Bring in the New Man

The first question:

Sarjano, man is dying, mankind is dying. And in fact there is not much time left. And this is felt not only here around the commune, it is felt everywhere by sensitive, intelligent, creative people. Only the mediocre are unaware of it; only the politicians go on rushing into the danger, the calamity, that awaits, totally unaware where they are going and where they are leading the world.

But people of sensitivity, awareness, meditativeness, people of the heart, are everywhere feeling that the danger is very close, that mankind can commit suicide any moment, that the future was never so uncertain as it is today, that the tomorrow may really never come.

These are moments of great turmoil, but they can become of great creativity too. When one is encountering death, one can bring one's total potential into manifestation. When there is no time left you cannot postpone. Hence the hurry.

When death is very imminent, life flares up to the optimum. And that is what is happening to all creative people around the world, and more so around this commune, because my whole approach is such that only the very creative ones will be attracted to it.

I teach sensitivity. Down the ages, religions have been teaching just the opposite -- how to become insensitive -- because the more insensitive you are the more you can remain aloof, distant, detached. Because it was thought that to attain to God one has to renounce the world, it was a natural consequence, a logical consequence, that one should learn how to be more and more insensitive to beauty, to music, to love, to people, to life itself. In the past, religion has been teaching people how to be unintelligent, because sensitivity and intelligence go together, insensitivity and stupidity go together.

Your so-called saints are not intelligent people at all, but you have worshipped them. And you have worshipped them for the wrong reason -- because they were insensitive, because they had dulled their consciousness, because they had grown thick skin around themselves. The spring will come but they will remain unaffected, the clouds will gather and they will remain unaffected. The peacock will dance but they will remain unaffected, the night sky will be full of stars but they will be completely unaware of it. That was the whole discipline in the past: how to become like a rock, so that the world cannot overpower you. It was a kind of paranoia, it was based in fear.

I teach you just the opposite: be sensitive, be alert, be loving, be sensuous -- because God is not against the roseflower, God is in it. If you can sensuously feel the velvetyness of the rose you have touched God himself. God is not against the stars and the sun and the moon, he is in them. If you can allow them to enter into your being, if you allow them to stir your heart, if you can allow them to drive you crazy in a dance of joy and celebration, you will be coming closer and closer to home. I teach sensitivity, I teach love.

The people who have gathered around me have a totally different quality to them. This is not an ordinary ashram, it is a commune of creators -- artists, painters, singers, musicians.

All kinds of talented people have come to me; only they can understand what I am saying. People understand according to their own inner capabilities. I may say one thing, you may understand something else. Communication is not easy, language is not adequate, and you will understand only that for which you have come.

I have gathered around me a special kind of people. Hence this urge will be felt by almost everybody, that something has to be done. First, it will be a very very vague kind of feeling, just a silent voice within your being, heard yet not heard, understood yet not understood... a whisper, not very clear, a little muddy, not very transparent. In the beginning this is bound to be so. You will hear it like a song: it will be more poetry than prose, it will come to you like dreams, visions. Slowly slowly the unconscious will be able to communicate to the conscious.

And that's what meditation is all about: learning the way to bridge the unconscious with the conscious, so that your own being can give you indications where to move, where to go, so that you don't need a leader, so that you become a guide to yourself, so that you can become a light unto yourself.

Sarjano, you are not dying, but this will be felt like that because you are part of humanity and humanity is dying. All that is human is disappearing, and all that is inhuman is becoming more and more dominating and powerful.

Man is being reduced to a machine, and mechanical values are becoming dominant. The artist is not respected, but the technician is. Poetry is not loved, but plumbing is. The dancer is no more in the center of life, but the businessman, the bureaucrat, the politician are. All that is beautiful is becoming irrelevant to man, because that which is beautiful cannot be used as a means to anything. That which is beautiful is an end unto itself. You cannot use poetry in war; you will need the scientist, not the poet. And you cannot use musicians in the marketplace; there you will need economists.

This whole life is geared around wrong things. Money is more important than meditation.

