Bring the other two Buddhas also!

Question 1:

Whenever you are with yourself you ARE with me, and there is no other way to be with me. So don't create a duality between you and me. Just try to be with yourself, just try to be your withinness, and you are with me!

Language is not capable of saying anything about a non-dual reality. Whatsoever is said in language is bound to be dual. And when you are with me neither you are nor I am. Whenever you are really YOUR BEING you are a nobody, a vast emptiness a whole sky with no boundaries. And then you are not only with yourself you are with the trees, with the clouds, with the mountains, with the sands and with the seas... when you are with yourself you become the whole.

That is the meaning of the Socratic insistence: Know thyself. If you can know yourself you have know all that can be known - or that which is worth knowing. If you miss yourself you can know much, but all that knowledge is just rubbish. It may hide your ignorance, it cannot dispel it. It may make you knowledgeable but it will not make you understanding, it will not open the inner eye of knowing. You will remain a head person, top heavy, in deep anguish and anxiety.

If you want to be with me, to be with me is not the way. If you want to be with me, to be with yourself is the way. And that is the insistence of all the Buddhas: Know thyself and you will know me, because in knowing yourself you have known all.

But if you try to be with me you will create a duality, and a conflict. Then being with me will become a new sort of attachment. That won't help you, that will really harm you and hinder you. Then I will not be helping you towards transcendence. Rather on the contrary I will become a rock hanging around your neck. You will not achieve through me then, you will be drowned.

But I will not be at fault; that will be your own fault. That has happened to millions of people all over the earth in all the centuries. A Jesus comes and people start being attached to him. The whole point is lost. A Buddha comes and people start their journey to know the Buddha and they become so much obsessed with it that they forget that their own Buddha is just inside themselves. He is not outside.

And the way to know the outside Buddha is to know the inside Buddha. When you are completely within yourself you have known all Christs, all Buddhas, all the Masters that have ever existed, and also all those which will ever exist, because you become one with the whole. Knowing oneself one knows the whole.

The temptation is strong to be attached to a Master, to cling to a Master, to become a shadow; but that won't help, that will be suicidal.

Don't cling to me, I am here to make you free. I am here to help you to be completely, authentically yourself.

If you have accepted me as your Master then you have to understand what I am saying. If you have accepted me as your Master then the only way for you is to know yourself.

Forget about me, move withinwards. One day when you will be standing in your own total glory, in the magnificence of your inner being, in the inner light - there you wi]l find me. Not as a separate being, not as an object, but as the very innermost core of your own self.

It is reported: Buddha was dying, and Anand started weeping and crying - his oldest disciple, and the most clinging one; for forty years he had been with Buddha and he had not attained, he had not realized himself yet; he loved Buddha too much. If you love too much... remember always, anything that is too much becomes part of the mind; only balance is transcending mind; anything that is too much becomes part of the mind; He loved Buddha too much, the love was not a freedom, it had become a bondage - anything of the too much is a bondage - and now that Buddha is dying his whole life is ruined. Anand cries and weeps like a small child whose mother is dying.

And Buddha stops him and says: What, Anand, are you doing? He looks at Buddha with tear-filled eyes and says: Now where will I see you? Where will I seek you? And Buddha laughed and he said: That has been my whole teaching! For forty years that is what I have been telling you, that whenever you want to see me, look within! APPA DEEPO BHAVA; be a light unto yourself. THERE, inside you, you will find me.

If you cling to the outside, it may be a Buddha, a Jesus, but you cling to the world, because the outside is the world. You own innermost interior is the transcendental.

Move withinwards and you come closer to me. Come closer to me and you go far from yourself. Try to understand this paradox: If you try to come closer to me you will go further from yourself, and

how can you come close to me if you are going further from yourself? Come closer to yourself and you come closer to me, because how is the otherwise possible?

When you come closer to yourself you come closer to me because in the innermost being the centre is one. On the periphery we differ; on the periphery I am an individual, you are an individual; the move withinwards brings these peripheral points closer and closer and closer - and when you exactly reach to the centre of your being there is no duality. The two have disappeared. The TWONESS has disappeared.

Question 2:

Bauls have been very extraordinary people. The word BAUL means MAD. Bauls were mad mystics.

They have talked in all sorts of paradoxes; but very beautiful. They are not philosophers, they are mad poets. They are not proposing any logical thing, rather on the contrary 'they are trying to show you something through paradox.

This Baul, Panchuchand, is one of the greatest Bauls. He says: Strike your Master hard and worship in faith. This is what I was saying just now. If you want to come closer to me MOVE CLOSER TO YOURSELF. Forget me completely. Just remember your own being - and you will be moving towards me.

This Baul says: Strike your Master hard - destroy the duality of the Master and the disciple. Drop the Master completely Forget about him. STRIKE YOUR MASTER HARD AND WORSHIP IN FAITH.

This is the paradox.

And you can strike your Master hard only when you have really worshipped him in faith. If you really understand me only then will you drop your clinging to me. If you have really loved me you will not cling. Then whenever I come in your way - strike me hard.

