This is the Queen; Cleopatra

Question 1:

Don't feel so much confidence, otherwise it will be delayed for ever. Self-confidence is not a quality for the inner journey, it is a barrier.

In the outer world self-confidence is a help, is a must. Without it you cannot go anywhere in the outside world, because ego is needed, a sort of madness is needed. But when you move to the inner, all the qualities that are helpful in the outer journey become obstacles. Self is not needed, self-confidence is not needed.

One should completely lose the self, only then is there a possibility of enlightenment. YOU never become enlightened. When you are not, there IS enlightenment. That is the first thing to remember.

And the second is - how can you compare that which is better, enlightenment or waiting for it? The comparison is possible only when you have become enlightened. When you know both, then you can compare.

Don't befool yourself. Don't try to rationalize it. Because you have to wait, you are now trying to rationalize it, that there is much beauty, much happiness, bliss, in waiting. If in waiting there is much bliss, more bliss than in enlightenment then those who attained it were fools. Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, Jesus - stupid, all stupid! Then what is the point in trying to attain it?

No, you are trying to befool yourself. Nowhere does it seem to be coming nearer... and the mind is very cunning and very tricky; it says, Who is in a hurry? If it is not coming it is very beautiful; to wait is good, and very blissful!

Now you are trying to hide an impotency. This way, you can go on in circles. First, it is being delayed - and it will be delayed, it can be delayed for ever if too much self is there. It is delayed because of you! Not that there is any bliss in waiting - waiting is always a misery, waiting is always hanging in the middle, it is to be in limbo; waiting is always tense, a suffering - otherwise who would want to reach? For what are you waiting? You are waiting to reach! Waiting cannot be beautiful - but you can try to console yourself.

Drop the self, and drop false consolations, because nobody else is fooled by it except yourself. You are not deceiving anybody, but you can deceive yourself, for eternity.

Drop the self, drop that 'too much confidence', it is egoistic, and suddenly there IS enlightenment - there is no need to wait! Waiting is there because of the obstacles you are creating. Enlightenment is not creating any obstacles on your path. God is not pushing you away from himself. Nobody is creating any difficulty for you. If you are not reaching it is only because of you.

So drop self-confidence, drop the self, and then suddenly you find that enlightenment is not something that happens to you; enlightenment is your very nature, your very being. When the self is not - it is; then it IS yourself.

And forget all consolations.

You must have heard, I have told it many times myself, the famous story of the fox and the grapes.

One of the very extraordinary men, Aesop, wrote it. A fox comes near a tree, and the tree is full of grapevines, bunches of grapes. She jumps, she tries hard, but cannot reach the grapes, they are too far away, her jump is not long enough. Then she looks all around - is somebody watching? A small hare is watching from a bush, and he asks, Auntie, what is the matter? Couldn't you reach the grapes? She says, No son, that is not the thing. The grapes are sour.

This is consolation.

I tell you the grapes are never sour - at least the grapes of enlightenment; never sour; they are always ripe and sweet; and if you cannot reach, don't try to console yourself that you love waiting, just try to understand why you are forced to wait. Who is forcing you to wait? You will not find anybody else, just you yourself, that self.confidence and the self.

Question 2:

Yes, all time is special, every moment is special. But every age feels that THIS age is special.

That is the ego of the age. Every age has always felt that there has never been such a time, such a revolutionary time, such chaos, such wars, such knowledge, such wisdom - but something is special.

I have heard - I don't know how far it is correct, but it must be; knowing human mind it has to be - when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden, it is said that the first words that were uttered, getting out of the gate, were Adam saying to Eve, My dear, this is the greatest revolutionary time we are passing through.

The first day of the world, the first moment rather, the first step in the world - and the revolution!

'This is the greatest revolutionary time we are passing through.' And since then every Adam has felt that, and every Adam has said to every Eve, My dear, this is the greatest age we are living through, very special.

Why does this happen? The age is special, the religion you are born into is special, the Master you follow is special - the greatest in the world, the book you believe in is written by God himself not by ordinary human beings, everything that belongs to you is special - this is how the ego is helped, supported; these are the PROPS.

The country you are born in is special. If you are an Indian, then the country is sacred. If you are English then you know well that you are the best in the world. If you are French - the same.

