In Search of the Miraculous

The first question

Question 1:

Adolph Smith,

RELIGION AND SCIENCE ARE DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE, and because they are diametrically opposite they are complementaries. Religion cannot support science, science cannot support religion. They are bound to oppose each other -- in their very opposition is their complementariness. Hence, anything that science is going to discover is of no value to religion. In fact, EACH scientific discovery makes the existence of religion more and more difficult.

Science tries to demystify existence, hence the question 'how?' -- how did life arise out of matter? Religion is basically a different approach: it does not want to demystify existence; its whole approach is to reveal the mystery of it. It is not a search for the answer: it is diving deep in the question itself k does not ask any questions; it takes life for granted. The question is not how life arose: the question is how life should be lived, the question is how life should be celebrated.

The scientific question will be: What is love? How docs love arise? What is the causality? And the religious question will be: How to drown yourself in love? How to be in love? How to be love itself?

Science will come to certain clues; those clues look stupid in the eyes of a mystic. If you ask about love, science will answer with something which is nothing but chemistry:

hormones, chemicals. And the grandeur and the splendour of love are reduced -- reduced to a very mundane world. What does love have to do with chemistry? Love certainly has something to do with alchemy, but nothing to do with chemistry. It is a transforming force, but it cannot be reduced to hormones.

Life cannot be reduced to any answer. Once life is reduced to a certain answer life becomes meaningless, it is no more worth living. It is like coming across a lotus flower.

The poet will enjoy the beauty of it; he will not be bothered where it comes from. He will simply enjoy the fragrance, the colour, the sun shining over it, the dewdrops on the lotus petals. And the mystic will dance around it, because he is not seeing only the lotus flower but he is seeing something of the transcendental in it. Hidden behind the lotus, its beauty, its splendour, its majesty, its magic, are the hands of God. The mystic not only feels the roseflower or the lotus flower, he also feels the mysterious presence of the unknown force called God surrounding it, protecting it, caring for it, caressing it.

The poet simply sees the lotus flower, the mystic goes beyond, he goes higher -- he takes the roseflower or the lotus flower to the ultimate peak. And the scientist? -- he will think about where it comes from. It comes from the mud. The scientist will start moving deeper and deeper into the mud; he will start enquiring about the mud and the elements that are in the mud.

Just look at these three approaches: the scientist goes lower than the lotus, the mystic goes higher than the lotus, the poet remains with the lotus. In the ultimate analysis the scientist will think that the lotus is nothing but mud -- a form of mud -- and the mystic will think the lotus is nothing but a manifestation of God. And for the poet, a lotus is simply a lotus. Now, how can these three approaches meet?

The mystic cannot agree with the scientist -- in fact, the mystic will think that the scientist is destroying something tremendously important. By all his logical answers, objective answers, he is destroying the subjectivity of the lotus. The mystic may agree a little bit with the poet, but only a little bit, not the whole way. He will nod to the poet: he will say, "You are on the right track, you have taken the first step. but don't get stuck there -- go on. The lotus is not enough: you have to find the face of God in the lotus. And if you cannot find the face of God in the lotus, where else are you going to find it?"

Adolph Smith, your question is important -- but don't remain in this confusion that if you can find some clue as to now matter becomes life you will be bringing some understanding between religion and science... you will be talking about mud! And the poet will not be convinced by you, because he knows the lotus. And what to say about the mystic? He will simply feel pity for you.

Everything can either be reduced to its beginnings -- that's what science goes on doing -- or it can be raised to the ultimate peak; that's what the work of religion is. And poetry is just the bridge between the two. The poetic approach is in a way closer to both science and religion. If you really want to understand religion, you have taken a wrong route.

Religion does not think that life needs any answers. Life needs to be lived in its totality, life needs to be celebrated. Life needs to be penetrated -- that is the only way to know it.

Not in the lab, not going deep into life cells, not by analysing the elements; those are constituents of life, but life is more than the sum total of its parts.

Somebody is playing on a guitar, beautiful music. The scientist will become interested in the guitar, not in the music. He will think, "From where is it coming?" He may become interested in the fingers of the musician and in the instrument. He will analyse the instrument and he will find some wood some strings, this and that -- but that is NOT music! And if he analyses the fingers of the musician he will find some blood, some bones, skin -- and that is not music! Music is something more. The hands of the musician and the guitar are simply an opportunity for the beyond to descend to the earth.

