What Type of Heaven is This?

Question 1:

The responsibility is not with the people, the responsibility is with me.

They are not doing anything. They can leave me to myself, it is me who is not leaving them to themselves. They are simply reacting, and their reaction is natural. It has been always so, and it will be always so.

I am a rebel. Whatsoever I say goes absolutely against their conditioning. They have been conditioned to look at life in a certain way, to think in a certain way, to live in a certain way. What I say disturbs them.

And I do it knowingly, I have to disturb them, otherwise there can be no transformation in their lives.

And whenever you say something which unsettles the old mind, the old mind becomes defensive.

Nothing is wrong in it - it is natural, because the old mind is accustomed to a certain pattern of living which is easy; the path which is of least resistance, is easy. The mind knows a certain way to live, then suddenly you say something which disturbs the mind because now a problem arises: whether that which they believe is true or not. I create a doubt.

Of course I create a doubt to make them aware of a higher trust, but that higher trust is not visible to them; they only become wavering, hesitant; whatsoever they have been doing becomes suspicious.

For example, if I say: You go to the temple, and it is useless because those temples are made by man, and how can man make a temple of God? All that is man-manufactured will be at the most human, not more than that. If you really are in search of the temple of God then you have to find something which is uncreated, uncreated by man.

But you have been going to a church, to a temple, and you were complacent, you were consoled by it, you had a fixed routine, and you were thinking that everything is going well, then I come suddenly in your way and I say: This temple is manmade! And you have been worshipping before your own creations! God created man, man cannot create God! So if you want to really search for the temple of God, move towards the vaster horizons of existence. The whole existence is the temple, and unless the whole becomes the temple you will never reach to the innermost shrine of it, you will never be able to find what is the centre of the all.

So your temples are deceptions, toys to play with - of course it disturbs you.

A man who has been going to the temple for fifty years suddenly becomes suspicious - what will he do? He will react with anger. He will become antagonistic to me, because I have been a disturbance in his life.

My disturbance was well meant, but that is not the point. If he comes nearer to me I will help him to see the real temple - but that is a second thing. First he has to be convinced that his temple is wrong and pseudo. That is painful.

When you live in a dream and somebody wakes you suddenly, you feel angry. And if the dream was beautiful, nice, sweet, the waking is going to be painful and a suffering. That's why they crucified Jesus. The people who crucified Jesus were not bad people - never think like that - they were not bad people. They were good, moral - very good people; but they crucified Jesus because he disturbed their whole way of thinking. He was a great destroyer! A great destructive force! He forced them out of their sleep, and they wanted to dream, and their dreams were sweet. Jesus had to be crucified.

They poisoned Socrates. The people who poisoned Socrates were good people, they were not evil forces but moralists, judges of those days, politicians, social servants - they were all together in poisoning a simple man like Socrates, who had not done anything except talk to people.

But that talking was very dangerous, very potential, because he had many people come out of their dreams, saved many people from their consolations, shocked many people out of their dead beliefs - it was necessary, if people are to be helped you have to break their dreams and shatter their beliefs.

Of course they react. One should not feel bad about it. That reaction is simple and natural. They become antagonistic, that antagonism is nothing but a defence measure. They defend themselves.

It is not the people who don't allow me to live my way. They cannot do anything - I go on living my way; whatsoever they do, that makes no difference. They crucified Jesus but they could not disturb his way of life. They poisoned Socrates but they could not disturb his way of life.

The judges had given an ultimatum to Socrates; the court felt that this man had not done anything wrong; maybe his ideas were dangerous, rebellious, but he had not acted in any unjust way; so the court gave him a last alternative: If you promise the court that never again will you teach to people what you call truth, then you can be pardoned.

Socrates said: It is better that you kill me. Because that is my whole profession - to talk about truth, my whole habit, I cannot drop that, it is better I should die.

He was not ready to drop his style of life, his way of thinking; he was ready to drop his body - that's not much. No, nobody can disturb my way of life, because it is not an outer thing, it is something deep inside me where nobody can enter except me. In fact just the reverse is the case: I disturb people's lives and it is natural that they react with antagonism.

I have no complaint against them, no grudge, I know it is natural. And I cannot do otherwise. When I see something is wrong, I have to say that it is wrong. When I see that something is deeply false. I have to say that it is false. Helping you is not something that I am doing for you; I cannot help doing it.

This has to be understood. Just as a light cannot help spreading light, a flower cannot help spreading fragrance, whatsoever the cost, and whatsoever the result - what I see I will have to say.

It is not a question of my decision to say or not to say. It is just like a flower opening and the fragrance spreading; whether people like it or not, that is not the point. If they like it, they will be helped soon; if they dislike it, they will be helped a little later, that's all.

