The Blessed One

Question 1:

BECAUSE I AM - and because you are. And because only god is. There is no other way, there is no other way to be. You may know it, you may not know it.

The only choice is between ignorance and knowledge. The choice is not between whether to be a god or not to be a god; the choice is whether to recognize it or not. You can choose not to call, but you cannot choose not to be. But it has to be understood, because it is one of the most radical standpoints about life.

Life is made of one stuff. Call it god, call it matter, call it electricity. One thing is certain - that life consists of only one stuff. At the deepest, life is one unity. You can call it whatsoever you like. Scientists used to call it matter, now they have decided to call it electricity. Religious people decided to call it god, non-religious people decided to call it the world. But one thing is certain - that there exists only one thing.

Now, calling it A, B, C, does not matter. Whatsoever you call it, it does not change the reality, but it can change you. It will show your attitude. A person who calls the world matter, cannot grow. He has dropped all future possibilities.

He has closed his door. He has denied his destiny. Now he has no opening - he is a windowless atom, a monad... closed, going nowhere. Because matter cannot have any destiny, matter cannot have any growth. Matter cannot have any potentiality. Matter cannot have any experiencing.

The moment you say that life is nothing but matter, it does not change life.

Because you call it matter, it does not become matter, but by calling life matter, you become a closed thing. By calling life matter, you become a thing. You lose your personality you lose that throb of aliveness. Something inside you suddenly goes dead. Then you are a grave; you will drag. The dance will be lost. Your life will become more like prose, it will not have any poetry then.

When you call this life god, you bring poetry to it. You bring a vision, you open doors. You say, 'More is possible.' You say, 'We are not the end.' Higher realms of possibilities arise in your vision. You start dreaming. The moment you say this existence is divine, dreams become possible. Then you can live a life of adventure: God is the greatest venture, it is the greatest pilgrimage.

Calling existence divine, you bring something new to your vision. Then you are not finished, then you are not a full stop. Then you are a rushing river moving towards the ocean. By calling existence divine, you bring dynamism to your life.

Then you are not stale, stagnant. Then fantastic possibilities are there. Just courage is needed, and you can go on and on... and there is no end to it.

There are only two ways to give a label to life. One is the way of the realist - he calls it matter. The other is the way of the poet, the dreamer - he calls it god.

I am an unashamed poet. I'm not a realist. I call myself god, I call you god, I call rocks god, I call trees god, and the clouds god.... The whole consists of only one stuff and I have chosen to call it god, because with god you can grow, with god you can ride on great tidal waves; you can go to the other shore. God is just a glimpse of your destiny. You give personality to existence.

Then between you and the tree it is not emptiness. Then between you and your beloved it is not emptiness - god is bridging everything. He surrounds you, he is your surround. He is within and he is without.

When I call myself god, I mean to provoke you, to challenge you. I am simply calling myself god so that you can also gather courage to recognize it. If you can recognize it in me, you have taken the first step to recognizing it in yourself.

It will be very difficult for you to recognize it in yourself, because you have always been taught to condemn yourself. You have always been taught that you are a sinner. Here I am to take all that nonsense away. My insistence is that it is only one thing that is missing in you - the courage to recognize who you are.

I call myself god to help you, to give you courage. If this man can be a god, why not you? I'm just like you. By calling myself god, I am not bringing god down, I am bringing you up. I am taking you for a high journey. I'm simply opening a door towards the himalayan peaks.

Once you start recognizing that you are also divine, you become unburdened.

Then there may be errors, but there are no sins any more. You are not a sinner.

You may be mistaken, you may be wandering on astray paths, but you are not a sinner. Whatsoever you do, you cannot lose your godhood - that is your nature.

You can be a sinner, but still you cannot lose your godhood. Then, by becoming a sinner, your god becomes a sinner, that's all. You can be a fool, but that simply shows that god within you has chosen to play the game of being a fool, that's all.

Millions of forms, but all forms divine. Millions of forms, all complementing each other and making this whole world a great cosmos.

Calling myself god, I am just hinting something to you. I'm not interested in what you call me - that is pointless. It is just indicative, a gesture. I'm saying to you, 'Look at me! I'm just like you. If I can recognize the divinity within me, if I can respect my own being, why not you? Be respectful towards your own being.'

It is not going to help that you go and worship a stone in the temple unless you start worshipping yourself, unless you start being respectful to your own being, unless you feel reverence for your own existence... that's what I mean when I call myself god.

I respect my being. I don't feel any condemnation about me. I am happy as I am.

I am tremendously happy as I am. I am tremendously grateful as I am.

The indian term for god, Bhagwan, is even better than god. That word is tremendously meaningful. It simply means 'the blessed one' nothing else.

Bhagwan means 'the blessed one' - one who is fortunate enough to recognize his own being.

It has no christian associations. When you say 'god', it seems as if I have created the world. I deny all responsibility! I have not created this world. I am not that much a fool. The christian idea of god is one who has created the world.

Bhagwan is totally different. It has nothing to do with creating the world. It simply says one who has recognized himself as divine. In that recognition is benediction. In that recognition is blessing. He has become the blessed one.

