My blessings with you

Question 1:

THE QUESTION IS FROM NAGARJUNA. He is a psychoanalyst, a trained rationalist. His whole discipline of the mind is that of analysis. Coming to me, being with me, has transformed him tremendously, but his old mind goes on lingering somewhere in the unconscious. It goes on throwing judgements. The old mind goes on saying, 'What are you doing? It is nonsense.'

It is nonsense in a way - because it is beyond sense. Just to think that you ask only for the hand - somebody's hand on your head - is so irrational, so fanciful.

Just to ask for blessings only, is so unreasonable. The reasonable person asks questions, waits for answers, analyzes those answers, judges whether they are right or wrong, creates more questions, and so on, so forth.

To ask for blessings is difficult for the modern mind, but it is beautiful that it is happening to you, Nagarjuna. You are getting into contact with a deeper world which goes beyond sense and reason. You are asking for something which is not of this world. It cannot be understood by intellect alone. It can be understood only by the heart. You can feel it. There is no way to figure it out by reasoning.

Allow it, go with it.

To be capable of nonsense is to be alive. Because all that is beautiful is nonsense.

Love is nonsense. Meditation is nonsense. God is nonsense. Poetry is nonsense.

Beauty is nonsense. All that is beautiful, true, is far beyond sense.

Sense is very narrow. Nonsense is vast. Remain sensible, but don't be confined by it. Use your sense, your reason, but never be a slave to it. One should be capable of putting reason and sense by the side whenever one wants.

When you are watching a full moon in the night, put your reasoning aside. Be a child again. When you go to the sea and you listen to the roar of the waves, put your reason aside. Be again primitive. Those roaring waves are primitive. You also be primitive so that a deep contact becomes possible, so you become en rapport with them. When you go to the trees, please don't take your reason and sense with you. Otherwise you will miss much which was there just for asking.

When you come to me, by and by you will have to put your reason aside.

Because only then you will be able to enter deeper. Once you have known the beauty of nonsense, the truth of nonsense, then you will not call it nonsense; you will call it supra-sense. Then you will not think in terms condemnatory and negative. You will start thinking in more positive terms.

Good that you have no more questions. That's my whole effort here - to help you to become questionless. I am not here to supply you with answers, because no answer can be the answer. All answers in their own turn will create more questions. It is a non-ending process, it goes on ad infinitum. One question is answered, the answer creates more questions. They are answered and those answers create still more questions.

The whole history of philosophy is nothing but creating more and more questions. The old ones are not solved. The questions remain the same as they were in the days of Solomon, as they were in the days of Vedas. They remain the same as they were in the days of Manu, Mahavir and Mohammed. They have not changed. Of course, they have become multiplied. The old are there, new have bubbled up. And those new have bubbled up out of the old questions. The old questions were answered, those answers created new ones.

This is the difference between philosophy and religion. Philosophy tries to answer your questions. Religion tries to make you aware that questions cannot be solved, they have to be dropped. And in their dropping is the solution. And a questionless mind is a mind who has arrived home.

So the real thing is to look deep into your questioning. They are all absurd. From the very beginning they are doomed. They cannot be answered; their very formulation is such.

For example you ask, 'Who created the world?' Now this is a foolish question, it is absurd. It cannot be answered. The way it is asked prohibits its answer. If somebody says, 'God created the world,' you will ask the same question about god - 'Who created god?' And if the person becomes angry - as so-called religious people become angry if you ask them 'Who created god?' - then they are simply showing that they are afraid.

They are afraid that you may be bringing the question back again. Somehow they have tried to solve it, somehow they pretend that they have solved it - and you are bringing the question again. Again the anxiety, again the worry. They become angry. They don't want you to open that Pandora's box again. Somehow they are sitting on the lid. They have closed it: god created the world. They also know that the question still remains relevant.

If to ask 'who created the world?' is relevant, then 'who created god?' is also relevant. The question is the same. Now if you say 'A created god,' then you ask, 'Who created A?' Say B. Then who created 'B'? It goes on and on. It is a foolish question.

I am not here to answer your foolish questions. I am here just to show it to you - that they are foolish. In that understanding, they drop.

When I am answering you, in fact I am not answering you. I am just trying to make you a little more aware about your question, so that you can see that in the very asking of it you are entering into a ditch, and you will never be able to get out of it unless you drop the question.

Religion is the art of dropping questions. So, good that now you don't have any questions. I am happy, my blessings are with you. My hand is on your head. And be careful - sooner or later you will find only my hand is there, your head has disappeared! That is the whole effort. If you don't believe me, you can ask Yatri, our cartoonist. A few days ago he made a beautiful cartoon for me. He has understood the point - that this is the whole magic.

If you allow me to put my hand on your head, beware. Sooner or later you will find only the hand is and the head is gone. I am trying to behead you. And once your head disappears, you have arrived home. Then there is nowhere to go.

It is all in your head - this going, searching, enquiring, questions, problems, believing this, not believing that, Islam, Hinduism, Christianity. This is all in your head. When the head disappears, you are suddenly there. The old man is there. The essential man is there. God is there.

