A personal seeking, an individual quest

Something about right inquiry.... Before you ask something, it will be good to know what is meant by right questioning. Every question is not a right inquiry, because as far as the inner dimension is concerned you can ask many, many, questions that appear to be meaningful but are not; they are nonsense.

Metaphysical questions are meaningless as far as inner inquiry is concerned. Intellectual questions are meaningless: intellect will not lead you inward, because even if you do get the right answer it will not be of any use. Intellect is an instrument, a bridge to all that exists outside; it has no door to the inner.

So the moment you begin to ask intellectually, you can go on asking for many lives and collect many answers but still you will not be connected to the inner world.

You can know many things about yourself, but to know something about yourself is not to know you.

The "about" goes round and round on the periphery and the center remains untouched. You can go on in a vicious circle of questions and answers, and every answer will create more questions, then more answers, and then more questions. You remain on the periphery, asking and being answered, gathering much knowledge about the self without knowing the self.

How to ask something which can be meaningful - not simply intellectually but existentially, not just for verbal knowing but authentic living? There are a few things which have to be remembered.

One: Whatever you ask, never ask a readymade question, never ask a stereotyped question. Ask something that is immediately concerned with you, something that is meaningful to you, that carries some transforming message for you. Ask that question upon which your life depends.

Don't ask bookish questions, don't ask borrowed questions. And don't carry any question over from the past because that will be your memory, not you. If you ask a borrowed question you can never come to an authentic answer. Even if the answer is given, it will not be caught by you and you will not be caught by it: a borrowed question is meaningless. Ask something that you want to ask. When I say you, I mean the you that you are this very moment, that is here and now, that is immediate.

When you ask something that is immediate, that is here and now, it becomes existential; it is not concerned with memory but with your being.

Two: Don't ask anything that once answered will not change you in any way. For example, someone can ask whether there is a God: "Does God exist?" Ask such a question only if the answer will change you, so that if there is a God then you will be one type of person and if there is no God you will be a different person. But if it will not cause any change in you to know whether God is or is not, then the question is meaningless. It is just curiosity, not inquiry. So remember, ask whatever you are really concerned about. Only then will the answer be meaningful for you, meaningful in the sense that you are going to be different with a different answer. Are you really concerned about the existence of God? Will it make a vast difference to you if there is a God? Will you be a different type of being? And if there is no God, will your whole life begin to have such a different shape that you cannot be the same?

As I see it, whether God exists or not, people remain the same. They are interested only for the sake of peripheral knowledge. They are not really concerned; the question is not existential.

Immediately, here and now, spontaneously, let a question arise in you. Don't carry something from the past, don't carry something that comes from others, don't carry something that comes from the scriptures.

Let it come from you. And even if nothing comes, that is better. If no question comes and you feel a deep emptiness, that is good. That emptiness is authentic, it is yours. Even in that emptiness much can happen.

If you ask in this way from your deeper being, the very questioning becomes a process of meditation.

And sometimes it happens that your question itself becomes the answer. The greater the depth it is coming from, the nearer it is to the answer. If you can ask from the very center of your being then there will be no need for any answer; the very question will become the answer. That is why I say that it becomes a process of meditation. If you can ask a question in such a way that you are totally involved in it and nothing remains outside the question, you have become the question.

Then no answer is needed. This very fact of totally being the question will become the answer.

An answer is needed from the outside only because your questioning is not deep. What I am saying is true as far as the inner search is concerned. In science, or with any outward inquiry, it will not be so. There a question will remain a question and an answer will have to be sought. But as far as the inner being is concerned, the question itself can become the answer, your quest itself can become the end.

In the inner search, means and ends are not two separate things. Means themselves are the end.

Rightly pursued, the beginning is the end, the quest is the realization. But then the question must be total, authentic. You must be deeply committed to your question, it must not be just a peripheral curiosity.

So now, relax. And when I say relax, I mean to relax your past, relax borrowed questions, relax your mind so that your being can emerge. Then this questioning will become a meditative process. Then anything that comes to your mind, don't hesitate to ask.

