Truth is neither I nor you

The first question:

Question 1:

PEOPLE LIKE BAULS ARE NEVER ORIGINATED. Religions like the Baul religion are more like happenings. Who originated the roses? Who originated the songs that the birds go on singing every morning? No, we never ask that question. It has always been there.

Philosophies are originated; you can find the originator. 'Isms', dogmas, creeds are originated. The Baul is not a creed, it is a spontaneous way of life. People have always lived that way. People who have ever lived have always lived that way. People who have ever been alive have been alive in no other way. Whether they were known as Bauls or not is immaterial. The name may have some origin somewhere; I'm not concerned with it.

The word simply means 'the madman': madly in love with existence, madly in love with life -- but this madness has always been there. And it is good that a few people have always been so mad that we have not lost contact with the roots of existence. It is because of them that we haven't. They could sing and dance and live and love -- real people, authentic to the very core.

So, I don't know when they started. They must have started from the very beginning, if there was any beginning. They must have started with the first man, because their whole teaching is about the essential man. In fact, by and by, they have disappeared. They must have been more in the beginning. By and by they have lessened; their numbers have become less and less and less every day. Because the world has become too worldly, and the world has become too cunning and clever, it does not allow the simplicity of the heart to exist. The world has become too competitive and too ambitious. It has forgotten all that is beautiful, it has forgotten all that cannot be manufactured, it has forgotten how to surrender, to allow the eternal to happen in time. It has forgotten the language of ecstasy.

The more we move back, the more and more Bauls you will find. In the beginning the whole humanity must have been like the Bauls. Even now you can watch it: every child is born a Baul, then later on he is corrupted. Every child is again born as madly in love with life, but we cultivate him, we prune him, we don't allow him spontaneity of being. We condition him, we give him a certain character.

The Bauls have no character. They are men of consciousness, but not of character. In fact, a man of consciousness never has a character. Character is a fixity, character is an obsession, character is an armor. You have to do only that which your character allows.

Character can never be spontaneous. Character is always imposed by the past on the present. You are not free to be, you are not free to respond; you can only react.

The Baul believes in the SAHAJA MANUSH, the spontaneous man. The Baul says the spontaneous man is the way to the essential man. To be spontaneous is to be on the way towards being essential. Every child is a Baul.

So as I see it, in the beginning -- if there was, any beginning -- the whole humanity must have been like Bauls: true, authentic, sincere, mad, deep in love, rejoicing -- rejoicing the opportunity that God has given, rejoicing the gift.

We don't have any claim on life. Have you ever noticed it, that we don't have any claim?

If we had not been, there would be no way to be and there would be no way to appeal it.

There would be no way to complain against it. If you are not, you are not. The next moment you can disappear. Life is fragile, and without any claim. We have not earned it!

That is the meaning when we say it is a gift. A gift is something that you have not earned; you don't have any claim over it. You cannot say that you have some right to get it. A gift is something that is given to you.

Life is a gift. It has been given to you for no reason at all. You cannot have earned it, because how can you earn it if you were not? Life is a gift, but we go on forgetting it, we are not even thankful. We don't have any gratitude. We certainly complain for a thousand and one things which we may think we are missing in life, but we never feel grateful for life itself.

You may complain that your house is not good: the rains have come and it is leaking.

You may complain that your salary is not enough; you may complain that you don't have a beautiful body. You may complain that this is not happening and that is not happening - - a thousand and one complaints -- but have you ever seen that the whole life, the very possibility that you can be, breathe, look, see, hear, touch, love and be loved, is a gift? It has been given to you because God has so much to give, not because you have earned it.

The Baul lives in tremendous gratitude. He sings and dances -- that is his prayer. He cries. He simply wonders why, for what has life been given to him, for what has he been allowed to see the rainbows in the sky, for what has he been allowed to see flowers, butterflies, people, rivers and rocks? For what? Because life is so obvious you tend to forget the tremendous gift hidden in it.