Question 2:

When you say WHEN ALL I KNOW OF LOVE IS ITS ATTACHMENTS, HOW CAN I DROP THEM?

you are not rightly understanding your mind. If you really know that they are attachments, they drop.

Then there is no question of HOW to drop them. The HOW comes only when the understanding is not ripe.

If you simply see that something is rubbish, you throw it! You are asking me: I know that these diamonds are not real diamonds, they are just false, imitations, how can I drop them? - you are asking this.

If you have seen to the fact, if you have realized the truth that they are false, is there any need to drop them? Is there any question possible of how to drop them? You simply drop them! That dropping is not even an effort on your part - it happens. Knowing well that this is useless, it drops. I would like to say: it drops itself, not that you drop it. When a falsity is known as falsity, it drops. When untruth is known as untruth, it drops.

How do you drop your dreams? You know they are dreams - they disappear. The moment you know that this is a dream it has already started disappearing.

You say: WHEN ALL I KNOW OF LOVE IS ITS ATTACHMENTS... No, you don't know, you are confused; you have been hearing me too long. I go on saying that what you call love is attachment, and I have put the idea in your mind that what you call love is attachment - this is not YOUR understanding, this is my understanding. For you this is just information. Somebody else has told you. You may love me, you may trust me, so you take it for granted it must be true. But truth cannot be taken for granted, one has to grow into it.

Truth is not information. It is not something that can be transferred from one hand to another. Even if I try to transfer my truth to you the moment it reaches your hands it will be a falsehood. That is the very nature of truth: untransferable. You have to grow into it. It is your own maturity, it is your own realization.

So remember: listening to me, always remain alert.

There are many pitfalls; and the greatest is, that listening to me continuously you may start thinking that whatsoever I am saying IS TRUTH FOR YOU. It is truth for me, otherwise I would not have said it, but it is not truth for you. Remain alert - it is KNOWLEDGE. It is not yet knowing and understanding.

Knowledge is borrowed, knowing is your own flowering, blossoming. Knowing is yours authentically, knowledge is always from some source: Vedas, Bible, Koran, ME. It is always from somewhere else.

And this is the intrinsic nature of knowledge: borrowed, it burdens. It never makes you free. Only knowing frees you, liberates you. Jesus has said: Truth liberates. But not another's truth. Otherwise all Christians would be liberated already.

A Christian is not liberated. In fact the truth of Jesus has become HIS bondage. A Christ is a liberated soul but a Christian? He lives in a prison; of course, decorated in a Christian way. A Hindu lives in another prison, decorated with Hindu deities, and pictures and images and mantras. A Jain lives in a Jain prison. Their prisons differ, but the bondage? The bondage is the same. Your fetters can be different. It is even possible your fetters may be more valuable than others' fetters - you may have golden ones, but that doesn't make any difference - you are not yet liberated.

Truth liberates. Whose truth? How can MY truth liberate you? Your bondage is yours, how can MY truth cut YOUR bondage? YOU have created your bondage out of your ignorance, you have to create your own liberty out of your realization of truth. Nobody else can liberate you. Only you, and ONLY YOU.

And never cling to the hope that somebody else can liberate you. If that was possible than a Buddha would have been enough, a Jesus would have been enough, a Krishna would have done the whole thing. There would have been no need.

This is the difference between scientific knowledge and religious KNOWING. When some Einstein discovers a scientific truth, once discovered it is discovered for all. Then there is no need to discover it again and again - that would be foolish! Then even a small child in school can learn the truth of the theory of relativity. But the Buddha's truth? My truth? - No, it cannot be learnt that way.

That's why there is no possibility of religious teaching. Awakening is possible, teaching is not possible. And all great religious teachers were not teachers at all - they were Masters. They were trying to create devices in which YOU awaken. They were not trying to give you some information.

Buddha discovered HIS truth. That truth disappears with Buddha. Nothing is left of it. Only words in the air. Those words you can collect, you can become very knowledgeable, a great pundit, a great scholar. But Jesus did not say that scholarship liberates. It decorates your prison in a beautiful way.

You can live more comfortably in it. But it does not liberate.

Truth has to be individual. It has to be basically YOUR OWN, only then it cuts the knot, otherwise not.

So you must have got confused. I go on talking to you while I am talking I am not really giving you some information. In fact I am just creating a device around you so that in that device, in that situation, you can become more alert.

For example, this question - why am I answering this? I am not giving you an answer, I am creating an answering situation. And that has a qualitatively different dimension. I am simply creating an answering situation in which you can see the fact that: Yes, your own truth can liberate you, nobody else's; in which you come to realize, become aware, that: Right! How can anybody else's truth liberate me? Nobody has created your bondage, nobody can create your freedom. You create your bondage, only you create your freedom.

