No peaks, no valleys

The first question:

Swami Deva Rahaman, there are no peaks, no valleys; the whole idea is a fabrication.

There is no higher, no lower; there is no hierarchy in existence at all. It is just one cosmic whole, it is an organic unity.

But the egoist has always been trying to divide people into different categories: the ignorant, the enlightened; the sinners, the saints; the criminals, the virtuous; the notorious, the famous; the moral, the immoral. The game is the same: divide people and then try to belong to the higher category so you can pretend to be "holier than thou."

Hence I want it to be continuously remembered by you that there are no peaks and there are no valleys; we all belong to one oceanic whole. The smallest blade of grass is as significant as the greatest star. They all participate in the same cosmic play, they all contribute to its beauty, to its joy, to its song, to its celebration. The existence will be less even if a small blade of grass is missing; there will be something lacking, there will be an emptiness.

My approach to life is non-divisive. My sannyasins are not my followers; they are not to imitate me, they are not to become me.

Hence, Deva Rahaman, don't use such language, don't use such concepts.

Don't say:

The peaks and the valleys are part of one whole: the peaks cannot exist without the valleys, the valleys cannot exist without the peaks. So who is important? Both are interdependent. Life is neither dependent nor independent, life is a continuum of interdependence. It is beautiful wherever you are, it is lovely to be whatsoever you are.

The desire to be on the peaks is a wrong desire -- all desires as such are wrong, and religious desires are far more wrong than any other desires for the simple reason that other desires can be fulfilled. Of course, by their fulfillment you will not go beyond frustration; fulfilled or not fulfilled, frustration is inevitable. If your desire is fulfilled you will be frustrated -- in fact, more so, because now you will see you were chasing a shadow; you have got it and there is nothing in it. If your desire is not fulfilled you will be frustrated, because your whole life is wasted and you have not been able to fulfill a single desire. All your hopes are shattered.

Hopes are bound to be shattered. To hope is to hanker for hopelessness, to desire is to breed frustration. But in the worldly things at least there is a possibility of succeeding, failing, attaining, not attaining. But in spiritual matters there is no question of attainment at all because the goose is out! Nothing can be done about it, it is already out. The moment you start enjoying your valley you are on the peak -- there is no other peak!

One day I suddenly decided enough is enough. I dropped the idea of the peaks and started enjoying the valley, and a miracle I saw: the valley disappeared. In fact, from the very beginning there had been no valley, I was always on the peak, but because I was searching for a peak I could not see where I was.

Your eyes are focused far away, hence you miss the obvious. It is here, and your mind is there, arrowed into the blue sky. And the reality surrounds you: it is closer than your very heartbeat, it is closer than your breathing, it is closer than the circulation of your blood, it is closer than your very marrow, it is closer than your very consciousness. It is your very core, your very being!

Rahaman, don't ask for the peak, otherwise you will go on missing it. And the more you miss the more you will be in a vicious circle, because the more you miss the more you try to reach, the more you miss the greater the endeavor, the more you miss the more you become an American: "Try it again and again, try hard." A simple conclusion: if you are missing that shows you are not trying hard enough, so put your total energy into it. And you will still be missing; there is no way to make it. You are trying for the impossible and the impossible does not happen; it cannot happen, it has never happened -- it is not in the nature of things.

Buddha says again and again: AIS DHAMMO SANANTANO -- this IS the nature of things. Listen to the nature of things and you will never be in misery; try to improve upon it and you will live in hell. Hell is our creation, and we create hell by trying to do the impossible. Heaven is our nature, it is our spontaneity, it is where we always are.

You have heard the biblical story that God threw Adam and Eve out of his kingdom, the Garden of Eden. It is basically wrong; for two reasons it is wrong. First: the reason why he threw them out is very despotic -- they had not obeyed him. He seems to be a very ordinary daddy, too ordinary, fanatic! A small, childish rebellion, which is part of nature, part of growth... We should be immensely grateful to Adam and Eve because they disobeyed. That is the beginning of humanity, that is the beginning of revolution, that is the beginning of growth, of maturity, of freedom, of a sense of dignity. They revolted against being animals. All other animals were very good Catholics, all going to Church every Sunday, reading the Bible, following the commandments, following every order without ever questioning it. They are still doing the same, hence dogs have remained dogs, eagles have remained eagles, buffaloes have remained buffaloes, donkeys, howsoever saintly and holy they look, have remained donkeys. Only man has grown; his growth started with the rebellion.