Question 2:

Because there is so much expectation. Expect, and there will be frustration. Don't expect, and there will be no frustration. Frustration is a byproduct: the more you expect, the more you create your own frustration. So frustration is not really the problem, it is the result. Expectation is the problem.

Frustration is just a shadow which follows expectation. If you don't expect even for a single moment, if you are in a state of mind where there is no expectation, then it is simple. You ask a question and the answer comes; there is a fulfillment. But if you ask with any expectations you will be frustrated by the answer.

Everything we do, we do with expectations. If I love someone, an expectation enters without my even knowing it. I begin to expect love in return. I have not yet loved, I have not grown into love yet, but the expectation has come and now it will destroy the whole thing. Love creates more frustration than anything else in the world because, with love, you are in a utopia of expectation. You have not even been on the journey yet and already you have begun to think of the return home.

The more you expect love, the more difficult it will be for love to flow back to you. If you expect love from someone the other will feel it as bondage; it will be a duty for him, something which he has to do. And when love is a duty it cannot fulfill anyone because love as a duty is dead.

Love can only be play, not a duty. Love is freedom and duty is bondage, a heavy burden that one has to carry. And when you have to carry something, the beauty of it is lost. The freshness, the poetry, everything is lost, and the other will immediately feel that it is only something dead which has been given. Love with expectation and you have killed love. It is abortive - your love will be a dead child. Then there will be frustration.

Love as play not as bargain, not because there is something you want to get out of it. Rather, love the other as an end in itself. Thank God that you have loved and forget about whether it is returned or not.

Don't make a bargain out of it and you will never be frustrated; your life will become filled with love.

Once love has flowered in its totality there will be bliss, there will be ecstasy.

I use love only as an example. The same law applies to everything. There is so much frustration in the world that it is difficult to find someone who is not frustrated. Even your so-called saints are frustrated: frustrated because of their disciples, frustrated because they begin to have expectations about them that they should do this and not do that; they should be like this and not be like that.

Then frustration is bound to come, it has come.

Your so-called workers are all frustrated because they have expectations. Whatever their ideal is, society must conform to it; whatever their utopia is, everyone must follow it. They expect too much.

They think that the whole world must be transformed immediately according to their ideals. But the world goes on in its own way, so they are frustrated.

It is very difficult to find a person who is not frustrated. And if you find such a person, know that he is a religious person. It makes no difference what the object, the cause, the source of frustration may be. One can be frustrated because of power, because of prestige, because of wealth. One can be frustrated because of love. One can even be frustrated because of God.

You want God to come to you. You begin to meditate and expectation comes in. I have seen people who meditate for fifteen minutes each day for seven days, and then they come to me and say, "I am meditating and I have still not realized the divine. The whole effort seems to be useless." They have devoted fifteen minutes to meditation for seven days and still God is nowhere to be seen. "I am still no nearer to God, so what should I do now?" Even in the search for the divine we have expectations.

Expectation is the poison. That's why there is frustration; it has to be so. Realize the falsity, the poisonousness of the expecting mind. By and by, if you can become aware of it, the expectations will drop and there will be no frustration.

So don't ask the question, "Why is there so much frustration in the world?" Ask "Why am I so frustrated?" Then the whole dimension changes. When someone wonders why the world is so frustrated, there is again an expectation that the world could be less frustrated. But whether the world is frustrated or not, you will remain frustrated.

The world is frustrated - that is a fact. Then you go and try to find out why you are frustrated. You will find that it is because of your expectations. That is the seed, the root cause. Throw it out!

Don't think about the world, think about yourself. You are the world and if you begin to be different the world begins to be different. A part of it, an intrinsic part, has begun to be different: the world has begun to change.

We are always concerned with changing the world. That is just an escape. I have always felt that people who are concerned with others' changing are really escaping from their own frustrations, their own conflicts, their own anxieties, their own anguish. They are focusing their minds on something else, they are occupying their minds with something else, because they cannot change themselves.

It is easier to try to change the world than to change oneself.