That's what Zen Masters have been saying to their disciples: If you meet Buddha on the way - kill him immediately! And they loved Buddha tremendously.

It happened, A Zen Master, Ikkyu, was staying in a temple. The night was very cold and he had no blankets - he was a beggar, and the whole temple was so cold - it was made of stones: stone coldness. In the night he couldn't sleep, so he went in, into the shrine, found a Buddha, a wooden Buddha; burnt a fire with the Buddha; and enjoyed and delighted in the fire.

The sound of fire, the movement of this Ikkyu - and the priest became awake. Seeing the fire inside the temple he came running and when he saw that one of the Buddhas was missing (there were

three Buddhas in the shrine) and he looked at the fire - it was almost burnt - of course he was MAD; and he said to Ikkyu: What are you doing? Are you mad? You have burnt my Buddha! You have committed the greatest sin that a man can commit, and we were thinking that you are an enlightened man!

The fire was going down now; Ikkyu started to poke in the ashes.

The priest asked: What are you doing? He said: I am trying to find the bones of the Buddha so that they can be preserved. The priest started laughing, seeing the whole stupidity. He said: This is a wooden Buddha, there are no bones. You are really mad! Ikkyu said: Then bring the other two Buddhas also; the night is long and very cold.

And in the morning - of course he was thrown out in the night, out of the temple, because he would burn the whole temple - in the morning when the priest came out of the temple Ikkyu was sitting just near the milestone on the road, and worshipping it.

The priest could not contain his curiosity. He asked: Now what are you doing, madman? Ikkyu said:

I am worshipping the Buddha and every day in the morning that is my first thing to do.

This is the contradiction. But if you can SEE it is not a contradiction at all, it is a simple fact. A fact, the deepest fact of all mysticism.

STRIKE YOUR MASTER HARD AND WORSHIP IN FAITH. Love your Master so deeply that there is no clinging - you can kill, you can drop, the other disappears, the other is absorbed, only you in your crystal purity remain. But this is possible only if total faith is possible.

Of course this Ikkyu must have loved Buddha tremendously, otherwise how is it possible to burn Buddha? How is it conceivable? He must have loved so totally that there was NO PROBLEM. He could burn the wooden Buddha.

Buddha died. Mahakashyap, one of his greatest disciples, did not utter a single word: as if nothing had happened. He remained sitting under his tree. People were running here and there, there was much turmoil - Buddha has said he is leaving today! But this Mahakashyap never moved from his tree.

Many people said: Mahakashyap, what are you doing? This is the last day! Buddha is leaving the body! It is said that he laughed and said: But who told you that he ever had a body? I know him. He has never been in the body. So what is the point of all this fuss? Let him leave it! He has never been in it. It is said that Mahakashyap told his disciples that Buddha was never born, never died, he never walked on the earth, he never uttered a single word; and every day in the morning Mahakashyap was worshipping the feet of Buddha.

Difficult to understand, because you can understand hate which becomes destructive, you can understand love which becomes attachment, you cannot understand total love which is both, which destroys the non-essential and creates the essential.

IF YOU WISH TO BE DEVOTED TO GOD, LIVE UNATTACHED... Very beautiful. But remember, to be unattached is not to renounce the world. If you renounce the world you are attached to the world;

otherwise why should you renounce it? What is the point in renouncing it if you are not attached to it?

Only attachment renounces. If you are really non-attached there is no question of any renunciation.

IF YOU WISH TO BE DEVOTED TO GOD, LIVE UNATTACHED, HOMELESS, IN SPITE OF A HOMESTEAD AND YOUR LIFE WITH A GIRL. Live in the house, be a householder: with your woman, your children - but remain unattached; because when you leave woman and children and house and you escape to the forest, you simply show that you were too much attached to all these things - otherwise why should you bother? And if you were attached how can attachment disappear by just going to the forest? It may become even greater because whenever things are not there you feel their need more.

When you are hungry, you become food-obsessed. When you are on a fast you think only of food and nothing else. When you try to escape from your woman you will be sex-obsessed; you will think only of sex and nothing else.

If you wish to be devoted to God, if you really want to know the truth - live unattached, but LIVE.

Unattachment should be a way of life, not a renunciation. Live unattached, but emphasis is on being in the world - live!

Don't try to commit a slow suicide - LIVE it through and through! Live unattached, homeless, in spite of the home; live in the home but homeless. Live with the family but as if alone. Move with the crowd but never become part of the crowd. Be in the marketplace but never lose your inner meditativeness.

DO NOT LISTEN TO YOUR HEAD THAT FOREVER MISLEADS. Why does the head mislead forever? In fact the head is not yours, that's why it misleads. The head is a trick played by the society upon you. The head is like a mechanism attached to you by the society, imposed on you by the society.

You bring a heart with you, you don't bring the head with you - it is conditioned and trained by the society.

Have you ever thought that there is any possibility of a heart being a Mohammedan or being a Christian or a Parsee or a Hindu? The heart is simply the heart, but the head is a Hindu, head is Christian, head is a Mohammedan. The heart is not Indian nor Chinese nor American, it is simply human. But the head is Indian, Chinese, American...