The poet will listen to the music; he will not be worried about the musician and the musical instrument. He will be drunk with the music. But the mystic will dance with abandon, because in music he will hear the ultimate music. The poet will forget about the musician and the instrument, and the mystic will even forget about the music, because it reminds him of something deep in his own being. It reminds him of what Kabir calls the music of SOHAM -- I am that. He will forget all that is happening outside; it has triggered a process in his being. He is transported into another world.

ADOLPH SMITH, if you really have any interest in religion then you will have to meditate -- analysis won't help, scientific investigation won't help. And remember, I am not against scientific investigation -- if you are interested in it, DO it! But know perfectly well: it is not going to bridge science and religion -- they cannot be bridged. There is no need to bridge them either. They have different functions to fulfill; there is no need to create a synthesis between them -- because the synthesis will impoverish both, it will not enrich.

Existence remains alive through the tension of the polar opposites: the negative and the positive, man and woman, birth and death, darkness and light, love and hate -- religion and science. These are the polar opposites. Life needs them. Without them life will become a stagnant pool, it will not be a dialectical process any more. Life is dialectics; it moves through the thesis and the antithesis, and again the synthesis becomes a thesis and creates antithesis. That's how life goes on progressing.

Religion and science don't need to be synthesized -- they need to be purified. Science should be pure science, utterly scientific; and religion should be pure religion, utterly mystic.

I would like you to be reminded of a great statement of a Christian mystic, Tertullian.

Somebody asked him, "Why do you believe in God?" And he said, CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM -- I believe in God because he is absurd."

Now, what kind of answer is this? But this is the answer of a mystic, not the answer of a scientist. The scientist will try to prove, will answer WHY he believes; he will argue. But Tertullian simply says, "Because God is absurd, hence I believe. I believe in the mysterious, in the miraculous, in the unanswerable, in the unknowable."

If you have any interest in religion... and you can be both! I am not saying that a man who is a scientist cannot be religious -- a man who is a scientist can be religious -- but then he will have to create a dialectics in his own being. He will have to be very conscious. When he is working in the lab he has to forget all about religion; religion should not interfere in his scientific work. And when he leaves the lab and sits in his meditation chamber he should forget all about analysis, experimentation, observation -- there he should be a lover, in prayer, in meditation.

A scientist can be both. And my approach is this, that I would like many many people to be both scientists and religious. And if some person can be all three, that is my vision of a real, true sannyasin: a scientist, a poet, a mystic. In him humanity will have blossomed to its ultimate possibilities. The potential in him will have been transformed into actuality.

He will have bloomed in all possible ways. He will be a multi-dimensional man.

And to be a scientist does not mean that you have to be a physicist or a chemist or this and that -- to be a scientist means having a scientific approach. There are problems which can be tackled only by science. When somebody comes with an illness to me, I tell him to go to Navanit, to Darshan, to Amrit, to Hamid -- go to the doctors! Your illness needs a scientific approach.

In India it happens that ill people go to the saints for their blessings, and the East has remained ill, poor, because of this nonsense. If you are poor, don't go to the saints; go to the technologists, go to the scientists, go to the economists, enquire "Why are we poor?"

But you go to the saints and enquire "Why are we poor?" You are foolish and so are your saints. And they answer you, why you are poor; they tell you, they have to, because when you question them they cannot show their ignorance. They tell you because in your past lives you have been committing so many sins, that's why you are suffering. You ask a foolish question and you will get a foolish answer.

Go to the scientist when it is a question about the material world. And if you have fallen in love, then don't go to a scientist -- avoid him! Even if he meets you on the way, escape, because he will destroy your whole love. He will say, "It is all nonsense. It is just the attraction between female and male hormones -- don't be befooled. Those hormones are deceiving you." Don't go to the scientist; if you want to kiss your woman, don't go to the scientist. He will say, "This is dangerous. All kinds of infections are possible. And millions of germs are transferred in a single kiss." He will make you so afraid that even if you kiss, you will not be totally there in it. And you will start carrying Dettol and things like that with you -- so kiss and then immediately wash, or before you kiss, wash.

Don't go to the scientist when you are in love -- go to the poet. He knows about love.