Remember to find out the cause of your own frustrations. And the sooner you do so, the better.

Situations differ, but the source of frustration is always the same: expectation.

Question 3:

Doing will not help. You cannot do anything about it because the problem is very delicate. If you begin to do something about your hatefulness, that means that you will have begun to hate your hatefulness. The mechanism is very delicate. One can be angry towards one's anger and one can be hateful towards one's hatefulness, and you can fight it but you will not win because the disease has gone one step deeper.

Don't do anything. Just be aware of it. Whenever you feel hate, just be aware of it. Feel what this hatefulness is, feel the fact of it. Don't try to escape from it.

Even your doing can become an escape. If I am angry and I begin to do something about the anger, then I am not concerned with the anger itself but with doing something about it. My perception has changed: my awareness of the anger is no longer there but rather the effort to do something about it has taken its place. This is not good, this is not the way, because then the anger will be suppressed.

So if you feel hatred, anger, greed, or anything, don't try to do something right away, just be aware of it. First see the ugliness of it, see the poisonousness of it, see what it is. Once you see what hate is in its totality, it will drop by itself. Hatred can continue only if you have not known it in its totality.

It is just like a snake crossing your path. The moment you become aware that the snake is there, you jump.

That jump is not something which you have to think about, decide about or choose to do; it happens.

When you become aware of the snake, the jump happens. In the same way, when you become aware of your hate, the jump happens; no planning is needed.

The first thing to remember is this: don't condemn anything; rather, become more aware of the fact of it.

Whenever it appears, be aware of it; meditate on it. The second thing, which is even more subtle, is your thinking, "I feel hatred inside me. I feel anger and greed and ego." This again is a very deceptive trick of the mind, a very cunning trick, because then, in a very subtle way, you have separated yourself from the hatred. You are saying, "I see hatred in me, I see greed in me. The greed is something which is in me, it is not me. I am not greed, I am not hatred, I am not anger. It is something accidental, something foreign that is inside me."

This is how the mind thinks and how language deceives us. Language says, "There is anger in me,"

but this is not the fact. When you are angry it is not that anger is in you... you are hate. There cannot be two entities there, only one. Either hate can be present or you can be present, but both cannot be present. If you are there then hate will dissolve; if hate is there then you are not there.

Move existentially not linguistically. Language creates many problems. Because of the construction of the language we acquire a very unrealistic attitude toward things. For example, when you are angry, there is no "I" to whom anger is happening. There is only anger; you are dissolved in it; you are not.

Go into the problem existentially. When there is hate, become aware of whether you are there or only the hate is there. Then a very subtle change happens in your consciousness. Once you begin to be aware of whether "I am" or hate is, your consciousness begins to emerge. And the more conscious you become, the more the hatred will dissolve. Both cannot exist simultaneously. Hate is possible only when one is unconscious: not conscious, not mindful, not alert.

When hate has gone, anger has gone, violence has gone, and you think about it retrospectively it becomes part of your memory. Now you can divide yourself from it.

You are separate from the anger and the anger is separate from you. Now it is part of your memory.

This is how the linguistic fallacy I was talking about is supported by your experience.

You were angry a moment ago, now you are not - the anger has gone. You are separate from the anger: you are one thing, the anger is something different - the anger has become part of your memory. Now there are two things: the memory of your past experience of anger, and you.

But in the act of anger itself, there was only one thing: you were anger. So whenever there is hate, feel it deeply. Be aware of it: you have become hate, you are hate. This awareness will change the whole thing.

The day this awareness comes to you, hate will dissolve, because for you to coexist with hatred or anger or greed is not possible. Awareness means a conscious mind, and anger, hate, and greed are possible only in a very unconscious, sleepy state of mind. Be more and more alert - and not retrospectively, because that is useless, it is a waste of energy. When anger is there, when hate is there, in that very moment close your eyes and meditate on whether you are or only the anger is.

Your first realization will be that only anger is. Where are you? You are not. Your whole energy has become anger, the whole of you has become hate.