WHEN ALL I KNOW OF LOVE IS ITS ATTACHMENTS - NO, you don't know what love is, you know only attachments; and those attachments you don't know AS attachments, you know them as love, that is where the whole thing goes wrong. If attachment is known as attachment it drops. And I would insist again, IT DROPS - -you never drop it.

Just seeing the fact that this is an attachment, that attachment is a bondage - a beautiful word for bondage - that attachment is not love... just seeing the ugliness of attachment - it drops; then arises love. The same energy that was becoming attachment, released from attachment becomes a totally different energy; it becomes love.

But this has to be YOUR understanding. So WATCH. When you are attached to a person, or you feel you love - just watch: Are you possessive? If you are possessive you are trying to kill the person, because no person can ever be possessed, only things can be possessed, not persons.

How can you possess an alive person? You can possess a house, you can possess a car, you cannot possess a human being. How can you possess a child or a husband or a wife or a beloved?

No. The very effort to possess says that you are trying to kill the person and change the person into a commodity, change the person into a belonging, a possession.

And all lovers go on doing this. That's why there is so much conflict. Love is always - the so-called love of course - always a continuous fight between the lovers: both are trying to possess the other.

Through possession jealousy arises, the fear that the other may move, move to somebody else, the woman may not love you, or the man may start loving another woman. Then jealousy arises.

Jealousy is the shadow of possessiveness. And when jealousy arises, fear arises. All the beauty of love is lost, the whole thing has become a disease, an illness.

Love never possesses, because love knows that love is possible only in total freedom. When the other is totally free, only then love is possible. Love is a happening of total freedom. When the other is not in any way in bondage, but free to give, free not to give, TOTALLY free - only then giving is beautiful.

When somebody comes and gives his or her love to you without asking, without demanding anything in return for it, it has a beauty, it is not of this world, it has an unearthly quality to it, it is sacred.

That's why every love in the beginning is beautiful: because in the beginning there is no expectation, in the beginning there is no possessiveness. You meet somebody, a stranger in the train - how can you possess? How can you bind the other to you? How can you become attached? How can you be jealous? No, the thing is so new. In the beginning every love gives a beautiful fragrance, a benediction, but the more you know the person the more the cunning mind starts creating politics.

Attachment is politics, love is religion.

To possess another person is political. To possess a whole country is the effort of the politicians. To possess another being is the effort, on a small scale, of being political, to dominate, to dictate, to control, to manipulate; your ego is enhanced. You start killing.

The more love settles, the more love dies. Something else arises. Then there is only a corpse, a dead memory. Something was beautiful - every lover thinks: What happens? what goes wrong?

Something is beautiful in the beginning, then where does everything go wrong? The moment the mind enters in - the mind is the greatest politician there is.

In the first moments of love the mind is not functioning, it is stunned. The heart functions. Not knowing the ground, not knowing the other - exactly who he is, how he is, what he is, how can you manipulate? No, manipulation has not entered yet. You are moving in an uncharted territory, with no map; you are moving into the unknown.

The beginning is innocent, it is virgin. Then, the more you feel at ease, settled - things have settled, now you know the other is there, and you are there, and you are committed to each other - now the mind enters from the back door. It tries to possess the heart; now love becomes attachment, possessiveness, jealousy, fear - everything goes ugly. When love goes ugly it goes the UGLIEST.

When you fall from a peak you fall to the very bottom of the well. The higher the peak, the greater will be the valley. Because of this, social thinkers settled for marriage. All old cultures settled for marriage - don't give the first glimpse at all, because that first glimpse will give always a comparison.

Marriage means living together with a person without the initial glory and the initial innocence of the experience. There is no peak in marriage, it is an arranged affair. You never fall to the valley.

Marriage is secure. Love is dangerous.

But I am in favour of love because I am in favour of danger. Life is dangerous, death is secure.

Marriage is like death, absolutely secure - no problems will arise. But it is death, even if no problems arise. It is not alive! With love, millions of problems will arise, but that's how life grows - facing, encountering, suffering, growing, moving through the dangerous valley, falling many times and getting up, and trying to reach the peak again and again and again. Through this whole effort one grows.

Love has disappeared from the world because-of the mind. People became aware that if you fall in love, allow people to fall in love, soon they become miserable. A married person is never miserable; never happy of course, but never miserable either. He has settled for the plain ground, he moves on the super highway - everything clean, settled. No danger. He never moves in the forest, in the unknown. He is always moving with a map, and on every crossroad there is a milestone showing the way, where to go and what to do. He lives like a channel, not like a river - flowing and moving and searching, and not knowing where the ocean is.