This happens; and this is such a cunning method that you will not be aware of what you are doing to yourself: making your religion special, YOU become special. It is not that Christianity is special, in fact it is YOU who is so special! Because of you Christianity appears to be special. It is not India that is a sacred land, it is because of you, you are so religious! So sacred is your being! Because of you the whole of India becomes a religious country, special. Wherever you were born, the same would have happened. If you had been born in Holland, or in China, the same would have happened.

Try to see into it. The world is always either ordinary or extraordinary, because there is no point in saying that it is always extraordinary, that doesn't make any difference. If there are ordinary moments then only can some moments be extraordinary. So you can either say that the world is always ordinary, the time ordinary, the country, the religion - everything, or you can say it is always extraordinary - it is the same, because then there is nothing to compare with, to contrast with. And by and by, if you drop these props, suddenly you will disappear. Your country ordinary? - then you cannot walk so heartily as you used to walk. Your language ordinary? - then you will hesitate a little. If everything is ordinary: your birth, your family, this and that, then how can you help the ego be strong? All props withdrawn - ego falls to the ground.

These are very subtle tricks.

I have heard about a professor, a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris. One day suddenly he told his students: I am the greatest man in the world! They could not believe it! This ordinary professor - and at that too, not a professor of physics but of philosophy; nobody comes to study even, rarely, some mad people come, and nobody bothers about his Department, the most neglected in the University, and he is the greatest man in the world? They laughed. They said, We have always heard that philosophers are a little eccentric, but now you prove it. You are the greatest man in the world? Then what about Richard Nixon? And Mao Tse-Tung? And Indira Gandhi? What about these people?

He said, Wait! Whenever I say something I prove it, I am a logician. I will prove it. I have a proof, unless I had a proof I would never make such a statement.

He brought, next day, a map of the whole world. He fixed it on the wall and he said, Come here, now I will prove it. Which is the greatest country in the world? Of course, it was France because all were French. So the whole world was dropped, only France remained. And then he said, Which is the greatest town, city, in France? Of course it was Paris, all were Parisiens. Then he said, And which is the greatest place in Paris? Of course it was the University, the citadel of wisdom. Now the students started feeling a little restless because he was coming to the point, and it would be difficult now to disprove. And then he said, Which is the best and the greatest Department in the University? Of course it had to be philosophy: the most ancient, with the secret most knowledge. 'And who is the head of the Department of Philosophy? He is the greatest man in the world.'

This is how you all function. This is the logic, this is the proof.

Please don't be foolish. Let philosophers be foolish, you need not be. Drop all such nonsense. It is all garbage. And once you drop it, you will feel so clean. As if you have taken a bath in eternity. You will feel so unburdened, so young, because all this rot in your head is making you rotten. You are ill because of it. You cannot be healthy unless you throw all this garbage.

Be simple, ordinary. Everything is ordinary - or you can call it extraordinary, that makes no difference. This morning is as extraordinary as any morning.

And people have always thought like that. Whenever you fall in love you feel - this woman, this is the queen. Cleopatra. There has never been such a woman... But every lover has felt like that. And not only that, you will fall again and again in love, and again and again you will feel that, Now this is the real Cleopatra; that was nothing; and you will forget that you have been saying the same thing to many women.

Every lover feels an ego enhancement. And this has been the cause of much misery in the world.

Christians think they are special, the very chosen of God. Jews think they are very special, God has made them the chosen race. And that has created much misery in the world. If you are the chosen race then you are forgiven all sins, you can do whatsoever you like.

Nobody is chosen or everybody is chosen! The dog on the street is also a chosen dog, and ordinary grass is also chosen, and stars are also chosen, you are also chosen - either all are chosen or nobody is chosen, it is for you to decide.

But never say 'I am chosen' because then what about others?

Mad people like Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, they all feel they are chosen people: they are MADE to govern, and others are made to be governed. These people create trouble. But you also have the same seed within you; if you allow it to grow you can become an Adolf Hitler.

Nobody is special. Life is so beautiful in its ordinariness, so extraordinary in its ordinariness, why bring these nonsense concepts into it and disturb it?

Question 3:

Otherwise who else? A saint is already enlightened, only sinners are left to be enlightened.

But religions have taught you something which is creating the problem. They have condemned you as sinners - how can you become enlightened?

Sin is nothing but error. There is no condemnation in the word - it is just error! And those who err, they learn.