You can also become. If I can become, why not you? Nothing is lacking - just a courage to penetrate your own soul, just a courage to enter yourself. You have been taught to be sinners - condemned crushed, crawling on the earth. Your wings have been cut and destroyed.

Calling myself Bhagwan, I would like simply to say to you to gather courage, reclaim your wings... the whole sky is yours. But without wings it is not yours.

Reclaim your wings and don't allow anybody to condemn you. Respect yourself!

If you cannot respect yourself, you cannot respect anybody else.

When you respect yourself, a great respect arises. Then you respect the tree, the rock, the man, the woman, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars. But those ripples of respect arise only when you have started respecting yourself.

I call myself Bhagwan because I respect myself. I am tremendously fulfilled as I am. I am the blessed one. I have no discontent. That is the meaning of Bhagwan - - when you have no discontent, when each moment of your life is a fulfillment...

when you don't desire anything in the future; your present is so full, overflowing... when there is no hankering.

That's why we call Buddha Bhagwan. He has denied god in his cosmology. He says there is no god, no creator. Christians become very puzzled when Buddha says there is no god, no creator. Then why do Buddhists call him Bhagwan?

Our meaning of Bhagwan is totally different. We call him Buddha, Bhagwan, because he has now no more desires. He is contented. He is happy and at home.

He has come home - that is his blessedness. Now there is no conflict between him and existence. He has fallen in accord, in harmonia. Now he and the whole are not two separate things. They vibrate in the same way. He has become part of the orchestra of the whole. And by becoming a part of this great orchestra of stars and trees and flowers and winds and clouds and seas and sands, he has become blessed - we call him Bhagwan.

Go on this adventure. Once you use a certain word, that word creates many things - words are very creative. If you call the world just matter, that very word pulls you down. So there is nothing else? just matter? Then all else that looks superior to matter must be illusory.

That's why a materialist goes on saying that the samadhi of Patanjali is illusion, the nirvana of Buddha is imaginary, the satori of zen masters is just a game of the mind. Why does the materialist go on denying these things? Once you have this concept of matter, that everything has to be reduced to matter, then there are many things that cannot be reduced to matter. How to reduce the experience of satori into matter? The only possible way is to deny it, say it is not.

Nietzsche says god is not, god is dead, because if god is, then you have to accept Jesus, you have to accept Buddha, you have to accept Patanjali, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra. They are like rainbows... bridges between the known and the unknown. But you have to raise your eyes towards the sky.

If you look down into the earth and you go on digging there, you cannot look at the rainbows. If you deny the existence of sky itself and somebody says, 'Look up!' you will say, 'Where? There is no up.' And if somebody says, 'I am seeing a beautiful rainbow in the sky,' you will say, 'You must be hallucinating, you must be in a delusion. What are you talking about? There is no sky, so there is no possibility for any rainbow.'

By denying god, we deny all possibilities of all rainbows. But then man becomes stuck. Then you are not going anywhere, then you are a stagnant pool... just waiting to die. For a materialist there is nothing else - just waiting to die. His life becomes a tremendous burden, anguish.

Jean-Paul Sartre calls man a useless passion. If there is no god, he is right. If there is no god, then why are you existing, for what? If you cannot become god, then what is the point of it all? Why go on existing and why go on carrying this anguish, angst, this anxiety, this tense life? Why? Why continue this nightmare?

Why not drop out of it?

In one of Dostoevsky's great novels, 'Brothers Karamazov', one character says to god, 'If I ever meet you, I want to give back this ticket that you gave me to enter into the world. Take it back! I don't want to be here; it is so pointless.'

Jean-Paul Sartre is right. If there is no god then existence is meaningless. Then it is just a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing. Then it is a madhouse.

With god, with the very concept of god, things start falling in line. Then it is not just a tale told by an idiot; then life has meaning. The meaning comes from the beyond. The meaning always comes from the transcendental. The meaning is always surpassing that which is. If you deny all future possibilities, then meaning disappears, then life is futile.

I call myself god because I would like to introduce you to a life of passionate meaning, full of meaning... a life of significance, grandeur, beauty, truth. With god, everything becomes possible. Without god, everything becomes impossible.

A man without god is not a man at all. He resembles man, but he is not a man because he has no transcending meaning in him. He is like a tree without flowers. The tree exists in a futile way, no fulfillment. Unless flowers bloom and the fragrance is released to the winds, the tree exists in vain. You can go and listen deeply; you will find it crying and weeping. Deep in its heart you will find pain. When flowers come to a tree, poetry has started happening, something transcendental.

Can you ever imagine flowers by looking at the roots? If you have never seen any flowers and I bring the roots of a beautiful flowering bush and show you the roots, can you imagine that flowers are possible from looking at ugly roots? You will simply deny. But hidden in these roots are flowers.

Somebody is needed to nourish these roots, to protect these roots, to water these roots, to give them light and shade and sun and wind and rains, and one needs to be tremendously trusting that something is going to happen, because long will be the awaiting. Then one day just a miracle happens - the tree is blooming. You cannot believe your eyes. How did those ugly roots get so transfigured? so transformed? How have those ugly roots become such beautiful roses?