Sometimes lovers feel that when love is there, they are not. To feel this in love is easy because love is gratifying, but to feel it in hate is difficult because hate is not gratifying. Lovers, deep lovers, have felt that it is not that they "love" - love is not an activity - rather, they have become love.

When you love someone you become love. When you hate someone you become hate. But if you just remain yourself, then you can neither love nor hate in the ordinary way. That is why we say that someone has fallen in love. The phenomenon of love is a falling down, and falling in love means that you lose consciousness of yourself because of love. Lovers look mad to those who are not in love.

They are! You cannot communicate with them, they are not in their senses.

They are not, really; the whole energy has become love; they are identified with it completely. There is no witness to the phenomenon of love.

The same happens in hate. Love and hate are alike, because it is the same energy inverted. When you are in love you are madly attracted, when you are in hate you are madly repulsed. When you are in love, when you have become attracted to someone, you lose your center, your self, and someone else becomes the center. When you hate someone, the same thing happens: someone repulses you; you are not at the center, you lose consciousness of yourself, and someone else becomes the center.

Remember this - not retrospectively but in the very moment of the happening. When you feel that hate is there, close your eyes, forget the situation outside, and be conscious of what is happening inside you. The whole energy has become hate. If you watch it, then suddenly part of the energy will begin to transform itself into awareness. A pillar of consciousness will arise out of the chaos of hate or love or whatever. And the more the pillar arises, the more the chaos inside will drop and disappear. Then, when you feel that you are, you will notice that hate is no longer there: you become a self, a center; the other can no longer be the center which either attracts or repels.

This meditation has to be done at the very moment of the happening. Then you will be a different person altogether. Not that you will have conquered your hatred, not that you will have a controlled mind. Now you will be a consciousness, a light unto yourself. Because of this light, darkness will have become impossible. Now you are a conscious being. Hate has become impossible because hate needs your unconsciousness as its basic requirement.

This must be understood very distinctly and clearly: hate needs your unconsciousness. That is the food for hate, that is where hate gets its strength. So don't do anything about hate, just do something about your consciousness. Become more conscious of your acts, of your thoughts, of your moods - of whatever happens.

A conscious being is neither hateful nor love-full.

That is why we have used different words in talking about Buddha. We could say that Buddha loves everyone, but then the word would carry the same meaning that we ordinarily associate with it.

Buddha cannot love you because he cannot hate you. He cannot be repulsed by you and he cannot be attracted by you either; in both cases, the other is the center. Buddha is not love but compassion, and the difference is very deep.

When you feel compassion, you remain the center; you can be neither repulsed nor attracted. It is a very neutral state. The other will feel very deeply that you love him, but....

If you come to a Buddha, you may feel that he loves you. That is your freedom. At any moment you can also feel that he hates you. That is also your freedom. It is your projection that he loves or hates. In fact, he neither loves nor hates; he remains himself, and the compassion flows.

See the difference? If you are not in this room, I cannot love you nor can I hate you. If I want to hate you I must have an object to hate, so if you are not here I will have to imagine that you are here.

Love stops when the loved one is absent and hate stops when the enemy is not there. If they are absent, you make them present in your imagination.

Compassion means that even if there is no one there, Buddha will still be compassionate. It is not because of his imagination; it is his natural state. Just as a river flows, Buddha is compassionate.

The other is not a part of it at all, the other is not the center, he himself remains the center.

When one becomes a center, when one becomes crystallized, there is neither repulsion nor attraction to anyone. This creates a deeper problem because it means that you cannot go beyond hate unless you go beyond love. Everyone wants to go beyond hate, but no one wants to go beyond love. But that creates an impossible situation for you because hate is a part of the one phenomenon of repulsion and attraction.

How can you just be in love, how can you be attracted to everything? We go on trying to love in many, many ways, but the only easy way is to hate one person and to love someone else. That is the easy way. You make one person your enemy and another person your friend.

Then you can be at ease, you can love. You can be attracted to A and be repulsed by B. This is one way. Another way, even more complicated, is to hate the same person that you love. This, too, we do. In the morning we love, in the afternoon we hate, and at night we love again. Every lover goes on continuously moving between hate and love, attraction and repulsion. Freud has said, and said very truly, that you have to hate the same person that you love - it cannot be otherwise.