The rebellion was simple -- every child has to go through it. A moment comes when the child has to say no, he has to insist on the no. In fact, unless a child learns to say no he will never be able to say yes; his yes will be impotent without a background of no. A fundamental no is needed as a blackboard; only on that fundamental blackboard of no can he write a beautiful yes.

God denied man his fundamental right to say no, and in that very denial he denied man's ultimate growth to say yes. The whole story is fanatical, ugly.

Secondly: where can you drive man out to? This whole existence is the Garden of Eden!

There is no other place, there is no other space, there is no other time. The whole universe is divine, so wherever you are you are in the Garden of Eden. The only thing that CAN be is: the idea has been implanted in man that you have to reach the Garden of Eden. You are in the Garden, and the idea that you have been thrown out of the Garden and you have to get back to the Garden is creating your trouble, your whole misery, your whole anguish. Not recognizing where you are, you are hankering for something which is not possible, because this is the place.

There is no other Buddhahood and there is no other Lotus Paradise. The word "paradise" comes from the Persian FIRDAUS; FIRDAUS means a garden -- the same story, the Garden of Eden. Everybody is searching for a paradise. You can give it different names -- NIRVANA, enlightenment, SAMADHI, kingdom of God, ultimate truth -- you can go on giving it different names, but you will still be missing -- missing not because you have been thrown out of the Garden, but missing because you are in the Garden and you have fallen in a deep dreamlike state. The dream consists of your desires to reach somewhere else, to the peaks.

My insistence is that you are already there. Just sit silently and look around, sit silently and look within. You have never been anywhere else! AIS DHAMMO SANANTANO -- this IS the nature of things -- you cannot be anywhere else.

A rose is a rose is a rose -- there is no other possibility -- but you can drive a rose crazy.

You can put the idea into the mind of the rose that "You have to be a rose. What are you doing here? Wasting time, wasting a great opportunity. God has given you an opportunity to be a rose. What are you doing here? Swaying in the wind, dancing in the sun, taking life as fun? Be serious, be somber, become holy! Read the Koran, the Gita, the Bible," and you will have driven the rose crazy.

It is good that roses don't understand your language. It is good that they don't care a bit about what you are saying. It is good that they go on doing their thing without bothering at all about your politicians, your priests, your professors. That's why they are so beautiful, so innocent. Your priests cannot be so beautiful, they cannot be so innocent; they are bound to be cunning.

After checking into the large motel complex, the evangelist read in his room for several hours, then sauntered over to the bar where he struck up a conversation with the pretty hat check girl. After she had finished working they shared a few drinks and then retired to his room. But when the evangelist began removing her blouse she seemed to have second thoughts. "Are you sure this is all right?" she asked. "I mean, you are a holy man."

"My dear, he replied, "it is written in the Bible."

She took him at his word, and the two spent a very pleasant night together. The next morning, however, as the girl was preparing to leave, she said, "You know, I don't remember the part of the Bible you mentioned last night. Could you show it to me?"

In response, the evangelist took the Gideon Bible from the nightstand, opened the cover and pointed to the flyleaf on which someone had inscribed, "The hat check girl screws."

These are your priests, your evangelists, your great spiritual leaders! They are neurotic and they are driving the whole of humanity neurotic. Avoid all spiritual nonsense -- and spiritual nonsense is REAL nonsense; all other nonsense is very ordinary, very mundane. In fact, with mundane matters you cannot be too nonsensical -- reality will prevent you -- but with religious nonsense there are no checks. There is no reality, no criterion, you cannot judge, so you can fly off into all kinds of esoteric bullshit.

And your priests are such bullshitters, and for centuries they have been bullshitting on you!

You are crawling in holy cowdung! It is time to get out of it.

Deva Rahaman, the way you are is the only way you can be. Accept it -- not only accept it but rejoice in it, love it, and the peak will start opening up within your very heart, and suddenly you will find you are awake in the Garden of Eden, immediately. It is not a question of going anywhere, just of being here.

