Rejoice to abandon!

The first question:

Margrit, the best way to miss life is to have a certain attitude towards it. Attitudes originate in the mind, and life is beyond mind. Attitudes are our fabrications, our prejudices, our inventions. Life is not our fabrication; on the contrary, we are just ripples in the lake of life.

What kind of attitude can a ripple in the ocean have towards the ocean? What kind of attitude can a grass leaf have towards the earth, the moon, the sun, the stars? All attitudes are egoistic, all attitudes are stupid.

Life is not a philosophy, it is not a problem; it is a mystery. You have to live it not according to a certain pattern, not according to a conditioning -- what you have been told about it -- you have to start afresh, from the very scratch.

Each human individual should think as if he is the first on the earth; he is the Adam or the Eve. Then you can open; you can open to infinite possibilities. Then you will be vulnerable, available; and the more vulnerable you are, the more available you are, the greater the possibility of life happening to you. Your attitudes function like barriers; then life never reaches to you as it is -- it has to fit your philosophy, religion, ideology, and in that very fitting, something dies in it. What you get out of it is a corpse: it may look like life but it is not.

That's what people have been doing down the ages. The Hindus are living according to the Hindu attitude, the Mohammedans according to the Mohammedan attitude, and the communists according to the communist attitude. But remember a basic, fundamental truth:

the attitude does not allow you to come in contact with life as it is; it distorts, it interprets.

There is an old Greek story:

A fanatic king had a beautiful golden bed, very precious, studded with thousands of diamonds, and whenever there was a guest in the palace he would offer the bed to the guest.

But he had a certain attitude: the guest had to fit with the bed. If the guest was a little longer then the king would cut him down to size. Of course, the bed was so valuable it could not be changed, but the guest had to be put according to the bed -- as if the bed did not exist for the guest but the guest existed for the bed!

And it is very rare, almost impossible, to find a man to fit a ready-made bed. The average person does not exist, remember; the average person is a fiction, and the bed was made for the average person. The king was a mathematician -- great calculation had gone into it. He had measured the height of all the citizens of his capital, and then the height was divided by the number of all the citizens; he had come to a fixed average. Now, there were small children in the capital, young people, old people, pygmies, giants, but the average was a totally different phenomenon. There was not a single person in his whole capital who was really average. I have never come across the average person -- the average person is a fiction.

So whosoever was going to be the guest was in trouble. If he was shorter than the bed, then the king had great wrestlers who would pull the man to size. That must have been the beginning of Rolfing! Ida Rolf must have learnt it from that king. Of course, each guest died, but that was not the king's fault -- he was doing everything with the best intentions in the world!

When you have a certain attitude towards life, Margrit, you will miss life itself. Life is vast, uncontainable by any attitude; it is impossible to put it into a certain definition. Yes, your attitude may cover a certain aspect, but it will be only an aspect. And the tendency of the mind is to proclaim its aspect as the whole, and the moment the aspect is claimed as the whole you have missed the very connection with life. Then you will live surrounded by your attitude in a kind of cocoon, encapsulated, and you will be miserable. Then all your so-called religions will be very happy because that's what they have been telling to you: that life is misery.

Buddha says birth is misery, youth is misery, old age is misery, death is misery -- the whole of life is nothing but a long, long tragedy. If you start with attitudes you will find Buddha absolutely correct; you will be a proof of it.

But I want to tell you that life is not misery, and I don't agree with Buddha at all. Life becomes a misery, but that is your doing; otherwise life is eternal joy. But to know that eternal joy you have to come open-hearted, open-handed.

Don't approach life with your fists closed, clenched. Open your hands. Go into life with immense innocence. Attitudes are cunning: you have already decided without tasting, without experiencing, without living. You have already arrived at certain conclusions, and of course if those conclusions are there already in you A PRIORI, you will find them confirmed by life. It is not that life confirms them, but your whole mind will try to find out ways and means, arguments, data to support them.

Mind is like a sponge: it goes on sucking. It is a parasite. Once there is the center of a certain A PRIORI conclusion then that center starts becoming crystallized.