All saints have been sinners. There has never been a saint who has not been a sinner, otherwise how will he come to be a saint? He travelled, he erred, he went astray, he fell a million times, and rose up again. He has reached. The whole journey he has been a sinner. Now he has learned, and now no error happens. He has become wise through sinning, through errors. He knows. He has become enlightened. Out of the darkness of the night is the morn born.

Every saint has been a sinner, and every sinner will become a saint. The past of the saint is bound to be of sin, and the future of every sinner is bound to be of saintliness. So between a saint and a sinner there is only a difference of past and future, that's all. Don't feel condemned. Sin in itself is enough, why burden yourself even more by condemnation?

Be alert, that's all. You will have to commit mistakes, but don't commit the same mistake again, that's all. Be alert, watch - and learn! In fact if you ask me, then I will tell you that the world of sin is the world of learning. One cannot learn without it. One has to go deep in sin.

It is just like the roots of a tree: the deeper the roots go, the higher go the branches. A tree grows to a great height, but it depends, is based, on the roots which go deeper and deeper and deeper.

If you come across a great saint you must know that he must have sinned greatly. The roots must go deep! Otherwise how can he know so much? If he has never sinned he will be not innocent but stupid.

There are stupid saints also - to me they are not saints, they are simply afraid people, cowards.

They have never sinned, they never went astray, they have always clung to the right path, to the well trodden path, to the ideology the society has given to them, to the concepts the religion has enforced on their minds, to the conditioning that they have been born into - they have clung to it, they have never moved astray, they are cowards, they have learned nothing. To me, their value is zero. They may be good people, but their goodness is saltless. It has no flavour. It is a little dull and dead.

You will find two types of saints in the world: one, who is saintly out of fear, who, out of fear of the hell, fear of the consequences, never sinned. He is almost a clay saint, not real, he has not achieved anything; and you will not find him wise, because from where will he get the wisdom? He never went astray, how will he become mature? He will be a child, ignorant, foolish and stupid; not harmful, but you cannot learn anything through him. At the most he can teach you his stupidity, his cowardliness.

There is another type of saint - you are fortunate if you can find a saint of the other type, because if a hundred saints exist, ninety.nine are stupid. It has to be so - that is the proportion between stupidity and intelligence, so it has to be always the same proportion everywhere. In the world, in the marketplace, the same proportion exists: ninety-nine stupid persons, one person intelligent, wise, aware. The same proportion has to be reflected in the saints also - in all directions!

If you can find the one who has lived, and lived dangerously, and moved in all directions without any fear, and learnt through experience to transcend sin - not that he never committed sin, he committed it, and he committed it totally and intensely, that's why he could transcend it; he could see it through and through, he could see the very absurdity of it, that's why he has become transcendental to it; if you can find such a saint - only through him goes the path, the way.

Jesus could say to people, I am the way. Jesus is not an ordinary stupid saint. That was the reason why he was crucified. If he had been an ordinary stupid saint he would have been worshipped!

Jews would have proclaimed him: Here is the son of God! But the trouble was that his ways were not exactly right - as Jews used to think right was; they were not exactly moral.

Sometimes he stayed with a prostitute. This is not saint like. Sometimes he stayed with drunkards, and he used to drink wine himself - he loved it. And he moved with all sorts of people - he was not respectable in any way, he didn't care a bit for respectability. Immoral people, condemned by the society, were his friends. He moved in all sorts of companies.

That was the reason, the basic reason why all the priests and all the stupid so called saints were against him: because deep down he was cutting the roots of the old morality: This man is dangerous, he has to be destroyed, because he is bringing something into the world which will be a chaos for the ordinary morality - because ordinary morality lives by rules, and a saint lives by awareness, not by rules.

Rules are for those who are cowards. A saint lives by his inner discipline, he believes in no other discipline. His own consciousness is the only law. He follows it. Wherever it leads he is ready to go - if it goes to hell he will go to hell. Because that is his way to know the truth. He follows his own being. He does not allow anybody to enforce anything on him. He rebels.

Ordinary saints are harmless but saints like Jesus are dangerous - to the society, to the culture, to the fixed mode of life, to the status quo, to the establishment. Jesus must have looked like a hippie - rebellious, breaking all the rules.