In the beginning, everybody must have been a Baul, because civilization was not there to corrupt, society was not there to destroy. Priests and churches were not there to give you a character, to give you a narrow passage. In the beginning, life must have been overflowing. Everybody must have lived out of their own beings -- not because of any commandments, not because of scripture. There was no scripture and there was no commandment. Moses had not appeared yet. Everybody must have been a Baul in the beginning; and every child, when he is born, is a Baul. Watch a child to understand what this phenomenon of being a Baul is. See children delighting for nothing -- just shouting out of joy, just running here and there out of overflowing energy. When you become a Baul you again become a child.

To become a Baul is to become a primitive. To become a Baul is to reclaim one's primitiveness, one's primalness. One is reborn; it is a rebirth -- the child happens again.

Your body may be old, your mind may be old, but your consciousness is released from the bondage of the body and the mind. You have a past, you have many experiences, but they no longer burden you. You put them aside. You use them when needed; otherwise, you don't carry them continuously on your head for twenty-four hours. This is what liberation is: it does not liberate you from existence or from life or from flowers and love, it simply liberates you from your past. In fact, the more you are liberated, the more you fall in love with God. The more you are liberated, the more you become capable of rejoicing and loving.

So don't ask me who originated Bauls. Nobody has ever originated things like that. The whole emphasis is on spontaneity. Of course, to have a theory like Einstein's Theory of Relativity, an Einstein is needed. Without him it cannot be originated; without him it would not be in existence. A very complicated mind is needed to discover the complicated Theory of Relativity.

Bauls don't give any theories. They simply say, "All that you need be, you are already." It is not a question of being very clever, it is a question of just being simple. No talent is needed to become a Baul. That's the beauty of it: no genius is needed. What genius is needed to be a child? Every child is born as a child. The sages and the fools -- all are born as children. No talent is needed. Childhood is simply everybody's nature.

To be a Baul nothing is needed. In fact, the moment you need nothing, you become a Baul. The moment you are unburdened and you don't possess anything, any past, you are a Baul.

No, things like that are never originated. Nobody creates them; they happen. They are part of nature.

The second question:

Question 2:

Then there is no need to be careful about the meaning of the words; that will be a disturbance. If you feel in tune with my sound, THERE is the meaning. If you feel you are being showered with a new energy, if you feel thrilled, pulsating in a new way you never knew before, if you feel a sort of new dimension arising in your being because of the sound of my words, then forget all about me. Then there is no need; you have got the meaning already. That showering is the meaning, that thrill in the spine is the meaning, that vibration that cleanses you is the meaning. Then there is no need to worry about the ordinary meaning of the words. Then you are getting a higher meaning, then you are reaching a higher altitude of meaning. Then you are really getting the content and not the container. The meaning of my words is just the container.

If this is happening to you, then my words are no longer words to you; they have become existential. Then they are alive, then they have become a transfer. Then something is transpiring between my energy and your energy. Then there is happening something like what Bauls call love.

Allow it. Forget all about the words and their meaning. Leave it for foolish people who only collect words and are never in contact with the content. The words are just like shells: hidden behind them, I am sending you great messages. Those messages cannot be understood by the intellect, those messages have to be decoded by your total being. That is what is happening -- the vibration, the pulsation, the thrill, the showering of a new energy -- your total being is decoding. This is real listening. This is really to be in contact with me, to be in my presence.

Once I stayed with a friend. He had a big cage in his garden and he had one eagle in that cage. He took me to the cage and he said, "See, what a beautiful eagle." The eagle was beautiful, but I felt sorry for her.

I told the friend that this was not an eagle.

He said, "What do you mean? This is an eagle. Don't you know eagles?"

I said, "I know them, but I have known them only against the wind in the sky, in the high heavens, free, almost not of this world and not in this world, weighing themselves floating on the winds, in deep love with the free sky. I have known them as freedom. This eagle is no eagle. Because an eagle in a cage without the openness, the wideness of sky, without those high heavens, without weighing herself in freedom on the winds, is no eagle. Where is the background? -- because this is only the figure. In a cage, the real eagle has disappeared. You cannot find a real eagle in a cage because a real eagle is tremendous freedom. Where is the freedom? The soul has disappeared. The essential has disappeared; only the non-essential is here. This is just a dead eagle, more dead than any dead eagle. Release it from the cage; let it become real."