Impossible. Illogical. It should not really happen. It goes against all reasoning.

But it is so.

If you exist without a god, you are a tree without flowers, a rosebush without roses. And what is a rosebush without roses? Just thorns....

When I call myself Bhagwan, I am simply saying to you, 'Look at me - the roses have bloomed. And what has happened to me can happen to you. So don't feel desperate and don't feel depressed. Look at me and your hope will come back, and you will not feel hopeless.

'Allow me to enter you. At least allow my fragrance to enter your nostrils. Let me get to your heart. Let me stir your heart a little so that your own flowers start growing, your own buds start opening their petals.'

Calling myself Bhagwan is just a device. I can drop it any day. The moment I see it has started working, the chain has started. The moment I see that now it is no more needed... a few people have become a flame; then they will be enough proof. There will be no need to call myself Bhagwan. They will be enough proof.

If a few of my sannyasins start blooming, I will drop calling myself Bhagwan.

The device will have worked.

A few years back, one day I called Yoga Chinmaya and told him to find a new word for me because I was going to function in a new way. I was known all over the country as the acharya. The acharya means a master, a teacher, and I was a teacher, and I was teaching and travelling. That was just the introductory part of my work; that was to invite people.

Once the invitation reached, I stopped travelling. Now those who want, they should come to me. I have gone to their home, knocked on their doors. I have told them that I am here and any day the desire arises in them, they can come. I will wait. I have shown them the path towards me. And then one day I called Yoga Chinmaya and I told him, 'Now find a new word for me because the word "teacher" will not be enough.'

He brought many names for the new function that I was going to take. He said, 'Maharishi, great seer.' I said, 'That is comparative - seer and great seer, rishi and maharishi. No, that is not good. And everybody cannot be a seer. It is a talent. A few people can become seers, everybody cannot become a seer.'

Then he said, 'Paramahansa, the great swan?' Again it is comparative. And it is a symbol of hierarchy. In certain old sannyasin orders, Paramahansa is the last stage. Just as in buddhist terminology, Arhat is the peak, one has arrived. In hindu terminology, Paramahansa is the peak - but it shows graduation, step by step. It is mathematical, calculative.

He said, 'Then what about Avadhuta? That too is another comparative term, belonging to another sect of sannyasins. It is again parallel to Arhat and Paramahansa, and belongs to the Tantrikas. Avadhuta is their last stage. But it shows achievement.

I said, 'Find something which is universal. Find something which is not relative.'

And then he found 'Bhagwan'.

It is a non-comparative term. You cannot be godlier than god; godder than god you cannot be. It is a non-comparative term. And it does not show any achievement; it simply shows your nature. Not that one has to become god; one is god, one has simply to recognize It does not show any talent. There is somebody who is a great poet, somebody who is a great seer, a great visionary; somebody a great painter, somebody a great musician, somebody a great dancer - these are all talents. All cannot be great dancers; you cannot all be Nijinskys. And all cannot be great painters; you cannot all be Van Goghs. And you all cannot be great poets; you cannot all be Tagores and Pablo Nerudas.

But Bhagwan you all are. It does not show an achievement; it simply shows your universality, your very nature. Already you are god.

I loved the term. I said, 'That will do. At least for a few years it will do; then we can drop it.'

I have chosen it for a specific purpose and it has been serving well, because people who used to come to me to gather knowledge, they stopped. The day I called myself Bhagwan, they stopped. It was too much for them, it was too much for their egos. Somebody calling himself Bhagwan?... it hurts the ego.

They stopped. They were coming to me to gather knowledge. Now I've changed my function absolutely. I started working on a different level, in a different dimension. Now I give you being, not knowledge. I was an acharya and they were students; they were learning. Now I am no more a teacher and you are not here as students.

If you are here as students, sooner or later you will have to leave, because you will find yourself in a wrong place; you will not fit here. Only if you are a disciple, then you can fit with me. Because now I am to give something more. If you are here for knowledge, then sooner or later you will see - you have to go somewhere else.

I am here to impart being. I am here to make you awake. I am not going to give you knowledge, I am going to give you knowing - and that is a totally different dimension.

Calling myself Bhagwan was simply symbolic - that now I have taken a different dimension to work. And it has been tremendously useful. All wrong people automatically disappeared and a totally different quality of people started arriving.

It worked well. Chinmaya's choice was good. It sorted out well. Only those who are ready to dissolve with me remained, all others escaped. They created space around me. Otherwise they were crowding too much, and it was very difficult for the real seekers to come closer to me. The crowds disappeared. The word 'Bhagwan' functioned like an atomic explosion. It did well. I am happy that I chose it.

Now people who come to me are no more argumentative. Now people who come to me come to drink me, to eat me, to digest me. Now people who come to me are great adventurers of the soul. And they are ready to risk - to risk any and everything.

Calling myself Bhagwan is a device. Sooner or later, when you have grown up and you have understood the point, and when your presence here has created a different quality of vibrations, I will stop calling myself Bhagwan. Then there will be no need. Then the whole atmosphere will be throbbing with godliness.