This is a very topsy-turvy situation: man is standing on his head. Man is dying, and the death is very slow. And remember, when death is very fast you can avoid it, because you become intensely aware of it. When it comes very very slow, a slow poisoning....

For example, a person goes on smoking every day. All the experts go on saying that this is dangerous to you, that this will kill you, but he smokes every day and it doesn't kill him! So you may write it on every packet of cigarettes -- nobody bothers about your warnings that "This is harmful to health," that "This is harmful to life." Who cares? -- because experience says something else! You smoke every day, dozens of cigarettes, and you don't die and you have not died yet.

You believe in your experience. The poison is very very slow: if a person goes on smoking one dozen cigarettes every day, then it will take twenty years to poison the whole system. Now, twenty years is a long time, and man has a very very short vision, he is shortsighted.

The world is being poisoned very slowly. The rivers are being polluted, the oceans are being polluted, the lakes are dying. Nature is being destroyed. We are exploiting the earth so much that sooner or later we will not be able to live on it. We are not behaving well with nature.

Our whole approach is wrong, it is destructive. We only take from the earth, and we never give anything back. We only exploit nature. The ecology is broken, the circulation is broken; we are not living in a perfect circle, and nature is a perfect circle: if you take from one hand and you give from another, you don't destroy it. But we are doing it: we only go on taking, and all the resources are being spent. But this poisoning is happening slowly, slowly. You don't see it happening because it takes a long time. And then there are politicians who go on gathering more and more atomic weapons -- more atom bombs, more hydrogen bombs, super-hydrogen bombs -- as if man has decided to commit suicide.

This is what is being felt by you, Sarjano. You have the heart of a poet or the heart of a painter, the heart of a lover. You have immense potential for creativity. You are sensitive, hence you are feeling it. But the feeling is as if "I am dying." No, not you -- something far more important is happening, something far more dangerous too.

Individuals have always died, it is not a problem. It is, in fact, part of recycling. Your body goes back to the sources to be renewed, your being moves back into the eternal to be rested, and then you come back again, fresh, young. Life tires, life exhausts, death is a rest. For the individual, death is a blessing -- but not for humanity itself; then it is a curse.

Individuals go on dying and they go on coming back. But humanity is needed for them to come back. This earth is a beautiful planet and it is in the wrong hands. Hence you are feeling that something is to be done very urgently. Yes, it is urgent, because death is coming closer.

This century's end is going to see either the total destruction of humanity, and with it the total destruction of life on this earth, or a new man being born -- a new man who will not hate life, as in the past it has been done; a new man who will love life; a new man who will not be negative in any way, but will be affirmative; a new man who will not desire life after death, but will live moment to moment in sheer joy -- who will think of this life as a gift and not as a punishment; who will not be antagonistic to the body, who will respect the body as the temple of the soul; who will love, and who will not be afraid of love; who will move in all kinds of relationships and yet be able to remain himself.

To be in relationship and become dependent is the sign of weakness. And to escape to the Himalayas or to some Catholic monastery because of the fear of becoming dependent is again the sign of weakness; it is cowardly.

To live in relationship and yet remain independent, that is what courage is. The new man will be courageous. In the past, only two kinds of cowards have existed on the earth, the worldly kind and the otherworldly kind -- but both are cowards. The really brave man will live in the world and yet not be of it. Either this is going to happen, or a total destruction. Now there is no third alternative. Man cannot survive as he is. Either he has to change himself, transmute himself, or he has to die and vacate the earth.

This is what is felt, this is why you are in such a hurry. That's why I am in such a hurry.

My sannyasins can be the new man, my sannyasins can herald the new age. Hence my sannyasins are going to be opposed by all past-oriented people: by Hindus, by Christians, by Mohammedans, by Jainas, by Buddhists -- by almost everybody. They are going to be opposed, and that is natural because we are trying to bring a new future in. To bring that new future we will have to destroy the past, because unless the past ceases to exist, the future cannot come into existence.