When I talk to you my words are like caged eagles; my words are in a prison. If you really listen to me, you will drop the cage and you will release the eagle. That is what is happening...the thrill. Then the freedom is released; then you become the eagle -- and higher and higher you rise. The earth is left very far behind. You can forget all about it.

The ordinary is left very far behind. The shell is left, the container is left, and you have the whole sky open to you; you, your wings, and the sky, and there is no end to it. The eternal pilgrimage has started.

Forget all about words and their meanings, otherwise you will be more concerned with the cage and you will not be able to release the eagle within you.

The third question:

Question 3:

The questioner says, and rightly so, that whenever he has been in love he has found something else masquerading as love, so he has lost faith in love.

The first part is absolutely. right: if you observe deeply, you will find something else always hiding behind love, something counterfeit. But the counterfeit can exist only because real coins exist. If there were no real coin, how could a counterfeit exist?

Sometimes it is possessiveness which hides itself behind love, sometimes it is lust, sometimes something else, jealousy.

But why do they hide behind love? -- because they feel love is a real coin, and you can pretend and hide behind it. You can be safe behind love. Whenever you hide yourself somewhere, it simply shows that somewhere that place is protective; it can become an armor around you. Why does everything seek to hide behind love? -- because love is the greatest protection in the world, the greatest reality in the world, the only energy.

Everything else is false; love is true. All that is not love is false, and whatsoever you are doing which is not love is a sheer wastage. All that is love is true, and whatsoever you do on the path of love increases your being, gives you more truth, makes you more true.

Knowing this, everything hides behind love because love can give protection. Love is so beautiful that even ugly things can hide behind it and pretend to be beautiful.

I was reading Shepard's book, BEYOND SEX THERAPY. He relates one incident.

He was in love with a woman, a young woman. A few friends had come to see him, but the whole time he remained with the woman, talking to her, as if he was not interested in the friends. They felt a little offended, and they told the woman, "We know Shepard better than you. He has been in love with many women, and this comes and goes. So remember it: sooner or later he will get interested in some other woman. What are you going to do then?"

The woman said, "I will feel jealous, but that is my problem. But I would like my man to know every sort of love, to know all that is possible before he dies. I will feel jealous, but that is my problem. That I have to tackle, and I have to get over it. That has nothing to do with him. As far as he's concerned, this is my desire: that he should know all that he wants to know before he dies, because once gone, one is gone forever. I would like him to live as richly as possible. If problems arise, like jealousy, then they are my problems."

This is what love is. It knows the distinction between jealousy and love. It is not confused about it. The jealousy cannot hide behind it; it cannot pretend to be love.

So the first thing is right, the questioner is absolutely right: "Every time I have loved someone and afterwards dug into it, I have found that it was no love at all. It was something else..." perfectly true "... in the name of love. Thus I now have no faith..." That is wrong -- because you have not known love yet. How can you lose faith in love, which you have not known yet? You can lose faith in jealousy, you can lose faith in possessiveness, you can lose faith in anger, you can lose faith in lust, but you have not come across love at all so how can you lose faith in it? To lose faith or to have faith, at least some experience of love is essential -- and you have not come across it.

Dig a little more and you will be able to sort it out now. What is jealousy? -- you know; what is possessiveness? -- you know. This is good; you are evolving. This is how everybody has to evolve. In the beginning, everything is mixed -- as if mud is mixed in gold. Then one has to put the gold into fire: all that is not gold is burned, drops out of it.

Only pure gold comes out of the fire. Awareness is the fire; love is the gold; jealousy, possessiveness, hatred, anger, lust, are the impurities. You are becoming more aware.

Now you see what jealousy is, and you can see it is not love. Half the battle is won; fifty percent of the battle is over -- you can recognize jealousy. But you have not yet known what love is. You are on the right track. But don't become hopeless, don't lose courage, don't lose faith, because sooner or later you will be able to know what love is. You are coming closer to home.