Then people who will come, it will shower on them. It will penetrate into their hearts. There will be no need to call me anything - you will know. But in the beginning it was needed, and it has been of tremendous help.

The last thing about it. I am not a philosopher. Always remember me as a poet.

My approach towards life is that of poetry, is that of romance. It is romantic, it is imaginative. I would like you all to be gods and goddesses. I would like you to reveal your true being.

Calling myself god is a challenge. It is a subtle challenge. There are only two ways to settle with it. One is, you say, 'This man is not god, and go away, because then what are you doing here? If this man is not god, then why waste your time? You go away. Or, you accept that this man is god, and then you start being with me, and your own godliness starts flowering.

One day you will also be a god, a goddess. Accepting me as god is in fact deep down accepting the possibility that you can also be a god, that's all. The very acceptance that this man can be a god, stirs something that has been fast asleep within you. Then you cannot remain as you are; something has to be done.

Something has to be transformed, something has to be known. You cannot live at rest any more. A dream has taken possession of you.

I was reading an anecdote:

The cute and efficient young maid seemed to enjoy her work until one day without warning she gave notice.

'Why do you wish to leave?' the lady of the house asked. 'Is there anything wrong?'

'I just can't stand the suspense in this house a minute more,' the maid replied.

'Suspense?' said the confused mistress. 'What do you mean?'

'It is the sign over my door,' the girl explained. 'You know, the one that says:

Watch ye, for ye know not when the master cometh.' 'Watch ye, for ye know not when the master cometh.'

She misunderstood it, but it created a continuous suspense, uneasiness. 'Watch ye, ye know not when the master cometh....'

If you decide to go with me, you will become more and more watchful. And the more watchful you will become, the more you will be able to understand me, the more you will be able to understand what has happened, what has transpired within my soul. You will become more and more a participant in this happening, in this dance, in this singing.

And by and by you will see - the master is coming. And it is not coming from the outside, it is coming from your innermost core, it is arising from your depths.

The master cometh, the god comes, but not from the outside. He comes from your very center. He has been there waiting for you to call him. He has been there since eternity waiting that some day you will look in.

I looked in and I found him there. My message is simple - that I have found the god within me. My whole effort is to persuade you - look within, the master cometh. Yes, it is possible. Yes, he comes. And he does not come from the outside; he explodes from the inside. He arises in you. He is your future, he is your destiny.

You may know it, you may not know it. You are already in him and he is already in you. The only question is how to become aware. 'Watch ye, for ye know not when the master cometh.'

The only question is of becoming a watcher on the hills. Become a witness - alert, observing - and you will be fulfilled.

Question 2:

To live dangerously means to live. If you don't live dangerously, you don't live.

Living flowers only in danger. Living never flowers in security; it flowers only in insecurity.

If you start getting secure, you become a stagnant pool. Then your energy is no more moving. Then you are afraid, because one never knows how to go into the unknown. And why take the risk? The known is more secure. Then you get obsessed with the familiar. You go on getting fed up with it, you are bored with it, you feel miserable in it, but still it seems familiar and comfortable. At least it is known. Unknown creates a trembling in you. The very idea of the unknown and you start feeling unsafe.

There are only two types of people in the world. People who want to live comfortably - they are seeking death. They want a comfortable grave. And people who want to live - they choose to live dangerously, because life thrives only when there is risk.

Have you ever gone climbing the mountains? The higher the climb, the fresher you feel, the younger you feel. The greater the danger of falling, the bigger the abyss by the side, the more alive you are... between life and death, when you are just hanging between life and death. Then there is no boredom, then there is no dust of the past, no desire for the future. Then the present moment is very sharp like a flame. It is enough. You live in the here and now.

Or surfing... or skiing... or gliding. Wherever there is a risk of losing life, there is tremendous joy. Because the risk of losing life makes you tremendously alive.

Hence people are attracted to dangerous sports.

People go climbing the mountains. Somebody asked Hillary, 'Why did you try to climb Everest? Why?' And Hillary said, 'Because it is there - a constant challenge.' It was risky, many people had died before. For almost sixty, seventy years, groups had been going, and it was almost a certain death. But still people were going. What was the attraction?

Reaching higher, going farther away from the settled, the routine life, you again become wild, you again become part of the animal world. You again live like a tiger or a lion or like a river. You again soar like a bird into the skies, farther and farther away. And each moment the security, the bank balance, the wife, the husband, the family, the society, the church, the respectability... all are fading away and away, distant and distant. You become alone.

This is why people are so much interested in sports. But that too is not real danger because you can become very very skilled. You can learn it, you can be trained for it. It is a very calculated risk - if you allow me the expression, calculated risk. You can train for mountaineering and you can take all precautions.

Or driving, speed-driving. You can go a hundred miles per hour. It is dangerous, it is thrilling. But you can become really skillful about it, and the danger is only for outsiders; for you it is not. And even if it is there, it is very marginal. And then, these risks are only physical risks, only the body is involved.

When I say to you, live dangerously, I mean not only bodily risk, but psychological risk, and finally spiritual risk. Religion is spiritual risk. It is going to such heights from where maybe there is no return. That is the meaning of Buddha's term, anagamin - one who returns never. It is going to such a height of point of no return; then one is simply lost. One never comes back.