Remember, when you are in love be very alert, nothing else needs more alertness. If you want the purity of love to grow don't allow the mind to interfere; live in the unknown, don't try in any way to secure the future. This moment should be the only moment. Here-now should be the only space.

This moment you are in love - perfectly beautiful; be in love. Don't think of the next moment, what will happen. Nobody knows. And nobody can plan it. And all planning goes wrong.

Life remains an unknown affair - and that's why it is so beautiful. The next moment always comes as an unknown surprise. Don't try to make it predictable. A beloved is unpredictable, a wife predictable.

The moment a person becomes predictable he is dead. When humanity becomes more aware, marriage will disappear. Not that people will not be together, really only then people will be together; now they live together but they are not together. They live in the same house but they don't live in the same home. They are physically together, spiritually far apart.

Vast distances exist between people. No communication, no communion. They may be making love to each other - that too is a physical thing. And when love is only physical it is as if you have an aeroplane with four engines and one engine only is functioning. Lopsided it goes, and always in danger of falling. When all the four engines function - this is what I have told you again and again:

one engine is sex, another engine is love, third engine is prayer, fourth engine is meditation. When all the four function in tune, in a deep harmony, then you know what it is to be here, what it is to BE!

Then you become religious - not that you go to a temple or a GURUDWARA or to church; suddenly, when you are functioning in deep harmony, your whole being a musical concert, an orchestra, all notes falling together, meeting and merging into one whole, when you are a unison - this is what we have called in India SAMADHI, to attain to the absolute at-homeness, togetherness, of your being - then you feel grateful, then you simply bow down. Not that there is a God and you are bowing down to him no, you simply bow down out of gratitude - not that there is a God, but because there is gratitude.

Remember the emphasis I give to gratitude, not to God. All concepts of God are childish, anthropomorphic. Man has created God in his own image.

Not that there is God, but suddenly when you function beautifully, and you feel so good, and a deep well-being surrounds you, a deep gratitude arises like a pillar of light within you. It penetrates all the skies; it goes to the highest, it goes to the deepest; suddenly you bow down - not before anybody, remember, you simply bow down in deep gratitude because you don't know now what to do - such benediction! such blessedness! such ecstasy - what to do? You simply bow down in deep gratitude BEFORE THE WHOLE. You become a godly person.

H. G. Wells has said about Buddha and I love to quote it again and again, that there has never been a man MORE GODLESS AND MORE GODLY. He has said about Buddha that Buddha is the most

godless and the most godly man in the whole of human history. He is. He does not believe in any God, but you cannot find a more divine being.

Absolute gratitude. A deep thankfulness.

Remain alert, because if love becomes attachment you will never function in your totality. The energy has moved in a wrong way. Don't a]low love to become attachment, remain alert! Allow love absolute freedom, even if sometimes it is painful - it is. But that pain is also beautiful.

When you suffer for freedom, that suffering is good. When you are comfortable because of bondage, that comfortableness is bad.

I have heard one story, that one man, a great priest, dreamed one night that he was in a beautiful place, sleeping under a tree, a cool breeze passing, subtle fragrance of flowers, birds singing; he couldn't imagine a more heavenly moment. He looked around - it was really peaceful, beautiful. He thought in his mind he must be in paradise! But he was feeling hungry, so he thought: But where to get food? I am feeling hungry. Suddenly an angel appeared, with delicious food, and he was so hungry that he didn't bother to ask: Where is this food coming from, and who are you? He ate. Then he wanted water, the water appeared from another angel; then he was feeling like sleeping again, very tired, so he said: But where to sleep? There is no bed. A bed appeared out of nothingness, out the blue. He slept. When he awoke again he became a little afraid. What was happening?

Now he wanted to do something. He was feeling full of energy; so he again said in his mind: Please send some angel, I would like to do something. An angel appeared. He said: I would like to do something, now I am full of energy, rested. The angel said: That is difficult. All you ask for we can provide, but doing is not allowed here. You cannot do anything - you can rest! You can be comfortable, as comfortable as you like. Whatsoever you need, you just ask, and it will be supplied.

A few days passed, then the man was feeling very very bored: not able to do anything and everything supplied - on order, immediately, with no time gap. One day he said: What type of heaven is this?

It would have been better had I thrown into hell. The angel appeared and said: Where do you think you are? This is hell.

I like this story. Hell must be very comfortable. must be absolutely comfortable, so that no life is needed. Everything is supplied and you become dead, you vegetate; you don't live.

Don't try to make your life just comfortable. That's how love becomes attachment - you are afraid of changes. The beloved may leave. Tomorrow it may not be the same, so you make arrangements.

