is still in paradise.

Paradise is nothing, paradise is a capacity to enjoy yourself right here and now.

You are in paradise, but still you have lost it because you cannot enjoy here and now. You are thinking, planning for the future, somewhere when you become like gods, then you will enjoy it.

Knowledge creates future. Knowledge creates desire. Knowledge creates becoming. Knowledge is SANSAR, the wheel. When you are in the wheel you go on round and round and round reaching nowhere.

Knowledge is the world. When Jesus says: My kingdom is not of this world, he means the world of becoming. He does not mean this world of the trees and the birds singing and the rain falling, and the sky and the clouds, no, he does not mean by 'this world', this world that surrounds you, he means the world that surrounds your mind and your being, the world of becoming, desire - what Buddha calls TANHA. The desire to be something other than you are already.

And that is impossible. You are going to be in a constant hell. You can be only that which you are already, nothing else is possible. You are simply trying to do something impossible.

You cannot be anything else. How can you be? A rose flower trying to become a lotus flower, a lotus flower trying to become something else... but they are not so stupid, they are still part of paradise.

The rosebush just by your side is still in paradise but you are not. The child just sitting by your side may be still in paradise but you are not. I am just here before you, and in paradise, but you are not.

So paradise is not a question of geography, it is a question of inner space.

Knowledge creates the rift, it corrupts innocence, it makes you old, otherwise you would remain always like children. And when Jesus says, and he says perfectly rightly, that 'unless you become like children you will not enter my kingdom of God,' that is the secret key to open the closed doors of paradise again.

Knowledge expels you, not God. There is no God, that is just a way of saying the same thing.

To say it in easier ways we make parables that you can understand. The moment you become knowledgeable you are expelled automatically, nobody expels you. And the moment you drop knowledge and become innocent again you are accepted back, nobody accepts you.

Knowledge is a device to fight with the whole, and how can you fight with the whole? It is just like a drop of ocean fighting with the ocean; it is going to be a miserable, very very miserable, hellish phenomenon. How can the drop fight with the ocean? It can go on fighting, but there is no possibility of it ever conquering the whole. It will be always in defeat, and that is the hell, always defeated, always defeated, always a failure.

And Lao Tzu says: Knowledge is the only sin. And all those who have awakened to their inner innocence say the same.

Drop knowledge, and become innocent, childlike again. Regain your lost childhood, and suddenly you have become a sage, a saint. Nothing is lacking. Except for this desire to become something else nothing is barring your way.

THE STUDENT OF KNOWLEDGE AIMS AT LEARNING DAY BY DAY, THE STUDENT OF TAO AIMS AT LOSING DAY BY DAY.

Those who are interested in knowledge, their whole effort is to know more and more and more.

They go on accumulating, and the more they accumulate, the more they are burdened. You can look around - everybody seems to be carrying such a heavy load, crushed under his own accumulations; suffering, but still clinging to it because he thinks it is something precious.

If you watch yourself you will be surprised that you go on clinging to your agony; you go on desiring that some day, somewhere, the ecstasy will happen, but you go on clinging to your agony, you never drop it. Remember, it is not clinging to you, it cannot cling to you, knowledge cannot cling to you, you cling to it. Not only do you cling, you go on growing it, you go on helping it to grow more and more.

SAYS LAO TZU: THE STUDENT OF KNOWLEDGE AIMS AT LEARNING DAY BY DAY. His whole effort is to learn more, to accumulate more, to know more. And the more he knows the less he becomes inside, because then the being is lost more. Then he becomes a heap of information, a junkyard, and he cannot find himself, where he is. He is lost in the jungle of his own knowledge.

THE STUDENT OF TAO AIMS AT LOSING DAY BY DAY.

Just the opposite is the student of Tao, the student of truth, not of knowledge, the student of being, not of becoming. He is just the opposite. He goes on losing day by day, he unburdens himself, he unlearns. His only learning is how to unlearn. The only thing he is interested in is how to be totally unburdened.

A German philosopher came to see Maharshi Raman. Of course he had travelled long, and he must have thought much about what he was going to ask. When he reached Raman he said, I have come to sit near you, to learn much. Raman looked at him with deep compassion and said, Then you have come to the wrong person because here I teach only unlearning. If you have come to learn you have come to the wrong place, go somewhere else; but if you are ready to unlearn, mature enough to unlearn, then you can stay here.