The past has to die. We have to drop our clinging with the past. What does it mean when you say that "I am a Hindu"? It means you cling to a certain past tradition. What do you mean when you say that "I am a Mohammedan"? You cling to something past.

But when you say, "I am a sannyasin, a neo-sannyasin," you don't cling to any past. Your eyes are focused on the future. Your roots are in the present and your branches are moving towards the future. Then the past is irrelevant. I want you to remember it again and again that the past has to be made irrelevant. You have to cut yourself off from the past.

You say, Sarjano, "What is this urge to do something?"

Yes, something has to be done. You have to give birth to yourself, and you have to prepare the way for the new man.

"What is this urge to do something, to create? to free your message, your word, unto the world?"

Yes, it has to be shouted from the housetops, it has to be hammered -- because people are deaf, people are blind, they will not hear what is being said to them.

Just the other day, Neeraj sent me a beautiful parable from Pierre Delattre's Tales of a Dalai Lama. In this beautiful book comes this parable:

All the monks had seen the spirit come out of the wall long enough to utter just one word.

But each monk had heard a different word. The event is immortalized in this poem:

The one who wanted to die heard LIVE.

The one who wanted to live heard DIE.

The one who wanted to take heard GIVE.

The one who wanted to give heard KEEP.

The one who was always alert heard SLEEP.

The one who was always asleep heard WAKE.

The one who wanted to leave heard STAY.

The one who wanted to stay, DEPART.

The one who never spoke heard PREACH.

The one who always preached heard PRAY.

Each one learned how he had been in someone else's way.

What I am saying has to be conveyed to as many people as possible, and as fast as possible. Use all modern media to reach as many people as possible. Still, be aware that it is very difficult to communicate. It is almost an impossibility to communicate; still it has to be done. Even if fragments of what I am saying are understood, it will be enough to create the field, the energy field, in which the new man can be conceived.

Even if people misunderstand it... it is better to understand the truth, but even if the truth is misunderstood it is better than a lie. Something of the truth will remain in the misunderstanding too. And truth is a potential power, a great power. Even if a fragment, just a seed of truth, falls into your heart, sooner or later you will become the garden of Eden. It cannot be avoided. Just a drop, and the whole ocean will find its way towards you.

Sarjano, it has to be done. You have to create my message in as many forms as possible.

Compose music, play on the guitar or on the flute, because it is easier to stir the heart of the people, to wake it up through music than through words. Dance, but dance in a new way so your dance becomes a teaching of meditation. Dance in such a way that the one who looks at you starts feeling that it is not only a dance but something more, something plus; so that he starts feeling the vibe of meditation that is happening inside you.

Paint: paint pictures which can become objects of meditation, paint pictures of the inner sky of buddhas. The modern painting is pathological. If you look at Picasso's paintings you cannot look long, you will start feeling uneasy. You cannot have Picasso paintings in your bedroom, because then you will have nightmares. If you meditate on a Picasso painting long enough you will go mad, because those paintings are out of Picasso's madness.

Go to Ajanta, Ellora, Khajuraho, Konarak, and you will see a totally different world of creativity. Looking at the statue of a buddha, something in you starts falling in tune.

Sitting silently with a buddha statue, you start becoming silent. The very posture, the very shape, the face, the closed eyes, the silence that surrounds a marble statue will help you to get connected with your own inner sources of silence.

Gurdjieff used to say that there are two kinds of art. One he used to call objective art, and the other he used to call subjective art. Subjective art is absolutely private, personal.

Picasso's art is subjective art; he is simply painting something without any vision for the person who will see it, without any idea of the person who will look at it. He is simply pouring out his own inner illness; it is helpful for himself, it is therapeutic.

I am not saying that Picasso should stop painting, because if he stops painting he is bound to go mad. It is painting that is keeping him sane; his painting is like vomiting. When you have eaten something wrong, when you have a food poisoning, vomiting is the most healthy way to throw the toxins, the poisons, outside the system; it will help. Picasso's paintings are like vomiting. He is suffering from many illnesses, all the illness that humanity is suffering from. He simply represents humanity, he is very representative.