The head belongs to the world, the heart belongs to you. The head is trained by the world, it is the world put within you. That's why it misleads. It always says things which go against the innermost flow. It goes on diverting your energies, diverting your energies according to the society in which you have been brought up. The heart is natural, the head is social. The head comes from the crowd, the heart comes from the universe.

DO NOT LISTEN TO YOUR HEAD THAT FOREVER MISLEADS. DO NOT ONLY THINK BUT CHAIN YOUR MASTER HAND AND FOOT. CUT OUT A CANE OF LOVE AND FLOG HIM UNTIL HE IS BLUE - but it is a cane of LOVE - AND FLOG HIM UNTIL HE IS BLUE. THE MASTER MUST ETERNALLY BOW AT THE FEET OF THE DISCIPLE...

Absurd sayings, but very beautiful. I have told you many times: it happened that Buddha, in a past life, when he was not a Buddha, heard about a man who had become enlightened. He went to see him. He touched his feet. Then suddenly he was surprised because that enlightened man, that Buddha, touched Buddha's feet. Buddha said: What are you doing? I am an unenlightened ignorant man, a sinner - and you, touching my feet? I should touch your feet - that's okay, but why are you touching my feet?

That enlightened man started laughing and he said: You may not be knowing it but you are also a Buddha. Sooner or later you will become a Buddha. You may not be able to see it but I can see it.

Once you have become a Buddha you know the Buddhahood of the whole of existence. Then you never meet anything which is not part of Buddhahood, enlightenment. You look at a stone and you see a Buddha hidden there. In the greatest sinner you see the fulfilment of the greatest sainthood. In the greatest of evil you see the good sprouting. Once you are alert, aware, enlightened, the quality of the whole existence changes for you.

THE MASTER MUST ETERNALLY BOW AT THE FEET OF THE DISCIPLE... Ordinarily the disciple bows at the feet of the Master - but that is in the visible world which can be seen by the eyes; in the invisible the Master is bowing at the feet of the disciple.

When Jesus was leaving his disciples, the last night, when he was caught - and the next day he was murdered - he bowed down and touched the feet of all his apostles; even the feet of Judas he washed and kissed. And they were all surprised: This has never happened, what is he doing? He is bowing down to the future Buddhas. Even a Judas some day or other will become a Buddha, a Christ.

And time does not matter much. Time matters only to the mind, but to a man who has gone beyond mind, time matters nothing. Somebody has become enlightened today, somebody will become enlightened tomorrow, somebody else the day after tomorrow - but it doesn't matter to one who has attained to a no-mindness. It is eternity.

Somebody asked Jesus: Why are you touching our feet? What are you doing? And Jesus is reported to have said: So that you remember that the Master had touched the feet of the disciples; so that you don't become haughty so that you don't become proud so that you don't force people to touch your feet so that you remember that finally the Master has to just touch the feet of the disciple and has to bow down. Because in the disciple also the morning is hidden.

It may be a dark night still, but the darker the night the brighter the morning is going to be. It is just coming, it is just by the comer, you cannot see but the Master can see and he bows down to you - to the morning that is going to happen within you.

This Baul Panchuchand is really beautiful. Lao Tzu would have accepted him as a friend.

Question 3:

Fear is a negativity, an absence. This has to be understood very very deeply. If you miss there you will never be able to understand the nature of fear. It is like darkness. Darkness does not exist, it

only appears to be. In fact it is just an absence of light. Light exists; remove the light - there is darkness.

Darkness does not exist, you cannot remove darkness. Do whatsoever you want to do, you cannot remove darkness. You cannot bring it, you cannot throw it. If you have to do something with darkness, you will have to do something with light, because only something which has an existence can be related to. Put the light off, darkness is there; put the light on, darkness is not there - but you do something with LIGHT. You cannot do anything with darkness.

Fear is darkness. It is absence of love. You cannot do anything about it, and the more you do, the more you will become fearful because then the more you will find it impossible.

The problem will become more and more complicated. If you fight with darkness you will be defeated. You can bring a sword and try to kill the darkness: you will only be exhausted. And, finally, the mind will think: Darkness is so powerful, that's why I am defeated.

This is where logic goes wrong. It is absolutely logical that if you have been struggling with darkness and you could not defeat it, could not destroy it; it is absolutely logical to come then to the conclusion that darkness is very very powerful.I am impotent before it. But the reality is just the opposite. You are not impotent, darkness is impotent. In fact darkness is not there - that's why you could not defeat it. How can you defeat something which is not?

Don't fight with the fear otherwise you will become more and more afraid: and a new fear will enter into your being, that is: fear of fear, which is very dangerous. In the first place fear is absence and in the second place the fear of fear is the fear of the absence of absence. Then you go into a madness.

You have taken a wrong step. Fear is nothing but absence of love. Do something with love, forget about fear. If you love well, fear disappears. If you love deeply, fear is not found.