You ask me:

There is no need. You have to come to YOU, not to me. I am not here to create a new kind of neurosis. There are enough alternatives available! Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism... three hundred religions in the world. You can choose your own kind of neurosis; they come in all shapes, in all sizes. You can easily pick any kind of fanaticism, neurosis, and that will keep you engaged your whole life -- but simply engaged.

It will not give you time or space to dance, to sing, to celebrate.

All kinds of goals basically create deep down in you a split, a hypocrisy. You are that which you are and you start trying to be that which you are not. In the beginning it is only an effort to be that which you are not; slowly slowly you start pretending too that you are becoming that which you are not, because to encounter failure continuously is very humiliating. At least you can pretend to others, you can wear masks, you can create a certain persona, a personality, a garb, a facade, and you can start living behind that facade. And people will look only at your mask and they will believe it, and once they start believing it -- you will start believing it -- because they are believing that you are holy, that you are saintly, that you are this and you are that.

It is a very strange game: you start it, and soon you will be caught in it yourself -- in your own lie! And once you are caught in your own lie you will try to hide the truth, to evade the truth, to repress the truth; you will begin investing more and more in your lie. You may be a marigold and you may invest your whole life in being a rose. You may be a rose and you may invest your whole life in being a diamond -- which you cannot be. This is the sheer stupidity of the experience humanity has been living with for centuries.

Hence what I say hurts. It is not a question of small dimensions, it is a question of immense dimensions. For thousands of years man has lived a hypocritical life, utterly false, pseudo, and now to shatter his whole investment, to shatter his whole mind, certainly hurts.

Hence everybody is going to be against me except just a few people who are intelligent enough to wake up.

"My so-called liberal mother is really such a prude," the high-school cheerleader sadly told her locker partner. "She said that I could only pet with my dates if they didn't touch me below the waist."

"Oh, that's too bad," her schoolmate commiserated. "What do you intend to do about it?"

"Well," the cheerleader giggled, "the first thing I'm going to do is learn to stand on my head."

That's what your religious people have been doing: SIRSHASANA -- the art, the yoga of standing on your head. It certainly fulfills something: the ego. Whenever you can do something unnatural or at least pretend that you are doing it, it fulfills the ego. Nature cannot fulfill the ego. If you eat and enjoy eating, what is there to brag about? If you make love and you enjoy it, what is there to brag about? But if you become a celibate then there is something to brag about, if you fast then you have something which nobody else has. Then you can feel superior, higher, greater, bigger, chosen. The unnatural has an attraction, although it destroys your whole life, but the attraction is in the ego. And unless we drop this whole game of the ego, hypocrisy cannot disappear from the world.

Rabbi Goldstein had just moved into his apartment and decided he should get acquainted with his across-the-hall neighbor. When the door was opened, he was pleasantly surprised to be confronted by a young damsel considerably more than passing fair and considerably less than fully clad.

Though justifiably flustered by this smiling apparition, the rabbi nevertheless managed a remark singularly appropriate to the occasion: "Hi, I'm your new sugar across the hall -- can I borrow a cup of neighbor?"

You can try to be unnatural, but your nature will assert itself in a thousand and one ways; it will come up again and again. You will have to hush it, you will have to repress it.

It was eight a.m. at a Las Vegas gambling palace and two lone bettors were still standing by a dice table awaiting further competition, when a lusciously endowed brunette attired in a suit happened by.

"Although it's quite early in the day," she announced, "I feel lucky this morning. I'd like to roll the dice once for twenty thousand dollars. Would the two of you care to take me up on the wager?"

"Sure, lady," answered one of the men, "we'll take your action."

"I hope you gentlemen won't mind," she then said, "but the only way I can get lucky is to roll the dice without my panties on."

So saying, the lissome lovely proceeded to remove her slacks and panties. With a shout of "Mamma needs a new pair of pants!" she rolled the dice, gave a squeal of delight and yelled, "I win!" She then picked up her money, her slacks and her underwear and made a hasty exit from the room.

The two men exchanged double takes, and one of them blurted out, "Hey, what did she roll anyway?"

"How the hell should I know?" snapped the other, "I thought YOU were watching the dice!"