When I say live dangerously, I mean don't live the life of ordinary respectability - - that you are a mayor in a town, or a member of the cooperation. This is not life.

Or you are a minister, or you have a good profession and are earning well and money goes on accumulating in the bank and everything is going perfectly well.

When everything is going perfectly well, simply see it - you are dying and nothing is happening. People may respect you, and when you die a great procession will follow you. Good, that's all. And in the newspapers your pictures will be published and there will be editorials, and then people will forget about you. And you lived your whole life only for these things.

Watch - one can miss one's whole life for ordinary, mundane things. To be spiritual means to understand that these small things should not be given too much importance. I am not saying that they are meaningless. I am saying that they are meaningful, but not as meaningful as you think.

Money is needed. It is a need. But money is not the goal and cannot be the goal.

A house is needed, certainly. It is a need. I am not an ascetic and I don't want you to destroy your houses and escape to the Himalayas. The house is needed - but the house is needed for you. Don't misunderstand it.

As I see people, the whole thing has gone topsy-turvy. They exist as if they are needed for the house. They go on working for the house. As if they are needed for the bank balance - they simply go on collecting money and then they die.

And they had never lived. They had never a single moment of throbbing, streaming life. They were just imprisoned in security, familiarity, respectability.

Then if you feel bored, it is natural. People come to me and they say they feel very bored. They feel fed up, stuck. What to do? They think that just by repeating a mantra they will become again alive. It is not so easy. They will have to change their whole life pattern.

Love, but don't think that tomorrow the woman will be available to you. Don't expect. Don't reduce the woman into a wife. Then you are living dangerously.

Don't reduce the man into a husband, because a husband is an ugly thing. Let your man be your man and your woman your woman. And don't make your tomorrow predictable. Expect nothing and be ready for everything. That's what I mean when I say live dangerously.

What do we do? We fall in love with a woman and immediately we start going to the court, or to the registry office, or to the church to get married. I'm not saying don't get married. It is a formality. Good, satisfy the society. But deep in your mind never possess the woman. Never for a single moment say that 'you belong to me'. Because how can a person belong to you? And when you start possessing the woman, she will start possessing you. Then you both are no more in love.

You are just crushing and killing each other, paralyzing each other.

Love - but don't let your love degrade into marriage. Work - work is needed - but don't let work become your only life. Play should remain your life, your center of life. Work should be as a means towards play. Work in the office and work in the factory and work in the shop, but just to have time, opportunity, to play. Don't let your life be reduced into just a working routine. Because the goal of life is play. Play means doing something for its own sake.

You come to me even to meditate, and you take meditation also as work. You think something has to be done to achieve god. It is nonsense. Meditation cannot be done that way. You have to play, you have to take it as fun. You have not to be serious about it. You have to enjoy it.

When you enjoy it, it develops. When you start taking it as work, as a duty to be done - because you have to do, you have to achieve moksha, nirvana, liberation - then again you have brought your foolish categories into the world of play.

Meditation is play, it is a leela. You enjoy it for its own sake.

If you enjoy many more things for their own sake, you will be more alive. Of course, your life will always be in a risk, danger. But that's how life has to be.

Risk is part of it. In fact the better part of it is risk, the best part of it is risk. The most beautiful part of it is risk. It is every moment a risk. You may not be aware.

You breathe in, you breathe out. There is risk. Even breathing out, who knows whether the breath will come back or not? It is not certain, there is no guarantee.

But there are a few people whose whole religion is security. Even if they talk about god, they talk about god as the supreme security. If they think about god, they think only because they are afraid. If they go to pray and meditate, they are going just in order that they remain in the good books - in god's good books. 'If there is a god, he will know that I was a regular church-goer, a regular worshipper. I can claim.' Even their prayer is just a means.

To live dangerously means to live life as if each moment is its own end. Each moment has its own intrinsic value. And you are not afraid. And you know death is there and you accept the fact that death is there, and you are not hiding against death. In fact, you go and encounter death. You enjoy those moments of encountering death - physically, psychologically, spiritually.

Enjoying those moments where you come directly in contact with death, where death becomes almost a reality, is what I mean when I say live dangerously.

Love brings you face to face with death. Meditation brings you face to face with death. Coming to a master is coming to your own death. Facing somebody who has disappeared, is entering an abyss in which you can be lost, and you can become an anagamin.

Those who are courageous, they go headlong. They search all opportunities of danger. Their life philosophy is not that of insurance companies. Their life philosophy is that of a mountain climber, a glider, a surfer. And not only in the outside seas they surf; they surf in their innermost seas. And not only on the outside they climb Alps and Himalayas; they seek inner peaks.

But remember one thing - never forget the art of risking, never never. Always remain capable of risking. And wherever you can find an opportunity to risk, never miss it, and you will never be a loser. Risk is the only guarantee for being truly alive.

Question 3:

The half-cup will always remain half. Because it is in the very nature of desires that they cannot be completed. It is the very nature of desire to remain half, to remain discontent. It is the very nature of desire to remain desiring.