Don't be in such a hurry. Truth tends to reveal itself. Truth is revelatory, truth is revelation. You just go on seeking, searching, finding. There may be many errors, but there is no other way to grow. Trial and error is the only way. By and by, you go on eliminating the errors. Less and less errors happen, and more and more purity becomes available. Don't stop in the middle.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin got a job in a bank. The cashier tossed him a packet of one-rupee notes and said, "Check them to make sure there are one hundred."

The Mulla started counting. Finally he got up to fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, then he threw the packet in the drawer.

"If it is right this far," remarked Nasrudin to the man next to him, "it is probably right all the way."

Don't be in such a hurry. If it has been wrong so far, don't think it will be wrong all the way. At a hundred degrees, suddenly it turns right. One has to penetrate all the impurities.

But you are on the right track, so be happy.

And it is because of a deep desire for love that you have been able to recognize what is not love. Otherwise, how would you recognize? You can recognize that this is not gold because gold exists. Otherwise, what is the criterion to know that this is not love? You have some tacit understanding; it is not conscious yet, it is tacit, deep down. That is the meaning of understanding, understood. You have a tacit understanding, some deep undercurrent which knows what love is. That's why you can find 'this is not love', 'that is not love'. Good, you are on the right track. Go on to the very end, all the way.

It is because of the possibility of love that you have become aware of jealousy, of possessiveness, of anger, of lust, of greed, of indulgence, of gratification, and a thousand and one things. But the central core is dependent on a tacit understanding of love.

Truth tends to reveal itself.

Let me tell you a few anecdotes.

The funeral cortege was being set up for the wife of Mulla Nasrudin. He was dressed sombrely in the appropriate black. The funeral director said to the Mulla in a respectful whisper, "And you will be sitting in the head car with your mother-in-law."

Nasrudin frowned, "With my mother-in-law?"

"Yes, of course."

"Is it necessary?"

"It is essential -- the bereaved husband and the bereaved mother, the two closest survivors, together."

Mulla Nasrudin turned to look at the large and sobbing figure of his mother-in-law and said, "Well, all right then. But I tell you right now that it is going to spoil the pleasure of the occasion."

Your black dress cannot hide the truth, your tears cannot hide the truth. Deep down he was feeling happy that now he was free, now he was no more in bondage with this woman. Just on the surface he was showing his bereavement.

Truth has a tendency to reveal itself. If you just become a little alert, you will always know what is true. Truth need not be learnt; one needs just to be a little alert, and then the truth reveals itself. Revelation is intrinsic to truth. And when truth is revealed, a thousand and one lies are also revealed simultaneously, all the lies that were pretending to be truth when the truth was not known.

It happened: Abdul Rehman was very sick, a friend of Mulla Nasrudin. Everybody was worried about the sick man. He was very sick indeed, and his friends took turns visiting him to keep up his spirits.

The night Mulla Nasrudin went he was warned in advance that Abdul Rehman was very low and he must be extremely careful to say nothing discouraging. Nasrudin was doing beautifully, and actually had Rehman chuckling over a number of funny stories. But suddenly however, the Mulla stopped and began to shake his head.

"What is that? What is the matter, Mulla?" said Rehman anxiously.

"I was just thinking," said Nasrudin, "how in the name of the Holy Prophet are they going to get a coffin down the crooked stairs in this house?"

Now on the surface he was trying to encourage the man, but deep down he knew that he was going to die, and deep down an undercurrent: how are they going to get the coffin down? -- the staircase is so crooked.

Truth has a tendency to reveal itself. Just be a little alert and your heart will show you the path. And then nothing will be able to hide behind love. Things can hide behind love because you are unconscious. It is not a fault of love, it is your unconsciousness. So don't distrust love, distrust unconsciousness. Don't lose faith in love -- love has not done anything to you. Nothing wrong has love done to you. In fact, in spite of you, it is love that is keeping you alive. I repeat: in spite of you it is love that is keeping you alive. Lose faith in unconsciousness. If you are conscious, then nothing can hide behind love. Then no counterfeit can deceive you.

"It was something else, always in the name of love. Thus I now have no faith in love."