A man came to me who had been working for years on a certain hypothesis in many countries of the world: particularly in the West, and more particularly in America, the number thirteen is not thought to be good. There are hotels in America where the thirteenth floor does not exist; from the twelfth floor you simply come to the fourteenth. The number thirteen is avoided, no room has the number thirteen; from the twelfth you immediately reach the fourteenth, because nobody wants to live in the thirteenth room or on the thirteenth floor. A great fear -- the idea that the number thirteen has something evil in it.

And this man was working and collecting all kinds of data, and he had collected a really huge, mountainous support how many accidents happen on the thirteenth of every month, how many people die on the thirteenth, how many people commit suicide, how many people murder, how many people go mad.

And he was showing his great thesis to me, and he said, "What do you say?"

I said, "You do one thing more. You have put so much energy into it, now try one thing more. Now find out what happens on the twelfth! And you will come to the same data, because on the twelfth also people go mad, commit suicide, murder, rob. Everything happens every day, but if you have a certain fixed attitude then you will choose according to that attitude. And of course when you have so much information and argument you feel certain that your attitude is right."

Margrit, I teach you a life without any attitudes. This is one of the fundamentals of my experience: if you really want to know that which is then drop all philosophy, all "ism". Then go open-handed, utterly naked into the sun, to see what it is.

In the past, it was thought that our senses are doors, that the reality reaches from our senses to our innermost being. Now the latest research shows something else: our senses are not just doors, they are guards also. Only two percent of information is allowed to pass in, ninety-eight is prevented outside. Anything that goes against your idea of life is prevented and only two percent filters in.

Now, to live a life of only two percent is not to live at all. When one can live a hundred percent, why decide to live for only two percent?

Margrit, you ask me:

Not only is it not important, it is dangerous to have any attitude towards life. Why not allow life to have its dance, its song, without any expectations? Why can't we live without expectations? Why can't we see that which is in its purity? Why should we impose ourselves upon it? And nobody is going to be the loser. If you impose upon life you are the only loser.

From London comes the story of the three professors of literature who, while returning from luncheon, encountered several ladies of pleasure who were patrolling the street -- en masse.

"What might one call such a congregation?" mused the first professor, a Shakespearean specialist. "A flourish of strumpets?"

The second professor, being an authority on the novels of Anthony Trollope, naturally contributed, "A chapter of trollops."

But the best description came from the youngest and the least specialized of the professors.

He called the ladies "an anthology of pros."

It is better not to label life, it is better not to give it a structure, it is better to leave it open-ended, it is better not to categorize it, not to label it. You will have a more beautiful experience of things; you will have a more cosmic experience of things, because things are not really divided. Existence is one orgasmic whole; it is one organic unity. The smallest blade of grass, the smallest leaf in a poor tree is as significant as the biggest star. The smallest thing is also the biggest, because it is all oneness; it is one spectrum. The moment you start dividing you start creating arbitrary lines, definitions, and that's the way one goes on missing life and the mystery of it.

We all have attitudes; that is our anguish. We all look from a certain standpoint, hence our life becomes poor; because every aspect at the most can only be one-dimensional and life is multi-dimensional. You have to be more liquid, more fluid, more melting and merging; you are not to be an observer. There is nothing to be solved! Don't take life as a problem, it is a tremendously beautiful mystery. Drink of it -- it is pure wine! Be a drunkard with it!

A successful cloak-and-suiter had finally found the girl of his dreams and he made preparations for a wedding the garment district would never forget. His designers prepared for the bride a wedding gown of the finest imported silks and satins, and his own marital raiment was truly a sight to behold.

The affair was nothing less than breathtaking; no expense had been spared. Then, as the newly-weds were about to embark on their honeymoon trip to Canada, an urgent message arrived in the form of a telegram.

"It's from my partner," the groom explained. "Urgent business. I'll have to attend to it immediately."

"But what about our honeymoon?" the bride asked tearfully.

"Business comes first," he said. "But you go ahead. I'll catch a later plane and be there by tonight."

"But what if you can't make it by tonight?" she moaned.

"Then," he blustered, "start without me."