Call it whatsoever you like... but there is no problem, there is no question. You are there full of wondering eyes. You are there, full of awe. Suddenly a tremendous 'Aha!' arises in your being and spreads all over you and goes on spreading into the existence. This is what psychologists call the 'Aha!' experience, the peak experience.

That's what ecstasy is - such a great 'Aha!' that you are completely dissolved into it. It becomes your very song, your celebration, your dance. Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. Life is a mystery to be lost in, not a problem to be handled.

Good that you are becoming more and more capable of not asking questions. But I can understand the puzzlement.

SOME MONTHS AGO WHEN I LEFT YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME, I WAS FEELING STRONG, EXCITED, CONFIDENT... AND YET ALL MY TIME I WAS ASKING QUESTIONS, TRYING TO FIND A SOLUTION.

When for the first time you come to me, you start feeling very strong, because whatsoever you hear from me, your ego feeds on it. You start feeling very confident, very superior. You start feeling that you know, that you are somebody. Those are the honeymoon days. If you want to remain in that honeymoon, never come back again. Once is good, twice is dangerous. Thrice - and you are finished!

When you listen to me for the first time, you listen as you can listen. You don't know how to listen. Your whole life has been nothing but an effort to enhance the ego - so whatsoever you get goes on enhancing the ego. If you get money, your ego immediately exploits it. If you get knowledge, your ego jumps on it and becomes more knowledgeable. If you succeed in anything, the ego.... Whatsoever you do, the ego goes on absorbing everything that comes to it. It goes on eating it, and goes on becoming bigger and bigger.

When you come to me for the first time and take sannyas, I know very well the ego will jump on it also. It is its old habit, you have trained the ego for it. But this time it is getting into danger, because sannyas is like poison to the ego. It jumps on it - as it has been jumping on everything.

So for the first time you will feel everything getting better and better and better.

Next time you come, the poison has started working, it has entered into your very guts - the ego starts dying. Then you understand me more. You listen to me rightly. Then you understand what the game is - the ego has to be dropped.

Then you are no more so confident, then you don't feel so strong. Then you are not so excited. Then you start shrinking because the ego starts shrinking. Then you feel weak. It is natural and good. It indicates growth.

When Nagarjuna comes for the third time, I hope he will become even more capable, more receptive. Then again he will feel a new confidence arising, but this will not be of the ego any more. It will be of his being.

You cannot call it confidence. The best way to say it is to say that there will be an absence of no-confidence. You cannot say that he will feel strong. The only way to say it is that he will not feel weak. You cannot say that he will feel more knowledgeable. You can only say that he will not feel that he lacks anything, or he needs anything. Not that there will be knowledge - there will be knowing.

Not that there will be confidence - because all confidence is based somewhere on fear. There will be no confidence, no no-confidence. One will simply be there, just there, with no idea.

In Zen they call these three steps. Bokuju is reported to have said, 'When I came to my master, rivers were like rivers and mountains were like mountains. Then everything got confused. I lived with my master and rivers were no more rivers and mountains were no more mountains. Everything was confusing, everything got entangled into each other, everything trespassed each other's boundary, everything became a mess. But I remained. Again one day rivers became rivers, mountains became mountains. But what a difference!'

Again one day you will become the same as you were before, and yet not the same. It will be a totally different phenomenon in a way.

For example, a person who feels very strong must be aware somewhere deep down that he is weak. Otherwise who will feel strong? A person who feels that he is confident must be alert at some level of his being that he lacks confidence.

Otherwise who bothers about confidence? A person who feels superior must have some inferiority somewhere.

We always project the contrary. Our projections are complementary. Whatsoever is lacking, we project. An ignorant person becomes knowledgeable, an egoistic person becomes humble, a person who feels inferiority starts projecting superiority in some way or other. Because it is so difficult to live with inferiority, with no confidence, with weakness, we project the other. We project something opposite, and we pretend, and we start believing in it.

But when some day one comes really home, becomes aware, then there is no inferiority, no superiority - and that is real superiority. Then there is no strength and no weakness - and that is real strength. Then there is no ignorance and no knowledge - and that is real knowing.

NOW I AM LEAVING AGAIN, PROBABLY FOR A LONGER PERIOD, AND I FEEL CALM, PEACEFUL, SOMEHOW DETACHED - EVEN IF MORE AND MORE WEAK, CONFUSED, WITHOUT ANY ANSWER.

He has been able to understand his situation very correctly. Calm, serene, tranquil he is growing. But the more calm you become, the more you feel that all your strength was just your belief, that all your declarations were just bogus.

They were efforts to hide behind, they were like masks.

So those masks are falling down and you will feel weak, confused, without an answer. Live through it. Don't start falling back. Go through it. It will be hard, it will be arduous, but if you can go through it, soon the morning is coming closer.

The dark night is going to end. But remember, before the morning comes, the night becomes very dark.

Now, that is exactly the case with Nagarjuna. The night will become very dark, but don't be afraid. That is simply indicative that the morning is not very far.

And still he is feeling he is more calm, more tranquil.

Always remember that whenever you are feeling more calm, you are on the right track. Whatsoever else is happening, don't be bothered. Feeling calm, quiet, silent, is enough indication that you are coming closer and closer to the garden of god. The very calmness shows that you are coming closer to the cool garden.