This becomes more and more true as we get rid of all the scapegoats that we have had for our hatred. You could love your country and hate another country; you could love your religion and hate another religion because, if you love someone or something, you have to balance that love with hate.

In the old days this was easy, the balance was there, but now the humanitarians, the utopians, have destroyed all our scapegoats. Soon the world may be so united that there will be only one nation, only one race. Then one thing will have to become the object of both love and hate.

This duality is a natural thing. If you love, then you have to hate. There are people who go on preaching: "Love the whole world!" But you cannot love the world unless you discover another world to hate. I don't think this planet Earth can become one until we discover enemies on some other planet. The moment we discover an enemy somewhere - and we are trying very hard to find one - then the whole world can become one.

When India is fighting Pakistan, there is no fighting within India; India becomes one. There is a very deep patriotic feeling for India because now that love balances the hatred toward Pakistan. But when there is no war, then Hindus fight Mohammedans, and Brahmins fight Sudras, one state fights another state, one party fights another party... and the thing goes on. But if there is an enemy somewhere, then the whole nation becomes one.

This whole earth cannot become one unless we have another planet to fight. Even a rumor would help. Linus Pauling, a great scientist, a Nobel laureate, once suggested that it would be good to create a world-wide rumor through the United Nations that Martians were about to attack the earth, and have scientists from all over the world support the rumor; then there would be no fighting on earth. And he is right. As man is, it would be a good thing. Lies may help. The truth has not helped yet.

With love, hate will be there and you will have to find some object to focus it on. So the more you love, the more you will be hateful. That is the price one has to pay. Remember this: either love and hate go together or neither of them is there at all.

Hate will disappear not by your doing anything, but by being more aware, more conscious, more alert. Become a conscious being and you will be at your center, and no one will be able to take you away from your center.

Right now, anyone can do it. Some do it by love and some do it by hate, but anyone can take you away from your center. You have no center really, only a bogus center which is just waiting for anyone to come and take you away from it.

Consciousness means centering, being continuously centered inside. Then both love and hate disappear. Only when both disappear are you at peace.

And really, their symptoms are so alike. When you are in deep hate you cannot sleep, and when you are in deep love you cannot sleep. When you are in deep love your blood pressure rises, and when you are in deep hate your blood pressure rises. All the symptoms are the same: you become tense.

When someone is in love he becomes tired, exhausted, and bored by the ordinary things - just as in hate. Both are tensions, both are diseases.

When I say "disease," I am using the literal meaning of the word: dis-ease. You cannot be at ease either in love or in hate, you can only be at ease if there is nothing inside you, neither love nor hate.

Then you remain in yourself, alone in your consciousness. You exist without anyone else, the other has become irrelevant: you are centered.

Then, compassion will happen. It is a happening that follows once centering is there. Compassion is neither love nor hate, it is neither attraction nor repulsion, it is a totally different dimension. It is just being yourself, moving according to yourself, living according to yourself. Many may be attracted to you, many may be repulsed by you, but these are just their projections - it is their problem. You can laugh about it and remain unconcerned.

Question 4:

Why think about the past ten years? Why? That is the root cause of your problem.

What have you got from the past? Just memories and thoughts. You go on gathering more and more memories because every day your past becomes greater and greater. And the past is growing every day, because you go on accumulating thoughts, memories, experiences. Every day you have a bigger and bigger mind and less and less consciousness.

Mind means the accumulated past, and it goes on accumulating. What else can it do but go on repeating thoughts? What else is thinking but the repetition of the past again and again? Nothing new comes through.

Thinking is never original; it cannot be, because you can only think in terms of the known. You cannot think about the unknown; you can only come to the unknown when you are not thinking.

Every day you give your mind more to think about. The mind goes on thinking - it is a very efficient mechanism. It can even make you go mad if you begin to think so fast that you cannot connect two thoughts. A madman is one whose thinking has gone to the very extreme: his thoughts overlap one another. You think linearly while a madman thinks along many lines simultaneously; his thinking is very complex.