He was right. Near a sage you go to unlearn. When you are fed up with your learning, when you have learned much and gained nothing, when you know much and you are lost in your knowledge, when you know much but you have completely forgotten who you are, when you know much about unnecessary things, non essential things, and the essential knowledge about your own being is lost, then you come to a sage to unlearn.

And that is the greatest surrender. It is easy to surrender your wealth, because it is outside you.

Robbers can take it, it can be stolen, it is nothing that is part of you, it is outside! You can drop it easily. But your knowledge becomes an inner phenomenon, it gets inside you, it runs in your blood, it becomes part of your bones, it becomes your very marrow; it is difficult to surrender it.

It is easy to learn a thing, it is very very difficult to unlearn it. How to unlearn when you know a certain thing? It becomes very very difficult to not know it. How to drop it? It is so deep in you.

Unless you move beyond the mind, for you are identified with the mind, you cannot drop it because then you think 'It is me'. Then you think your knowledge is your being.

Move! All meditations are techniques to move from the mind, to gain a little distance from the mind, to become a little aloof and unidentified with it, to transcend the mind, to become a watcher on the hills so you can see what is happening in the mind. When you are separate from the mind, only then is there a possibility to drop something, to drop knowledge, to unlearn.

THE STUDENT OF TAO AIMS AT LOSING DAY BY DAY.

That is his gain. He gains by losing day by day. That is his learning, he learns by unlearning day by day. A moment comes when he is again a child, not knowing anything. A moment comes when he enters into the paradise again.

He tasted the bitter fruit of knowledge, but he found out it was stupid. Knowledge is deep stupidity.

He found it out, now he comes into paradise again. Now no serpent can seduce him. He comes mature - childlike but mature; a child, innocent - but alert, aware, conscious.

Now he attains to a greater purity, because a purity which has no awareness is bound to be lost.

Somebody is going to seduce, somebody is going to corrupt, and if there is nobody, you yourself will corrupt yourself, because you are not alert.

Adam had to be thrown out of the garden of paradise. He was simply innocent. He was Buddha like in one part: he was innocent, he was like Jesus in one part: he was innocent, but the other part was lacking, he was not aware.

Adam is the be inning, Jesus is the end. Adam is half, Jesus is complete - the other half has become aware. Now Jesus is incorruptible. He is not only pure he is also incorruptible, his innocence is now absolute.

THE STUDENT OF TAO AIMS AT LOSING DAY BY DAY. BY CONTINUAL LOSING ONE REACHES DOING NOTHING.

This is very subtle. Pay as much attention as you can pay to it. Be as meditative about it as possible.

You may not know that the word meditation comes from the same root as medicine, medical, and the original meaning of the word was - a technique to become whole, a technique to become healthy.

Medicine is medicinal, just like that, meditation is also medicinal. It makes you whole, integrated, healthy.

Pay attention, listen to it as meditatively as possible. When you listen meditatively you understand, when you listen concentratedly you learn. If you listen with concentration, you will gain knowledge, if you listen meditatively, you will lose knowledge. And the difference is very subtle.

When you listen attentively, attention means a tension, it means you are tense, too eager to learn, to absorb, to know. You are interested in knowledge, concentration is the way towards knowledge; mind focussed on one thing of course, learns more.

Meditation is unfocussed mind, you simply listen silently, not with a tension in the mind, not with an urge to know and learn, no, with total relaxedness, in a let go, in an opening of your being.

You listen, not to know, you simply listen to understand. These are different ways of listening.

If you are trying to know, then you are trying to memorize what I am saying, deep down you are repeating it, you are taking notes inside the mind, you are writing it in the world of your memories, you are interested in letting it become deeply rooted in you so you don't forget. Then it will become knowledge.

And the same seed could have become unlearning, understanding. Then you simply listen, you are not interested in accumulating it, you are not interested in writing it in your memory, in your mind.

You simply listen open, as you listen to music, as you listen to birds singing in the trees, as you listen to wind passing through ancient pines, as you listen to the sound of water in a waterfall - there is nothing to remember, nothing to memorize, you don't listen with a parrot mind, you simply listen without any mind - the listening is beautiful, it is ecstatic, there is no goal in it, in itself it is ecstatic, it is blissful.

Listen meditatively, not with concentration. All schools, colleges, universities, teach concentration, because the goal is to memorize. Here the goal is not to memorize, the goat is not to learn at all, the goal is to unlearn.

Listen silently, and don't think that you will forget. There is no need to remember; only that which is rubbish has to be remembered, because you go on forgetting it.