Shady trees are just waiting for you. The breeze has become cool, fragrant. You can feel it in the winds, you can feel it in the atmosphere. Calmness is the first indication of blissfulness. Silence, the first glimpse of the far away peak of bliss.

So whenever you feel silent, whatsoever else is there - confusion, weakness - don't be worried; they will disappear. If calmness is not there and you are confused, then there is trouble. That means you are not growing, you are even regressing.

So this has to be remembered by all. Whosoever is working with me, whosoever is in the work with me, should remember - keep your eyes alert for calm, tranquillity, silence. If that is happening, then don't be worried whatsoever else is happening. Let it be. It will disappear on its own accord. Maybe before it disappears it will create the last bout, it may create the last trouble that it can create. It has been there for so long... for millennia. Now suddenly you are ousting it.

These diseases, these illnesses, have lived in the house so long that they have completely forgotten that they are guests. They think they are hosts. And you are going to turn them out. They are not going to leave you easily. They will create trouble. That is accepted, agreed. You just go on listening to the silence that is happening, the calmness that is arising in you, and you will be able to transcend them.

My hand is on your head, my blessings with you.

Question 2:

First, all questions are foolish. I have never come across a question which is wise.

How can there be a wise question? Questions are foolish. All questions are childish.

One of the very important therapists in the West was Fritz Perls. He used to say to his friends, patients and disciples, that only children ask questions. That seems to be perfectly true. Only children ask questions.

Have you ever walked with a child - just a morning walk? And see - he will not allow you to walk at all. A thousand and one questions... each step brings questions. 'Why is this tree green papa?' Now who knows why this tree is green?

Everything becomes a question for a child. Put anything in a child's mind and out comes a question. The whole mechanism is question-producing. Anything, any small thing - and the child immediately makes it a question.

Questioning is childish. The more your maturity comes, the more you grow in maturity, the more questions disappear. And when there are no questions, there is a possibility to see. Otherwise questions are clouding the eyes and the mind so much.

This is my experience - answering so many and their questions, I have come to observe that it almost always happens that the person who asked the question never listens to my answer. Everybody else listens. He is so much concerned with his question, he is so much worried with his question.

Others listen and understand better, because they are not involved at all. This is not their question so they can listen silently. There is no worry about it. Their ego is not involved at all. But the questioner becomes very much involved. His ego is involved. He goes on looking from the corner of his eyes - what am I saying? He has asked the question to be appreciated. He has asked the question in search - not of the answer - but in search that people will think he is very knowledgeable - look, what a beautiful question he has asked!

If I don't answer questions.... A few people go on asking. For example, Madhuri.

She goes on asking every day, and I go on throwing her questions. She is more interested in asking than in listening to the answers. Because it is not a question that it has to be your question. Anybody's question is your question also. Any question that has happened to any human mind is part of you. If you listen rightly, it will solve many problems for you. It will give you insight, clarity.

But there are people who are interested only in their questions. If I am answering their questions they cannot listen because I am answering their questions, and they get into excitement and fever. If I don't answer their questions they are sitting there limp and dead - 'Again this man is not answering my question.'

Questioners are in trouble. The very effort to question is a little immature. In the old days it was the custom, it was the tradition to go to a master and to be with him - not to ask anything, just to be with him. Because what is there to ask?

Even to ask, one has to know something, and one knows nothing. So what to ask? One has to be just with the master, to imbibe his being... just to be soaked by his presence. One has to be like a sponge. One has to be open and receptive.

This was the tradition in the old days - that a disciple had to wait. When the master said, 'Now you can ask,' then the disciple could ask. And almost always it used to happen that when the master would say, 'Now you can ask,' the disciple would laugh and he would say, 'Now it is too late. My questions are finished.

There is nothing to ask now.' In fact the master would ask the disciple to ask only when he would say, 'Now there is nothing to ask. Now the mind is absolutely clean. There are no question marks in the mind.'

Question marks are like clouds. Behind those question marks your inner luminousness gets lost. When there is no question, all clouds disappear, the sky is clean, the sunrise is clear.

The answer is in your inner illumination. The answer cannot come from the outside. I cannot answer you. The answer is in your certain state of centering.

So the questioner has felt rightly - all questions are foolish. But I am not saying, 'don't ask', because I know the modern mind is not the old mind. Great changes have happened. Now if you say to somebody to wait for years, then nobody can wait. The modern mind is in such a hurry that it is not in a state of patience, and the modern mind has been trained to ask. The modern mind has not been trained to be.

That's why I go on answering your questions. Not that your questions are worth answering, or that answers are needed, or that I can answer your questions. No, nothing of the sort. I go on answering you questions because questioning has become part of the contemporary mind. Only by and by will you become able not to ask.

Listening to your questions and their answers, you can wait. Not doing anything, just simply sitting there in silence, you cannot wait. Silence will be too much, intolerable. So I go on answering you just to give you a few toys to play with.

Meanwhile you are growing - and I am waiting for that.

The child is growing meanwhile, while he is playing with the toys. I go on giving you toys every day. You play - but my interest is in your growth. One day I know you will go beyond the toys and you will come to me and you will say to me, 'Thank you, Osho, for all the toys you gave us to play with, but no more are needed.'