If you go on collecting the past, your thinking will grow more and more. You may even begin to lose consciousness of yourself completely and then you will become an automaton, a computer, a thinking machine, a robot.

So what to do? Let the past be past. Don't carry it.

Forget it. Remember only this moment. And the strange thing is that if you are really in this moment, you cannot think; it is impossible. Thinking is only possible in the past or the future, never in the present. Remain in the moment. Don't fall back into the past and don't jump ahead to the future.

Remain in the moment, the moment that is occurring right now.

For example, I have been talking. I don't think that you could have heard what I have been saying because your question must have remained working in the mind. You missed. And you can miss again this very moment. If you are really listening to me, your thought processes will cease. If the thought processes continue, you cannot be listening to me. If you are thinking about what I am saying - how to practice it - then you are again missing the present moment.

When you are eating, eat - don't do anything else. When you are listening, listen - don't do anything else. When you are walking, walk - don't do anything else. Remain in the present moment, remain with the activity, and soon you will realize that the past has drifted away and a new space has opened within you. In that space, there are no thoughts.

Live moment to moment. Die to the past and die to the future. Live here and now so that whatever you are doing becomes a meditation.

Meditation is an attitude not an activity, so whatever you do can become meditative. The so-called meditation that people go on doing is not meditation. It is the attitude of being in the present which is the core, the central, the essential thing.

Do whatever you are doing - walking on the street, running, taking a bath, eating, going to sleep, lying on the bed, relaxing - and remain with the activity totally. With no past, no future, remain in the present. It will be difficult in the beginning - very difficult and very arduous - but by and by you will get the feel of it and then a new door will open, a new realm. Then the thought process will no longer be there.

By that I don't mean to say that you will become incapable of thinking; on the contrary, only then will you be capable of thinking. Thinking is a different thing from this mad rush of thoughts. This crowd of thoughts is not thinking at all. The thoughts go on and on, and you cannot do anything about them. You are just a victim, not a thinker - you suffer, you try not to think about them.

Try to stop a thought and you will see who is the master. Try to stop it. You cannot. The thought will rebel against your control and it will come back with a vengeance - with more force, with more skill and efficiency. Whatever you think about is not thinking, really, it is just a rush, a mad rush, a crowd, a traffic jam of thoughts - an inconsistent, useless, unnecessary holdover from the past.

So be aware. Don't waste the present anymore. Live in the present. Live in the meditative quality of the present.

The present moment is not really a part of time at all. Past is time, future is time, but the present is not time. Ordinarily, we divide time into three parts: past, present, and future. But in reality it is not so.

The present is eternal, the present is. It is always here and now, an eternal now. In reality there is no past and there is no future. The past exists only in the memory and the future exists only in the imagination. Past and future belong to mind, not to existence. If you can understand this, you will see that time is mind and mind is time. Dissolve mind and there will be no more time, and vice versa.

That is why every religion insists that when you go deep down inside yourself there is no time: it is a timeless moment. That timelessness is here this very moment. You can miss it because of your wrong habit of accumulating the past, but it is there, and if you become aware of it, it can continue.

Be aware, and this very moment the past drifts away, the future dissolves, and the present moment becomes alive. Live in it, exist in it, and then this mad rush of thoughts will not be there. You will become capable of thinking for the first time. This new thinking means more awareness, a more concentrated consciousness, a more focused light of your being. You become so aware that whenever a problem comes before you, your consciousness, your focused light of being, dissolves it. And when a problem is dissolved, you know the answer.

Your so-called thinking is more akin to anxiety than to thinking. In this so-called thinking that you do now, you have to grope for the answer - and groping can only be in the dark. Today you think you have solved something and tomorrow the same problem is there again, everything becomes confused again, and you go on groping and groping in the dark. That is why thinkers change their minds every day. That which was a truth yesterday is not a truth today and today's truth will not be the same again tomorrow. So everything is just approximately true - nothing is true, nothing is false - it can become false again any moment.