You desire one thing. When you get it, by the time you get it, your desire has increased. You were desiring ten thousand rupees. By the time you get ten thousand rupees, your desire has gone farther ahead. Now it is asking for twenty thousand rupees.

In fact nothing has changed. You had five thousand rupees with you, and you were desiring ten thousand rupees. Now you have ten thousand rupees, you are desiring twenty thousand rupees. The proportion is the same. The distance between you and your goal is the same. It remains the same. The cup remains half. There is no way through desire to come to fulfillment.

Buddha has said it is not the nature of desire to be fulfilled. Fulfillment comes only by desirelessness.

Now, this is one of the most important paradoxes - if you drop desiring, you will be fulfilled. The more you desire, the more you are getting into desire, the farther and farther away you go from your possibility of fulfillment. One desire creates many more desires... then many more desires, millions more. It is like a tree. First it is one, then many branches, then many small offshoots, and on and on it goes.

The person has asked, I FEEL STUCK....

Everybody who has been living in desire feels stuck. The problem is that if you don't try to fulfill your desire, you remain unfulfilled. If you try, even if you get the goal of your desire, then you remain unfulfilled - then too, nothing changes.

This is the nightmare of life.

I have heard about a madhouse. A visitor had come, and the doctor, the superintendent, was taking him round. They came to a cage. A man was beating his head, pulling his hair, crying, and holding a small picture near his chest.

Pathetic, very tragic was the scene.

The visitor asked, 'What happened to this unfortunate man?'

The doctor said, 'He used to love a woman and he could not get her. She decided to marry somebody else. Since then he has been mad. He is carrying that picture continuously - day, night, awake, asleep - and he goes on in deep anguish. His misery is immense.'

Then they reached another cage, just in front of the first one. Another person was raving mad, hitting against the walls, fighting with some shadows. He was almost violent, aggressive; he looked like a murderer. And the visitor asked, 'What happened to this man?'

The doctor started laughing. He said, 'The woman married this man! And this is what has happened by marrying the woman.'

One is suffering because he could not get, another is suffering because he could get.

There are poor people who are suffering because they don't have riches. And there are rich people who are suffering because now they have riches and yet they have nothing. There are unsuccessful people who are in tremendous pain because they failed and life failed them. And there are successful people who are simply empty, all life gone out of them. They put everything at stake and they succeeded and now what to do?

Nothing fails like success. When it comes, you cannot believe what you were desiring. You can have a big house, and you can have respect and money, and suddenly you see - you are just empty and your whole life has been a wastage.

Things have accumulated and you have disappeared. Things are there, possessions are there, but the master is missing.

This is the nature of desire. Everybody feels stuck.

I FEEL STUCK. I FEEL I HAVE AN ESSENTIAL BEING INSIDE WHICH WANTS TO GET OUT.

That is not your essential being. Because the essential being is that which has no desire. The being that desires is the accidental being. Be careful what words you use.

The essential is one which has no desire. It is already fulfilled. That which desires is the accidental. It is continuously unhappy, continuously in discontent, continuously frustrated... and goes on desiring.

And the problem is - the more you desire, the more you get frustrated. The more you get frustrated, the more you desire. A vicious circle... and one goes on moving in it and is crushed by the wheel.

I FEEL I HAVE AN ESSENTIAL BEING INSIDE WHICH WANTS TO GET OUT.

The essential being never wants to get out. The essential being is your innermost core, it is your innerness. It never wants to get out. There is nothing for it to go anywhere. It is already where it should be. The essential is one which is already where it should be, which is already that which it should be. The essential is the ideal, the essential is the natural, the spontaneous.

I FEEL I HAVE AN ESSENTIAL BEING INSIDE ME WHICH WANTS TO GET OUT.

This is not your essential being that wants to get out. This is your accidental being. Maybe it arises because you are identified with the body, or it arises because you are identified with the mind. IT FEELS A LOT MORE ALIVE AND DANGEROUS THAN THE ONE I DRAG AROUND WITH ME.

Yes, it is. It at least appears to be more alive. It at least deceives you to be more alive. Follow it and you will find that it tricked you.

That's what people find by the time death is approaching. Their sex tricked them, their lust tricked them, their greed tricked them, their ambition tricked them.

And now everything is gone, all energy lost, and they are going empty-handed.

They have not matured. They have not got anything that they can carry beyond death.

Life is that which cannot be destroyed by death, remember. That is the definition.

And anything alive, if it is truly alive, is beyond death. It cannot be taken away by death. Nothing can destroy it. Aliveness is eternity.

IT FEELS A LOT MORE ALIVE... It simply deceives you. It is very very tricky, it is very persuasive. It is a great salesman... AND DANGEROUS THAN THE ONE I DRAG AROUND WITH ME. Yes, and it is dangerous; not for you - it is dangerous for others. For you, it is just an illusion.

Of course it is dangerous, but not in the sense that I was talking about danger.

That's what everybody is doing. That is nothing new. Everybody is greedy and everybody is full of lust. That is nothing new, that is nothing risky. That is the way of the world. Even animals are doing that, trees are doing that. Everybody is doing that.