That will be the day when for the first time you will fall in harmony with me...

and the answer will start flowing. It will not be a verbal answer, it will be a transfer of energy... a transfer beyond the scriptures. It will be a transmission, a jump - because in that moment you will be perfectly open.

Questioning shows doubting. Doubt creates barriers. A question is nothing but doubt in a very civilized dress. It looks very mannerly, but it is doubt. It is as if you go and you catch hold of a primitive man and take him to the barber, and the barber shaves and cleans him and shampoos him and gives him a bath, and then you take him to the dresser and give him a beautiful dress - and then you bring that primitive man to me. He looks a perfect gentleman, but he is not. Deep down he is the same primitive man.

A question is doubt pretending not to be doubt. A question is doubt in a very mannerly, gentlemanly way.

When questions disappear, doubts disappear. Or when doubts disappear, questions disappear. Then you are in tune with me, en rapport. Then we are not two. Then I can look into your eyes, and you can look into my eyes and you can see a meeting happening... a meeting of two souls. And then it is very difficult to understand who is the master and who is the disciple, because the energies meet and mingle and become one. In that moment, in that intimate moment, the real answer will be heard.

This is a paradox. What I am saying is this, can be summarized into this paradox - if you ask, you will not get the answer; if you don't ask, the answer is available.

Go on asking and you will go on missing the answer. Stop asking and the answer has been always waiting for you to receive it. A mind who goes on questioning never comes to the answer, and a mind who drops questioning suddenly finds the answer has been always there, luminous in one's own being. You had never lost it.

Good that you could feel I HAVE WRITTEN QUESTIONS FOR MONTHS AND NOT HANDED THEM IN BECAUSE THEY ALL SEEMED FOOLISH WHEN THE MOMENT PASSES. SOMETIMES I KNOW I AM A FOOL AND IN THOSE MOMENTS CAN HEAR THE BIRDS AND SEE THE SKY.

Let that be your key. Then be a fool. Then that is your path. If when you are a fool you can see the sky and you can hear the birds, then being foolish is your meditation. Then be a fool, then don't try to be anything. Because whenever you become knowledgeable, clever, cunning, intelligent, you miss.

The sky is there, the birds are singing - they have always been singing. Since eternity, existence has been in celebration. The dance continues, it is an ongoing process, a continuum. It is a river flowing and flowing and flowing. Sitting on the bank - what are you doing?

Yes, there are moments, the questioner says... and exactly he has caught, he has found some deep intuition - that whenever he is foolish, the sky is there and the birds are singing, and the celebration can be felt. Whenever he becomes intelligent, it is lost. So be a fool.

When I say be a fool, I mean don't be a mind, I mean don't be cunning and clever.

Don't be calculating. You have come across a beautiful intuition, an insight. Then be more and more like a fool.

There is a beautiful novel of Feodor Dostoevsky, 'The Idiot'. Read it, meditate upon it. In that novel the main character is a fool... but a fool like St. Francis, a fool - but like Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu. He has dropped, or he has no calculating mind.

Of course, if you are a fool you will be cheated. Of course, if you are a fool you will not be an achiever in this world. If you are a fool you will be poor - but you will be tremendously rich with god. In this world you will not succeed, that's certain. In this world only calculating and cunning people can succeed. But what is their success? Finally comes death and their whole success is nullified. It comes to be zero. In the end they see that it has always been a dream. They were befooled by their own cunningness.

If you are a fool you will have god within you. If you are a fool you will have all the beauties of life, tremendous riches of life. Your whole life will be a precious thing. Nobody can cheat you out of it because that is your innermost core.

Nobody can take it away.

Remember it - it is better to be cheated than to cheat. If there is a choice, always choose to be cheated rather than to cheat. Because in the ultimate analysis of things, the cheater is the cheated, and the cheated has not been cheated at all. In the ultimate analysis of things, it is exactly as Jesus says: Those who are last in this world will be the first in the kingdom of god, and those who are first will be the last.

The first will be the last and the last will be the first? The logic of existence is totally different from the logic of the marketplace. That is the difference between politics and religion. So I cannot conceive of a religious person being political, and I cannot conceive of a political person being religious. It is impossible. It cannot happen in the nature of things.

A politician has to be cunning. A politician has to be always ready to rob and cheat. Of course he cheats and robs in such a way that it is very difficult to catch hold of him. Rarely it happens that a Nixon is caught. But all the politicians are exactly the same - caught or not caught, that is not the point. Maybe Nixon did a little too much, he went beyond the limits. Hm? there are limits. If you remain below a hundred degrees, you will not evaporate; ninety-nine will do.

The very clever politicians remain nearly ninety-nine. They never go beyond that. Nixon got a little too self-confident, went a little further, got himself into trouble. But all politicians are cunning. If they were not politicians they would be criminals. They belong to the same category. The criminals, if they were somehow brought up in a better way, would have been politicians. The quality of the mind is the same.

A religious person is one who is virtually a fool in the eyes of the world. Accept that, and you will not be a loser. I promise you, you will not be a loser. Be a fool and enjoy it. Sometimes it is wisdom to be foolish, it is foolish to be wise.