And when you want to know the ultimate mystery, the poet cannot be of much help either; he remains on the surface. When you want to know the ultimate mystery, go to a mystic, become a disciple to a Master, because those secrets can only be imbibed in deep trust, surrender, love.

The second question

Question 2:

I HAVE NOT SAID that to be constant is to be stupid -- I had certainly said to be consistent is the way of the mediocre mind, the stupid mind. But don't you see the difference between being constant and being consistent?

Consistency is a logical phenomenon. When I say: Don't be consistent, I mean you need not remain confined to your past -- that's what consistency is. You have done something today; tomorrow life will change, and you have to repeat the same thing to be consistent.

Tomorrow will not be today; today is not your yesterday. The answers that were adequate yesterday are no more adequate today. Consistency means that it is always yesterday that has to dominate, it is always the past that has to dominate the present. That's what I mean by 'consistency'. Then you will never grow, because your youth has to be consistent with your childhood, and your old age has to be consistent with your youth -- that means you will remain childish your whole life.

And that's how people are. The average mental age of human beings is only twelve years.

This is what happens if you enforce consistency. In childhood, a few answers were given to you; they were good for the time being, but only for the time being. More than that you would not have understood. But as you grow, those answers become out of date, those answers become confinements, imprisonments, those answers become chains. You have to constantly throw them so that you can remain fresh, so that you can respond to the reality as it is.

But this is how, Zareen, it goes on happening: I say one thing, you understand something else. I say one thing, you hear something totally different. Your minds are so full of your own thoughts that I say, "Don't be consistent," and you hear, "Don't be constant."

Pasquel was being examined for naturalization as a U.S. citizen. "Who is the President of the United States?" The foreigner answered correctly. "And the Vice President?" Again he gave the right answer. "Could you be President?"

"No, no!"

"Why not?"

"I am-a too busy. I work-a in the barbershop all-a day now."

Now, his own occupation... he says, "No, no! I am-a too busy. I work-a in the barbershop all-a day now."

Zareen, you have heard something which I have not said. Your question has come out of your own idea. You know, at Least you believe you know, that the truth cannot change.

Who told you? And how do you know? Do you know truth? You have heard it being told to you that truth never changes; it remains for ever constant. Is it your experience? Have you known anything in life which remains always constant? Anything, I say, have you known in life which remains constant?

Everything is changing if you look at life. If you watch life, then Heraclitus is right: you cannot step in the same river twice, because the river is constantly flowing, changing. Old Heraclitus says: The ONLY thing that never changes is change. Only change is constant, otherwise everything is changing.

In fact, life is not a noun but a verb. If one day we want to be really scientific about our language, we will have to drop all nouns. A really scientific language will consist only of verbs. You see these trees all around and you think, "Beautiful trees!" But to call a tree 'a tree' is not true, because a tree is not something static -- it is a movement. By the time you utter the word 'tree' it has changed. It is no more the same tree about which you were talking One dead leaf has fallen, a new leaf is just growing, a bud is opening. The tree is growing higher -- each moment! Otherwise how is it going to grow?

To be exactly true about it, it is better to call it 'treeing' rather than 'a tree'. But we even call a river 'a river' -- a river is a rivering. It is a CONSTANT change! Life is not really life but only living -- there is no life as such but only living. Our languages give us a very wrong notion of the world. There is nothing like love, but loving.

Always remember... we have to use nouns because otherwise it will be very difficult to explain things to each other. For centuries we have used nouns. But whenever you use the word 'love', remember it is 'loving' -- it is a process. It is not a thing, constant.

If you have loved, Zareen, you will know: morning it has one colour, afternoon it has another colour, by the evening it is a totally different phenomenon. Sometimes the river is very deep and sometimes it is very shallow. And sometimes it makes much noise, and sometimes it is very silent. So is love. Sometimes it is sad, and sometimes it is a rejoicing. It changes its moods constantly. So the only constant thing is change. But you say:

THE TRUTH cannot change...

WHO HAS ORDAINED IT, THAT TRUTH CANNOT CHANGE? What do you mean by it? Have you known anything in life that never changes? The child becomes the young man, the young man becomes the old man, and the old man is gone one day -- dust unto dust. You go on seeing that everything is constant change, but there seems to be a fear deep down in the human heart: the fear is death. If change is there, then death is bound to happen. Change brings death in.