Buddha is true in a very different sense... with no time-relationship. Jesus is true, non-temporally.

Their truth cannot become non-truth because it is found not through thinking but through meditation, not through thoughts but through a process of no-thought. Remember this: the process of no- thought, which happens when you are in the present.

Question 5:

This, too, can become a frustration at any moment because the other still remains the center.

Whoever it is... the other must not be the center.

If you really feel intimate with me, then remember this: the other must not be the center. The moment your love is not centered on me you will be happy. If your love is centered on me that will only create problems.

You will love me and you will find someone else to hate.

This is what happens. If you love your guru, then you will begin to hate and condemn all other gurus.

If you love Ram then even Krishna becomes an enemy. If you love Jesus then how can you love Mohammed? You have to create an enemy.

If you love someone - even if you love me and you feel a freshness, a fulfillment - then, too, deep down, the other side will be there. Any moment it can erupt and become destructive. You must be fulfilled within yourself, because only then will there be no frustration. You will feel many things but they will be something separate from you. The center will remain. If you can be with yourself totally, then even if I am not here, even if you cannot find me, even if you forget me completely, the fulfillment will remain, the freshness will remain. Then, when you are centered in your self, you can feel a subtle gratitude toward someone, but that will be a different thing.

Don't get attached. Don't think in terms of love, because the very term, as we know it, is bound up with its opposite. It seems difficult to understand. If you love me it seems inconceivable that you could hate me. But it is a common phenomenon. When someone is dreaming he cannot know that what he sees in the dream is just a dream. To him it is a reality; he cannot conceive of how it could be unreal. The same thing happens when someone is in love: he cannot conceive of how he could hate his loved one. But then, when he begins to hate the other, he cannot conceive of how he could have loved.

Those who love and then hate are not real lovers. But the mind goes on supplying reasons. If you love someone and you cannot conceive of how you could hate him or her, then the mind says that this is real love. Then, when you begin to hate the same person, the mind says that although you were a real lover, the other was not worth loving. First you find many reasons and causes and rationalizations for your love, then you find as many rationalizations for your hate.

I have seen this not only with one person but with many people. Sometimes it happens that someone loves me very deeply, then begins to hate me. And when someone loves deeply he can only hate deeply; there is no other way. When he loved me he could not conceive that hate was possible and now that he hates me he cannot conceive how that love was ever possible.

It is easy to move from love to hate, but it is very difficult to move from hate to love. There are many reasons for it. You cannot hate in the beginning; one has to love first. Love is a necessity in order to hate; you cannot hate directly without some love having been there. But then it is very difficult to put the broken mirror back together again. You can love again, but the hate which has preceded the renewed love casts a shadow on it. Something of the hate remains; part of it is carried over. The old fantasy of total love cannot be revived again.

If you love me, then you will feel hurt when I say this. Don't feel hurt. If you want to move toward selfrealization, if you are trying to find a way toward the ultimate truth, then there will be many times when I will have to hurt you, when I will have to fight against your fallacies. I know that your love can become hate. And just as love has a freshness, hate also has a freshness, an aliveness.

But there is a love, which I call compassion, that can come to you. It can come to you only if you are at your center, no one else. Become more and more centered in yourself. Only if I can help you to do this will I have compassion. My compassion may hurt you sometimes, but that is needed.

So I say to you: anyone who is centered on someone else - whoever that someone else is - will become frustrated in the end. Become more and more free of others. That is why I allow you to come near me, that is my purpose in allowing you to be intimate with me - so that you can become yourself! If I can help you to come to that center in yourself where there is no love and no hate, only then will you be able to have an altogether different relationship with me. Then the quality of that relationship will not be of this world - neither hate nor love. Then you will not feel me as the other, you will feel me as yourself.

And not only with me... you will feel the whole world, the whole universe, as yourself. When one is centered in oneself, one becomes one with the whole universe. But if you are centered in the other, then you will be in trouble - that is a natural consequence. And the natural law never allows any exception. It is absolute, mercilessly absolute.