That is absurd. The logic is incorrect. You have not come across love; how can you lose faith in love? Dig a little more, go to the very end of it: you will always find purer gold, the deeper you go into yourself.

It is just like digging a well: first you dig a well -- you just get stones, rocks, rubbish; after that layer, more pure soil; after that layer, wet soil; after that, muddy water; after that, purer water. The deeper you go, purer springs become available. And this is so inside your heart also. On the surface there is just dirt, dust, rocks, then dry earth, then wet earth, then muddy water. But don't lose faith; you are coming closer to home -- then, pure water.

"I just cannot believe that we can love as we are." That's true -- you cannot love the way you are. But there is no need to choose to remain the way you are. You can change. There is no need to cling to your structure. You can destructure it.

That's what I'm doing here; that's all that we are trying to do together: to destructure you so that you can be realigned, so that you can be rearranged, so that the old disappears and the new is born.

This is true -- that the way you are you cannot love. But there is no reason to lose faith in love. Lose faith in yourself, lose faith in your ego. If it is you who is preventing you from loving, then drop this you -- because love is worth it. Millions of you's are not as valuable as a single moment of love. Drop this structure. Choose the sky, don't choose the cage.

The you you are feeling you are is nothing but the cage given by the society. Choose the sky drop the cage.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Be single-minded. The message is so clear; what is there to ask? Your being has given you a great message.

Sometimes it happens after deep sleep that you have messages from your deepest core of being. Start listening to your first thoughts in the morning; out of sleep you are very close to your being. There is more possibility, within two or three seconds of waking, to have some glimpses of your deepest being, some messages. After two, three seconds, the contact will be lost. You will again be in the world, thrown into the world. But sometimes it happens, as it happens to a few people: listening to me they fall asleep. There are different types of people.

For example, just now Sheela is fast asleep, but her sleep is really beautiful: it is a sort of trance, not sleep. She is not just asleep; her sleep is luminous. She has simply relaxed.

Listening to me deeply, she could not remain tense. All tension is gone, so she simply relaxed, relaxed into a deeper layer of her own being. To all people from the outside she will look fast asleep. When she is back, even she may not be able to understand what has happened because to her also it may look like sleep. It is not sleep; it is a certain stage: in yoga we call it TANDRA. It is a midway point between waking and sleep, and without dreams.

So there are two midway stages between deep sleep and waking. The ordinary stage is dreaming: if you are just in between, then you dream. Either you are awake, or you are fast asleep, or you are dreaming. And dreaming is just in the middle of waking and sleeping; it is the middle passage. This is ordinarily so.

But if your meditation goes deeper, or, if your love goes deeper, the first change that happens in consciousness is a change in the middle stage -- dreaming stops. Now it is very difficult to say what it is. You can think about it as sleep, or you can think about it as waking; it is both together -- just a balance between the two, a very balanced stage.

TANDRA is the first glimpse, the beginning of SATORI. Dreams disappear first. Then in the next step, sleep disappears; and in the third step, what you call waking, that disappears. And when all three have disappeared, then arises what we call REAL waking.

Then one becomes enlightened. TANDRA is the first step; dreams are disappearing.

So sometimes it happens that people fall asleep here -- they are in a state of trance.

TANDRA can be translated as trance. For all practical purposes, they are asleep. They will not be able to remember my words, but after they are back they will remember that something very deep and silent has happened. Something in their energy has changed.

It is a deep relaxation. In this relaxation if some message arises, listen to it very carefully.

"Two mornings ago I slept through the lecture and woke up at the end with the word 'single-mindedness' on my mind." That morning I had been talking about singlemindedness.

The question is old. The question is concerned with the series of Zen stories.

I was talking that morning about single-mindedness. You may not have heard; you were in TANDRA, in trance to what I was saying. But what I wanted to deliver to you has been delivered. Your being listened, your body listened, your totality drank out of me, absorbed what I was saying, what I was being here. And when you came back, as a condensed message, a gift from your deepest core to your periphery, from your center to your circumference, the word 'single-mindedness' arose in your consciousness. Now you ask what to do?. -- be single-minded!