He represents the whole madness that is happening in millions of people. He is a sensitive soul; he has become so attuned with the pathology of mankind that it has become his own pathology. Hence the appeal of his paintings, otherwise they are ugly. Hence his great name -- because he deserves it, he represents the age. This is Picasso's age: what you cannot say about yourself, he has said it. What you cannot pour out of yourself, he has poured it on the canvas. But it is a subjective phenomenon. It is therapeutic to him, but it is dangerous to everybody else.

The ancient art was not only art; it was, deep down, mysticism. Deep down, it was out of meditation. It was objective, in Gurdjieff's terminology. It was made so that if somebody meditates over it, he starts falling into those depths where God lives.

Khajuraho or Konarak -- if you meditate there, you will know what the Tantra masters were doing. They were creating in stone something that is felt in the ultimate orgasmic joy. It was the most difficult thing to do, to bring ecstasy into the stone. And if the stone can show the ecstasy, then everybody can move into that ecstasy easily.

But people who go to Khajuraho are foolish people. They look either at Khajuraho sculpture as obscene -- then they miss the whole point, then they are seeing something which is within their own unconscious; or they are too moralistic -- then they don't meditate on any statues, they are in a hurry to get out of the temple somehow, they just throw glances.

Khajuraho sculpture is not just to see, it is for meditation. Sit silently and meditate for hours. If one goes to Khajuraho, one should live at least for three months there, so he can meditate on each possible inner posture of orgasmic joy. And then, slowly slowly, the at- onement, slowly slowly, the harmony; then suddenly you are transported into another world -- the world of those mystics who created this temple. This is objective art.

So too is the Taj Mahal. On a fullmoon night, if you sit silently by the side of it, not being bothered about the history of the Taj Mahal and who created it and why -- those are all nonsense, irrelevant facts, they don't matter: Shah Jahan and his beloved, and his memory of his beloved, he created it.... Don't be bothered by the guides; tip them before they start torturing you, and get rid of them!

Shah Jahan has nothing to do with the Taj Mahal, in fact. Yes, he created it, he created it as a memorial for his wife, but he is not the essential source of it. The essential source is in the Sufi way of life, it is in Sufism. Basically it was created by Sufi masters; Shah Jahan was just instrumental. The Sufi masters have created something of immense value.

If you silently sit in the full moon night just looking at the Taj Mahal, sometimes with open eyes and sometimes with closed eyes, slowly slowly you will feel something that you have never felt before. Sufis called it zikr, remembrance of God.

The beauty of the Taj Mahal will remind you of those realms from where all beauty, all benediction comes. You will become attuned with the Sufi way of remembering God:

beauty is God.

Sarjano, don't try to repress this urge. Create in any way that suits you. My message has to be delivered in all possible mediums.

In the new commune we are going to have many guilds. The sculptors will have their own guild and they will sculpt, and the poets will have their own guild, and the painters and the carpenters and the dancers and the musicians and the novelists and the filmmakers. All possible media have to be used to approach as many people as possible, to approach as many different kinds of people as possible -- because one who can understand poetry may not understand prose, and one who can understand music may not understand painting, and one who can understand sculpture may not understand poetry.

And the message is so important because the whole future of humanity depends on it.

Nowhere else is the experiment being done on such a great scale. There is no other community on the whole earth which is working in such a way as this commune. This is the greatest therapeutic center in the world now.

We need a great therapeutic center so that the modern mind can be helped to vomit, cathart all that has gone wrong in it. Then we will need creators. And once somebody has catharted and thrown out all that is wrong, a great urge will arise in him to create.

Once pathology disappears, everybody becomes a creator. Let it be understood as deeply as possible: only ill people are destructive. The people who are healthy are creative.

Creativity is a kind of fragrance of real health. When a person is really healthy and whole, creativity comes naturally to him, the urge to create arises.