So we want to believe in something permanent, absolutely permanent. It may be truth, it may be God, it may be soul, but something is needed for the fearful heart to cling to so that death can be defied. At least one can believe, "There is something permanent in which I can have a shelter, which can become my security."

Do you know truth? Do you know God? Do you know the soul? No, you know only death -- which happens every moment, all around. But we go on defying death; we don't want to look at it, because it reminds us that we are going to die. We would like something that remains for ever and for ever. And we would like to be part of it so that we can also remain for ever and for ever.

But what is permanent in you? Your body changes -- you can ask medical science: your body changes constantly. Just ten years ago they used to think that the body changes totally in seven years' time, becomes completely new, not even a single cell remains of the old; but now further research has shown that the body changes totally in one year.

The body is continuously renewing itself.

That's why when you cut your hair and your nails it does not hurt -- why? The hair is part of your body and the nails too, and you are cutting them and it doesn't hurt? The reason is that your hair is not alive. These are the dead cells of the body that are being thrown out of the body. So are the nails -- just dead cells being thrown out of the body to make place for the new ones to happen. That's why it doesn't hurt if you cut them.

In a single year, your body is no more the same.

Buddha used to say again and again that life is like a flame. You burn a candle, you light a candle in the evening; the whole night it burns. In the morning you are just going to put it out -- a question can be asked of you: "Is it the same flame you started in the evening that you are putting out?" In a sense it is the same flame, because it continued the whole night; but in truth it is not the same flame, because the flame has been constantly changing, becoming smoke, and a new flame is replacing it. And the replacement is so quick that the old going into smoke and the new coming into existence is so fast that there is no gap between the two -- hence you cannot see it, hence you cannot see that it is not the same flame. Then Buddha had to invent a new idea.

The scientists now call it 'continuum', 'continuity' -- it is neither the same nor not the same, it is a continuity, a continuum. Buddha calls it SANTATI -- the first flame gives birth to another and that gives birth to another, and so on and so forth, one flame goes on giving birth to another. The whole night the birth process continued. So it comes into the same line, but it is not the same. You cannot say that it is different, you cannot say it is the same. In a sense it is different, in a sense it is the same.

Have you known, Zareen, anything in life which is really permanent? -- anything? Your body changes, your mind changes continuously, your emotions go on changing. About WHAT truth are you talking?

Yes, there is one truth which never changes, but that has to be experienced. Don't take it as a belief. And that truth is not something outside you; that truth is hidden in you -- that truth is your capacity to witness. Only the witness never changes, everything else goes on changing. There is a consciousness inside you that goes on watching and watching all the changes -- the childhood comes and goes, the youth comes and goes, the old age comes and goes, and there is a witness inside who is simply watching.

All meditation is nothing but an effort to know this witness. There is no God outside you who is permanent, never changing; there is no truth outside you which is for ever. Yes, there is a certain reality inside you, at the deepest core of your being... but to find it, Zareen, you will have to go deep in meditation. When all thoughts disappear, and all desires are gone, and when there is nothing to witness, then you become aware of the witness. Then witnessing turns upon itself. Having nothing else to see, it starts seeing itself If something remains there as an object, it remains focussed on the object.

Meditation is a process of taking all objects away from you; all contents of the mind are to be taken away. Slowly slowly, one day... the interval, the gap. Sudden emptiness.

When there is nothing to see, no content to focus on, then the miracle happens. The witnessing energy, finding nothing else to obstruct it, turns in a circle back upon itself.

This is what Jesus calls 'metanoia', which has been wrongly translated as 'repent'. It should be translated as 'return', not 'repent'; it should be translated as 'revolution', a one- hundred-and-eighty-degree turn -- and then suddenly you see yourself. And this witness has no name. It is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan; it is neither man nor woman: it is just pure consciousness.

Yes, this pure consciousness is absolutely the same. Except this, everything else changes.

And when I was talking to you about consistency I was not talking about the witness, I was talking about your ideologies, about your knowledge, about your experiences. They have all to be dropped every day: die every day to the past so you can remain fresh, so that you can respond to the reality as it is in the moment, not according to the past.

And listening to me, be alert, be very alert about each single word; otherwise, I will say one thing and you will understand something else. And you will go on thinking that I have said it.