A businessman has his own philosophy, his own attitudes. The scientist has his own attitudes. Everybody is living in a small prison of his own attitudes.

My effort here is to bring you out of your imprisonment, hence I don't teach you any doctrine, I don't give you any dogma, I don't give you any creed to live by. I am simply trying to help you to be unburdened of all the nonsense which has been imposed upon you for centuries. If you can put aside the mountainous weight of the past, if you can start living as if you are the first man, only then is there a possibility that you may come to know what godliness is, what freedom is, what joy is. Otherwise, misery is going to be your lot, and naturally, sooner or later, you will agree with the pessimistic attitude of Buddha: that all is suffering, all is pain.

I absolutely deny it, because my own experience is just the opposite: all is bliss, all is benediction. But it depends on you, how you approach life: guarded, with certain spectacles on your eyes, or unguarded, in deep trust, in love.

The second question:

Santosh Sneh, the bohemian life is the only life worth living! All other kinds of lives are only lukewarm; they are more ways of committing slow suicide than ways of living life passionately and intensely. In the past it was inevitable that the artist had to live in rebellion, because creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence. If you want to create you have to get rid of all conditionings, otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copying, it will be just a carbon copy. You can be creative only if you are an individual, you cannot create as a part of the mob psychology. The mob psychology is uncreative; it lives a life of drag, it knows no dance, no song, no joy; it is mechanical.

Of course, there are a few things you will get from the society only if you are mechanical:

respectability you will get, honors you will get. Universities will confer D.Litts on you, countries will give you gold medals, you may finally become a Nobel laureate, but this whole thing is ugly.

A real man of genius will discard all this nonsense, because this is bribery. Giving the Nobel prize to a person simply means that your services to the establishment are respected, that you are honored because you have been a good slave, obedient, that you have not gone astray, that you have followed the well-trodden path.

The creator cannot follow the well-trodden path, he has to search out his own way, he has to inquire in the jungles of life, he has to go alone, he has to be a dropout from the mob mind, from the collective psychology. The collective mind is the lowest mind in the world; even the so-called idiots are a little more superior than the collective idiocy. But the collectivity has its own bribes: it respects people, honors people, if they go on insisting that the way of the collective mind is the only right way.

It was out of sheer necessity that in the past, creators of all kinds -- the painters, the dancers, the musicians, the poets, the sculptors -- had to renounce respectability. They had to live a kind of bohemian life, the life of a vagabond; that was the only possibility for them to be creative. This need not be so in the future. If you understand me, if you feel what I am saying has truth in it, then in the future everybody should live individually and there will be no need for a bohemian life. The bohemian life is the by-product of a fixed, orthodox, conventional, respectable life.

My effort is to destroy the collective mind and to make each individual free to be himself or herself. Then there is no problem; then you can live as you want to live. In fact, humanity will really only be born the day the individual is respected in his rebellion. Humanity has still not been born; it is still in the womb. What you see as humanity is only a very hocus-pocus phenomenon. Unless we give individual freedom to each person, absolute freedom to each person to be himself, to exist in his own way... And, of course, he has not to interfere with anybody -- that is part of freedom. Nobody should interfere with anybody.

But in the past everybody has been poking his nose into everybody else's affairs -- even into things which are absolutely private, which have nothing to do with the society. For example, you fall in love with a woman -- what has that got to do with the society? It is purely a personal phenomenon, it is not of the marketplace. If two persons are agreeing to commune in love, the society should not come into it, but the society comes into it with all its paraphernalia, in direct ways, in indirect ways. The policeman will stand between the lovers; the magistrate will stand between the lovers; and if that is not enough then the societies have created a super-policeman, God, who will take care of you.

The idea of God is that of a peeping Tom who does not even allow you privacy in your bathroom, who goes on looking through the keyhole, watching what you are doing. This is ugly. All the religions of the world say God continuously watches you -- this is ugly. What kind of God is this? Has he got no other business but to watch everybody, follow everybody?

Seems to be the supreme-most detective!