You go to the court to get registered, so that when tomorrow the beloved wants to leave, or the husband wants to leave, the court will force them not to leave.

In every country marriage is very easy, divorce difficult. It should be just otherwise. Marriage should be very very difficult. People should be put on a probation period, so that you wait for three years, then get married - there is no hurry. And divorce should be immediate.

But no, marriage is absolutely easy; if you want to get married you just go to the court, say so, and you are married. Nobody bothers, because it is for you to enter hell - if you want to, you go; but if you want to get out of it, then the whole law and the force of law will prevent you.

Society lives for comfort. Only rare individuals choose suffering - to grow. Society is a collective death; dragging somehow.

Don't allow your love to become an attachment - but what will you do? Remain alert, nothing else can be done. Just be intensely alert; that intenseness of consciousness is a fire; in that fire, love remains pure; it does not become a bondage, and it doesn't try to manipulate the other. Then love becomes the door of prayer.

If it falls, it becomes hell and becomes attachment, possessiveness, jealousy, and then you suffer, then it is a nightmare. Then it is better not to fall in love. Remain alone and suffer alone. Why create suffering for anybody else?

When you bring the other in, when you move in a relationship, remember, the relationship can grow only in freedom. Never become a slave and never try to make anybody a slave. This should be the credo.

And you say:

ALL I CAN SEE IS THE EGO CLINGING TO WHAT IT BELIEVES IS LOVE - that too is not your understanding. If you can see the ego, you have transcended it. WHO is seeing the ego? WHO is seeing the ego clinging? You must have transcended, you must have become a witness. And when one becomes a witness the ego disappears just like a dewdrop disappears in the morning sun.

It simply disappears. It cannot remain in the light and the fire and the heat of witnessing - it simply disappears. It is a night phenomenon. It can live only in darkness.

No, it is the ego who is seeing, nothing else has happened.

It is very difficult to see the ego, because it is very subtle. The most subtle thing in the world is the ego, subtler than atoms, electrons, subtler than any energy, because it is so elusive you cannot get hold of it. In fact it is non-existential, that's why you cannot get hold of it. But if you become alert - the more alert you are, the less ego is there to see - a moment comes when you are perfectly alert, the whole energy is transformed, there is no ego.

So don't go on gathering knowledge from me. That won't help; rather it will hinder you. Because you will think that now you know, and you don't know. Always remain alert of your ignorance, because ignorance has possibilities, knowledge none. If you are ignorant you can become one day a knowing one, but if you become knowledgeable - all doors are closed.

Question 3:

The ashram is also part of the world, the ashram is not part of me - cannot be.

With me it is totally different. The ashram is part of the world, the marketplace. The ashram cannot be part of me. I will be gone some day, the ashram wi]l be there, even more established than it is

now. I will disappear from this world sooner or later, the ashram can continue for centuries - it is part of the world. Christianity is part of the world, not Christ.

So with me you can feel loose and natural, because I am not forcing anything on you. If I am trying to force anything you will not feel loose and natural. I give you freedom because I love freedom, but the ashram cannot give you freedom, the ashram is part of the world, the mundane world. That distinction you have to keep in mind. Don't identify me with the ashram.

I may be a guest here, as you are, but I am also an outsider. This ashram is not mine - no ashram can be. The ashram exists for some other functions. It is an organization! An organization has to be an organization. Rules and regulations. How can you be loose and free in it? You cannot be. But you have to suffer the ashram for me. So just feel pity for it and don't get disturbed.

Question 4:

There is no need to feel sincere towards me. Who has told you to feel sincere towards me? I have never told you. But you are a great guilt creator. You go on creating guilty feelings. Now this is a new guilt, as if you are committing a sin. You are not feeling sincere towards me. I never feel sincere towards you so why should your bother? I feel sincere for myself, you feel sincere for yourself. And if you want to do a certain thing - you do it! If you don't want to do a certain thing, you don't do it!

I am not here to impose my will on you because that will create a bondage, a slavery. That's what all religions have done. I am just helping you so that you can see the whole game, and then if you want to play it, play it; if you don't want to play it, drop out of it.

But you need not feel sincere towards me - who am I? Why should you feel sincere towards me?

Be sincere towards yourself.

I teach you to be yourself. I am not teaching you to become imitators. You are not to follow me! You have to follow your own being, your own inner urge.

At the most a Master can indicate the way; at the most a Master can be a pointer. But YOU have to walk. And if you want to walk - only then you walk.

Even if sometimes you feel like surrendering to and you come and surrender, in fact it is YOUR idea, that you want to surrender to me, so what can I do? Surrender! If you don't want to surrender, what can I do? Don't surrender. When you surrender to me you may be thinking that you are following me - no, you are following your own urge to surrender. Any day you can leave me. How wi]l I prevent you from leaving me?