These cats are having themselves a little jam session. They are really wailing. Pretty soon they hear a knock on the door; one of them opens up and the owner of the building is standing there. "I am sorry to burst in on you like this," said the landlord, "but do you know there is a sick old lady moaning upstairs?

"No," said the cat, "but if you give us the first few bars we can pick up on it."

The third question

Question 3:

Sambodh,

IT DEPENDS ON YOU. If you ask me, to me it is all the same. You can say that everything is important, or you can say nothing is important. Both mean the same.

Everything is ordinary, or everything is extraordinary. Whatsoever you want to choose, whichever word appeals to you -- everything is important, everything, not excluding anything at all; or nothing is important. Both mean the same, because the moment everything is important, or everything is not important, the very word 'important' loses meaning. The meaning remains only if there are some things which are important and some things which are not important, a few things ordinary and a few things extraordinary. Then the word carries meaning. But if everything is exactly either important or unimportant, then the word loses meaning.

My own suggestion is you can choose either, because the ultimate result will be the same.

If you have a negative mind, then the Buddhist answer will be perfectly right. Buddha says: "Nothing is important." Then there is nothing to make any fuss about. When hungry, eat; when thirsty, drink; when sleepy, sleep -- nothing is important. And this will give you a kind of relaxedness, a calmness -- nothing is important, so whether you succeed or fail it is all the same, whether you become famous or notorious, it is all the same, whether anybody knows you or nobody knows you doesn't matter. It will give you a very relaxed, still, tranquil state of being -- and that is the purpose!

Or you can choose Shankara's answer. He says: "Everything is important, because all is God, even the dust is divine." That too is perfectly right; you can choose that. Then, too, when hungry, eat, because it is important; and when thirsty, drink, because it is important; and when sleepy, sleep, because God is feeling sleepy -- the God within you.

These are the two answers, the basic answers: positive and negative. Just watch your own mind... whichever appeals to you. There are people who are basically attracted towards the positive, or towards the negative. Feel your own attraction, what attracts you more.

And whichever attracts you more, that can become your path: NO can become your path, res can become your path.

Kabir's path is that of YES. Buddha's path is that of NO. But, really, YES and no are not significant. What is significant is totality. If you say yes with your total being it is totality that liberates. If you say no with totality, it is totality that liberates. But it all depends on you.

There are not some things labelled as important and other things labelled as unimportant.

A roseflower may be important to a poet and may be utterly unimportant to somebody who is only interested in money. For him, a note, a hundred-rupee note, is more important. He will ask, "What is the use of the roseflower?" In fact, he will be very much worried why people go on singing songs of rose flowers -- "Why don't they sing songs of hundred-rupee notes?"

When I was at university I had a colleague who was really a money-maniac; his whole interest was money. Even somebody else's hundred-rupee note, and he would take it in his hand and he would touch it with such love that you may not have even touched your woman with that love -- with such care, with such tender hands, as if the note was alive.

And his eyes would shine, candles would burn in his eyes when he saw a note -- even if it was somebody else's note. A note is a note! And his whole thinking was money: how to have more money?

And then there is the one about the shipwrecked Englishman: as he gets out of the water onto the beach of a remote island, he is greeted by another man standing in the shade of a palm tree. "Pleased to meet you," says he, and then enquires, "Eton?"

"Yes," responds the new arrival.

"Oxford?"

"Yes."

"Guards?"

"Yes."

"Homosexual?"

"No."

"Pity!"

It depends on you what is important. How can I say what is important? To me, nothing is and everything is.

The fourth question

Question 4:

Deva Alla,

IF THIS IS YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE, then the question won't arise -- then how can you ask the question? The question arises out of some lingering hope somewhere in the unconscious: "Maybe there is a way to make it still. Maybe I have not tried enough, maybe I have not put my energy totally in it. Hence it is not satisfying. But if you yourself have felt that nothing is ultimately satisfying, if this is your experience, how can the question arise? It is so.

In that very experiencing, in that very understanding, you will be relaxed. Why ask that anything should be ultimately satisfying? Why not be satisfied with whatsoever life gives you? -- even if it is only for the moment. Why be greedy? Alla, you seem to be very greedy. You seem to be of that old, rotten type of spiritual person -- greedy. He wants everything for ever, for ever. If he falls in love with a woman, he wants her to remain of the same age for ever, for ever. He himself will be growing old -- that is another thing.