Humanity needs a new soil -- the soil of freedom. Bohemianism was a reaction, a necessary reaction, but if my vision succeeds then there will be no bohemianism because there will be no so-called collective mind trying to dominate people. Then everybody will be at ease with himself. Of course, you have not to interfere with anybody, but as far as your life is concerned you have to live it on your own terms. Then only is there creativity. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.

You ask me, Sneh:

"Discipline" is a beautiful word, but it has been misused as all other beautiful words have been misused in the past. The word "discipline" comes from the same root as the word "disciple"; the root meaning of the word is "a process of learning." One who is ready to learn is a disciple, and the process of being ready to learn is discipline.

The knowledgeable person is never ready to learn, because he already thinks he knows; he is very centered in his so-called knowledge. His knowledge is nothing but a nourishment for his ego. He cannot be a disciple, he cannot be in true discipline.

Socrates says: "I know only one thing, that I know nothing." That is the beginning of discipline. When you don't know anything, of course, a great longing to inquire, explore, investigate arises. And the moment you start learning, another factor follows inevitably:

whatsoever you have learned has to be dropped continuously, otherwise it will become knowledge and knowledge will prevent further learning.

The real man of discipline never accumulates; each moment he dies to whatsoever he has come to know and again becomes ignorant. That ignorance is really luminous. I agree with Dionysius when he calls ignorance luminous. It is one of the most beautiful experiences in existence to be in a state of luminous not-knowing. When you are in that state of not-knowing you are open, there is no barrier, you are ready to explore. The Hindus cannot do it -- they are already knowledgeable. The Mohammedans cannot do it, the Christians cannot do it. My sannyasins CAN do it, for the simple reason that I am not imparting knowledge; on the contrary, I am destroying your knowledge.

Hence it happens every day... Every day I receive many letters, many questions. One friend has come from the West. He says, for three, four years he has been reading my books and he was so excited, he was in such great love with me, that he wanted to come somehow as quickly as possible. Now he has been able to manage to come, but here he feels frustrated. For four years he was in deep love with me, and now he says, "I cannot say the same because you are so shocking to me. You irritate me, you annoy me; you go on hammering on my cherished ideas."

It is easy to read a book because the book is in your hands. I am not in your hands! You can interpret the book according to your ideas, you cannot interpret me according to your ideas -- I will make so much trouble for you! He was not in love with me, he was in love with his own ideas, and because he was finding support from my books he lived in an illusion.

But with me illusions are bound to be shattered. I am here to shatter all illusions. Yes, it will irritate you, it will annoy you -- that's my way of functioning and working. I will sabotage you from your very roots! Unless you are totally destroyed as a mind, there is no hope for you.

Discipline has been misinterpreted. People have been telling others to discipline their life, to do this, not to do that. Thousands of shoulds and should-nots have been imposed on man, and when a man lives with thousands of shoulds and should-nots he cannot be creative. He is a prisoner; everywhere he will come across a wall.

The creative person has to dissolve all shoulds and should-nots. He needs freedom and space, vast space, he needs the whole sky and all the stars, only then can his innermost spontaneity start growing.

So remember, my meaning of discipline is not that of any Ten Commandments; I am not giving you any discipline; I am simply giving you an insight how to remain learning and never become knowledgeable. Your discipline has to come from your very heart, it has to be YOURS -- and there is a great difference. When somebody else gives you the discipline it can never fit you; it will be like wearing somebody else's clothes. Either they will be too loose or too tight, and you will always feel a little bit silly in them.

Mohammed has given a discipline to the Mohammedans; it may have been good for him, but it cannot be good for anybody else. Buddha has given a discipline to millions of Buddhists; it may have been good for him, but it cannot be good for anybody else. A discipline is an individual phenomenon; whenever you borrow it you start living according to set principles, dead principles. And life is never dead; life is constantly changing each moment. Life is a flux.

Heraclitus is right: you cannot step in the same river twice. In fact, I myself would like to say you cannot step in the same river even once, the river is so fast-moving! One has to be alert to, watchful of, each situation and its nuances, and one has to respond to the situation according to the moment, not according to any readymade answers given by others.