We have created such a strange humanity, and the whole rationale of this whole mad earth, this mad humanity, is religious, spiritual. Search for the truth, search for God, search for the peaks, and you have lost yourself in the search.

There is only one search -- to find yourself -- and for that you need not go anywhere else.

For that you have to withdraw from all your desires, ambitions, goals. You have to come back home.

Rahaman, you are not to become me. I am not your enemy -- I cannot tell you to become me. If you try to become me you will only be a carbon copy, a hypocrite, you will only be an imitation.

Those who have gathered around me are not my followers, not my imitators -- just fellow companions, fellow celebrants, dance partners! Existence to me is a carnival, it is just a festival. It is for those who know how to dance. And the dance need not wait for tomorrow -- tomorrow never comes -- the dance has to be now, here, this very moment. This very silence has to become the dance!

So don't hanker for any peaks, just be where you are totally, utterly, and the goose is out!

Hanker for the peaks, and the goose is in the bottle. Those peaks are the bottle, those goals are the bottle. They keep you encapsulated, they keep you imprisoned. The future is your bondage and the present is your freedom.

Here I differ totally from Jesus, from Buddha, from Krishna, from Mahavira, from everybody else. Knowingly, unknowingly, they have created a pattern of imitation for humanity. I want to destroy this whole pattern, this whole status quo. I want you to be just yourself. Whatsoever you are, you are beautiful as you are; you need not be somebody else to be beautiful.

That's the only way to enjoy, but it is up to you. If you want to suffer... and there are people who love suffering, they cannot live without suffering; their only joy is in suffering and more suffering. The more they suffer the more they feel that they are doing something great.

Then it is up to you; then don't make any fuss about it, then go to the peaks. But the peaks won't satisfy you because from those peaks you will again be looking far ahead for further peaks.

The headmistress of a girls' boarding school was abruptly awakened one night by one of her students, a rather mature-looking sixteen-year-old. "Miss Forbes," she cried, "I've just been raped!"

"Now, be calm, Melissa," the headmistress told her firmly. "The first thing you must do is to go to the refrigerator and eat half a lemon."

"Half a lemon?" asked the surprised student. "Will that keep me from getting pregnant?"

"No," admitted the headmistress, "but it WILL get rid of that silly grin."

That's what religious people have been doing: removing all your smiles, making you look as sad as possible, as long-faced as possible.

Christians say Jesus never laughed. If it is true, then whatsoever he has said is wrong. If what he has said is right then this cannot be true, because the man continuously says, "Rejoice! I say to you again and again rejoice!" And Christians say he never laughed!

Laughter seems to be mundane for them, laughter seems to be worldly; it is not good for holy people. Holy people have to be continuously sad, hence they have created a long tradition of sad, ill, sick, pathological people whom they worship.

The more pathological you look the more you will be worshipped. The more you are a sadist and a masochist the more you will be worshipped. Torture yourself and teach others to torture themselves -- they call it asceticism -- become a monk, renounce the world...

The word "monk" means one who lives alone, escapes from people. And in fact it is relationship that is the opportunity to grow, it is love that is a challenge to growth, it is friendship that brings you to your real flavor. It is life in all its adventures, challenges, that helps you to become mature, integrated.

Monks remain retarded, they remain stupid. They are bound to remain stupid -- they have been taken out of the soil of life. At the most they are greenhouse plants: bring them into the world and they will immediately shrink and die. They are very afraid people, continuously trembling, afraid of hell, which does not exist, greedy for heaven, which does not exist -- and between hell and heaven missing everything that does exist.

The inexperienced young man had heard that a good way to arouse sexual desire in a girl who proved impervious to the more usual forms of wooing was to forthrightly place her hand on his organ. Having parked with a date for more than an hour in the local lovers' lane with nothing to show for it but some sisterly kisses, he decided to try this new technique. The response was instantaneous: the girl berated him with the longest stream of invectives he had ever heard. Stunned, he tried to reply, but she refused to listen, insisting instead that he take her home at once.

As he pulled up in front of her house, she again started shouting imprecations. Finally out of breath, she demanded, "Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"Yes, I have," was his pained reply. "Please let go."

The second question:

Gyaneshwar, the first thing you should get out of is your Catholicism; that is the real mess.