But mind is a guilt-creating force. And you have been trained to create nothing but guilt. For all the past centuries, priests, politicians - they have been dominating humanity by creating guilt. They say 'This is wrong', and once they convince you this is wrong, if you do it you feel guilty, and, if it is something natural and you don't do it, then you feel in a difficulty.

For example, somebody says that to eat food with taste is bad. Mahatma Gandhi used to say to his disciples: One should go beyond taste. In his ashram, taste was not allowed. You had to eat, but not to feel the taste. He used to destroy his own taste with chutney made of neem leaves - very bitter, the bitterest leaves you can find in India. And he would eat the chutney with his food, to destroy taste, because it is so bitter, the whole mouth goes so bitter, that then you cannot taste anything.

People who would taste something - and this is natural, the tongue is made to taste - they would feel guilty, they would feel guilty of committing some sin.

Religions have taught and preached that sex is bad - a sin. Now sex is a natural desire! A very natural phenomenon. You have nothing to do with it. But they have been conditioning the mind that sex is bad, and every child is taught this, so when the sex urge arises he feels guilty. And then both ways are difficult: If you don't move into sex the natural urge becomes a nightmare. If you move into sex the cultivated mind feels, makes you guilty. So, either guilt or fa]ling into wrong things, sin, this is the choice that has been given to you.

Things go on changing, ideas change, but still the original guilt-creating force remains the same.

Now you are here. I am here to make you guilt-free, to make you natural, flowing, because that's how I have known the ultimate: by being natural and flowing, by accepting not by denying, not by saying No but by saying a total Yes to life, by affirming it not negating it - that's how I have come to know the ultimate.

You also I would like to be guilt-free. Do whatsoever you want to do. Do it totally. Don't create guilt - if it is wrong to do, do it totally; if it is wrong to do, you will come to understand that it is wrong! It drops. If it is not wrong to do, and by doing it you realize that it is beautiful - it will grow. There is no other way.

Don't create ideals. Once you create ideals you will always be in difficulty because you will always be thinking in terms of SHOULD, OUGHT: This HAS TO be done; That OUGHT to be done; That SHOULD be done... and you will always feel crippled, guilty, a sinner. You will always feel ill. You will never be able to accept yourself. You will never be able to love yourself, and a person who cannot love himself in spite of all the mistakes that a human being is prone to make, if you cannot love yourself in spite of all things, you will miss the whole point of being here in life. To love oneself in spite of everything that is there, THAT gives you a base. Only on that base you love others, only on that base the edifice of higher loves is erected.

Remember, experience is always good; I say ALWAYS unconditionally. Even if it is bad it is good, because you know that it is bad, and you know this only through experience. Once you know it, it drops, nothing to worry about.

Don't be afraid of mistakes - and all sins are just mistakes - there is nothing much to them, just small mistakes. Don't be afraid to commit them. Commit them! But remember only to commit them once, because when you have known them, and they are futile and useless, let them drop. They drop by themselves.

So you need not be worried about being sincere towards me. If you are really sincere towards yourself you are sincere towards me. If you become yourself, you have followed me. BY NOT FOLLOWING ME, by attaining to your individual centre, you follow me. By following me, you will miss your centre. And that's how you would be insincere to yourself and to me also. Do you get the point?

It is simple, it may look paradoxical. By attaining to yourself, you have been sincere to me. If you create guilt, and you feel worried about it, that you are not following me, you will become more and more depressed. And a sad and a depressed person, and a guilt-ridden person, cannot celebrate, cannot become religious.

To become religious one needs a dancing heart. To become religious one needs to be celebrating.

To become religious one needs to enjoy and delight in small things. If you learn how to be delighted in small things: eating food, taking a bath, going for a morning walk; if you can delight in small things - and there are no big things in life, only small things are there - if you delight in small things then small things become great. And the total accumulated effect of small things lived, celebrated, transforms you. You become religious. That is the magic key to open the door of religion.

Don't become sad - there are enough churches for sad people, I am not to create any other church for sad and long faces. Don't feel guilty, there are enough hells already. Man is too much burdened.

If I can help you to dance a, little, sing a little, enjoy a little, feel grateful and thankful a little, that's enough.

Question 5:

They need it more than any woman. But they have been conditioned not to weep, not to cry; from the very childhood a boy is taught not to be sissy, not to be like a girl. If he cries they say: Stop! You are a man; a boy never cries, this is only for girls.

Men have been taught and conditioned not to cry, not to weep. They have become stones. And remember, if a person cannot weep heartily, he cannot laugh either. And God makes no difference between woman and man, he has given the same tear glands to both. If there was going to be a distinction - that man is not to cry - there would have been no tear glands in his eyes, or there would have been less than with women. But they are exactly the same. So nature has not made it that way. It is human society creating an ego that man has to be haughty and proud.