Do you see the stupidity of humanity? Five thousand years ago, Manu gave a discipline to the Hindus and they are still following it. Three thousand years ago Moses gave a discipline to the Jews and they are still following it. Five thousand years ago Adinatha gave his discipline to the Jainas and they are still following it. The whole world is being driven crazy by these disciplines! They are out of date, they should have been buried long long ago. You are carrying corpses and those corpses are stinking. And when you live surrounded by corpses, what kind of life can you have?

I teach you the moment and the freedom of the moment and the responsibility of the moment. One thing may be right this moment and may become wrong the next moment. Don't try to be consistent, otherwise you will be dead. Only dead people are consistent. Try to be alive, with all its inconsistencies, and live each moment without any reference to the past, without any reference to the future either. Live the moment in the context of the moment, and your response will be total. And that totality has beauty and that totality is creativity. Then whatsoever you do will have a beauty of its own.

The third question:

Bob Luka, we hear there is a new type of tranquilizer that doesn't relax you -- just makes you dig being tense.

Try it! Try it and try it and try it again -- be an American! -- but not more than three times.

Try it, try it, and try it again, and then stop because there is no point in being silly.

You ask me:

This is a great discovery. Yes, I mean it! Very few people are aware that they are bored, and they are bored, utterly bored. Everybody else knows it except themselves. To know that one is bored is a great beginning; now a few implications have to be understood.

Man is the only animal who feels boredom; it is a great prerogative, it is part of the dignity of human beings. Have you seen any buffalo bored, any donkey bored? They are not bored.

Boredom simply means that the way you are living is wrong; hence it can become a great event, the understanding that "I am bored and something has to be done, some transformation is needed." So don't think that it is bad that you are feeling bored -- it is a good sign, a good beginning, a very auspicious beginning. But don't stop there.

Why does one feel bored? One feels bored because one has been living in dead patterns given to you by others. Renounce those patterns, come out of those patterns! Start living on your own.

Only the authentic person is not bored, the pseudo person is bound to be bored. The Christian will be bored, the Jaina will be bored, the Parsi will be bored, the communist will be bored, because they are dividing their life in two parts. Their real life remains repressed and they start pretending an unreal life. It is unreal life that creates boredom. If you are doing the thing you are meant to do you will never be bored.

The day I left my home for the university my parents, my father, my family people, all wanted me to become a scientist -- there was much more of a future for a scientist -- or a doctor at least, or an engineer. I refused absolutely. I said, "I'm going to do what I want to do, because I don't want to live a boring life. As a scientist I may succeed -- I may have respectability, money, power, prestige -- but deep down I will remain bored because that is not what I ever wanted to do."

They were shocked because they could not see any prospects in the study of philosophy; philosophy is the poorest subject in the universities. Reluctantly they agreed, knowing that I would be wasting my future, but finally they recognized they were wrong.

It is not a question of money, power and prestige; it is a question of what intrinsically you want to do. Do it, irrespective of the results, and your boredom will disappear. You must be following others' ideas, you must be doing things in a right way, you must be doing things as they should be done. These are the foundation-stones of boredom.

The whole of humanity is bored because the person who would have been a mystic is a mathematician, the person who would have been a mathematician is a politician, the person who would have been a poet is a businessman. Everybody is somewhere else; nobody is where he should be. One has to risk. Boredom can disappear in a single moment if you are ready to risk.

You ask me, Bob Luka:

You are bored with yourself because you have not been sincere with yourself, you have not been honest with yourself, you have not been respectful to your own being.

And you say:

How to feel juice? Juice flows only when you are doing the thing that you wanted to do, whatsoever it is.

Vincent Van Gogh was immensely happy just painting. Not a single painting was sold, nobody ever appreciated him, and he was hungry, he was dying, because his brother was giving him only a small amount of money so that he could at least manage to survive. Four days a week he would fast and three days a week he would eat. He had to fast for those four days because from where was he going to get his canvases and paints and brushes? But he was immensely happy -- his juices were flowing.

He died when he was only thirty-three; he committed suicide; but his suicide is far better, Bob Luka, than your so-called life, because he committed suicide only when he had painted the thing that he wanted to paint.