This urge is being felt by many just like you, Sarjano. Do something for it -- and whatsoever you do is good. Follow your own urge, don't distort it. In the beginning it will remain vague, but if you follow it, soon it will become clear, more and more clear. And if you start doing something about it, things will become very clear very soon.

There are many things which become clear only when you do something about them. For example, the poet is never really aware of the poetry unless he has written it. It remains a very vague cloudy phenomenon. Once he writes it down it starts taking shape, form; it becomes crystallized into words. No painter is ever able to say anything about what he wants to paint, unless he has painted it.

It is said that the best way to learn is to teach. And I agree with it, because what you want to learn you will not be really clearly aware of unless you start teaching it.

In the future, education will have that dimension. My own vision is that each student should be given an opportunity to teach too. The students who are reading and studying for their master's degree should be allowed to go to lower classes to teach; those who are working for their bachelor's degree, they should be allowed to teach the lower classes.

Every student should be a teacher also, and vice versa. Every teacher once in a while should sit with the students and start learning again. Each teacher once in a while should be a student, and each student once in a while should be a teacher too. This difference between the teacher and the taught has to be dissolved; the teacher and the taught are part of one process.

And the same is true about other phenomena. The therapist and the patient -- the therapist should not remain always a therapist, once in a while he should lie down on the couch and let the patient be the therapist and he becomes the patient. And immense will be the benefit out of it. The patient will learn many things that he was not able to learn while he was functioning as a patient: by becoming the therapist, by trying to solve the problem of the therapist -- because now the therapist is the patient -- he will be able to see many things more clearly. And the therapist as a patient will be able to see more clearly the problem, the anxiety, the anguish of the patient, because he will be standing in the shoes of the patient; now he will know where it pinches.

The therapist and the patient should not be divided, they should become part of one team.

It is a therapy team, and sometimes the therapist plays the role of the patient and sometimes the patient plays the role of the therapist -- the roles are interchangeable and so on and so forth. A couple making love... the man should not always remain the man, and the woman should not always remain the woman. Sometimes the man should be the wife, passive, and the woman should be the husband, active; they should change roles.

The husband and wife should not remain frozen, they should be more melting: once in a while the wife should play the active role, take initiative making love, and the husband should be just passive, receptive. Love will have a greater richness that way than it has today. In fact all frozen roles have to be by and by dissolved. Life has to become more liquid.

So do whatsoever you can do, and by doing it, you will know what was the urge. Be articulate, try to convey the message, and don't be afraid.

A great fear arises when you are trying to deliver something immensely valuable; great fear arises, one starts feeling nervous. There is no need to feel nervous, because it is nothing to do with you. The urge is coming from the innermost sources of your being, it is divine. You are in the hands of God; be instrumental, you need not be worried.

You need not be proud if something good happens, you need not be ashamed if something goes wrong. Surrender both right and wrong unto the feet of God, and be free of your self-consciousness -- because if you are not free of your self-consciousness you will never really be a creator in my sense of the word.

The real creator has no self. The real creation comes out of no-self, the real creation comes out of inner emptiness. When one is utterly empty, one is full of God. Not to be is the way for God to enter you. If you are too much, he is not there. If you are not, only he is there. And creativity is part of the creator.

No man ever creates; it is always God who creates. Hence the poet while he is creating is divine, and the painter while he is painting is divine. The only thing: if he is self- conscious then God is not there, then whatsoever he will do will be subjective art.

But if he is not there, if he is drowned in painting, completely lost, has forgotten himself and there is no self-consciousness, there is no ego, then God is there. When you find a painter painting, utterly lost, linger around. God is very close by -- far more close than you will find him in the temples, in the mosques, in the churches.

When a singer is singing, sit by the side. Feel, God is very close by. When somebody is playing on the flute, hide behind a tree and listen, and you will be able to see something, something that is not of this world, something that is of the beyond. Creativity is always from the beyond.

The second question:

Devadatta, life is not something that can be defined. And life is not one thing, either; there are as many lives as there are people. Life is not a singular phenomenon. My life has a taste of its own, your life has its own individuality. The life of a tree certainly is not your life, and the life of a river is not the life of the tree.