It is dangerous in a different way. It is dangerous in the sense that it is destructive. It will destroy you, and it will destroy others. It is not creative.

Love is creative. Sex is destructive. And there is a lot of difference between the two. Sometimes you start thinking that your sexuality is your love. Then you are deceived. Sexuality can play the game of love, but it is a counterfeit game. I am not against sex, but I am certainly against sexuality. And the difference is that sex is a natural thing and sexuality is a mind thing.

To love a woman is natural, to love a man is natural. To reproduce children is natural, nothing wrong in it. But to think about women, to carry pornographic pictures, to fall asleep every night thinking about women - women and women and women - that is sexuality.

Mulla Nasrudin went to his psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist said, just as a test, 'Look at the clock on the wall. What does it remind you of?'

He looked at the wall and said, 'Of women.'

The clock!? The psychiatrist said, 'Okay, what does this chair remind you of?'

'Of course,' Mulla Nasrudin said, 'of women.' Even the psychiatrist was shocked - the chair? And then a camel was passing, so he said, 'And what does this camel remind you of?' Now, this is the farthest thing from a woman - a camel.

And he said, 'Of course, of women.'

The psychiatrist said, 'This is too much. How can the camel remind you of women?'

Mulla Nasrudin said, 'It is not a question of the camel or anything else. I never think about anything else. Everything reminds me of women. Even nothing reminds me of women. I simply think about women and nothing else.'

Now this is sexuality.

And the same is trying to erupt in the questioner. IT WANTS TO GRAB GIRLS AND SEXUALLY ENJOY.

Now nothing is wrong in falling in love with a woman, but to grab a girl is ugly.

Be a little more artful and a little more gentlemanly. Grabbing? The very word is aggressive, the very word is violent - as if you don't have any respect for the woman you love. Grabbing? Is she a thing? Do you want to rape?

This is what goes on happening in the ordinary mind. It has fallen from sex, it has become sexual. Sex is natural, normal. You love a woman, you love a man - good. But then you are finished. If you love a woman, you are finished with being concerned with other women. Then that one woman represents all women, then that one man becomes all the men in one. Then the whole mankind is there.

When you love a woman, you have found the essential woman that you were looking for. Now you are not looking at every passerby, and your mind is not grabbing. IT WANTS TO GRAB GIRLS AND SEXUALLY ENJOY.

First thing to remember - if you grab a woman, you will never enjoy. Because enjoyment cannot be forced. It is a subtle rhythm. When a woman also loves you, only then this music arises between the two which gives joy, delight.

You can grab a woman - and that's what people are doing. Somebody is doing just by physical force, somebody is doing by money-force... because he has money so he can purchase any woman... somebody is doing by some other means. As I see, out of a hundred, ninety-nine people have grabbed women and men. Rarely it happens that a person is in love.

When you are in love, you don't grab the woman and the woman does not grab you. When you are in love, love possesses you both. When you are in love, you don't possess each other. You possess not - not at all. And when you are in love, you don't think about enjoyment; it is there. All thinking about enjoyment exists because it is not there, it is missing.

Joy is something which happens as a consequence; it is not a result. You cannot make any effort to be joyful. You can move into some activity so deeply that you forget yourself, and joy arises. Joy arises only when you are not. This is what Buddha says - when the self disappears then joy arises.

The self can disappear in meditation. The self can disappear in love. The self can disappear in prayer. The self can disappear in dance, in singing and painting.

The self can disappear anywhere if you are completely lost in any activity, and the activity is so deep that you are no more a doer there; you have become one with it. It happens sometimes.

Once a young man came to me. He was a good runner, a champion runner, and he asked me how to meditate, and he was so bubbling with energy. He was a great runner, and he said, 'When I sit, and you tell me to sit silently, I cannot sit; the energy is so much. Is there any possibility for me to ever become meditative?'

I said, 'You forget about meditation. You run, and you drop yourself in running.

One day meditation will happen.'

He said, 'What are you saying? Just by running? Has anybody ever become a Buddha just running?'

I said, 'Yes, there is a possibility. Because a person can become a Buddha in any activity.'

He said, 'I will try.'

After a week he came and he said, 'It is unbelievable. I cannot even believe that it has happened. Something tremendously beautiful happened. I was running, I was going as fast as I could. And as you had said, I forgot myself completely. I was not performing, it was not a competition. I was simply in it... the sun falling on my being, showering me, the morning breeze, the birds singing, and the empty bank of the river. And I was running and running.

'And by and by I started falling into a rhythm with the river, with the breeze, with the trees. And suddenly, yes, it was there. I was so full of joy. I have never been so joyful. Tell me, Osho, has it really happened? Because I cannot believe that just by running... and I have been running for many years and it has never happened.' He was not losing himself; running was a performance.

Now, one of the most miserable things is happening in the West - people are making even love a performance. They read Masters and Johnson, and they read Kinsey and his reports, and they read other so-called great sex researchers, and now they are trying to perform.

They go on looking whether the woman is having the orgasm or not, whether she is thinking that the man is the greatest man in the world or not. And the woman is also thinking in the same way - seeing whether she is fulfilling the man and giving him great ecstasy or not. Now both are performing and the whole thing is destroyed. Now they are simply acting, they are no more in it.