The day he finished a painting of the sunset which had been his longest desire, he wrote a letter saying: "My work is done, I am fulfilled. I am leaving this world immensely contented."

He committed suicide, but I will not call it suicide. He lived totally, he burned life's candle from both ends together in tremendous intensity.

Bob Luka, you may live a hundred years, but your life will be just a dry bone, a weight, dead weight.

You say:

When I say accept yourself, I am not saying accept your pattern of life -- don't try to misunderstand me. When I say accept yourself, I am saying reject everything else -- ACCEPT YOURSELF. But you must have interpreted it in your own way. That's how things go...

The Martian landed his saucer in Manhattan and, immediately upon emerging, was approached by a panhandler. "Mister," said the man, "can I have a dime?"

The Martian asked, "What's a dime?"

The panhandler thought a minute, then said, "You're right. Can I have a quarter?"

I have not said what you have understood. Reject all that has been imposed upon you -- I am not saying accept it. Accept your innermost core which you have brought from the beyond and then you will not feel that you are missing something. The moment you accept yourself without any conditions, suddenly an outburst of joy happens. Your juices start flowing, life really becomes ecstatic.

A certain young man's friends thought he was dead, but he was only in a state of coma.

When just in time to avoid being buried he showed signs of life, he was asked how it felt to be dead.

"Dead!" he exclaimed. "I wasn't dead. I knew all the time what was goin' on. And I knew I wasn't dead, too, because my feet were cold and I was hungry."

"But how did that fact make you think you were still alive?" asked one of the curious.

"Well, I knew that if I was in heaven I wouldn't be hungry, and if I was in the other place my feet wouldn't be cold."

One can be certain, Bob Luka, that you are still not dead: you are hungry, your feet are cold. Just get up and do a little jogging!

A poor man, lacking education and all social graces, fell in love with the daughter of a millionaire. She invited him home to meet her parents at their elegant mansion. The man was intimidated by the rich furnishings, the servants and all the other signs of wealth, but somehow he managed to appear relaxed -- until it came to dinner time. Seated at the massive dinner table, mellow with the effects of wine, he farted loudly.

The girl's father looked up and stared at his dog which was lying at the poor man's feet.

"Rover!" he said in a menacing tone.

The poor man was relieved that the blame had been put on the dog, and so a few minutes later he farted again.

His host looked at the dog and again said, "Rover!" in a louder voice.

A few minutes later he farted a third time. The rich man's face wrinkled in rage. He bellowed, "Rover, get the hell out of here before he shits all over you!"

Bob Luka, there is still time -- get out of the imprisonment in which you have lived up to now! It only needs a little courage, just a little courage of the gambler. And there is nothing to lose, remember. You can only lose your chains -- you can lose your boredom, you can lose this constant feeling inside you that something is missing. What else is there to lose? Get out of the rut and accept your own being -- against Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna.

Accept yourself. Your responsibility is not towards Buddha or Zarathustra or Kabir or Nanak; your responsibility is only towards yourself.

Be responsible -- and when I use the word "responsible," please remember not to misinterpret it. I am not talking about duties, responsibilities, I am simply using the word in the literal sense: respond to reality, be responsible.

You must have lived an irresponsible life, fulfilling all kinds of responsibilities which others are expecting you to fulfill. What is there to lose? You are bored -- this is a good situation. You are missing the juice, what more do you need to get out of the prison? Jump out of it, don't look back!

They say: Think twice before you jump. I say: Jump first and then think as much as you want!

The fourth question:

Anand Navaneet, only a madman can become a Buddha! The so-called sane people at the most can become Buddhists but not Buddhas, they can become Christians but not Christs.

Only a madman...

My invitation is for the mad people of the world. I am a madman's guide to enlightenment!

A group of philosophers from a Russian prison decided to escape. They had a duplicate key, so they waited for the night to make their escape. At midnight one of them went to open the door but came back after a few minutes with a long sad face.

"What happened?" asked all the others.

"Well, our plan is useless. We can't escape -- the crazy night-watchman has forgotten to close the door and I can't use the key!"

Philosophers cannot become Buddhas! It needs guts to become a Buddha.