But the woman has to remain young.

It is these greedy people who have created the ideas of paradise, FIRDAUS. In their paradise, women never grow old. All women in paradise are stuck at the age of sixteen.

Must be getting tired... for millions and millions of years stuck at sixteen. But it says nothing about the men -- it may be because the scriptures are written by men. If women were writing scriptures then they would write something else: men will be stuck somewhere at eighteen.

And the same people who go on condemning all kinds of things here go on promising the same things a thousandfold, for eternity, in paradise. What kind of logic is this? Alcohol is prohibited here by the Mohammedans, but in their firdaus, in their paradise, rivers of alcohol flow -- rivers! You need not go to a pub; you need not only drink, you can swim, you can dive.

This is strange! -- but not really. The greedy mind is there. The greedy mind is ready to sacrifice the momentary joy of being in a pub, of drinking a little bit, for the ultimate joy of drinking and drinking forever.

These same religious people who go on condemning the feminine body -- all the religions have committed that crime -- that shows simply only one thing, that the people who were writing those scriptures were deeply sexually repressed people. It shows nothing else. It says nothing about the women, it simply shows something about the scripture writers, that they were deeply repressed people -- they were afraid of women.

But here they are afraid, and here they go on telling everybody: "Beware! Woman is the door to hell!" And the same people provide you with beautiful women in heaven -- the most beautiful. Do you know? -- in paradise women don't perspire, they don't need deodorants. Their bodies have a perfume of flowers -- a natural perfume, not created by some artificially manufactured perfume. Just naturally like flowers -- roses. Their bodies are made of gold. What greed! And what are you going to do with a woman whose body is made of gold? You will be stuck! But the greed, the greedy mind fantasizing.

All these scriptures are pornographic. This is real spiritual pornography: women with bodies of gold, studded with diamonds, no perspiration, natural perfume, and always young, and all beautiful.

One great saint died, and by coincidence his great disciple also died after a few hours.

The great disciple was very much excited about seeing his master again. And he was thinking on the way -- it is a long journey from the earth to paradise -- he was thinking, "My master must have been received by angels playing on their harps and beautiful women dancing, and he must have been given the most beautiful women because he was such a great saint, such an ascetic. When he was on the earth he had never touched any woman. What to say about touching? He had never allowed any woman to enter into his house. He had never seen any woman face to face; if he had to talk to a woman he would always look downwards or would keep his eyes closed.What great austerities he went through! Now he must be being rewarded."

And he reached and he saw his master -- and, really, he was rewarded. He was sitting under a tree, a beautiful tree, a golden tree; leaves of emerald and flowers of diamonds -- and Marilyn Monroe, utterly naked! hugging him. The disciple fell at the feet of the master and said, "My great master, I was waiting for this. This was due! You have been rewarded well."

And the master said, "You stupid fool! Keep your big mouth shut -- you have not grown at all. You don't understand anything. She is not my reward -- I am her punishment!"

But these greedy people....

Deva Alla, if you know from your own experience that all is frustrating ultimately, everything only brings joy for the moment, then why not be happy with the moment?

Why ask that it should be there for ever?

I teach you the joy of the moment. Live in the moment, and whatsoever the moment makes available, enjoy it, celebrate it. While it lasts, dance! And when it has gone, be grateful that it had come. Why ask that... NOTHING IS ULTIMATELY SATISFYING -- ALL IS NOT ENOUGH? Nothing can be done about it! This is so. This is how the reality is, and the reality is not going to change its ultimate law for you. Nobody can be all exception.

But if this experience has not yet become your own, then you will have to suffer a little more. You will have to hope a little more. When understanding arises, hope disappears.

That does not mean that one becomes hopeless: that simply means that one accepts the life as it is, and whatsoever it gives one accepts with gratitude and has no complaint.

In order to get a job with the railroad, Angelo had to pass a test. "Suppose two trains were heading for each other at a hundred miles per hour on the same track," asked the personnel manager, "what would you do?"

"I take-a the red flag and wave-a them to e-stop," Angelo answered.

"But you don't have a red flag," pointed out the man.

"Then I am-a take-a the switch iron and change-a the tracks." "You don't have a switch iron either."

"Well, in that case," decided the Italian, "I'm gonna call up-a my wife, Maria."