Whenever you hear the truth there is no need to remember it because it cannot be forgotten. You may not be able to remember the words but you will remember the essence - and that will not be part of your memory, it will be part of your being.

I am saying something here, Lao Tzu is saying something here through me, to reveal a part of your hidden being. He is not feeding you with new information, he is just uncovering you, rediscovering you, just giving you a glimpse of your own being.

BY CONTINUAL LOSING ONE REACHES DOING NOTHING.

Knowledge is a doing, it is a conflict, struggle, what Darwin calls 'survival of the fittest'. It is fighting with nature, it is a constant war of man against the whole. Foolish! But it is there.

When you want to learn something you are in fact trying to learn to DO something. All knowledge is pragmatic, practical, you would transform it into your practice, you will do something with it, otherwise you will say - Why learn? What is the point? You learn it as a utility.

That's why in a pragmatic, empirical world arts by and by disappear. Nobody wants to listen to poetry, nobody wants to listen to music, because the question is: What can you DO with it? Can you make money out of it? Can you become powerful out of it? What can you do? Can you repair a car by listening to music? Can you make a house? No, it cannot be used, music is non-utilitarian, it has no utility - and that's the beauty of it.

Whole life is non-utilitarian, it has no purpose, it is not going anywhere. It is simply being here, it is not going anywhere. It has no goal to achieve, it has no destiny. It is a cosmic play - what Hindus call LEELA, a play, just children playing with no goal in view - playing itself is the goal, they are enjoying it, they are delighting in it, they are happy - finished!

Learning is always with the view to do something. It is a technique towards becoming a great doer.

If you know more, you can do more. Then what will unlearning do? It will make you a non-doer.

By and by you will not know anything and you will not be able to do. By and by as knowledge disappears from you, doing will also disappear. You will become BEING, you can BE then, but you will not be a doer. I don't mean that you will not do anything - even a Buddha has to go to beg, even Lao Tzu must have tried ways and means to find bread and butter and things like that; when it was raining he must have found a shelter - he lived a long life, and he lived a very healthy life. No, I don't mean that you don't do, I mean you become a non-doer. Things start happening. You don't do them, they happen. The doer, the manipulator, goes, dissolves, disappears, and with the doer gone, the ego is no more found.

People come to me and they ask: How can we surrender the ego? You cannot surrender the ego. If the ego is there, who will surrender? This is the ego asking, ego asking how to surrender.

You can bow down your head, you can put your head at my feet and you can say 'I surrender', but this I which is saying it is the thing to be surrendered - now it will survive, and get nourishment through surrender itself, it will go and tell people: I have surrendered totally to my Master, I am no more. But the I goes on, it makes no difference what it broadcasts. It broadcasts itself through everything - through surrender, through renunciation.

No, the ego cannot be surrendered. But if you start unlearning, one day you suddenly find that the ego has never existed! In the first place it was not there and you were asking a foolish question:

How to surrender it? It was not there from the very beginning, it has never existed. Suddenly you start looking within yourself and it is not found there, not even a trace of it. It has never been there.

It is a false notion which comes through doing.

So there is a system: Knowledge, to help you become a doer, then when you become a doer you become a centre - a false centre of course, you cannot be a true centre because you are not separate from existence. A true centre is possible only if you can exist separate from existence - can you exist separately? Can you exist without the air surrounding you? Can you exist without breathing? Can you exist without the sun there continuously giving you life and energy? Can you exist without trees continuously giving fruits to you? and the earth cropping? Can you exist without the rains and the sands and the sea? Can you exist without the stars and the moons? You cannot.

Separate, you cannot exist.

Then how can you say that you have a centre? Only the whole can have a centre. In fact only the whole can be allowed to say I, nobody else.

But by losing knowledge, by and by you dismantle the whole house. But start from the foundation.

The foundation is knowledge. Lose the foundation, drop the foundation, and the house starts falling.

The house is of doing. The foundation is of knowledge, the house is of doing, and inside the house an imaginary ghost-like thing lives which is the ego.

When the foundation disappears the house falls. When the house falls you suddenly become aware that nobody lives there. The house has always been empty. It was just an idea, a whim. Just a dream in the mind, a nightmare.

BY CONTINUAL LOSING ONE REACHES DOING NOTHING. BY DOING NOTHING EVERYTHING IS DONE.

That is the secret. By doing nothing everything is done. Everything is already being done, you unnecessarily come in, you unnecessarily make much fuss. Without you everything is going as beautifully as it can ever go.