And what the questioner says.... The question is from Dayal. He has tremendous capacity to become like St. Francis. He is a very simple man... very simple. He has come to a great understanding. SOMETIMES I KNOW I AM A FOOL AND IN THOSE MOMENTS CAN HEAR THE BIRDS AND SEE THE SKY.

Then stick to it. Then relax more and more and let those foolish moments come more and more to you. Allow them to enter you deeper. You have nothing to lose. What is there to be lost? Drop calculations and cunningness.

People think that they are not calculating. But there are a few people who are calculatingly non-calculating. They think they don't calculate.

I was reading one anecdote:

Mrs Meyerowitz was having tea with Mrs Abramowitz. 'These cookies of yours are so delicious,' raved Mrs Meyerowitz, 'I have already had five of them.'

'Seven,' smiled Mrs Abramowitz, 'but who is counting?'

People go on counting by the side, and they go on thinking, 'Who is counting?'

Be a fool. Nothing is like it. Jesus is a fool. Buddha is a fool. In India we have a word 'buddhu' - buddhu means fool. It comes from Buddha. People must have thought that Buddha is a fool. So in indian languages, the very word for fool has become buddhu.

When Buddha started sitting under his bodhi tree where he became enlightened, everybody must have thought that he was a buddhu, a fool. People must have come to him and said, 'What are you doing? Have you gone mad? You were meant to be the king.' He was the only son of his father, he was going to be the king. There was no competition even - he was simply going to be the king. He had lived in tremendous riches, and suddenly he escaped. What to call this man?

Everybody must have said that he was a fool. People must have come to him and said, 'What are you doing here, sitting like a fool?' His name, 'Buddha', became associated with foolishness. Now buddhu means the fool. Nobody bothers to go into the history of the word, but it is tremendously meaningful.

Buddha was a fool. What else can you say? Everybody is trying to become the king, and he escaped. He was just on the verge. He had all the beautiful women possible. His father had brought all the beautiful girls from his kingdom for him.

He was surrounded continuously with beautiful girls. Beautiful palaces were made for him - one for each season. In summer he had one palace, in winter he had another palace, in the rains he had another palace. And the father really looked after him - because he was born when the father was very old; he was his only hope. And suddenly one night he escaped. To all practical purposes he is a fool. Jesus is a fool. So is Francis, so is Lao Tzu, so is Chuang Tzu.

Dayal, listen to your heart, and be simple. Be a fool. Let that be your very style of life, and more and more god will penetrate you.

EMPATHY COMES AND GOES. WHEN IT GOES I AM A WRECK. I AM FALLING APART IN FEAR AND YEARNING. THE YEARNING IS GETTING DEEPER, TWISTING IN MY GUT. BUT SOMETIMES I KNOW I AM A FOOL AND IN THOSE MOMENTS CAN HEAR THE BIRDS AND SEE THE SKY.

Empathy comes, compassion, love comes, but it comes only when you are a fool.

That's why everybody thinks that lovers are foolish, blind, hypnotized by each other. Love is a sort of foolishness. In the world where money seems to be the only goal, where name and fame seem to be the only goals, love is foolish, meditation is foolish, compassion is foolish.

That's why I insist - be a fool. That's why I have given you these ochre robes to make a fool out of you. Now you will be moving in the world and everybody will laugh that here goes a madman. Children will follow you and they will laugh and they will think, 'What has happened to this man or this woman?' They will ridicule you. When they ridicule you, laugh. Laugh with them. Enjoy.

People come and ask me, 'Why do you insist on orange robes?' It is a trick, a device, to force you to become fools. You can have it only if you are ready to surrender your so-called ideas of ego, respectability; your so-called ideas which society's approval gives to you. The society will disapprove of you. You will become strangers.

That's the whole purpose. I want you to become strangers in this world so you become guests in the house of god. If you become too worldly, you will miss god.

Compassion comes, there are moments when you are flowing, when nothing holds you, when you are open. Allow it! Enjoy it! Make it a point that it comes more and more. Don't close your heart. Float with it. Let it stream. In season, out of season, let it stream. With people, without people, let it stream. In the crowd, alone, let it overflow you. And by and by you will see that you have been missing. Without compassion, there is no truth.

Buddha has said that truth and compassion come together... aspects of the same energy. If you become true, you will have compassion. Or if you have compassion, you will start becoming true. A man of compassion, how can he be untrue? Just think of it. It is impossible.

If you love a person, how can you be untrue, unauthentic; how can you be false?

How can you wear masks if you love a person? When you love a person you are naked, nude. You drop all curtains. You don't carry any masks. You are simply there, whosoever you are, whatsoever you are... in your simplicity, in your truth.

Compassion or love brings truth. Truth brings compassion and love. Start from anywhere - the same will be the goal, the same will be the outcome.

For Dayal I would like to say, start by being a fool and by being compassionate.

And everything will happen to you. Then you need not worry.

Question 3:

Listen to the question very deeply. THE OTHER DAY I FELT 'HELL IS MYSELF'.

I AM IN HELL.

No, you are not in hell. You are hell. The very ego is hell. Once the ego is not there, there is no hell. The ego creates structures around you which make you miserable. The ego functions like a wound - then everything starts hurting it.

The 'I' is hell.

That is why Buddha says attain to no-self. Self is hell, no-self is heaven. Not to be is to be in heaven. To be is always to be in hell. DO I HAVE TO ACCEPT HELL BEFORE I CAN FIND BLISS ?