This is male chauvinism. A woman can cry - she is such a low being, no need to worry about her, she can weep. Weaklings. Man is powerful.

But in a way it has been good for women - they are more natural than man. That's why they are more beautiful than man; more relaxed than man.

Have you observed the data? More men commit suicide than women. You may have just the opposite notion, because more women talk about committing suicide - but they never commit it:

they go on talking. Even if they take sleeping pills they always take them in such a quantity that they never die. Men commit suicide more than women - have to commit, life becomes such a burden.

Crying and weeping is a natural way, a safety valve, to allow accumulated emotions - sadness, to be thrown out of the system: it is a deep cleansing. Every man and every woman should learn how to cry perfectly. And how to enjoy it! It is such an unburdening and refreshing process; not only do your eyes become fresh when tears have flowed, your whole being becomes pure, simple, innocent.

You attain again to a virginity that belonged once to you, but is lost, you again become uncorrupted.

After a good crying and weeping you feel bathed, the very soul has taken a shower. You are again ready and younger.

Women look younger than men, healthier than men. All over the world women fall ill less than men, live longer than men - five years longer. If a man is going to live seventy-five years, the woman on an average is going to live eighty. That's why if you go into the West you will find many old women, but not so many old men. They get ready every day, they allow, they are not so egoistic.

Women go less mad than men because they have their daily quota of madness, they never go wholesale mad. Women almost every day, once in a while, they go mad - but just for a few minutes; it is beautiful, nothing is wrong in it: they scream and jump and throw a plate - it is not costly either, but man goes on accumulating madness. He cannot cry, he cannot throw a plate - that is not manly.

He has to be always on guard, then the madness goes on accumulating within his heart - one day it explodes.

More men are in madhouses. And if you look at the society, men are interested in politics, not women. Sometimes a few women are interested, but they must have male hormones in their body.

Some scientific research is needed.

And the women who are interested in politics, and reach to the top, have never been very womanly, they have never loved their husbands, their children;never; they have been more politics-oriented, ego-oriented.

And of course when a woman goes into politics she will force all men out of it. It is natural, because when she goes, she really goes mad into it. A man may have some manners, but she has none.

Because a man has been forced to cultivate manners; even if he fights he fights in a mannerly way, he follows certain rules - but a woman is wild; when she fights she follows no rules, she simply fights. That's why whenever you are arguing with a woman you will always be defeated, because she follows no rules of the game, there is no logic in it; she jumps from one point to another with no visible link!

Men have created all the wars because man is madder. After every ten years a great world war is needed. It relaxes. When man can kill others, only then he feels a little release.

Unless man is allowed to weep and cry and be natural, and every child is taught to cry and weep, and is told: That is beautiful; when you feel hurt - cry! when you feel bad, let tears come out of your eyes... You may not believe me, because the thing may seem to be too far-fetched but I tell you that if men can start crying and weeping as women do, wars will be less in the world, madness will be less in the world, suicides will be less in the world, accidents on the road will be less in the world.

Fifty per cent of car accidents are because a man was angry. He couldn't scream so he screamed through the accelerator. He went beyond the speed limit, he went mad with the car, and he enjoyed the exhilaration that comes with this speed.

Women drivers are not good drivers, but they never cause so many accidents I have been collecting data. Women drivers are not good drivers because they are not good mechanical minds, they are not technological; but if a woman driver knows driving she is always safe to travel with. I myself have Laxmi as my driver; always safe, because she will never transcend the limit.

Man has been wrongly conditioned, that is why catharsis becomes difficult. But catharsis is very very necessary. If you cannot move into deep catharsis you cannot move into meditation. Before you take wings into the sky you have to unburden yourself That is the whole point of catharsis.

Question 6:

Why should you ask to do anything? When there is fear - be afraid! Why create a duality? When moments of fear come - be fearful, tremble with fear, allow fear to take possession. Why this constant enquiry: WHAT TO DO? Can't you allow life in any way to take possession of you?

When love takes possession, what to do? Be loving! Don't do anything, allow love to take possession of you. When fear comes - tremble, like a leaf in a strong wind. And it will be beautiful. When it has gone you will feel so serene and calm, as when a strong storm passes by everything is left calm and quiet after it. Why be always fighting something? Fear comes - it is natural, absolutely natural. To think of a man who is without fear is impossible, because he will be dead. Then somebody will be honking the horn on the road and a man without fear will go on, he will not bother. Then a snake will be on the path and a man without fear will not bother, he will go on. A man without fear will be absolutely foolish, stupid.