Once you know it you drop the doer, you become part of the flow, you float with the river, you don't even swim. Right now you are trying to go upstream, and then of course you feel tired, and then of course you feel you are being defeated. Nobody is trying to defeat you, the river is not trying to defeat you, in fact, the river is completely oblivious of the fact that you exist. And this is fortunate for the river, otherwise the river will go mad if she comes to know about you, that you exist; so many mad people. No, the river is completely oblivious of the fact, blissfully unaware that you exist, that you are trying to fight upstream.

It happened - it must have been a day like this - that it was raining, and the river by the side of the village was in flood. Suddenly people came running towards Mulla Nasrudin's house and they said:

Nasrudin, what are you doing here? Have you not heard? Your wife has fallen in the stream - go and save her! Nasrudin ran fast.

Nobody had expected that he would run so fast because every husband wants somehow the wife to be drowned in some river. It is perfect. And everybody knew in the village that they were not getting on well, things were always going wrong, and they were fighting continuously, so it was a bliss, a blessing from heaven - but Mulla Nasrudin ran so fast, they couldn't believe that he loved her so much.

He jumped into the river and started trying - fighting the river, he started swimming upstream.

People said: What are you doing? Are you a fool? The river has taken your wife downstream!

Where are you going?

Nasrudin said, Keep quiet, I know my wife well. She will always go upstream, she cannot go downstream, that is not her nature.

Everybody is going upstream, trying to fight with the river - Why? Because in the fight you can create the notion of the ego. in the challenge, in resistance, you can create the notion of the ego; if you drop fighting and you float with the stream, by and by you will come to know that you are not.

That's why people love challenge, people love danger, people want to fight. If there is nobody to fight they will create something or other to fight, because only in fight can their ego be maintained - and it has to be maintained continuously; it is just like a bicycle - you pedal it, and you have to go on pedalling otherwise it will fall. You have to continuously pedal it.

The ego needs continuous pedalling. Every moment you have to go on fighting with something or other.

Once you stop fighting, suddenly you find the cycle has fallen. The ego cannot exist without fight.

Learning helps doing, doing helps fighting, fighting creates the ego - this is the system, the science.

And this is all that religion is about. Drop knowledge, forget about it, become innocent like a child, suddenly you see things are changing. Now you are not a doer. When you are not a doer, it is not that things stop happening, they continue; you're irrelevant - when you were not, undisturbed, things were happening; the sun was rising as it is rising now...

Have you heard about an old woman who lived in a small village and who believed that it was because of her that the sun rose in the village? She had many cocks, and just before the sun rose they would start making noise, crowing, and she believed that it was because of those cocks the sun rose.

It was a logical thing. Always, they made their noise - and immediately the sun started rising, it had never been otherwise. She told the villagers: It is because of me the sun rises. Once I leave this village you will live in darkness. They laughed. Angry, she left the village with all her cocks.

She reached another village, and of course, in the morning the sun rose. She laughed and said, Now they will understand! Now the sun is rising in THIS village! Now they will weep and cry and repent, but I am not going back.

Things have been happening without you. Everything has been perfect without you. When you will not be here everything will be as perfect as ever. But you cannot believe in it because if you believe in it your ego disappears.

Things will go on when the doer disappears.

BY DOING NOTHING EVERYTHING IS DONE.

Everything happens because the whole is functioning. And when you are not fighting you also become a vehicle of the whole, a passage, a flute, hollow within, and the whole goes on singing through you. Better songs will go on coming through you.

Even now in spite of you they sometimes come. Sometimes you feel a sudden mood of silence coming, you don't know where it comes from - just out of the blue; it comes because somehow in that moment you forgot to fight. You forgot - you may have been tired - you forgot to fight, and suddenly everything is beautiful.

But the sky does not remain so open always. Again clouds gather because you start again. Just at the moment you feel everything is beautiful, suddenly you start doing something; the mind starts thinking: How long is this moment going to last? I may lose it so I must do something to protect it, to make it secure!

Now you have come in. The flute is no more hollow, it is filled with you, the music is not flowing, it is lost. And when it is lost you think: Look, I should have tried harder. It is because of your effort that it is lost, but your mind goes on saying you should have tried harder, then it would have continued.

Sometimes, sitting under the stars, you feel a bliss arising within your heart. It seems not of this world. You are surprised. You cannot believe it.