"What has your wife got to do with two trains coming at each other at a hundred miles an hour?" exclaimed the man in charge of hiring.

"I tell-a her to come down 'cos she has-a gone see the biggest-a mess-a in the whole world!"

YOU can do whatsoever you can do, and when nothing can be done it is better to call the wife and see -- and enjoy it! Learn to enjoy not only the pleasures of life but the pains too, not only the ecstasies but the agonies too. And the person who can enjoy the agonies is liberated.

The fifth question

Question 5:

Eduard Povel,

TOTALITY IS NOT A GOAL. Totality is not perfectionism. Totality is simply a vision of seeing the life in a different light. For example, you are angry. You can be half- heartedly angry, then the remaining part that has not been expressed will remain in you as a poison.

And if again and again this has been done, you go on accumulating poison in yourself.

Then a moment comes when you may not be angry in particular, but you are still in anger for no reason at all. That's how people are -- they are just angry, illogically angry, because right now there is no reason to be angry, but all the anger that they have repressed in the past has accumulated, has gone deep into their bloodstream, has poisoned them, has become toxic. It has created a certain musculature, a wrong kind of musculature in their bodies. And that is going to destroy many many beautiful things in their lives.

If such a man is going to see a sunset, he will not see any beauty in it. He is in such a rage! If such a man goes to listen to music, he will not be able to listen to it, because to be able to listen to great music you need a relaxed state. He cannot relax. He is carrying so many tensions, the whole life's accumulated tensions....

When I say be total I simply mean... I am not giving you a superhuman ideal. I am simply giving you a very human vision that when you are angry, then BE angry! Then don't repress it. If it is too risky to be angry with somebody, then go into your room and be angry alone, but express it. Beat the pillow, shout at the walls, make a picture of your wife and beat it! But do something -- do what you really wanted to do with the wife.

It is really a good idea to have an effigy of your wife, or if you are a wife then an effigy of your husband, so whenever the need arises you can go and be as nasty as you feel like being -- and with no danger of retaliation. And you will be surprised: after beating your wife, in her absence, after shouting nasty things, using four-letter words, then when you see your wife you will be surprised -- you will feel compassion for her. You may even feel ready to apologize. You may be able to see her in a different way, because you are no longer carrying that subtle layer of anger -- it has been released. You may be able to see her face again after years.

When I say be total I simply mean don't repress things, because the repressed things are bound to rebound on you, those repressed things are going to take revenge, they are going to explode with vengeance one day. Those repressed feelings are creating all kinds of neurotic, psychotic people in the world. To be total is not a goal! To be total is only a way of life.

And you say: BEING TOTAL WITHOUT 'FRAGMENTATION ANY MORE, IS NOT THAT A FINAL STATE...?

Yes, it is a final state too -- but the first step is the last step, and the beginning is the end.

It is a means and an end too. You have to begin. I know you cannot be total right now.

Slowly slowly, you will be able to become total, because the society has not allowed you to be total in anything; it has allowed you only so far. It has made you very lukewarm; it has taken away all passionate energy from your being. Hence, you don't really love madly, you don't really go into anger madly, you don't share totally, you cannot commune -- everything is just so-so. And, hence, so much dust has gathered on your face.

Totality has to be started; it is the beginning and the end too. In the beginning it is going to be difficult because you will be going against the current of the society, but that's what sannyas is: taking courage to be oneself And I don't expect you to become total right now, But the decision will help. If you decide to be total, slowly slowly you will be more and more total, degrees and degrees, by degrees one day you will attain to the hundred- degree point.

And the miracle is: when one can go into one's emotions a hundred percent, all that is wrong starts disappearing. That is the miracle! And all that is right starts growing. A really total person will not be able to be angry. In the beginning when you start you will be more and more angry, but soon the point comes when you are totally angry and you have seen the naked futility of anger, the utter absurdity of anger, the insanity of anger -- When YOU have seen it -- not because Buddha has said so or I have said so -- when you have seen it, it will drop. The seeing is enough. You need not drop it: it drops of its own accord.

A total person will be able to love and will be unable to hate. A total person will be able to be compassionate and will be unable to be angry. But that is the end. I am not telling you to be a Buddha right now. But one has to begin somewhere; one has to start moving in the direction of being a Buddha.