Life is a multiplicity, life has millions of forms. How can it be defined? No definition will do justice to it. Yes, it can be lived, it can be tasted, but it cannot be defined. And your definition will simply show your experience. It will not say anything about life, it will only say something about how you have understood your life. It will not be relevant to anybody else's life. Remember this, then life is felt as a tremendous mystery.

Sol Greenberg was the only Jewish man in a small Texas town. He had given freely of his wealth and was particularly kind to the black population. And then Greenberg died.

Since he had no relatives, Greenberg bequeathed all his worldly goods to the townspeople. In order to show their respect and appreciation they decided to bury Greenberg in grand style.

They dressed him up in a cowboy outfit, complete with ten gallon hat and gold spurs.

They had a solid gold Cadillac built, placed Greenberg behind the wheel and then dug a hole large enough to accommodate the car and its deceased occupant.

As they were lowering the Caddy into the ground, two blacks stood nearby and one commented to the other, "Ah tell ya, man, them Jewish folks sure knows how to live!"

The definition depends on you. The definition is always going to be your definition, how you conceive life, it will not be the definition of life. For the money mad, life will have the sound of money, of solid gold. For the power mad, the power maniac, life will have a different taste. For the poet, of course, life will have something of poetry in it.

It differs individual to individual, it depends. But one thing is central, essential, and that I would like to tell you. One thing is very essential: anybody who is really alive will be herenow. Whatsoever the form and whatsoever the expression of his individual life, one thing will be essentially there: the quality of being herenow.

Past is no more, future is not yet, so those who live in the past don't live, they only think they live. And those who live in the future can't live, because how can you make anything out of the future which has not come yet?

But that's how people are living. Millions live in the past, and the remaining millions live in the future, and it is very rare to find a person who lives herenow. But that is the real person, that is the person who is really alive. Life needs only one thing: to be rooted in the present. There is nowhere else for it to be rooted. Past is memory, future is imagination; both are unreal.

The real is this moment -- thisness.

You ask me, "What is life?"

This is it!

You will have to learn how to unburden yourself from past and future, then you will be able to live like a roseflower or like a bird or like an animal, like a tree. Then you will have the same greenness, then you will have the same life juice flowing in you.

As I see it, millions of people on the road are not alive but walking zombies, they are dead people. In their eyes you will not find life flowing, life juices flowing. Their life is utterly meaningless -- it is meaningless because it is not life.

In the old days, a minister had a negro named Ezra in his household. Ezra was smart and ambitious, but he couldn't read or write.

One Sunday the minister saw Ezra in church, scribbling away industriously through the sermon. Afterwards the minister asked him, "Ezra, what were you doing in church?"

"Takin' notes, suh. Ah's eagah to l'arn."

"Let me see," said the minister, and he glanced over Ezra's notes, which looked more like Chinese than English.

"Why, Ezra," he chided, "this is all nonsense!"

"Ah thought so," said Ezra, "all the time you was preaching it."

Life is not there readymade, available. You get the life that you create, you get out of life that which you put into it. First you have to pour meaning into it. You have to give color and music and poetry, you have to be creative. Only then will you be alive.

The second essential thing: that only those few people who are creative know what life is.

The uncreative never know, because life is in creativity, life is creativity. Can't you see how life goes on creating? It is a continuum of creativity, constant creativity, every moment creativity.

In fact God is not a creator. It is better to call him "creativity," because verbs are truer than nouns. Nouns look like things, verbs are processes -- alive, flowing, dynamic. God is more creativity than a creator. Whenever you are creating, you will have the taste of life, and it will depend on your intensity, on your totality. Life is not a philosophical problem, it is a religious mystery. Then anything can become the door -- even cleaning the floor. If you can do it creatively, lovingly, totally, you will have some taste of life.

Here in the ashram you will see people cleaning the floors, cleaning the bathrooms, structuring rooms, making furniture. But you will see a totally different quality:

whatsoever their work is, they are doing it out of immense love. And you will see joy.