Whenever you have been in love with someone, ever for a single moment, was there any fear? It has never been found in any relationship - if even for a single moment two persons are in deep love and a meeting happens, they are tuned to each other, in that moment fear has never been found.

Just as if the light is on and darkness has not been found There is the secret key: Love more.

If you feel there is fear in your being - love more. Be courageous in love, take courage. Be adventurous in love, love more, and love unconditionally, because the more you love the less will be the fear.

And when I say LOVE I mean all the four layers of love: from sex to samadhi.

Love deeply.

If you love deeply in a sexual relationship much fear will disappear from the body. If your body trembles in fear, it is the fear of sex; you have not been in a deep sexual relationship. Your body trembles, your body is not at ease, at home.

Love deeply - a sexual orgasm will dispel all fear out of the body. When I say it will dispel all fear I don't mean that you will become brave because brave people are nothing but cowards upside down.

When I say all fear will disappear I mean there will be no cowardice and no bravery. Those are two aspects of fear.

Look at your brave people: you will find that deep inside they are afraid, they have created just an armour around them. Bravery is not fearlessness, it is fear well-protected, well-defended, armoured.

When fear disappears you become fearless. And a fearless person is one who never creates fear in anybody, and who never allows anybody to create fear in him.

Deep sexual orgasm gives body at-homeness. A very very deep health happens in the body because the body feels whole.

Then the second step is love. Love people - unconditionally. If you have some conditions in the mind then you will never be able to love - those conditions will become barriers. Because love is beneficial to you why bother about conditions? It is so beneficial, it is such a deep well-being that - love unconditionally; don't ask anything in return. If you can come to understand that just by loving people you grow in fearlessness, you will love! For the sheer joy of it!

Ordinarily people love only when their conditions are fulfilled. They say: You should be like this - only then will I love. A mother says to the child: I'll love you only if you behave. A wife says to the husband: You have to be THIS way, only then can I love you. Everybody creates conditions; love disappears.

Love is an infinite sky! You cannot force it into narrow spaces: conditioned, limited.

If you bring fresh air into your house and close it from everywhere - all the windows closed, all the doors closed - soon it becomes stale. Whenever love happens it is a part of freedom; then soon you bring that fresh air into your house - and everything goes stale, dirty.

This is a deep problem for the whole humanity. It has been a problem. When you fall in love everything looks beautiful, because in those moments you don't put conditions. Two persons move near each other unconditionally. Once they have settled, once they have started taking each other for granted, then conditions are being imposed: You should be like this, you should behave like that - only then will I love: as if love is a bargain.

You don't love out of your fullness of heart, you are bargaining. You want to force the other person to do something for you, only then will you love. Otherwise you will betray your love. Now you are using your love as a punishment, or as an enforcement. But you are not loving. Either you are trying to withhold your love or you are giving your love but in both cases love in itself is not the end; something else is.

If you are a husband then you bring ornaments to the wife - she is happy, she dings to you, kisses you; but when you don't bring anything to the house there is a distance; she does not cling, she does not come near to you.

When you do such things you are forgetting that when you love it is beneficial to you, not only to others. In the first place love helps those who love, in the second place it helps those who are being loved.

And as I see it, people come to me, they always say: The other is not loving me. Nobody comes and says: I am not loving the other. Love has become a demand - the other is not loving me! Forget about the other! Love is such a beautiful phenomenon, if you love you will enjoy.

And the more you love, the more you become loveable. The less you love and the more you demand that others should love you, the less and less you are loveable, the more and more you become closed, confined to your ego. And you become touchy. Even if somebody approaches you to love you, you become afraid, because in every love there is a possibility of rejection, withdrawal.

Nobody loves you - this has become an ingrained thought within you: how is this man trying to change your mind? He is trying to love you? - Must be something false; isn't he trying to deceive you? Must be a cunning man, tricky. You protect yourself. You don't allow anybody to love you and you don't love others. Then there is fear. Then you are alone in the world, so alone, so lonely, not connected.

What is fear then? Fear is a feeling of no contact with existence Let this be the definition of fear: a state of no contact with existence is fear. You are left alone, a child crying in the house, the mother and father and the whole family gone to the theatre. The child cries and weeps in his cradle. Left alone with no contact, nobody to protect, nobody to give solace, nobody to love; a loneliness, a vast loneliness all around. This is the state of fear.

This comes up because you are brought up in such a way that you don't allow love to happen. Whole of humanity has been trained for other things, not for love.

To kill, we have been trained: and armies exist. Years of training to kill! To calculate, we have been trained: colleges, universities exist. Years of training just to calculate so that nobody can deceive you and you can deceive others. But nowhere is there any opportunity available where you are allowed to love - and love in freedom.

In fact, not only that, the society hinders every effort to love. Parents don't like their children to fall in love. No father likes it, no mother likes it; whatsoever their pretensions no father, no mother likes their children to fall in love. They like arranged marriage.