You have to understand hell. Because if you don't understand hell, you will never be able to get out of it. And for understanding, acceptance is a must. You cannot understand anything if you go on denying it.

That's what we have been doing. We go on disowning parts of our being. We go on denying - 'This is not me.' That's what Jean-Paul Sartre says - the other is hell. When you deny something in you, you project it on the other. Look at the mechanism of projection. Whatsoever you deny in yourself, you project it on others. You have to put it somewhere. It is there, you know.

Just the other night a sannyasin told me that she has become very afraid that her husband is going to kill her. Now she has a very simple and beautiful husband, a very simple man. Rarely can you find such simple people. It is almost absurd - the idea that he is going to kill her.

When she was saying it, the husband started crying. The very idea was so absurd, tears started falling from his eyes. It is very rare to see a man crying, because men have been trained not to cry. He felt it - what to do? And the woman thinks that any moment the husband is going to suffocate her. She feels his hands on her neck in the darkness. Now, what is happening?

Then by and by she talked about other things. She has no child, and she desperately needs a child. And she told me that looking at others' children she feels that she would like to kill them. Now things are clear. Now nothing is complicated.

She said she would like to kill the children - others' children - because she has no child and she would not like anybody else to be a mother. Now this murder is in her, and she does not want to accept it. It has to be projected on somebody else. She cannot accept that she has the murdering instinct in her; it has to be projected. It is very difficult to accept that you are a murderer, or that you have ideas of murdering children.

Now, the husband is the closest person, the most available to be projected on, almost like a screen - you can project. Now the poor man is crying and the woman thinks he is going to murder her.

In the deep unconscious she may even have ideas of murdering the husband, because she must have this logic inside - that because of this man she is not getting pregnant. If she were with some other man, she would have become a mother. She will not accept it on the surface. Deep down, because of this man, because of this man being her husband, she has not been able to become a mother. Somewhere in the unconscious there is a lurking shadow that if this man dies, he will be able to find another man - or something like that. And then the idea that she would like to kill others' children... She is projecting it. Now, you project your ideas on others, then you become frightened. Then this man looks like a murderer.

This we all do. If you have some part of your being denied, disowned, where will you put it? You will have to put it on somebody. So Hindus go on projecting on Mohammedans. Mohammedans go on projecting on Hindus. Mohammedans think Hindus are very cunning. Hindus go on thinking that Mohammedans are very dangerous, murderous, violent, rascals.

India goes on projecting on Pakistan; Pakistan goes on projecting on India. China goes on projecting on Russia; Russia goes on projecting on America; America goes on projecting on Russia. And they all deny that they have these things inside them.

Just look! America goes on piling up armament, Russia goes on piling up armament. Now the competition has gone to foolish extremes. The people who understand it, they say, 'Now it is absolutely foolish to go on accumulating more armaments because already we have more than we need - seven times more!

This earth is too small we can destroy seven earths like this! We can kill every person seven times! Of course, this is not needed. One person dies once. There is no need. We have overkill capacity.' But still we go on.

So now the problem is that Russia goes on piling up armaments, looking at the absurdity - now where to, how to put it? how to make it understandable? She projects that America is after her, is getting ready to destroy her. The murderer is there - that's why we have to prepare, get ready. The same is happening in America. Both project on each other, then they become frightened.

Wars have continued, conflicts continue, violence continues... unless man comes to understand not to deny anything in himself, but to accept it. Reabsorb it into your organic unity, because the denied part will create many troubles for you.

Whatsoever you deny, you will have to put somewhere else. You will have to project on somebody. The denied part becomes a projection. And the eyes which project, live in maya, illusion. Then they are not realistic.

Jean-Paul Sartre says, 'The other is hell.' This is something to be understood. You always think in that way. He is simply saying a very common misunderstanding, expressing a very common illusion. If you are miserable you think somebody else is making you miserable. If you are angry you think somebody is making you angry - but always somebody else.

If you are angry, you are angry. If you are miserable, you are miserable. Nobody is making you. Nobody can make you angry unless you decide to become angry.

Then everybody can be a help, then everybody can be used as a screen and you can project. Nobody can make you miserable unless you decide to be miserable.

Then the whole world helps you to be miserable.

Self is hell, not the other. The very idea that 'I am separate from the world' is hell.

Separation is hell. Drop the ego and see suddenly - all misery disappears, all conflict disappears. DO I HAVE TO ACCEPT HELL BEFORE I CAN FIND BLISS?

Certainly, absolutely. You will have to accept and understand. In that acceptance and understanding, the hell part will be absorbed back into the unity. Your conflict will dissolve, your tension will dissolve. You will become more of one piece, you will be more together. And when you are together, there is no idea of ego at all.

Ego is a dis-ease. When you are pulled apart, when you live in a split way...

moving in many dimensions, directions simultaneously against each other...

when you live in contradiction, then the ego arises.

Have you ever felt your head without a headache? When the headache is there you feel the head is there. If all headache disappears, head disappears. You will never feel it - that it is there. When you are ill you feel the body. When you are healthy you don't feel the body. Perfect health is bodilessness. You don't feel the body at all. You can forget the body; there is nothing to remember it. A perfectly healthy person is one who is oblivious of the body; he does not know that he has a body.