That joy is not coming out of the work, that joy is coming out of their totality in the world, out of their surrender to the work. No work in itself can give you joy unless you pour joy into it.

So don't ask what life is, ask how to enter into life. The door is now, here -- and you have to be creative, only then will you be able to enter the door; otherwise you will go on standing in the doorway without entering the palace.

So the second essential is: be creative. If these two things are fulfilled, you will know what life is.

The third question:

Akam, there is no such thing as right or wrong, because something may be right this moment and it may not be right the next moment. Something may be wrong today and may not be wrong tomorrow.

Right and wrong are not fixed entities, they are not labels that you can put on things, "This is right" and "This is wrong." But this has been done up to now. Right and wrong have been decided by people. And because people have decided right and wrong, they have misguided the whole humanity.

Manu decides in one way: what he thinks is right becomes right for millions and millions of Hindus for thousands of years. It is so stupid, it is unbelievable! How can people go on following Manu for five thousand years? Everything else has changed. If Manu comes back he will not be able to recognize the world at all; everything has changed. But the Hindu mind goes on following the categories that Manu has fixed.

Still, after five thousand years, there are millions of people in India who are not treated like people. What to say, that they are not treated like people -- they are not even treated like cattle. Even cows are far more important than alive people. Cows are worshipped, cows are holy, and the untouchables, the sudras, the rejected people -- rejected by Manu, five thousand years ago -- are burned.

And even a man like Vinoba Bhave is ready to go on fasting if cow slaughter is not completely stopped in the country, totally stopped. But he is completely silent, he does not say a single word, that the untouchables are being killed, burned alive, their women raped, their children murdered, butchered. Villages of untouchables, whole villages are being effaced from the earth, and Vinoba Bhave is not thinking of going on a fast. Who bothers about these untouchables? They are not part of humanity, they are not human beings. Cows have to be saved, because Manu worships the cow.

It may have been right at that moment; I am not against Manu, I am against the foolish followers of Manu. It may have been right at that time, because the cow was very very important, it was the center of the whole economy; particularly the Indian economy was based on the cow. It was an agricultural society, and the cow was the source of many things: of the bulls, the bullocks, the manure, the milk -- it was immensely important, it was perfectly right to save it. But now the world is living in a totally different way. Manu had a very small world; now we have the whole earth to think of, it is not only a question of a small sect. But once right has been fixed, people go on following blindly; it has been like that up to now.

For example, in the ten commandments Moses says, "Do not worship any other god than the true God. Don't make idols of the true God and don't worship any other gods." It was a totally different world; three thousand years have passed. In fact, in those ten commandments there is not a single commandment which says anything about atheists. It says, "Don't worship any other god." It does not say, "Don't disbelieve in God," because there was no disbeliever. Atheism was not at all in the air.

Now the most fundamental thing will be to teach people how not to be atheists, because atheism is very prevalent. Almost half of the earth has gone communist, it is atheist, and the remaining half is only formally theist. Now the most fundamental commandment should be, "Don't be atheists, don't be disbelievers, don't be doubters." Now trust should be the most fundamental teaching to be given to people.

As time changes, rights change, wrongs change. And you can see it in your own life -- every day things are different, and you go on clinging to your fixed ideas. The man who lives with fixed ideas lives a dead life. He is never spontaneous and he is never in a right relationship with the situation that exists. He is never response-able; he functions out of his old conclusions which are no longer relevant, he does not look at the situation itself.

So, Akam, according to me there is no such thing as right and no such thing as wrong.

Then what do I teach? I teach awareness -- not labeling, not categorizing. I teach awareness. I teach you to be fully aware in every situation, and act out of your awareness.

Or, in different words I can say: Any action that happens through awareness is right; any action that happens through unawareness is wrong.

But see the emphasis. The emphasis is not on the action itself, the emphasis is on the source -- awareness or unawareness. If you act fully aware, then whatsoever you do is right. If you move mechanically and do things unconsciously as if you are a sleepwalker, a somnambulist, then whatsoever you do is wrong.