In the West, this century is proving the worst century for love. And they talk too much about love, and so many books are there - but something is missing. Love is becoming a performance.

I am saying to you that even a thing like running, if it is no more a performance, will give you the same orgasm that love can give, and the same ecstasy that meditation can give. Even cleansing the floor, you can attain to samadhi.

Sarita goes on cleansing. I hope one day she achieves her samadhi through cleansing. She is moving by and by towards it. Sometimes she even misses my talks because she has to clean, and she enjoys cleaning so much that I say, 'Okay, you miss the talk. You will not be missing me.'

Even an ordinary activity - very ordinary activity - can have tremendous import once you are completely lost in it. Don't be a performer.

IT WANTS TO GRAB GIRLS AND SEXUALLY ENJOY. If you grab a girl you will have a corpse in your hands, not a human body. You can make love to a corpse. There have been people.... It is said that when Cleopatra died, some foolish people dug her out of her grave and raped her... with a dead body. But this is not so strange. As I see, many people are doing it. It is not very strange.

Cleopatra was tremendously beautiful, and men are foolish.

H. G. Wells has written that if Cleopatra had had a little smaller nose, the whole history of humanity would have been different. Men are such fools that their whole history can be different if Cleopatra had had a little smaller nose. It must have been; H. G. Wells is right. The whole history would have been different.

And some fools raped the dead body.

But this is happening on a very large scale. If your woman is not ready to love you in that moment... maybe she is your wife; that does not make it sure... if she is not ready out of her own heart, if she is not flowing in it, you are making love to a dead body. If your man is not ready, drawn into it, losing himself into it, you are making love to a dead body.

You can grab, but you will never reach the woman. The woman or the man can never be grabbed. And you can try to enjoy and you will be only frustrated, because nobody has ever attained any enjoyment by trying it. Enjoyment comes like a shadow. The whole effort is ridiculous.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

Mulla Nasrudin and his wife were at the ballet. He suddenly started laughing.

The wife asked, 'Why?'

'I was just wondering what the audience would do if I suddenly jumped on the stage, grabbed one of the girls, threw her down and made violent love to her,' he said.

The wife thought a little and began to laugh. He asked, 'Why?'

'I was just thinking,' she said, 'what would you do if the audience gave you a standing ovation and screamed for an encore. If the audience screamed, "Once more!" what would you do?'

It will be really ridiculous. Performance is ridiculous. Don't be a performer.

Never think of grabbing a woman or a man. Love - love is beautiful. But loving needs a tremendous transformation in you, because it is a surrender. You have to surrender, you have to be respectful. You have to revere the other person, his being. Love is prayer. And if sex happens as part of love, sex is spiritual. Then sex is no more sexual, then it is a spiritual ecstasy. It is meditative and prayerful.

BUT YOU HAVE SAID THAT FOR LIFETIMES THE ENERGY HAS GONE DOWN; TIME FOR A CHANGE. IT WANTS TO FUME AND RAGE AT GETTING A HALF-CUP INSTEAD OF A FULL CUP OF MILK.

The very nature of desire is such, and you are tackling it in a very foolish way.

Try to understand the nature of desire. I am not saying repress it. I am saying understand it. Because repression will not help. In fact, repression has brought you to this stage.

The questioner must have been repressing. See, he has repressed his natural desires so much that they have become corrupted. Now he thinks that is his essential being. It is nothing but his repressed being. Then you can go on and on in your head, playing again and again the same repressed desires. And it is not going to fulfill you.

I am not saying be repressive. I am saying be skillful, be aware.

It happened:

When Syble got to be twenty-eight without any prospects of getting married, her mother nagged her into inserting an ad in the matrimonial column. The ad read:

Beautiful exotic young heiress seeks correspondence with devil-may-care gentleman who wants to go places fast.

After the ad appeared, the mother asked anxiously, 'Well, any answers?'

'Just one,' sighed the daughter.

'Who wrote it?' demanded mama.

'I should not tell you,' said the daughter.

'But it was my idea,' shouted mama, 'and I insist on knowing.'

'All right,' said the daughter, 'you asked for it. It is from papa.'

If you go on repressing, then it will become uglier and uglier. And in old age all your repressions become very strong - because you become weak and your repressions take revenge.

I am not saying to repress. I am saying understand. Only if understanding can help, then it is good. And understanding helps.

Meditate on your sexuality. See it through and through. Let it become transparent. And the first thing needed is - at least make your sexuality normal.

Let it be sex. Don't think in terms of grabbing. Be a little more romantic. Don't be so aggressive and violent. Be a little more poetic about life, and a little more graceful.

First let your sexuality come to a normal point of sex, and then let your sex follow your love. Never put your sex before love. Love should be the driving force and sex should follow it.

And once you have done this much, you are on the right track. Soon you will realize that whatsoever you have been calling your essential self was your repressed self. And once that repressed self is dispersed, eliminated, and you have become natural, healthy, whole, then your essential self will come for the first time into your vision.

The essential self is your innermost god. The essential self is what truth is. The essential self is no-self.