Homosexuality is not such a big problem, it is not a problem at all, in fact. It is part of human freedom. There is nothing wrong if two persons choose a certain style of sexual relationship; it should be nobody's business. But the priests and the politicians are poking their noses into everything! They create guilt in you -- absolutely unnecessary.

If two men are in love, what is wrong in it? What harm are they doing to anybody? In fact, they look happier than the heterosexuals; that's why they are called "gay." This is strange: I never see lesbians looking gay -- they look sad, they look very serious -- but homosexuals always look very gay, very sweet, really honey.

I have been wondering what is the matter, why are lesbians not so happy? Maybe they cannot enjoy nagging, which has been an eternal joy for the woman. In fact, without their nagging I don't think anybody would ever have become religious. All your saints are the by-product of nagging. All your saints should be immensely grateful to women: they have driven them to be spiritual! They did not leave any possibility for them IN the world; they had to escape to the monasteries. They say they are going in search of God; in fact, they are simply going away from the wife. They were cowards.

Lesbians don't look very happy. Something is missing, and that something seems to be they cannot torture each other. They understand each other perfectly well, and because they understand each other very well there is no mystery left.

Man lives in the head, the woman lives in the heart. The heart can rejoice only when there is something very mysterious, something like a koan: the goose in the bottle. Neither the bottle has to be broken nor the goose has to be killed, and it has to be taken out too. The heart enjoys the mysterious; the head is not interested in the mysterious, it is interested in the puzzling, in the riddling. Any riddle, any puzzle, and the head is interested. The approach of the head is logical.

To a man the woman is mysterious; to connect with the woman he has to come to his heart, and he lives in the head. Hence the woman always remains a trouble. He cannot understand her, he cannot explain what is happening, he cannot explain it away either. He has to live with a mystery, and that is a constant pain in his neck; it is beyond his grasp.

But with a man things are simple: both are logical. They understand the language, they understand logic, they understand mathematics, calculation. At the most the man is just a new question to be solved -- not a mystery to be lived but a question to be solved; a problem which can be solved, which is not impossible to solve. That keeps them interested, that keeps them intrigued. Hence I see homosexuals looking gay. Lesbians look very sad.

And one more thing happens: homosexuals become more feminine and they start having a certain beauty, a certain "niceness" about them, a certain roundness, a grace. The lesbian becomes manly, she starts losing her feminine grace; she becomes masculine, aggressive, hard. Hence, Gyaneshwar, if you were a woman it would have been a problem and I would have helped you to come out of it. But you are a man. Why bother? Why make much out of a simple thing? If you are enjoying a relationship with a man, enjoy it!

The Christian God himself seems to be homosexual -- the whole trinity consists of three men. How they are managing it nobody knows -- not a single woman! Only the Holy Ghost is a little suspect -- maybe the Holy Ghost is bisexual? Ghosts can do any kind of thing!

Otherwise the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost -- what kind of trinity is this? It is very homosexual! They have not allowed a single woman to be in it, just to keep out of trouble.

One woman would have destroyed the whole trinity; it would have become a real triangle!

So homosexuality is not a problem. We should start looking at real problems and should not be concerned about unreal problems. There are real problems to be solved. And this is a trick of the human mind: to create unreal problems so that you become occupied with them while real problems go on growing. And this is an old strategy: politicians, priests, so-called religious leaders go on giving you pseudo problems to solve so that you become occupied with the pseudo.

The problem in itself is meaningless, the problem is not a problem at all, but how much fuss has gone on down the ages about homosexuality! There are countries where people are still killed for homosexual acts, murdered, sentenced to jail for their whole lives. Strange world! This is a twentieth-century world? Homosexuality is not a problem at all; there are thousands of real problems to be solved. But man has to be kept engaged with toys.

My effort is to withdraw all your attention from toys so that you can focus on the real problems of life; and if you focus on the real problems of life they can be solved. Now, I don't see how homosexuality becomes a problem. How does it become a problem? Why should it be of concern to anybody? A love affair is two individuals' private concern; it is THEIR intimacy, it is not a social phenomenon.