That's how one should live! Because unless you live totally free, unless you suffer through your own choice, you will not transcend anything. You will remain a clay saint.

You ask, Does a sinner deserve to be enlightened? And I say, Who else? He has earned it. Through sin he has suffered. Through sin he has become mature. But I am not saying that just by sinning you will attain to it. Otherwise all would have attained! Sin plus awareness - that should be the formula. Sin plus awareness. Then go wherever you want, and do whatsoever you like - that awareness will bring you back, that awareness will always be the ladder by which you can transcend any experience.

If Jesus had been born in India he would not have been crucified, no. That has never been our practice here, because we have known even more dangerous people - Jesus is nothing. We have known Krishna. In fact, there is every possibility that CHRIST is a distorted form of KRISHNA.

Jesus must have given something of the quality of Krishna. In Bengali, Krishna is KRISTO; in many European languages Christ is Cristo. CHRIST seems to be a form of KRISHNA; Christ is not Jesus' name. Jesus Christ means Jesus the Krishna - something of Krishna was in him. Being in love with Mary Magdalene; something like Krishna in love with Radha.

Jews could not believe it. They are very moralistic people; mathematical, calculating: and here comes this man and he will destroy the whole structure!

We allowed Krishna sixteen thousand girl friends. We call them GOPIS. Gopi is a better word than girl friend, more lovely and more deep. Sixteen thousand we allowed him and we never crucified this man. And not all were married to him, a few of them were others' wives. Radha herself was not his wife, but somebody else's.

Just a few days before there was a case in Uttar Pradesh, in a court, about a certain land. A certain piece of land for centuries has been in Radha Krishna's name. Now new rules have come in and that much land cannot be in one person's name. But the judge has given his judgement - and it is beautiful; he said: Because it is in the name of Radha Krishna it is not in one person's name, and because Radha was never a legal wife to Krishna, these are two persons. So the land can remain as it is, because it is in two persons' names, and for two persons, that much land can be allowed; Krishna's wife's name, people have completely forgotten. Her name was Rukmani. It is completely a forgotten name. Radha was not his wife. Radha was his mistress.

And India never bothered to kill this man. Rather on the contrary we have said that he is the ABSOLUTE avatar, the TOTAL coming of God on the earth. Why have we called him the total God?

Because he can sin like a sinner, the greatest sinner, and he remains like a saint - the greatest ever known. Two polarities meet in him. He is total.

If a saint is simply a saint and has never sinned he is one polar. Something is missing. When a man is two polar, and both the polarities are there, the man is total and alive. He is both night and day, life and death, chaos and cosmos.

So, you ask, Does a sinner deserve to be enlightened? I tell you, Yes. Only a sinner deserves. But awareness has to be brought in.

So I don't condemn sin. I only indicate to you: Sin, but sin with conscious, alert, aware mind.

Do whatsoever you like. If you want to take wine, take it, but remain alert. Soon you will find that this is impossible. When you take wine you lose awareness, and when you lose awareness it is simply sin. Then there is no possibility of saintliness happening in it. If you can drink and remain alert, drink as much as you want - it is water, nothing else.

It is said that Jesus turned water into wine. I teach you the other trick - how to turn wine into water:

be aware. Then you will do a greater miracle than Jesus ever did.

Be aware, and wine becomes water. Be aware - sex becomes love. Be aware - love becomes prayer. Be aware - prayer becomes meditation. Simply one thing has to be remembered: do whatsoever you like, but do it with full consciousness, and then you will not go astray.

Question 4:

Yes. Mind has a very deep-rooted disease I call the disease of O.D: overdose; overdoing. Remain alert for this disease of O.D. You can do anything too much, and then, that which was going to be beneficial will become harmful.

Food is good, it is vitality, but you can eat too much, then it becomes poisonous. You can die by overeating - in fact, medical researchers say that people die more of overeating than of starvation.

Newspapers go on reporting that a few people have died somewhere because of starvation, they never report how many people are dying by overeating - that should be reported first. Always, more people are dying through overeating.

A man can live for three months without eating anything at all. But you overeat for even three weeks, and you cannot survive. You try. For three days eat as much as you can....

It happened, Mulla Nasrudin and a disciple went for a visit to Mecca. In the manner of travelling dervishes they would present themselves at the doors of large houses and food would be handed to them, and also water. Whenever they ate Nasrudin would eat as much as he could, then lie down to sleep, but the disciple had a curious habit: he would eat a little, shake himself, then eat some more.