A child is perfectly healthy. He has no body. The old man has a big body. The more old one becomes, the more illness, disease, conflict settles in. Then the body is not functioning as it should function, is not in harmony, is not in accord. Then one feels the body.

All younger cultures accept the body; old cultures deny body. Old cultures reflect the old minds, old man's mind; younger cultures reflect the young man's mind. For example in India - it is one of the ancient-most cultures - body is denied. Your so-called monks, munis, saints, sadhus - they are anti-body, they are enemies to the body. They have the old man's attitude towards the body. In America - it is a very young country - the body is accepted, enjoyed. When a country is young, the body is enjoyed, when the country is old, the body becomes the enemy. It simply shows the old man's attitude.

If you understand this simple phenomenon - that headache makes you aware of the head, illness makes you aware of the body - then it must be something like illness in your soul which makes you aware of the self. Otherwise a perfectly healthy soul will not have any self. That's what Buddha says - there is no self, no atman, anatta. No-self is... and that is the heavenly state. You are so healthy and so harmonious that there is no need to remember it.

But ordinarily we go on cultivating the ego. On one hand we go on trying not to be miserable, on another hand we go on cultivating the ego. All our ways are contradictory.

I have heard:

A haughty socialite died and arrived at the gates of heaven. 'Welcome, come right in,' was Saint Peter's greeting.

'I will not,' sneered the snob. 'If you just let anyone in without a reservation, this is not my idea of heaven.'

If the egoist, even by chance, reaches to the gate of heaven, he will not enter. This is not his idea of heaven - without reservation? anybody is welcome? Then what is the point? Only very chosen persons, very few, rare persons should be allowed. Then the ego can enter in heaven. In fact the ego cannot enter in heaven, it can only enter in hell. It will be better to say the ego carries its own hell wherever it goes.

It happened:

Mulla Nasrudin fell into a cesspool in the countryside and was not able to work his way out. So he stood there yelling, 'Fire! Fire!' and in a couple of hours the firemen finally arrived.

'There is no fire here!' exclaimed the chief. 'What are you yelling "Fire" for?'

'What did you want me to yell?' demanded the Mulla. 'Shit?'

The ego is such that even if it is in hell, it will not accept, it will not accept it. The ego goes on decorating itself.

You ask me, DO I HAVE TO ACCEPT HELL BEFORE I CAN FIND BLISS?

There is no other way. You will have not only to accept, you will have to understand and penetrate. You will have to suffer the pangs and the pain of it so that you become perfectly aware what it is. Only when you know what it is will you be able to know how you create it. And only when you know how you create it, then it is for you whether you want to create it any more or not. Then it is your choice. I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW?

Yes, it is difficult to accept hell. Our whole effort is to deny it. That's why you may be crying within, you go on smiling on the outside. You may be sad, but you go on pretending you are happy. It is hard to accept that you are miserable.

But if you go on denying it, it will by and by become disconnected from your awareness.

That's what happens when we say something has become unconscious. It means it has become disconnected from consciousness. You have denied it so long that it has receded back into the shadow part of your life, it has moved into the basement. You never come across it, but it goes on working from there and affecting you and poisoning your being.

If you are miserable you can smile, but that smile is painted. It is just an exercise of the lips. It has nothing to do with your being. You can smile, you can persuade a woman to fall in love with your smile. But remember - she is doing the same.

She is also smiling and she is also miserable. She is also pretending. So two false smiles create the situation that we call love. But how long can you go on smiling?

You will have to relax. After a few hours you will have to relax.

If you have a penetrating eye, you can see - if you live with a person for three hours you can see his reality. Because to pretend for even three hours is very difficult. How to go on smiling for three hours if there is no smile coming from you? You will forget again and again and your miserable face will show.

For moments you can deceive. That's how we deceive each other. And we promise that we are very happy persons, but we are not. The same is done by the other. Then every love affair becomes a misery, and every friendship becomes a misery.

By hiding your misery you are not going to get out of it - you will create more misery. The first thing is to encounter it. Never move unless you have encountered your reality, and never pretend to be somebody else. Because that is not the way happiness ever happens. Just be yourself.

If you are miserable, then be miserable. Nothing wrong is going to happen. You will be saved many troubles. Of course nobody will fall in love with you; okay - you will be saved many troubles. You will remain alone - but nothing is wrong in being alone. Face it, go deep into it, take it out, uproot it from the unconscious and bring it to the conscious.

It is hard work, but it pays - it pays tremendously. The pay-off is immense. Once you have seen it, you can simply throw it. It exists unseen, it exists only in the unconscious, in the darkness. Once you bring it to light, it starts withering.

Bring your whole mind to light and you will see - all that is miserable starts dying, and all that is beautiful and blissful starts sprouting. In the light of consciousness, that which remains is good, and that which dies is bad. That's my definition of sin and virtue. Virtue is that which can grow with absolute awareness; there is no difficulty. Sin is that which cannot grow with awareness; it needs unawareness to grow. Unawareness is a must for it.

Question 4:

There is no need for a road - because your master is where you are. You can come to me only when you stop travelling, when you drop out of all paths and ways and roads. When you are simply there, where you are, you are with me.