And, in fact, it will help the world population if more people turned homosexual. It will be good, very good for the world: less people will be born, the earth will be less burdened, there will be less poverty. Of course, less orphans and less Mother Teresas! There will be less need for contraceptives, birth control methods, sterilization, and of course the whole business of the Polack Pope will go out of his hands. That is his whole business! For one year continuously he has been talking against contraceptives, against birth control, sterilization, abortion.

Homosexuality can solve all these problems simply!

So I don't see there is much of a problem in it. The only problem is your Catholicism.

Rodney, the eldest son of a respectable Boston family, announced to his shocked father that he intended to live with his swishy boyfriend on Beacon Hill.

"Damn it, Rodney," the parent responded, "our family came over with John Winthrop, and we've never had a scandal such as this."

"I can't help it, father, I love him."

"But for God's sake, son, he's Catholic!"

That is the true problem! Come out of your Catholicism. And when I say come out of your Catholicism, I mean come out of all kinds of stupid ideologies and start living life as if you are Adam and Eve -- the first man on the earth, the first woman on the earth. Start afresh, from scratch.

And as far as your stuttering is concerned, what is wrong in it? It may just be because you have made such a problem out of homosexuality that you are stuttering. Stuttering -- I have watched it in many people -- comes in a state of stress, tension.

When I was a student in the university, my neighbor... a young man, beautiful man, healthy, in every way intelligent, and I had never seen him stuttering. Once his father visited him and he immediately started stuttering -- before the father. I could not believe what was happening. The moment the father left he was perfectly okay. I asked him.

He said, "This is a problem. When I go back home, I cannot avoid stuttering before my father and mother. It happens... the more I try to avoid it the more it happens. Even when my father's letter comes and I start reading it, I suddenly feel a trembling. I cannot read my father's letter without stuttering. Otherwise I am perfectly okay."

So I said to him, "So it is not a question of stuttering; there is some stress, some tension.

The father is heavy on you and he regresses you back towards your childhood, back to your old fears, and those fears start overcoming your intelligence."

I said to him, "Do one thing: next time your father comes, try to stutter with every word!"

He said, "How is that going to help?"

I said, "You try. Don't try not to stutter, on the contrary try to stutter. Make every effort that not a single word should come out without stuttering!"

He said, "What are you suggesting? I have been doing just the opposite and have failed utterly, and your method seems to be such that it is bound to create more troubles for me!"

I said, "Give it a try."

And the father came, and I was there, and he tried it -- and he could not stutter!

There are a few things which happen only if you try; there are a few things which happen only if you DON'T try, because the very effort comes out of fear and if fear is the cause then the effort cannot help.

Hypnotherapists call it "the law of the reverse effect."

If you are learning to ride a bicycle you may be on a sixty-foot-wide road, absolutely empty, nobody on the road, and then you see a milestone by the side of the road, and suddenly your cycle starts moving towards that milestone for no reason at all. You start feeling afraid, you try to avoid the milestone. Now, on a sixty-foot-wide road even a blind man has only a rare chance of hitting the milestone, but you will try hard, and the more you try the more you will become focused. Now the whole road disappears, there is only that milestone just standing there like Hanumanji, the monkey god, giggling at you, making faces at you, attracting you like a magnetic force. And you are doing every act that you can do to avoid it, but you are going... you know you are going. It is unavoidable! The more unavoidable you feel it is, the more energy you put into it. You become tense. The whole world has shrunken to Hanumanji... and the crash!

This is one of the fundamental laws of life. Homosexuality may be the cause, but it is not homosexuality really but your attitude to it, your approach to it. You are making a problem out of it; then there will be trouble.

My suggestion, Gyaneshwar, is: stutter beautifully -- make stuttering songs! You will enjoy, others will enjoy, and that's what we are here for.

"Have faith and ye shall be healed!" intoned the evangelist at the revival meeting. A woman on crutches and a man came forward. The evangelist asked, "What is your name, my good woman?"

"I'm Mrs. Smith," she answered, "and I haven't been able to walk without crutches for twenty years."

"Well, Mrs. Smith," he said, "go behind that screen and pray."

Turning to the man, he asked, "What is your name?"

"My name ith Thamuelth," he answered, "and I have alwayth thpoken with a lithp."

"All right, Mr. Samuels," the evangelist said, "go behind that screen with Mrs. Smith and pray."