And what do I mean when I say 'be single-minded'? In fact, to say 'be single-minded' is almost to say 'be without mind' -- because the mind exists only in conflict. Mind exists only as many. When the manyness has disappeared and the crowd is no more there, we call it single-minded -- or you can call it no-mind because the mind has disappeared.

Mind is many; single mind is no-mind. When you are one, together -- no conflict inside, no division, all demons gone, you have become indivisible,,everything joined together in a deep coherence and harmony, a single orchestra -- then there is no-mind.

Single-mindedness is a term from Yoga tradition. No-mind means the same, but the term belongs to another tradition, Zen. But they both mean the same: don't be a crowd, don't be poly-psychic. Become uni-psychic, become one.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

The distinction is subtle but very clear, not difficult; subtle, but not difficult. If you have egomania, it will create more and more misery for you. Misery will indicate that you are ill. Egomania is a disease, a cancer of the soul. Egomania will make you more and more tense, will make you more and more up-tight, will not allow you to relax at all. It will drive you towards insanity.

Self-love is just the opposite of egomania. In self-love there is no self, only love. In egomania there is no love, only self. In self-love you will start becoming more and more relaxed. A person who loves himself is totally relaxed. To love somebody else may create a little tension, because the other need not be always in tune with you. The other may have his or her own ideas. The other is a different world; there is every possibility of collision, clash. There is every possibility of storm and thunder because the other is a different world. There is always a subtle struggle going on. But when you love yourself, there is nobody else. There is no conflict -- it is pure silence, it is tremendous delight.

You are alone; nobody disturbs you. The other is not needed at all. And to me, a person who has become capable of such deep love towards himself becomes capable of loving others. If you cannot love yourself, how can you love others? It must first happen at close quarters, it must first happen within you, to spread towards others.

People try to love others, not being at all aware that they have not even loved themselves.

How can you love others? That which you don't have you cannot share. You can give to others only that which you have already with you.

So the first and the most basic step towards love is love of oneself; but it has no self in it.

Let me explain it to you.

The 'I' arises only as a contrast to the 'thou'. 'I' and 'thou' exist together. The 'I' can exist in two dimensions. One dimension is 'I-it': you -- your house, you -- your car, you -- your money; 'I-it'. When there is this 'I', this 'I' of 'I-it', your 'I' is almost like a thing. It is not consciousness; it is fast asleep, snoring. Your consciousness is not there. You are just like things, a thing amidst things: part of your house, part of your furniture, part of your money.

Have you watched it? A man who is too greedy about money, by and by starts having the qualities of money. He becomes just money. He loses spirituality, he is no more a spirit.

He is reduced to a thing. If you love money, you will become like money. If you love your house, by and by you will become material. Whatsoever you love, you become.

Love is alchemical. Never love the wrong thing, because it will transform you. Nothing is so transforming as love. Love something which can raise you higher, to higher altitudes.

Love something beyond you.

That is the whole effect of religion: to give you a love-object like God so that there is no way to fall down. One has to rise.

One sort of 'I' exists as 'I-it'; another sort of 'I' exists as 'I-thou'. When you love a person, another type of 'I' arises in you: 'I thou'. You love a person, you become a person.

But what about self-love?. -- there is no 'it' and there is no 'thou'. 'I' disappears because 'I'

can exist only in two contexts: 'it' and 'thou'. 'I' is the figure, 'it' and 'thou' function as the field. When the field disappears the 'I' disappears. When you are left alone, you are, but you don't have an 'I', you don't feel any 'I'. You are simply a deep AMNESS. Ordinarily we say 'I am'. In that state, when you are deep in love with yourself, 'I' disappears. Only amness, pure existence, pure being remains. It will fill you with tremendous bliss. It will make you a celebration, a rejoicing. There will be no problem in distinguishing between them.