That is the only way to be with me. No path is needed. All paths lead astray. To come home, no path is needed. You have to stop travelling and rushing here and there.

The old man really asked a beautiful question to you. 'HOW DID YOU GET HERE SINCE THERE IS NO ROAD?'

He was talking in a zen way. In Zen they have a koan that a man had a goose.

When the goose was very small, he put it into a bottle. Then the goose started growing. He continued to feed the goose in the bottle. Then the goose became too big - so big that the mouth of the bottle was very small and it could not come out.

Now the problem is - the bottle has not to be broken, and the goose has to be taken out otherwise it will die. Now there is no space to grow and it is growing.

The bottle has to be saved - it is very precious - and the goose has to be taken out, and the mouth is so small that it cannot get out. What to do?

This is a zen koan. It is given to disciples to meditate over. Now it is absurd.

What can you do about it? Whatsoever you do, again and again the same problem. The bottle has not to be broken. That seems to be the only way to bring it out. And the goose cannot be allowed inside any more, because now there is no space left and it will die. Now what to do? The question is urgent. And the disciple is told to meditate as intensely as possible.

The disciple meditates twenty-four hours. Then he comes to the master, he finds some way - but what way can you find? All ways are impossible. There is no other way, this is the only alternative. And the disciple becomes desperate and more desperate, and he thinks and meditates, and his mind starts reeling around.

He cannot sleep, because the master says, 'The question is very urgent. The life has to be saved. The goose is dying - and what are you doing sitting there? Be more intense, be more alert, and find out the solution.'

And the master is walking around with his staff, and you cannot relax and you cannot sleep. Even in sleep the disciple thinks only of the bottle and the goose.

And it continues - day in, day out.

And one day it happens. The disciple is sitting silently, relaxed. There is no worry. And the master comes and says, 'So, it has happened?'

The disciple says, 'Yes, the goose is out... because it has never been in.'

But this is not an intellectual answer. I have given it to you. You cannot deceive a zen master. He will beat you badly if you try to deceive. Because your whole being has to show it... your very being, your tranquillity, your silence, your relaxedness, has to show it. It is not a question that you have to answer.

The disciple goes on thinking and thinking and thinking. And thinking becomes almost mad. His whole mind moving, moving moving. And there comes a point where no more thinking is possible. He has come to the very end of it.

Every tension has to come to a point where you cannot go any more. Try it by closing your fist and making it as tense as possible, and go on making it tense and tense and tense. One moment suddenly you will see the fist is opening, you cannot make it any more tense. And you cannot open it; you cannot close it. It is simply opening on its own accord. Because to remain open is natural. When the extreme is touched, relaxation settles in.

The same happens in the mind. The worry goes to a climax, a peak, and then suddenly all thoughts fall away, and the disciple is sitting there on a lotus flower, as if on a lotus flower... no worry, no problem, no koan, nothing. The goose is out - because the disciple is out. That constant thinking was the bottle in which one was confined. Now the goose is out because the disciple is out.

The old man must have asked you, 'How did you get here since there is no road?'

like a zen koan.

In fact there is no road to reach to god, because god is where you are. The goose is already out, the god has never been missed.

And now you ask, I SIT HERE OFTEN AND WONDER HOW I GOT TO YOU.

You may have forgotten me, but I have been always there. I am not separate from you. If I am separate then I am worthless. If I am separate from you and you have to come to me, and there is a path that connects you to me, then you will never reach to me. Then I will be like a mirage. You will be coming and coming and you will never reach to me.

One day you will understand that you are just sitting here, doing nothing, and you are in me and I am in you. And that will be the beginning of a totally new dimension of life.

Then god is in you and you are in god, and the world is in you and you are in the world. Then you are floating with the clouds and clouds are floating within you.

Then you are flowering in the flowers and the flowers are flowering in you. Then division disappears. Then only one is. The goose is out. There is no road to it. The bottle is not to be broken, the bottle does not exist. The bottle is illusory. The bottle is just a belief. That you are far away and you have to travel is just a belief.

That you have never gone anywhere and you have always been in the home is the truth.

A small anecdote:

A traveller, hundreds of miles from home, was walking across a flat, featureless desert. It had been twelve hours since he left the last oasis and he was beginning to feel a tinge of fear that he was lost, and soon night would come.

Far off in the distance he saw a dust trail, hardly visible, and watched with relief as it drew nearer. Finally recognizing a figure walking towards him, as they drew nearer he shouted, 'How far to the nearest oasis?' And the oncoming figure did not respond.

'How far to the nearest oasis?' he cried as the man passed beside him and still no answer. 'How far to the nearest oasis?' he yelled, nearly hysterical, as the dusty- robed figure disappeared in a cloud of windswept sand, and still no sign of an answer or even that the figure had heard.

He walked on. Five minutes later he heard a distant sound. Turning, he heard the figure shout, very faint in the evening winds, 'Two hours.'

'Why didn't you tell me before?'

'Because I did not know how fast you walked.'

It depends.

But this journey is just the opposite journey. If you walk very fast, you will never reach me. If you don't walk at all, if you simply sit there inside you, you have arrived. In fact you had never departed.