Fear is part of your intelligence, nothing is wrong in it. Fear simply shows there is death; and we human beings are here only for a few moments. That trembling says that we are not going to be permanently here, we are not eternally here, a few days more and you will be gone.

In fact because of fear man has been in deep search of religion - otherwise there would have been no point. No animal is religious, because no animal is in fear. No animal can be religious because no animals can be aware of death. Man is aware of death, every moment death is there, surrounds you from everywhere any moment you will be gone; that gives you a trembling. Why be afraid - tremble! But again the ego says: No, YOU - afraid? No, this is not for you, this is for cowards. You are a brave man.

It is not for cowards. Allow fear. Only one thing is to be understood: when you allow fear and you tremble - watch it, enjoy it; and in that watching you will transcend it, you will see the body is trembling, you will see the mind is trembling, but you will come to feel a point within you, a deep centre, which remains unaffected.

The storm passes by, but somewhere deep within you is a centre which is untouched: the centre of the cyclone.

Allow fear, don't fight with it. WATCH what is happening. Go on watching. As your watching eye becomes more penetrating and intense - the body will be trembling, the mind will be trembling - deep within you will be consciousness, which simply is a witness, which only watches.

It remains untouched, like a lotus flower in water.

Only when you attain to that will you attain to fearlessness.

But that fearlessness is not being unafraid. That fearlessness is not bravery. That fearlessness is a realization that you are two - a part of you will die, and a part of you is eternal. That part which is going to die is going to remain always afraid. And the part that is not going to die, which is immortal, for it, there is no point in being afraid. Then a deep harmony exists.

You can use fear for meditation. Use ALL that you have for meditation, so that you go beyond.

Question 7:

There is a Zen saying, that when a seeker comes to a Master, rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains, but once in contact with the Master, soon rivers are no more rivers, mountains are no more mountains, everything is disturbed.

But if he continues, and does not escape in the middle - again a moment comes: mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers.

This is the process. When you start meditating you have a false personality, a painted face, which you have made beautiful according to the social needs. It is false, but you are identified with it. Then you start meditating; that face starts becoming loose, sometimes it slips, you come to feel your real face - you become afraid, it looks ugly.

That's why you had painted it. That's why you were hiding it under a mask. But meditation will drop all the masks. It is a search for the original face.

So a moment will come, you will grow and you will feel you are getting more ugly, because now you start seeing yourself RIGHTLY. Up to now you were seeing ugliness in others, now you have started to watch yourself. You have been seeing mistakes, uglinesses, wrong things, in others, now you start to see them in yourself. For the first time you start mirroring your own being. Everything seems to be topsy-turvy, chaos - afraid, you can escape, and put your face on again. Go to the market, hide behind the mask, and forget about the meditation.

But if you are really in search, this is a good sign, a beautiful indication, that something is happening.

Continue. Soon this ugliness will also disappear, because that ugliness belongs to your mind. That beauty that you are thinking was there never belonged to you, it was just a mask. It has to be taken away. Now you come face to face with the mind.

If you GO ON, sooner or later the mind will also fall - that too is a mask. Then you will come face to face with your being. And that's tremendously beautiful. In fact that is the only beauty there is.

When one comes face to face with his own being it is as if two mirrors are facing each other. When two mirrors face each other, what happens, do you know? They reflect eternity. Infinite vastness.

When you come to yourself, you mirror yourself. Eternity is reflected. That is the glory of God. You have come to the God.

In the Upanishads, those who have known, they have said - at this moment: AHAM BRAHMASMI:

I am the absolute. That is the goal.

But to reach that goal you will have to pass through an interim period where everything will become a chaos. You will always be like a mad maniac. That has to be passed.

Before you become absolutely normal you will feel that you have become absolutely abnormal.

Because that which you call normality today is nothing but a social face.

Society has to be dropped. Then you have to drop your past SAMSKARAS, past conditionings of the mind. Then only you come to the purest source, the very source, the very ground of being. We call that ground of being GOD. God is not a person. God is an experience of absolute virgin purity, innocence - and that is hidden behind you.

So don't be afraid of ugliness if you feel it now, it is a good sign - feel happy about it. You are growing. It shows growth. You are on the right track. Rivers will not be rivers, mountains will not be mountains. Again: rivers will be rivers, mountains will be mountains.

That's why Buddha moves to the forest, Mahavir goes to the mountains, Jesus and Mohammed, they retire into the mountains - to face their ugliness.

But once that ugliness has disappeared, the illness gone, the leprosy evaporated, they come back into the marketplace, they come back again into the world beautiful; supremely beautiful.

You will also come back. But this passage has to be passed. This much cost has to be paid.