I have come across simple people who have known many moments in their life which are Buddha.like, which belong to Christ consciousness, but they have never talked about them to anybody because they themselves don't believe that they were possible. They have in fact suppressed them. They have been thinking that they must have imagined them: How can it happen without any effort of my own? How is it possible that suddenly one becomes blissful?

You can remember them in your own life - and in such moments when you were never expecting them - just going to the office, in the daily routine, the sun is high and you are perspiring, and suddenly something strikes home, and for a moment you are not the old you. Paradise is regained.

And then it is lost again. You forget about it because it is not part of your style of life. You don't even talk about it, you think 'I must have imagined it. How are these things possible? And I have not done anything so how can it happen? It must have been hallucinatory, an illusion or a dream.' You don't talk about it.

As I have observed thousands of people deeply I have not come across many people who have not found such certain moments in their life. But they have never talked of them to anybody. Even if they tried to, people laughed and they thought: You are foolish, stupid. They don't believe, they repress.

Not only has humanity repressed sex, has humanity repressed death, humanity has repressed all that is beautiful in life.

Man has been forced to become like an automaton, a robot. All clues, all doors, have been closed towards the unknown.

But Lao Tzu is true, and what he says he knowS - I KNOW it. Things go on happening on their own.

For many years I have not done anything, not even thought about them. They go on happening on their own. It is a sheer delight to see how things go on happening on their own. It is a sheer delight to see how things go on happening on their own.

Much happens without your doing. And when it happens without your doing it has a beauty of its own. It has no violence in it. It has a grace. It is lovely. When you do it you force it. The grace is lost, it becomes ugly.

Violence cannot be graceful. And to be non violent - this is the only way, as Lao Tzu says. Simply drop knowledge, the doer. Just be and let things be. And everything starts flowering, and everything starts flowing. Knowledge has made you frozen.

BY CONTINUAL LOSING ONE REACHES DOING NOTHING. BY DOING NOTHING EVERYTHING IS DONE. HE WHO CONQUERS THE WORLD OFTEN DOES SO BY DOING NOTHING.

WHEN ONE IS COMPELLED TO DO SOMETHING, THE WORLD IS ALREADY BEYOND HIS CONQUERING.

Those who have done tremendous things are the non-doers. The doers may appear to do things but these are not lasting.

Alexanders, Napoleons, Hitlers, Mussolinis, they tried hard to do things, but they created only nightmares around themselves, and in themselves. Their own doing cost thousands, millions of people much, and themselves also. Their own doing became suicidal. They killed millions, and finally they killed themselves. That's all that happened. They existed as a nightmare. Mad people.

Neurotics. Murderers. Those people are not the conquerors. They have not conquered the world.

Then look at a Buddha, a Lao Tzu, a Jesus; a different type of flowering. Centuries pass, ages come and go, Lao Tzu remains flowering, his fragrance remains as fresh as ever. It has not lost a bit of its newness - it has not become old. It has not become dusty. It is as fresh as a dewdrop of THIS morning.

People who have lived in the now always remain in the now. They are never of the past.

Lao Tzu is more a contemporary than any Hitler or Mussolini. A Lao Tzu will remain a contemporary for thousands of years to come. He will always be a contemporary. A Jesus is never part of past history, he is always part of the present. He dies, but he never dies. He goes on living - that is the meaning of the Christian parable of resurrection: he died on the cross but he was found another day walking on the road. Don't take it literally. This is a beautiful parable with deep significance. You killed him on the cross, but you couldn't kill him. In a few days he was walking, moving again.

You cannot kill a Jesus. One who has known non doing cannot be killed because only the ego can be killed. Ego can be destroyed, the being never. He is resurrected.

And in Christianity just the opposite happened - the cross became the most significant thing.

Resurrection should have become the most significant thing, not the cross, because many people have died on the cross, that is not very significant. The most significant thing is the resurrection.

The whole of Christianity should depend on that - that Jesus could not be killed. We kill him, we crucify him, but he could not be killed. He remains fresh, he is always fresh. You can meet him on the crossroads now. You can find him anywhere.

In India, we have never depicted any AVATAR, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavir, as old. Not that they never became old, they became old, the body has to follow the same laws, nature never believes in exceptions, the rule is absolute. Ram and Krishna and Buddha and Mahavir - they also became old but we have never depicted them as old, always as young. All the images that exist in India are of the young Mahavir, the young Buddha, the young Krishna, the young Ram, never old - what is the matter? Because we have known their youngness, and we have felt that they never became old.