Why? Because once a young man falls in love with a woman or a girl, he is moving away from the family, he is creating a new unit of family, his own family.He is against the old family of course, he is rebellious, he is saying: Now I am going away, I will create my own home. And he chooses his own woman; the father has nothing to do with it, the mother has nothing to do with it; they seem completely cut off.

No, they would like to arrange it: You create a home, but let us arrange it. So we have some say in it. And don't fall in love - because when you fall in love the love becomes the whole world. If it is an arranged marriage it is just a social affair, you are not in love, your wife is not your whole world, your husband is not your whole world.

So wherever arranged marriage continues the family continues. And wherever love-marriage has come into being the family is disappearing.

In the West the family is disappearing. Now you can see the whole logic of why there is arranged marriage: the family wants to exist. If you are destroyed, if your very possibility of love is destroyed that is not the point; you have to be sacrificed for the family. If a marriage is arranged then a joint family exists. Then in a family a hundred persons can live - if marriage is arranged.

But if some boy falls in love or some girl falls in love then they become a world unto themselves.

They want to move alone, they want their privacy They don't want a hundred persons around: uncles and uncles' uncles and cousins' cousins and... they don't want this whole market around; they would like to have their own private world. This whole thing seems to be disturbing.

Family is against love. You must have heard that family is the source of love, but I tell you family is against love. Family has existed by killing love, it has not allowed love to happen.

The society does not allow love because if a person is really in deep love he cannot be manipulated.

You cannot send him to war; he will say: I am so happy! Where are you sending me? And why should I go and kill strangers who may be happy in their home? And we have no conflict, no clash of interests...

If the young generation. moves deeper and deeper in love, wars will disappear because you will not be able to find enough mad people to go to the war. If you love, you have tasted something of life; you would not like death and killing people. When you don't love you have not tasted something of life; you love death.

Fear kills, wants to kill. Fear is destructive, love is a creative energy. When you love you would like to create - you may like to sing a song, or paint, or create poetry, but you would not take a bayonet, or an atom bomb, and go rushing off madly to kill people who are absolutely unknown to you, who have done nothing; who are as unknown to you as you are unknown to them.

The world will drop wars only when love enters into the world again. Politicians don't want you to love, the society does not want you to love, the family doesn't allow you to love: they all want to control your love energy because that is the only energy there is. That's why there is fear.

If you understand me well drop all fears and love more and love unconditionlly - and don't think that you are doing something for the other when you love, you are doing something for yourself. When you love it is beneficial to you. So don't wait; don't say that when others love, you will love - that is not the point at all.

Be selfish. Love is selfish. Love people - you will be fulfilled through it, you will be getting more and more blessedness through it.

And when love goes deeper fear disappears; love is the light, fear is darkness.

And then there is the third stage of love - prayer. Churches, religions, organized sects - they teach you to pray. But in fact they hinder you from praying because prayer is a spontaneous phenomenon, it cannot be taught. If you have been taught a prayer in your childhood you have been debarred from a beautiful experience that may have happened. Prayer is a spontaneous phenomenon.

I must tell you one story I love. Leo Tolstoy has written a small story: In a certain part of old Russia there was a lake, and it became famous because of three saints. The whole country became interested. Thousands of people were going and journeying to the lake to see those three saints.

The arch-priest of the country became afraid: What is happening? He had not heard these 'saints' and they had not been certified by the church; who has made them saints?

This Christianity has been doing one of the most fooish things; they give certificates: This man is a saint. As if you can make a man a saint by certifying him!

But the people were mad, and much news was coming that miracles were happening, so the priest had to go and see what the matter was.

He went in a boat to the island where those three poor people lived; they were simply poor people, but very happy - because there is only one poverty, and that poverty is a heart which cannot love.

They were poor, but they were rich: the richest you could ever find; they were happy sitting under a tree laughing, enjoying, delighting.

Seeing the priest they bowed down, and the priest said: What are you doing here? There are rumours that you are great saints. Do you know how to pray? - because seeing these three persons the priest could immediately sense that they were completly uneducated; a little idiotic, Lao Tzuan.

Happy but foolish.

So they looked at each other and they said: Sorry sir, we don't know the right prayer authorized by the church because we are ignorant. But we have created one prayer of our own - it is homemade.

If you won't feel offended we can show it to you.

So the priest said: Yes, show it to me, what prayer you are doing. So they said: We tried and thought and thought - but we are not great thinkers, we are foolish people, ignorant villagers; then we decided upon a simple prayer. In Christianity God is thought of as a trinity, three: God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. And we are also three. So we decided on a prayer: You are three, we are three, have mercy upon us. This is our prayer. We are three, you are also three, have mercy on us.

The priest was very very angry, almost enraged. He said: What nonsense! We have never heard any prayer like this. Stop it! This way you cannot be saints. You are simply stupid. They fell at his feet and they said: You teach us the real, the authentic prayer.

So he told them the authorized version of the prayer of the Russian Church. It was long, complicated; big words, bombastic, those three persons looked at each other - it seemed impossible, the door of heaven was closed for them.