You are right: it is the final state, the last stage on the way. But the w ay is also part of the last stage. The way and the goal are not separate. The goal is just the other end of the way. And the beginning is THIS end and the goal is THAT end, and the way joins both, is the bridge.

Eduard, I am not teaching you any kind of perfectionism, I am not saying you any ideals.

Totality is certainly not all ideal -- it sounds as if it is. It is just a different style of life.

Right now you are living a life-style which can be called partial -- only parts of your being are allowed to surface, only the tip of the iceberg. You are living in fragments, you are living split. This is a kind of schizophrenic life.

Misery is bound to be the outcome of it -- misery and only misery. Bliss is the consequence of being one, integrated. That's exactly the meaning of the word 'yoga':

union, integration, oneness.

YOU say: I HAVE NO REASON TO HOPE THAT IT WILL EVER HAPPEN AS A CONTINUOUS STATE.

Who is telling you to make it a continuous state? Why do we always think of the future?

Why do we make things unnecessarily difficult? For a certain reason -- there is a motive.

First you make something very difficult, then you can say, "This is not possible. I cannot do it," and it is finished. There is no need for it to be total, there is no need for it to be continuous.

That's why it looks contradictory, paradoxical, but I say to you that when sometimes you are not total then be total in it -- then don't be total! Then accept it -- that "This is the moment when I am not total." Then don't hide it, then don't fight it. If it is not possible, it is not possible. Don't feel guilty for it; you are not committing a sin. It is your life: if you want to be total sometimes, good; if sometimes you enjoy not being total, for a change, perfectly good!

The sixth question

Question 6:

Krishna Prem, IT IS JUST BULLSHIT!

The last question

Question 7:

Girish,

I DON'T EXPECT THE POLITICIANS to understand even the direct language. If I am indirect there is no hope that they will ever understand. They do not understand even my absolutely direct, frank, blunt language. I don't mince words. I simply say it as it is. That too they cannot understand.

In fact, only the third-rate minds become interested in politics. Anyone who has some kind of intelligence will do something else. He may become a scientist, he may become a poet, a dancer, a musician. He may become a mystic. Why in the world would he like to become a politician? That is only for those who have no other possibility of expressing themselves, who have no other intelligence.

The politician needs no other qualification, no talent. In fact, the more unintelligent he is, the greater is the possibility of his being successful.

A tourist was visiting New Delhi. Walking on a side street late one evening, the visitor was held up by a bandit. "Give me your money!" he threatened, "or I will blow out your brains."

"Blow away..." said the tourist.

In New Delhi you can live without brains but not without money. I have to be direct. And I am not a politician, so why should I be diplomatic? Truth is never diplomatic -- it is straight.

And the politicians cannot understand what I am doing here, and I don't expect them to understand. It will be great if they simply ignore us. That's enough. If they forget all about us. that is more than can be expected.

A German philosopher pleaded with Adolf Hitler not to mistreat the Jews if for no other reason, he said, than just because they are so smart.

"What makes you think the Jews are so smart?" asked the dictator.

"Come, and I will show you. '

He took the Nazi leader to Gutman's Gift Shop and said, "Ask him for a lefthanded teapot."

The Fuhrer did. Gutman went to the back of the store, picked up a teapot, turned it around, and returned. "You are in luck," said Gutman, handing the teapot to Hitler, "I just happen to have one left."

Back out on the street the philosopher said, "You see, that's what I mean about the Jews being so smart."

"What is so smart about that?" exclaimed Hitler. "He just happened to have one left."

You can't expect politicians to understand much. They are bound to misunderstand even my direct statements. And if I start making indirect statements they will create more complexities. Then there will be more chances of misunderstandinng.

Levi closed his shop Friday night and headed for temple services not realizing his fly was unzipped. At the entrance he met Mrs. Weiss, the president of the Ladies' Auxiliary. "I don't like to say nothing," she said shyly, "but your business is open."

"You are mistaken lady, ' said Levi.

"Believe me," said Mrs. Weiss, blushing, "your business is open."

"You are crazy!" shouted Levi rushing inside. "I close the store every Friday to come here."

Later at home, Levi saw that his fly was open and realized that Mrs. Weiss had only been trying to tell him so in a delicate way. He telephoned her immediately. "I want to apologize." he said, also trying to be tactful, "but tell me somethin' -- when my business was open, was my salesman in or out?"