Jesus was hanging on the cross when a philosopher passed by. He stopped, looked at Jesus and asked, "What are you doing up there?"

Jesus nodded his head to the left and right and said, "I'm hanging out with friends!"

The philosopher continued, "Well, if you want, I could get a ladder and take you down."

"I would appreciate that," Jesus replied.

Half an hour later the philosopher came back with a ladder, climbed up to the cross, screwed the nails out of the right hand, then out of the left hand.

Jesus fell headlong, screaming, "You idiot! Next time start with the feet!"

The last question:

Dharmo, the very idea of getting lost utterly, ultimately, absolutely, is demanding too much. Be a little more human, don't aspire to the impossible. The impossible has been driving people to unnecessary hysteria, and we have been burdened with impossible values for centuries. We have learned these words and we go on repeating these words parrot-like without even taking in the significance.

Be human, don't aspire to perfection in any way because all perfectionism is neurosis. Be human and accept all the frailties and limitations of human beings. Why should you want to be lost utterly? For what? What are you going to gain from it? If it CAN be managed -- it is good that it cannot be managed -- but for argument's sake I am saying if it can be managed, you will come again with: "Now I am feeling very lonely, utterly lost, absolutely lost, ultimately lost!" You will start hankering to go back, to have a little more of the spice of life.

It is good to meet and merge, but why make it something ultimate? Why bring in such meaningless words? Is it not enough to melt for a moment and then be back home? Then there is a rhythm: you melt, you enjoy the melting, then again you are back. It creates a rhythm, and rhythm is always richer. If you are simply dissolved forever there will be no rhythm, no music, no dance. It will really be death, not life.

My whole approach is to teach you to be human. For centuries you have been told to be superhuman. I rejoice in your human-ness. To me, human-ness is synonymous with godliness.

It is perfectly beautiful to be lost once in a while and found again, so that you can lose yourself again. Create a rhythm of getting lost, of finding yourself again. Life is a music, and the music is possible only if both things continue, otherwise it will be monotonous.

Dharmo, I cannot help you to get lost absolutely, ultimately, utterly. I love the moment, I love the IMMEDIACY of the moment. I am very averse to words like "ultimate"; they are faraway words, they don't have much meaning in them; they are pretentious words.

The absolute is not of any significance; a rose flower is of far more significance, it is not absolute: in the morning it grows, by the evening it is gone. That's its beauty -- it is momentary. It is a miracle! The ultimate rose will be synthetic, plastic; it will be there forever, but because it will not be able to die it will not be alive either.

You have to learn this losing yourself, then coming back to yourself and losing yourself again -- the closeness of love and the distance. Each distance in love again creates a longing to be close. If you are stuck together and you cannot separate, your love life will become a nightmare.

Meditate over this story, Dharmo; it is a beautiful parable. Only I can say it is a parable.

Rosalie Mazzolli, nee Adelstein, had married a midget. For a while they were getting along all right, but one day Rosalie showed up in the domestic relations court and demanded she be granted a divorce from little Harry.

"Surely, Mrs. Mazolli, you knew your husband was a midget when you married him," questioned the judge. "Why are you now desirous of leaving him? Didn't you anticipate the problems this marriage would encounter?"

"Oh, Your Honor," sobbed Rosalie, "how was I to know? Everything is wonderful, except for sex."

"Sex?" repeated the judge. "What has his being a midget got to do with sex?"

"Well," she continued tearfully, "when we're nose to nose his toes are in it; when we're toes to toes, his nose is in it, and when he's in it he disappears altogether, and oh, Your Honor, I get so lonely!"

There is no need to be utterly, ultimately, absolutely lost. Be relaxed -- once in a while get lost and that is good. Lose yourself and find yourself again and again. This is a beautiful drama, this existence, of losing and finding yourself. And drop all these words like "ultimate," "absolute," "perfect"; all these words are the inventions of the philosophers. Life is immediate, life is always now and here. And live it with all the frailty of a human being, with all the frailty of a rose flower, and you will come to know the greatest splendor IN the moment -- not in eternity. It is always now and it is always here! Don't condemn the momentary, rejoice in it, rejoice to abandon.