One day Nasrudin said, What do you do? Tell me the secret. Am I not your Master? The disciple said, Well Master, I find if I eat a little, then drink some water, then settle it all by shaking, I can hold more. It is just like a box - you settle, things settle.... Nasrudin took off his sandal and hit him hard on the head, and said, You fool! How dare you conceal such a valuable secret from me! To think of the amount of food I have wasted by not being able to eat it! I knew the limit of eating was farther ahead because the limit of eating after all is bursting. And I never knew this trick. You have been hiding such a great secret, and now I feel so miserable - how much food I have missed!

Remember the disease of O.D. It kills in many ways. Overeating, overloving, can kill you. Many people come to me - they are overdoing sex. They are killing themselves. Or overeating, they are killing themselves.

Yes, and you can do over-meditation also. The mind always likes to do something to the extreme.

Mind is the extremist, it never wants to be in the middle, because to be in the middle is to be without mind. Be exactly in the middle, and there is no mind. When you move to the extreme, mind enters.

The further away you go from the centre, the more mind comes in and takes possession of you.

Either eat too much or fast too much, and mind will be there; that's why I am neither in favour of eating too much nor in favour of fasting. Just be in the middle. Right eating, exactly balanced - and always remember in everything to be balanced.

You can overdo meditation, and then you will be exhausted rather than being resurrected through it and revived and revitalized and rejuvenated; you will feel exhausted. And then you will go to the other extreme and you will say: It is nothing, this meditation is nothing, I must stop, I am dying because of it. You are not dying because of it, you are dying because of overdoing.

So how to know that THIS is the middle? Difficult, very difficult, one needs to be very very conscious, only then one knows.

When you eat, where is the middle? The middle is, when you are still feeling a little hungry, just a little hungry, and you know that now if you eat you will feel heavy. Just THERE - stop. If you eat four chapattis and then you feel heavy, then three chapattis - the right thing is to stop there. Three fourths of your stomach should be full, one fourth empty. That is the right thing because - give a little space for the food to move, to be transformed, to be changed into blood; give a little space!

Food needs a little space in the stomach.

If you are meditating, and you feel you are doing too much catharsis, catharsis will become a very very exhausting phenomenon.

You are crying in meditation; cry up to the moment when you start feeling that now you are losing energy, you are feeling weaker. If you cry more you will be simply exhausted and nothing else. Stop.

Always stop when you feel that the energy is being lost, not regained.

If catharsis is real, necessary, then through catharsis you will feel unburdened, you will feel light, you will feel as if you can fly; but if you go on doing it more and more, thinking that more will be more helpful, then soon you will find that you are simply exhausted, dead, you cannot move.

One has to watch it. There cannot be a fixed rule for everybody because everybody's body has a different quality, different energy, different quantity of energy; one has to watch oneself.

If you are sleeping less than necessary then the whole day you will feel sleepy. If you are sleeping more than necessary then also, the whole day you will feel dull, not sleepy but dull. There is an exact moment; if you get up at that moment you will feel fresh the whole day - neither sleepy nor dull. And you have to search out that moment for yourself because nobody else's moment will do.

That's how all scriptures become useless. If somewhere it is said: Get up early in the morning at five o'clock, it may have suited the man who has written this, it may not suit you. And then you can get up at five, and suffer. And then you will think, I am a sinner; because of past karmas this is happening, otherwise my Master would not have said five - the exact time.

In Vinoba's ashram they get up at three o'clock. Many suffer. Then they sleep the whole day, or if they are not allowed to sleep they feel sleepy, they cannot be conscious, they move as if fast asleep, somnambulists.

It suits Vinoba. It does not mean it is going to suit everybody. It suits him because his food is such, more sleep is not needed. He takes only curd, he almost lives on curd. Even milk needs to be digested, curd is almost digested. Milk first goes in the body and becomes curd, and then - curd is almost a digested food.

And he eats very little because he has ulcers, chronic ulcers, so it suits him. But his followers also take curd; if they don't have ulcers - they will have. Foolish. They will simply create more acidity in their stomachs. And then he gets up at three o'clock because he cannot sleep more than that. They all get up at three o'clock. Then the whole ashram feels sleepy the whole day.... I have been there, I have seen those people's faces - somnambulists, as if in hypnosis.