They said: You please tell us once more, because it is long, and we are uneducated. He said it again. They said: Once more sir, because we will forget, and something will go wrong. So again he told it. They thanked him heartily and he felt very good that he had done a good deed: brought three foolish people back to the church.

He sailed off in his boat - just in the middle of the lake he could not believe his eyes: those three persons, those foolish people, were coming running on the water. They said: Wait! Once more! We have forgotten! Now this was impossible to believe!

The priest fell at their feet and he said: Forgive me. You continue your Prayer.

The third love energy is prayer. Religions, organized churches, have destroyed it. They have given you readymade prayers. Prayer is a spontaneous feeling.

Remember this story when you pray. Let your prayer be a spontaneous phenomenon. If even your prayer cannot be spontaneous, then what will be? If even with God you have to be readymade then where will you be authentic and true and natural?

Say things that you would like to say. Talk to him as you would talk to a wise friend. But don't bring formalities in. A formal relationship is not a relationship at all. And you have become formal with God also. You miss all spontaneousness.

Bring love into prayer. Then you can talk! It is a beautiful thing - a dialogue with the universe.

But have you watched? If you are really spontaneous, people will think you arc mad. If you go to a tree and start talking, or to a flower, a rose, people will think you are mad. If you go to the church and talk to the cross or to the image, nobody will think you are mad, they will think you are religious.

You are talking to a stone in the temple and everybody thinks you are religious because this is the authorized form.

If you talk to a rose - which is more alive than any stone image, which is more divine than any stone image; if you talk to a tree - which is more deeply rooted in God than any cross, because no cross has roots, it is a dead thing that's why it kills; a tree is alive, with roots deep into the earth, branches high into the sky, connected with the whole, with the rays of the sun, with the stars - talk to the trees!

That can be a contact point with the divine, but if you talk that way people will think you are mad.

Spontaneousness is thought to be madness. Formalities are thought to be sanity. Just the opposite is the reality. When you go into a temple and you simply repeat some crammed prayer you are simply foolish. Have a heart-to-heart talk! And prayer is beautiful. You will start flowering through it.

Prayer is to be in love - to be in love with the whole. And sometimes you get angry with the whole and you don't talk; that?s beautiful. And you say: I will not talk, enough is enough, and you have not been listening to me! A beautiful gesture. Not dead. And sometimes you drop praying completely, because you go on praying and God is not listening.

It is a relationship with deep involvement in it. You get angry. Sometimes you feel very good, feel thankful, grateful; sometimes you feel put off; but let it be a LIVING relationship; then prayer is true.

If you just go on like a gramophone and repeat the same thing every day, you are not doing any prayer, it is not prayer.

I have heard about an advocate who was a very calculating man. Every night he would go to bed, look at the sky and say: Ditto. Just like the other days. And go to sleep. Only once he prayed - the

first time in his life - and then: Ditto. It was like a legal thing; what was the point in saying the same prayer again?

Whether you say ditto or you repeat the whole thing it is the same. Prayer should be a lived experience, a heart-to-heart dialogue. And soon, if it is hearty, you will feel that not only are you talking, but the response is there. Then prayer has come into its own, come of age. When you feel the response, that not only you are talking - if it is a monologue it is still not prayer - it becomes a dialogue, you not only speak, you listen.

And I tell you the whole existence is ready to respond. Once your heart is open the whole responds.

There is nothing like prayer. No love can be as beautiful as prayer. Just as no sex can be as beautiful as love no love can be as beautiful as prayer.

But then there is the fourth stage which I call meditation. There dialogue also ceases. Then you have a dialogue in silence. Words drop, because when the heart is really full you cannot speak.

When the heart is too overflowing only silence can be the medium. Then there is no other. You are one with the universe. You neither say anything nor listen to anything. You ARE with the one, with the universe, with the whole. A oneness. This is meditation.

These are the four stages of love, and on each stage there will be a disappearance of fear. If sex happens beautifully the body fear will disappear. The body will not be neurotic. Ordinarily - I have observed thousands of bodies - they are neurotic. Bodies gone mad. Not fulfilled. Not at home.

If love happens, fear will disappear from the mind. You will have a life of freedom, at ease, at- homeness. No fear will come, no nightmares.

If the prayer happens then fear completely disappears, because with prayer you become one - you start feeling a deep relationship with the whole. From the spirit, fear disappears; the fear of death disappears when you pray - never before it.

And when you meditate even fearlessness disappears. Fear disappears, fearlessness disappears.

Nothing remains. Or. only the nothing remains. A vast purity; virginity; innocence.

Question 4:

No, you are not. Nobody is. Nobody is meant to be anybody's keeper. You are here to be yourself.

Your only responsibility is towards yourself.

I would like you to be totally selfish because only in that is there a possibility that you may be helpful to others. Unless you are deeply self-centred, unless you are so selfish in your being that you are happy, celebrating, you will not be able to share it.

Humanity has been put on the wrong track by altruists, by people who say: Serve others, you are responsible for others. Nobody is responsible for anybody. The only responsibility is towards yourself. And if you are fulfilled in that responsibility you respond beautifully.