After several minutes had passed, the revivalist announced, "I think the time has come.

Witness these miracles. Mrs. Smith, throw your left crutch over the screen." The audience gasped as it sailed over. "Mrs. Smith, throw your right crutch over the screen." The crowd cheered as the second crutch appeared.

Encouraged, the evangelist commanded, "Mr. Samuels, say something in a loud, clear voice, so we can all hear you."

Samuels answered, "Mithuth Sthmithjutht fell on her ath!"

So what is wrong in it? It is a far greater miracle! So don't be worried about unnecessary things. Stutter joyously, enjoy it, and there is a possibility that you may stop stuttering -- beware of it! If you don't want to stop it then don't listen to me, you just go on trying not to stutter.

My suggestion is stutter, and don't be a miser. Fill the whole place with stuttering!

Whomsoever you meet, stutter -- don't miss an opportunity. Even the words that you can speak well don't speak well, stutter! And you may be surprised that once you relax, once you start enjoying, once the tension is dropped, stuttering may disappear. If it disappears, good; if it does not disappear there is no harm in it. It is innocent!

Take life as easily as possible. But people don't understand me. I say to them, "Life is a mystery. It is not to be solved but to be lived." And somebody has asked me, "Osho, when you said that, I heard, "Life is a MISERY, not to be solved but to be lived." That is up to you. To me it is a mystery, not to be solved but to be lived, but you can hear it as "misery."

Don't make unnecessary problems for yourself, so that your whole energy can become focused on the essential problem. And the essential problem is only one: Know thyself.

The last question:

Gandharva, perhaps that's why you have come to me -- my name means the moon. You are moonstruck; that means you are a lunatic! "Lunatic" simply means struck by the moon... and this is a gathering of mad people. You have come to the moon! Your long-cherished desire is fulfilled... the goose is out!

But I have two jokes for you:

Shortly after his spaceship landed on the moon, the astronaut debarked and began exploring the strange new terrain. He had walked for only fifteen minutes when he came upon a lovely young moon girl who was busily stirring an empty pot with a stick.

"Hi," he said, introducing himself, "I'm an astronaut here to discover things about the moon."

The moon girl stopped stirring long enough to throw him quite a pleasant smile. "How nice it is that you are formed just like our moon men," she observed. Throwing off her clothes, she asked, "And am I structured as are Earth women?"

"Yes, you are," answered the now excited astronaut. "But tell me, why do you stir that pot?"

"I'm making a baby," she said. And, sure enough, a few minutes later a baby appeared in the pot.

"Now would you like to see how we make babies on Earth?" asked the astronaut. The girl agreed, and the astronaut proceeded with his passionate demonstration.

"That was enjoyable," she said afterward, "but where is the baby?"

"Oh, that takes nine months," explained the astronaut.

"Nine months?" she asked. "Then why did you stop stirring?"

A small group of scientists had spent an enlightening week on the moon comparing life there with our own.

"Tell me," one Earth scientist asked his moon counter-part, "just how do you reproduce the species here on this planet?"

"I shall be pleased to demonstrate," replied the leader of the moon group, and he called forth a voluptuous moon beauty with three heads. They then engaged their tentacles for a few moments, and almost at once a small pouch began to form on the female's back; it grew, and within little more than a minute it opened up very much like a blooming flower, and a small moon child dropped out, as fully developed as the adults but much smaller, and began scampering about the room.

Once the Earth scientists had recovered from this unexpected experience they attempted to explain how procreation differs in our world. The Moonians insisted upon being shown, and after unsuccessful attempts to dissuade them, the chief scientist of the expedition finally agreed. Choosing a comely scientific aide from the group, he took her to a cot in the corner of the room and there proceeded to make love to her in a manner to which we here on Earth are more accustomed.

The Moonians examined the couple from every angle, and when they were finished, their leader said, "That was certainly unusual and, I must say, interesting, but where is the baby -- or was the demonstration a failure?"

"It is difficult to say," replied the Earth scientist. "We cannot tell at once. But if the contact was successful, then the baby will arrive in approximately nine months."

"Nine months!" exclaimed the Moonian. "Amazing! But tell us then, doctor, if the Earth child will not be born for nine months, why were you in such a hurry there at the end?"