How can they become more alert and aware and how can they meditate? Find out your own rhythm - everybody has his own rhythm, and your rhythm is as different as your fingerprints. Just as your thumbprint is different from everyone else's in the world, in exactly the same way everything is unique with every individual - you have your own rhythm about everything.

I have worked on many people, and this has been my understanding: everyone is so different that no fixed rule can be applied. Only flexible understanding, that's all.

And you have to find your own rhythm. About catharsis also, try to find your own rhythm. This should be the criterion: if catharsis is exhausting, then you are overdoing it. if it is not overdone you will feel very very beautiful, light, after it - as if gravitation is no longer functioning. You will walk as if you are dancing, your step will have a dance to it - and that is a feeling you have to find out. If you work well, alert, within three months you can find every rhythm about yourself: when you should go to sleep, when you should get up... you have to create your own yoga.

Don't follow anybody else's rhythm, otherwise you will be in difficulty. And you will never be healthy.

Question 5:

If you can solve your own, that is already too much. Please never try to solve anybody else's problem; you will create a mess. You have not solved your own. Never do that. The mind has a tendency and a temptation to do it.

You ask: What is the relationship between love and responsibility? No relationship, because love IS responsibility. But the word has to be understood well - what it means.

I insist on the root meaning of the word. Responsibility means: ability to respond. It does not mean a duty.

Responsibility - go to the root meaning of the word: it means to be responsive. Love is a response!

When the other calls, you are ready. When the other invites, you enter the other. When the other is not inviting, you don't interfere, you don't trespass. When the other sings, you sing in response.

When the other gives you her or his hand, you take it with deep response.

Responsibility means openness, readiness, to respond. Somebody is calling and you don't respond, you remain closed. Somebody wants to love you but you don't help, you don't co-operate; rather, you create barriers. If this is the thing you are doing - and the majority of lovers go on doing this - when the other calls you don't respond, then when you call the other does not respond. Because when the other calls you see that this would be a good ego enhancing thing - not to respond. Then you feel your own master: nobody can push you, and nobody can pull you into something which you were not going into already; you don't follow anybody.

Comes your beloved - and she is happy, and she would like to be in a deep silence with you, but you remain closed. Then when YOU call, there is no answer. Have you seen birds calling each other? - that is responsibility. A cuckoo calls; there is silence; and then another cuckoo responds.

By their sounds, by their song, they answer. They may be far away in farther away trees, then they start flying closer; they have responded. By and by they come to the same tree, then they are sitting together, loving.

When the other's being calls READY! - be ready; respond with your totality. Don't be a miser - that is the meaning of responsibility.

But in your sense love has no responsibility. The word has been corrupted, destroyed, poisoned.

A mother says to the child, I am your mother, you have to be responsible for me. A husband says, I am your husband, and I work hard for you. You have to be responsible for me. A father says to the son, Don't be irresponsible! Whenever you do something always think of me. This is not responsibility, you have corrupted a beautiful word. It has become ugly. Responsibility has become almost synonymous with duty. And duty is an ugly word.

Love is beautiful; if you love your mother - you love, but it cannot be a duty. If it is duty it is better not to love, because duty is not going to satisfy her. And if you are doing your duty because she is your mother and she has given birth to you, what can you do? - you have to take care. When she is ill you have to sit by her side - then all the time, if it is a duty, your mind is against her, you are feeling suffocated, you are feeling burdened, in a bondage, you would like to rebel and revolt. And if this mother dies, you may not say so to anybody, but you will feel relief.

What type of responsibility is this - when the mother dies and the son feels a deep relief? Of course he cries and weeps - of course; and it is not that he is showing others that he is crying and weeping - in fact, if you had loved your mother there may have been no tears, but you have not loved your mother, now the opportunity is lost. You never loved your mother and now she is gone! Hence the tears, the so much weeping and crying - it is pathological, it is not healthy. If you had really loved your mother then what is there to weep and cry about? She is GONE!

A deep silence surrounds you. In that deep silence you start understanding death, you become aware of your own death. When your mother dies - or your father dies - it is an indication that you will have to die. Then you become involved with death. You try to understand it.

While she was alive she helped you to understand life. Now she is gone, she has opened another door - the door of death, to look into: because she has gone and you will have to follow.