A really fulfilled husband will love his wife, because out of his fulfilment love flows. But if he thinks he has to fulfil responsibilities, he has a duty to care because he has got married to this woman, then he will be killing his woman, poisoning the woman, because this very attitude is poisonous. He will be dragging the weight, and with his every gesture he will be showing that he is not satisfied. With every gesture he will go on hinting to the woman: You are a heavy weight on me.

Your mother is old; if you have really a deeprooted centring within you you will love and serve her - not because this is your responsibility, no, but because this is how it happens to be. You enjoy serving the old woman. You love it! It is simple. You are not being a martyr, you are not trying to sacrifice yourself - remember always whenever you are a martyr you can never forgive the person for whom you have been a martyr. You will carry the wound, and you would like to take revenge.

But the whole world has been trained: the father has to fulfil his duties to the children, then those children never forget and never forgive the father.

Now one of the greatest insights that has come to Western psychology is that children never forgive their parents. This seems to be ridiculous because parents have been doing so much; but the very idea that 'I am doing so much' is a crippling thing, heavy. The father goes on saying: I am sacrificing for you. This is simply stupid. Nobody is sacrificing for anybody else.

If you love the children - you work, if you don't love - you don't work. It is better that the children should die than they should live a burdened life. If you love your wife - you love, and there is no question of any responsibility. If you don't love, be frank and be true. Don't love her. Somebody else may love her, why waste her life and your life?

Now in the West out of four marriages one marriage is absolutely broken in divorce. That means twenty-five per cent of marriages break up in divorce. Now psychoanalysts have been trying to do some research: what happens to the other three? They have come to feel that out of four, one breaks up in divorce, and out of four, two are unlived marriages: living together yet not together. Out of four, one breaks, two are continued; divorce is not given but the situation is of divorce - they live in divorce, not separate, not together. Only one they suspect is a marriage, only one out of four - and that too is SUSPECTED only, certainty is not there.

Why is this happening? The basic point has been missed. The basic point is a man can love others only when he loves himself. A man can share his feelings with others only when he has something to SHARE.

First be selfish, only then can you be unselfish. Be rooted and centred in your being, so overflowing that out of your overflowingness you share. Not that you are a martyr. Never become a sacrifice, otherwise you will never be able to forgive those people who forced you to become a sacrifice.

No, nobody is anybody's keeper. The only responsibility is towards yourself. This will look as if I am teaching selfishness. Yes, I am teaching it. If everybody in the world was selfish the world would be beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Just think - everybody trying to be happy, everybody trying to be celebrating, everybody trying to be silent, meditative, prayerful, loving - because these are the things which will make you happy; the world will be happy.

But here, nobody is trying to be happy himself. People are trying to make others happy. And if you are not happy how can you make others happy? You make them more unhappy. Public servants

who are trying to change others' lives so that they can become happy, are the most mischievous people in the world. Who are you to make anybody happy? If they want to be unhappy please let them be unhappy. At least that is their right! To be happy or unhappy is one's right. You keep to yourself.

You become unhappy if you want, you become happy if you want. Nobody wants to be unhappy and nobody will be unhappy if he looks to his own affairs, pays attention to his own affairs. A world absolutely selfish will be the best world possible.

That's why I am against communism and all socialistic tendencies. Because they kill the individual.

They sacrifice the individual for the society, for the state. They say: For the country you have to die.

For the religion you have to die. For the good of all you have to die - and they go on saying this to everybody, and everybody is dying - and for nobody!

And everybody is unhappy trying to make everybody else happy. It is not possible - you cannot make anybody happy. In fact you cannot make anybody unhappy either. The most that can be done, that which is humanly possible, is to be happy or unhappy. Decide that. That's all. And out of that, beautiful things start happening.

When your house is lighted, when you have a fragrance of happiness, suddenly your fragrance enters into others' lives, changes them, transforms them, without any mind on your part to transform them.

Question 5:

No, nobody has any mission to fulfil. Missionaries are dangerous people. They have done enough harm. You have to fulfil yourself. No mission.

Let God take care of others. You just fulfil your own being. Don't try to convert anybody. Don't try to be a do-gooder, and don't think that you have a mission and everybody else has to follow it.

That's how the whole world has been suffering for so many centuries. So many missionaries creating so much conflict; pushing and pulling people from here and there. Leave them in peace!

Nobody has any mission to fulfil - but ego always wants such things: that you have a mission to fulfil.

People come to me and they say: Why has God given birth to me? Very important people. God has given special work to them. And I ask them: Just go and ask the trees and the dogs and the cats:

they must also be asking - WHY has God given birth to us? Mi]lions and millions of animals are there with no mission.

In your body there are millions of germs - with no mission. If you put twenty-seven zeros on the figure five - that is the calculation of living cells in your body; and they are completely oblivious of you - that you exist. They live their own life, they move in the bloodstream, they enjoy, they love, they fall in love, they get married, they give birth to children, they fulfil their duties - they must be thinking they have some mission to fulfil

What are you in this vast universe? Not even a small cell.