The body comes and goes but their youth remains. Their fragrance, their innocence, has a quality of eternity in it.

These are the real conquerors and they have not done anything. One never knows what Lao Tzu has done - nothing. You cannot find more uneventful a life than Lao Tzu's. Nothing happens. Only one thing has happened - HE HAS HAPPENED. That's all. Nothing else happens.

That's why these people are not regarded in history. At the most they become small footnotes, because they don't have any biography. They have nothing. Hitler has a big biography. So much happened around him, only nothing happened within him. Only one thing never happened, and that is his being. Much else happened: you can go on writing and writing thousands of pages, and still much will be left. But Lao Tzu? Just a footnote.

You can even drop that footnote. He is not a part of history, not an event at all. But these are the real conquerors - they go on conquering. Still Lao Tzu goes on throwing his net, and still people are caught, still people are converted, transformed, resurrected out of their graves. The miracle goes on continuing.

HE WHO CONQUERS THE WORLD OFTEN DOES SO BY DOING NOTHING. WHEN ONE IS COMPELLED TO DO SOMETHING, THE WORLD IS ALREADY BEYOND HIS CONQUERING.

Never compel anybody to do something, never compel yourself to do something, let things happen, then God will be doing them through you. There are two ways of doing things: one, you do; another, God does them through you. If you do them, you create anxiety for yourself, anguish, misery, because then you become result oriented; you think - Am I going to succeed or not? You become more concerned with the end result than with the process. And then you are constantly worried; and whatsoever happens you will be frustrated.

If you succeed you will be frustrated because the success will not deliver the goods that you were thinking were going to be delivered by it. If you fail, of course you will be in misery.

People who fail are in misery, people who have succeeded are in misery. In fact those who have succeeded are more in misery than those who have failed because a failure can still hope. A man who has really succeeded cannot hope. He becomes absolutely hopeless. Now he has nowhere to go, he has succeeded - ask the very rich people why they are in such misery. A poor man - we can understand, but why are rich people in so much misery? They have succeeded, and now, being successful, they have come to realize that it has been useless, that success has not given them anything, it has simply wasted their whole life.

Now, the lost time cannot be regained, and there seems to be no future and no hope because they may have millions of dollars and at the most if they continue on the same lines they will have many more millions. But what of that? If these so many millions have not given any satisfaction, many more millions will not give it.

This word SATISFACTION has to be understood. This word is very strange: it comes from the Latin root SATIR. Satisfaction, satisfy, satiate, they come from SATIR, and this word SATIR comes from a sanskrit root SAT. SAT means the real, the absolutely real. From the same word SAT comes the Japanese word SATORI - one who has realized the truth.

SAT means to be truth, one who has realized the truth, has attained to satori. But TO SATE and SATISFY, they have lost contact with their original root. Nothing else can satisfy except truth. So when you succeed in the world there is no satisfaction. Only SAT can satisfy.

You can accumulate millions of dollars and pounds, but suddenly you find nothing satisfies, your thirst remains the same, it is not quenched. And there is no hope now. You have learnt a trick - how to succeed. Now you have succeeded, and you have wasted your whole life in this success, and there comes no satisfaction, but a deep frustration, a hopeless state. And if you fail? Of course then how can there be satisfaction? In the world, if you fail you fail, if you succeed, you also fail.

You have a proverb; you say, Nothing succeeds like success. I have changed it a little bit and I say, Nothing fails like success.

Failure fails, success fails. There is only one possibility: that you know your being, SAT. Only that can satisfy, only that never fails. But that is not part of becoming. That has nothing to do with time.

Right now this very moment it is available. It is already there in its total glory. The king is on the throne within you but you never look there. You are in search of money, knowledge, prestige, power, and you go out. And, all those who go out - come in!

Drop learning, learn unlearning. Come in! Drop the doer, learn how to do things without doing them.

And there is a secret. This is the greatest secret of all, the greatest miracle that can happen to anybody, and that is - you simply become a passage, a vehicle, a hollow flute, and divine songs start flowing through you.

You just don't come between you and yourself. That is the whole of all yoga, tantra, religion. Please, put yourself aside, don't come in the way. Just stand by the side and let the chariot of God pass. If you can learn only one thing - how to stand aside, you have learnt all.

And then you become aware that everything is going on by itself. The whole is working. The part is not needed to work, it only needs to participate. It only needs not to create trouble and conflict. It only needs to be with the whole.

To be with the whole is to be religious. To be against the whole is to be worldly.