If you are getting more and more miserable, then you are on the trip of being an egomaniac. If you are becoming more and more tranquil, silent, happy, together, then you are on another trip -- the trip of self-love. If you are on the trip of ego you will become destructive to others -- because the ego tries to destroy the 'thou'. If you are moving towards self-love, the ego will disappear. And when the ego disappears, you allow the other to be himself or herself; you give total freedom. If you don't have any ego you cannot create an imprisonment for the other you love; you cannot create a cage. You allow the other to be an eagle in the high heavens. You allow the other to be himself or herself; you give total freedom. Love gives total freedom. Love IS freedom -- freedom for you and freedom for the object of your love. Ego is bondage -- bondage for you and bondage for your victim.

But ego can play very deep tricks with you. It is very cunning, and subtle are its ways: it can pretend to be self-love.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

Mulla Nasrudin's face lit up as he recognized the man who was walking ahead of him down the subway stairs. He slapped the man so heartily on the back that the man nearly collapsed, and cried, "Goldberg, I hardly recognized you! Why, you have gained thirty pounds since I saw you last. And you have had your nose fixed, and I swear you are about two feet taller."

The man looked at him angrily. "I beg your pardon," he said in icy tones, "but I do not happen to be Goldberg."

"Aha!" said Mulla Nasrudin, "so you have even changed your name?"

The ego is very cunning and very self-justifying, very self-rationalizing. If you are not very alert it can start hiding itself behind self-love. The very word 'self' will become a protection for it. It can say, "I am your self." It can change its weight, it can change its height, it can change its name. And because it is just an idea, there is no problem about it:

it can become small, it can become big. It is just your fantasy.

Be very careful. If you really want to grow in love, much carefulness will be needed.

Each step has to be taken in deep alertness so ego cannot find any loophole to hide behind.

Your real self is neither I nor thou; it is neither you nor the other. Your real self is altogether transcendental. What you call 'I' is not your real self. 'I' is imposed on reality.

When you call somebody 'you', you are not addressing the real self of the other. Again you have imposed a label on it. When all the labels are taken away, the real self remains - - and the real self is as much yours as it is others. The real self is one.

That's why we go on saying that we participate in each other's beings, we are members of each other. Our real reality is God. We may be like icebergs floating in the ocean -- they appear to be separate -- but once we melt, nothing will be left. Definition will disappear, limitation will disappear, and the iceberg will not be there. It will become part of the ocean.

The ego is an iceberg. Melt it. Melt it in deep love, so it disappears and you become part of the ocean.

I have heard....

The Judge looked very severe. "Mulla," he said, "your wife says you hit her over the head with a baseball bat and threw her down a flight of stairs. What have you got to say for yourself?"

Mulla Nasrudin rubbed the side of his nose with his hand, and meditated. Finally he said, "Your Honor, I guess there are three sides to this case: my wife's story, my story, and the truth."

Yes, he is perfectly right.

"You have heard about two sides of a truth," he said, "but there are three sides" -- and he is exactly right. There is your story, my story, and the truth; I and you and the truth.

The truth is neither I nor you. I and you is an imposition on the vastness of the truth. 'I' is false, 'you' is false; utilitarian, useful in the world. It will be difficult to manage the world without 'I' and 'you'. Good -- use them, but they are just devices of the world. In reality, there is neither 'you' nor 'I'. Something, someone, some energy exists with no limitations, with no boundaries. Out of it we come, and into it we disappear again.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

So what is wrong in it? Love has to arise out of lust. If you avoid lust, you will be avoiding the whole possibility of love itself. Love is not lust, true; but love is not without lust -- that too is true. Love is higher than lust, yes, but if you destroy lust completely, you destroy the very possibility of the flower arising out of the mud. Love is the lotus, lust is the mud the lotus arises out of. Remember it; otherwise you will never attain to love. At the most, you can pretend that you have transcended lust. Because without love, nobody can transcend lust; you can repress it. Repressed, it becomes more poisonous. It spreads into your whole system, it becomes toxic, it destroys you. Lust transformed into love gives you a glow, a radiance. You start feeling light, as if you can fly. You start gaining wings. With lust repressed you become heavy, as if you are carrying a weight, as if a big rock is hanging around your neck. With lust repressed, you lose all opportunities to fly in the sky. With lust transformed into love, you have passed the test of existence.

You have been given a raw material to work, to be creative. Lust is raw material.