But man is very egoistic. He cannot feel at ease just to be himself, he wants some great mission to be attached to his ego. No, I don't see any mission. The whole may have something but no individual has.

So the only thing you can do is to be yourself, blissfully yourself, and through that blissfulness you fulfil something. But it is not that you fulfil it, it is fulfilled through you; you become a vehicle to the whole. But it is not a mission. You should not look at it and you should not bother about it.

Be ordinary. Just the effort to be extraordinary is a sort of madness. Just be ordinary and you are divine. Try to become extraordinary and you are mad.

Question 6:

I don't think of the morrow at all, of what will happen tomorrow. People who will be here tomorrow - they will think about it. This moment is enough for me. And this is the only moment we can live, you cannot live in the future. Don't waste your time on it.

And don't be worried about mankind: you will never meet anywhere any mankind or humanity; all that you will meet will be human beings. Humanity is an abstraction; non-existential; just a word.

Don't be bothered about it.

You have a small life span; you will be living with human beings; just see how you can live so you can be fulfilled. Whether in the future there will be wars or not, who are we to decide? And why should we bother?

But there are utopians who go on thinking about the future. They miss their lives in thinking about the future. And that future never comes. The word utopia means: that which never comes.

Go on thinking about it: a world without wars, without famine, without poverty, but what is the point?

- you are dreaming! Rather, be more realistic. Create a human being inside you who has no warring tendencies, no conflicting tendencies, no violence, no aggression; that's all that can be done. That is feasible.

Create a human being within, don't think about human kind. How can you manage that? That is not possible. Leave all that to foolish politicians. They will think about it.

You can do something for the human being that you are. Drop all conflicting tendencies: violence, aggression, fear - be loving, prayerful, meditative. Create at least one human being as you would like the whole humanity to be. At least create a model within you so that your fragrance spreads and gives a vision to people that this too is possible, that man IS divine.

Love more. Delight more, celebrate more, dance more, sing more: that's all that you can do. Leave a dream around you - actualized. If somebody loves it, he may follow. I cannot say that the whole humanity will follow - it is such a vast thing.

And there is no need of that because your happiness may not be others' happiness. Your singing may be just noise for somebody else. Your dance may be nothing but a nuisance. So who is to decide? Don't take the responsibility that you will decide for the whole - no.

You drop out of these roles of decider. You are not the decider. You simply live your life in the small corner that you have got. Whatsoever you can do for yourself, DO IT. And if somebody feels good, attracted, magnetized - help him, but out of love, not out of any missionary spirit. That is poison.

Question 7:

Do the same to me. First try to find me and then when you have found me - kill me immediately.

Because that's how you will attain to your own perfection.

Even if I am there the duality will remain. An object in the mind is a disturbance. Drop that object also. When you have killed me you have completely followed me. When I have disappeared only then will you be grateful to me. Only then will you understand that the work of the Master is very contradictory.

First he has to create a situation in which you fall in love with him. He has to create a situation in which you start allowing him to guide you. This is the first part. When it starts functioning he has to create a situation in which you have to drop him.

It is just like a ladder: you go on the ladder - first you have to move on the ladder, cling to the ladder, and then you have to leave the ladder. If you go on clinging to the ladder then the whole point is missed.

The ladder is not the goal. You only want it to reach some other plane of being. The ladder helped from one plane to another, but if you cling to the ladder, at the last moment you say: I cannot leave this ladder because it has helped me so much, and I am so grateful, how can I leave it? Then the whole point is missed.

The ladder is not the goal.

Buddha used to say that once it happened: Five idiots were travelling. They came to a big river.

They purchased a small boat. They crossed the river. Then they thought: This boat is wonderful. It has helped us to come across the river, otherwise it would not have been possible for us to cross it.

So we should be grateful to it.

So they carried the boat on their heads into the marketplace.

People enquired: What is the matter? Why are you carrying this boat? They said: We are very grateful. This boat helped us to cross the river otherwise we would still have been on the other shore. Now we can never leave it!

Buddha said: Always remember that the Master is a boat. Cross the river, but don't carry the boat on the head otherwise one who was going to free you will become your bondage.

That's how when a boat is carried, the boat of Christ is carried, you become a Christian, not a Christ.

If you drop the boat you become a Christ; if you carry the boat you become a Christian. If you drop the boat of Buddha you become a Buddha yourself; if you carry the boat you become a Buddhist.

Which is foolishness.

So don't be one of those five idiots.

Love me only to drop me one day. And love me so deeply that you can drop without any grudge without any clinging without any complaint.

It looks difficult because you can understand love only in terms of attachment. You don't know that love is deep unattachment. You can understand love only as possessiveness. You don't know that love is the greatest freedom, non-possessiveness.

If you allow me to create the situation and you don't create resistance, first you will start clinging to me - that's how the journey starts, one has to enter the boat. But when the other shore is reached I will be the first to tell you to leave the boat completely and forget about it. The purpose is fulfilled.

You move ahead.

The last step has to be taken in the divine, in God, and the Master has to be dropped. The Master is naught but a door.