If you have loved a person, when the person is gone you don't feel relief - and you don't cry, and you don't weep. In deep silence you accept the fact, the helplessness of it - and the love continues, because love does not end with the body, love does not end with the mind, love goes on flowing.

No, don't ask what the relationship between love and responsibility is - there is none. When there is no love, the question of responsibility comes in. When there is no love, you start talking about duty.

When there is love, love itself is responsibility.

And, does loving another person mean trying to solve their problems as well as your own? No.

Never try. That is trespassing. Accept the person as he is with all his problems - that is love.

If he asks you, share your understanding, but don't try to change him.

Very difficult; because the mind is a manipulator. In the name of good, in the name of doing good, it tries to manipulate; it is a politician. A wife says, Because you are smoking I will have to fight with you; you have to change your smoking, this is not good, you are destroying your health - and I have seen that a nagging wife destroys health more than any smoking. And the wife goes on nagging, and she says, It is because of your health - I love you. And for thirty years she has been nagging.

Now they have been experimenting on nagging; and a very rare phenomenon has been revealed.

They have tried it on the food that you eat: bread, butter, vegetables, fruit juice; they have put the fruit juice and the other food on a tray and the wife is nagging and screaming: it destroys the juice - on the tray! The juice becomes toxic, poisonous. So just think what will be happening in the stomach, because on the tray everything is still non organic, dead in a way. The juice in a glass is destroyed, so what will be happening to the juice in the stomach? Because then it has become part of your life stream, it is more alive.

Nagging destroys life, health - and your wife is nagging for your health because you are smoking. If she really loves you how can she nag? Impossible. How can she scream? She will simply love you, and she will love you so much and so deeply that the need for smoking will disappear.

In fact, people smoke because they have not really been deeply kissed. If they are deeply kissed, with tremendous love flowing, smoking will disappear.

People are smoking because their mothers have not given them their breast as totally as it should be given. Reluctantly the breast was given to them, very reluctantly. An unfulfilled desire has remained in the mind; now they are fulfilling that desire by smoking.

Smoking is very symbolic. The cigarette functions as a nipple. And the hot smoke flowing within functions as hot milk flowing from the mother's nipple. If all over the world mothers love their children there will be no need for smoking - it will simply disappear. It is a symptom, it is not a disease.

Mothers should learn - and nothing else can stop it!

Now in America they have decided, the Congress has decided, on every package of cigarettes should be written: The surgeon general has decided that smoking is harmful to health. Nothing has happened. Now it is written on the packet it makes no difference. On the contrary, the sale of cigarettes has gone higher. Because people are suicidal, they want to destroy themselves. So cigarettes can destroy? Okay, let them destroy. Their life has nothing worth preserving. So what are you saying, that it is harmful? People are suicidal. They are seeking something harmful to do to themselves. Because nobody accepts them, and they themselves don't accept themselves.

If you love a person you accept the total person. With all the defects. Because those defects are a part of the person. But your love changes - remember this: Love never tries to change, but it changes tremendously. If you can love that will bring a revolution, and it brings the revolution so silently that even the footsteps are not heard. Nobody ever becomes alert to what is happening - everything happens so silently, as the buds open and flower and no noise is heard. Just like that.

And never try to change a person you love, because the very effort to change says that you love half, and the other half of the person is not accepted - that is the meaning of trying to change, that you say: I love you but I don't love your nose. I love you, but I don't love your face. One very fat girl said to me that only one boy loves her, and he says, I love your soul but not your body.

But all lovers go on saying such things: that I love you but I don't - I CAN'T love your smoking. I hate it! But that seems a rejection. And for the lover smoking is part of his being. He cannot help it. It is the way he is. Suddenly he shrinks, he is not accepted. You have poisoned a very beautiful thing like love for a very non essential thing like smoking. If you love, you simply love. If love brings change, it is okay. If it doesn't bring change - that is also okay.

Question 6:

Yes it feels so. Love feels more illusory than hate because in love you have to drop the ego, and in hate the ego is strengthened. That's why people love less and hate more. Even the person they love - they find something to hate in him.

You hate ninety-nine per cent, and one per cent you love. And even that one per cent looks dreamlike because when the ego disappears in certain moments, you are not there. When the ego comes back the ego cannot remember exactly what happened, because it was not there; it looks like a dream, as if it never happened, you simply dreamed about it.