I have heard....

Berkowitz and Michaelson, who were not only business partners but life-long friends, made a pact: that whichever one died first would come back and tell the other what it was like in heaven.

Six months later, Berkowitz died. He was a very moral man, almost saint-like, a puritan who had never done anything wrong, who had always remained afraid of lust and sex.

And Michaelson waited for his dear departed holy friend to show some sign that he had returned to earth. Michaelson passed the time impatiently hoping for and eagerly awaiting a message from Berkowitz.

Then one year after the day of his death, Berkowitz spoke to Michaelson. It was late at night; Michaelson was in bed.

"Michaelson, Michaelson," echoed the voice.

"Is that you, Berkowitz?"

"Yes."

"What is it like where you are?"

"We have breakfast and then we make love, then we eat lunch and we make love, we have dinner and then we make love."

"Is that what heaven is like?" asked Michaelson.

"Who said anything about heaven?" said Berkowitz. "I am in Wisconsin, and I am a bull."

Remember, this happens to people who repress sex. Nothing else can happen because that whole energy repressed becomes a load and pulls you down. You move towards lower stages of being. If love arises out of lust, you start rising towards higher being.

So remember, what you want to become -- a Buddha or a bull -- depends on you. If you want to become a Buddha, then don't be afraid of sex. Move into it, know it well, become more and more alert about it. Be careful; it is tremendously valuable energy. Make it a meditation and transform it, by and by, into love. It is raw material, like a raw diamond:

you have to cut it, polish it; then it becomes of tremendous value. If somebody gives you an unpolished, raw, uncut diamond, you may not even recognize that it is a diamond.

Even the Kohinoor in its raw state is worthless.

Lust is a Kohinoor: it has to be polished, it has to be understood.

The questioner seems to be afraid and antagonistic: "It is all my hidden cravings for sex and all that." There is a condemnation in it. Nothing is wrong; man is a sexual animal.

That's how we are. That's the way life means us to be. That's how we have found ourselves here. Go into it. Without going, you will never be able to transform it. I'm not speaking for mere indulgence. I'm saying move into it with deep meditative energy to understand what it is. It must be something tremendously valuable because you have come out of it, because the whole existence enjoys it, because the whole existence is sexual. Sex is the way God has chosen to be in the world, notwithstanding what Christians go on saying -- that Jesus was born out of a virgin woman -- all foolishness.

They pretend that sex was not involved in Jesus' birth. They are so afraid of sex that they create foolish stories like this: that Jesus is born out of a virgin Mary. Mary must have been very pure, that's true; she must have been spiritually virgin, that is true -- but there is no way to enter into life without passing through the energy that sex is. The body knows no other law. And nature is all-inclusive: it believes in no exceptions, it allows no exceptions. You are born out of sex, you are full of sex energy. But this is not the end; this may be the beginning. Sex is the beginning but not the end.

There are three types of people. One thinks that sex is the end also. They are the people who live a life of indulgence. They miss, because sex is the beginning but not the end.

Then there are people who are against indulgence. They take the other, the opposite extreme: they don't want sex even to be the beginning, so they start cutting it. Cutting it, they cut themselves. Destroying it, they destroy themselves, they wither away. Both are foolish attitudes.

There is the third possibility: the possibility of the wise man who looks at life, who has no theories to enforce on life, who just tries to understand. He comes to see that sex is the beginning but not the end. Sex is just an opportunity to grow beyond it, but one has to pass through it.

The last question:

Question 7:

It is from Anup.

It is significant to have come to an understanding of what surrender or submission is. It is one of the keys, but people are very afraid to use it -- because if you surrender, submit, you are lost. It is death-like. It is as if one is committing suicide. So people go on doing other things and they call it submission, surrender.

To have this understanding, this glimpse that all that you have up to now been thinking of as surrender, as submission is not the real thing, is a great step towards transformation.

Once you understand the false as the false, you are becoming capable of knowing the real as the real. To understand the false as the false is the beginning of understanding the real as the real. The lies have to be exposed. Once lies are exposed, truth stands nude, naked, revealed.