Awareness is right, unawareness is wrong.

But if you go to the priests, they will teach you what is right and what is wrong. They will not give you insight, they will give you dead categories. They will not give you light, so that you can see in every situation what to do and what not to do; they want you to depend on them. They don't give you insight into things, so you have to remain dependent forever. They give you crutches, but they don't make you stand on your own feet.

Avoid the priests. Whenever you go to any kind of experts, their whole effort in fact is how to make you dependent on them.

The star of a Broadway hit was visiting friends when talk got around, as usual, to psychiatry. "I must say," said the hostess, "I think my analyst is the best in the world!

You can't imagine what he has done for me. You ought to try him."

"But I don't need analysis," said the star. "I could not be more normal -- there is nothing wrong with me."

"But he is absolutely great," insisted her friend. "He will find something wrong."

There are people who live on finding something wrong with you. Their whole trade secret is to find something wrong with you. They cannot accept you as you are; they will give you ideals, ideas, ideologies, and they will make you feel guilty and they will make you feel worthless, dirt. In your own eyes, they will make you feel so condemned that you will forget all about freedom.

In fact you will become afraid of freedom, because you will see how bad you are, how wrong you are -- and if you are free, you are going to do something wrong, so follow somebody. The priest depends on it, the politician depends on it. They give you right and wrong, fixed ideas, and then you will remain guilty forever.

I say to you: There is nothing right and nothing wrong. I don't want you to depend on me, and I don't give you any fixed ideas. I simply give you indications, hints, which have to be worked out by you. And the hint that I give to you is awareness. Become more aware, and it is a miracle....

If you are angry, the priest will say anger is wrong, don't be angry. What will you do?

You can repress anger, you can sit upon it, you can swallow it, literally, but it will go into you, into your system. Swallow anger and you will have ulcers in the stomach, swallow anger and sooner or later you will have cancer. Swallow anger and you will have a thousand and one problems arising out of it, because anger is poison. But what will you do? If anger is wrong, you have to swallow it.

I don't say anger is wrong, I say anger is energy -- pure energy, beautiful energy. When anger arises, be aware of it, and see the miracle happen. When anger arises, be aware of it, and if you are aware you will be surprised; you are in for a surprise -- maybe the greatest surprise of your life -- that as you become aware, anger disappears. Anger is transformed. Anger becomes pure energy; anger becomes compassion, anger becomes forgiveness, anger becomes love. And you need not repress, so you are not burdened by some poison. And you are not being angry, so you are not hurting anybody. Both are saved: the other, the object of your anger, is saved, and you are saved. In the past, either the object was to suffer, or you were to suffer.

What I am saying is that there is no need for anybody to suffer. Just be aware, let awareness be there. Anger will arise and will be consumed by awareness. One cannot be angry with awareness and one cannot be greedy with awareness and one cannot be jealous with awareness. Awareness is the golden key.

The last question:

Sybrand, there is no secret in it, it is just a way to recognize my people. I have poor eyesight, my eyes have gone all inwards. I will tell you one story:

I know of a tragic case where a minister made just one little transgression. For weeks, this preacherly pious man had admired and coveted a flashy sport coat in a clothing store window. It was colorful, too colorful for a preacher; for a preacher it was almost blasphemous. But finally one afternoon he cracked and went in and bought that blasphemous coat. It was a bright sunny day as he stepped out of the clothing store in his gaudy garb. Yet, lo and behold, right there in the bright sunlight he was struck dead by a lightning bolt.

Up in heaven he was dumbfounded as he faced the Lord. "Lord, oh Lord!" he said. "Why me? And why so suddenly after all my years of faithful service?"

"Why, Reverend Smith!" said the Lord. "What a dreadful mistake! We had no idea it was you."

So, I just have poor eyesight to recognize my people. If you want to become one of my people you will have to wear orange. There is no secret about it, all those secrets that I have been telling you are all just bullshit.

Enough for today.

The Book of Wisdom