Ego has no memory of love experience. If you are really in love, for that single moment an ecstasy happens; the ego is not there. Boundaries merge, mingle, meet, disappear into each other.

After the experience when the ego is back, again boundaries have come, you are separate from the lover, the experience seems to be as if you have seen it in a film, read it in a novel - or, really it HAPPENED? The ego was not a witness to it.

It is just as in the morning, you feel the night was good, you slept well, but if somebody insists, How do you know, because you were so fast asleep? you shrug your shoulders, you yourself become a little hesitant. You say, Yes you are right, just a feeling has remained. Because in sleep, deep sleep, ego disappears.

That is why Patanjali says in his yoga sutras that samadhi and sleep have one thing in common, and that is the disappearance of the ego. Love and samadhi also have one thing in common - the disappearance of the ego. Ego is so identified with you that without it you cannot function, so whenever ego disappears then - everything seems to be illusory. Hate seems to be more real, fighting seems to be more of a challenge. This is my observation: that many people love just to fight. And people get interested in love affairs if there is some challenge, otherwise not.

There are women who will fall in love only with somebody else's husband, never with a bachelor, because then there is no fight. No challenge. There are men who are always looking at others' wives but are not interested in unmarried women, not interested. Because unless the triangle is there the story seems to be meaningless. You cannot make a film without a triangle, you cannot write a novel without a triangle. Just twos - the whole thing seems to be a little boring. The third gives challenge, energy, and then you are alert and fighting.

Even in love you are seeking hate and fight and war and conflict, because ego feeds on conflict. So hate seems to be more real.

That's why wherever there is war in the world: see people's faces - they look more radiant, their walk has a different quality, they move fast, they look very interested. In the morning, just at BRAHMAMUHURT, they get up and enquire for the newspaper, and everywhere people are talking, and - it's as if something is happening.

When there is no war they become dull. Life becomes a routine.

Hate seems to be more real. And this should not be so. If you are alert just otherwise will be the case: hate will become unreal, love will become real, because the reality can be known only when the ego disappears. Through the ego reality cannot be known: that is the barrier to reality.

Question 7:

Don't judge the judge.

Question 8:

This has been asked by Dominique, a French visitor. As far as I know about Westerners, it is better to take a bath. After the bath you can do the meditation also. But first take the bath, the body comes first. Clean the body, because meditation is also a cleaning, a deeper cleaning of being. And if you are not cleaning the body, you will not be interested in cleaning the soul. Clean the body, that is the beginning, clean the temple, only then can you give the bath to the god - inside the shrine.

Question 9:

No, not at all. But don't be afraid and worried. Nobody needs to deserve, it is a gift of the divine, it is a PRASAD, a grace. In fact, the more you think you deserve, the less is the possibility of it happening. The more you feel you don't deserve, the more is the possibility for it to happen.

Allow it to happen, there is no question of deserving it. Only allow it to happen.

Question 10:

Is there any intellectual meaning also' There is none. I am talking heart to the heart, being to the being. Don't lose your path in the forest of intellectuality, otherwise you will listen to something but that will not be what I am saying. If you want to listen to me, listen from the heart - in fact from the navel, from the belly. Forget the head, so that the being can commune with the being. Only then the meaning will be mine. If you listen through the intellect the meaning will be given by you. You will have heard it, but I will not have said it.

The last question is from Bodhidharma:

Question 11:

First thing: this is good to feel that the last step should come from the guru. But the last step never comes from the guru. The last step one has to travel alone without the guru. Because if in the last step also the guru remains with you, it i8 impossible for God to happen. You should be left alone, totally alone.

So in the last step the guru by and by disappears. You are left alone. You have to take that courage and jump. Or, you have to be courageous to remain open so that God can jump. But in the last moment the guru is not there.

Up to the last moment he can help you. He prepares you for the last step, but in the last step he cannot be there because then his own presence will be a disturbance.

And when you achieve to the last, then from your very heart you will thank, then you will bow in gratefulness to your guru, because he withdrew himself in the last moment.

The guru helps you so that everything else drops - only the guru remains. Then, the guru withdraws himself. Then you are alone. In that total aloneness God happens. There is no other way.

The guru would like to help you but it cannot be done. It is simply not the way things happen.