I am not a person

The first question:

Question 1:

Ananda Vandana,

RECEPTIVITY is a state of no-mind. When you are utterly empty of all thought, when consciousness has no content, when the mirror reflects nothing, it is receptivity. Receptivity is the door to the divine.

Drop the mind and be.

In the mind, you are miles away from being. The more you think, the less you are. The less you think, the more you are. And if you don't think at all, those are the moments when being asserts itself in its totality.

Receptivity simply means dropping the garbage that you go on carrying in your head. And much garbage is there, utterly useless. The mind means the past. Now the past is no more of any use; it has happened, and it is never going to happen again, because in reality nothing ever repeats.

Even when you think, feel, that this is the same situation, it is never the same situation. Each morning is a new morning, and each morning the sun that you encounter is the new sun. I am not talking about the material sun. I am talking about the beauty, the benediction, the blessing that it brings every day - it is so utterly new.

If you go on carrying pictures of the past, you will not be able to see the new. Your eyes will be covered with your experiences, expectations, and those eyes will not be able to see that which confronts you.

That's how we go on missing life: the past becomes a barrier, encloses you, traps you, into something that is no more. You become encapsulated in the dead. And the more you become experienced, grown-up, the shell of the dead experience goes on becoming thicker and thicker around you. You become more and more closed. Slowly slowly all windows, all doors, are closed.

Then you exist, but you exist alienated, you exist uprooted. Then you don't have a communion with life. You don't have a communion with the trees and the stars and the mountains. YOU CAN'T have a communion, because a great China Wall of your past surrounds you.

When I say become receptive, I mean become a child again.

Remember Jesus, who goes on saying to his disciples: Unless you are like small children you will not be able to enter into my kingdom of God. What he is saying is exactly the meaning of receptivity.

The child is receptive because he knows nothing; not knowing anything, he is receptive. The old man is not receptive because he knows too much; knowing too much, he is closed. He has to be reborn, he has to die to the past and become a child again - not in the body, of course, but the consciousness should always be like a child; not childish, remember, but like a child, grown-up, mature, but innocent.

And that's how one learns, learns the truth that is presented to you every moment of your life, learns to know the Guest which comes and knocks on your doors every moment, day in, day out, year in, year out. But you are so surrounded by your own inner talk, by your own inner procession of thoughts, that you don't hear the knock.

Do you hear the distant call of the cuckoo? Do you hear the birds chirping? This is receptivity. It is an existential state of silence, utter silence; no movement, nothing stirs, and yet you are not asleep, and yet you are alert, and yet you are absolutely aware. Where silence and awareness meet, mingle and become one, there is receptivity. Receptivity is the MOST important religious quality.

Become a child. Start, Vandana, functioning from the state of not-knowing, and then silence will come of its own accord, and great awareness. And then life is a benediction. The second question:

Question 2:

Sudheer.

PHILOSOPHY means mind, philosophy means thinking, philosophy means going away from yourself Philosophy is the art of losing yourself in thoughts, becoming identified with dreams. Hence I am against philosophy, because I am all for religion.

You cannot be philosophical if you want to be religious; that is not possible. Religion is existential, philosophy is intellectual. Philosophy is about and about, religion is direct. Philosophy is thinking about things you don't know. Religion is a knowing, not thinking. Philosophy depends on doubt, because the more you can doubt the more you can think. Doubt is the mother of thinking.

Religion is trust, because the more you trust the more there is no need to think. Trust kills thinking; in trust, thinking commits suicide. And when there is no thinking and trust pulsates in your being, in each pore of your being trust permeates you, overwhelms you, you know what is.

Philosophy TRIES to know, but never knows. Religion never tries to know, but knows. Philosophy is an exercise in futility, of futility. Yes, it talks about great things - freedom, love, God, meditation - but it only TALKS about. The philosopher never meditates. He talks about meditation, he spins and weaves theories, hypotheses, inferences ABOUT meditation, but he never tastes anything about meditation. He never meditates.

Hegel, Kant - these are philosophers; Buddha, Kabir - these are NOT philosophers - Plato, Aristotle - these are philosophers; Heraclitus, Plotinus - these are not philosophers, although in the books of philosophy they are also called philosophers. They are not! To use the word 'philosopher' for them is not right, unless you change the whole meaning of the word. Aristotle and Heraclitus cannot be called philosophers in the same sense. ]f Aristotle is a philosopher, then Heraclitus is not; if Heraclitus is a philosopher, then Aristotle is not.

I use a totally different word, 'philosia', instead of philosophy. Philosophy means, literally, linguistically, love for knowledge. Philosia means love for seeing, not only for knowledge. Knowledge is not enough for the real enquirer; he wants to see. He does not want to contemplate on God, he wants to encounter God. He wants to hold His hand in his own hands, he wants to hug and kiss God! He is not satisfied with the concept of God. How can the concept be of any help?

When you are thirsty you cannot be satisfied by the formula H20. Howsoever right it is - that is not my concern, that is irrelevant - right or wrong, the formula H20 cannot quench your thirst. You would like water, and whether you know about H20 or not does not matter. For millions of years man has been drinking water without knowing anything about H20, and it has been perfectly satisfying.

Philosophy talks about water, religion drinks.

Talking about food is utterly stupid; you will have to prepare food. You will have to eat, you will have to chew, you will have to digest. Unless food becomes blood and bones and marrow, just talking about it is not going to help. Hence I am against philosophy.

A woman was going to a doctor for a physical examination before her fourth marriage. During the course of her examination the doctor was startled to discover that she was still a virgin.

He demanded an explanation, "How can this be? You are preparing for your fourth marriage and yet you are a virgin?"

"My first husband," she replied, "I married for love, but as we were leaving the church to go on our honeymoon a tragic automobile accident occurred and he was killed."

"My second husband," she continued, "I married for money. He was very old, and so nothing ever happened between us."

"My third husband," she said, "was a great philosopher, and all he could ever do was sit on the edge of the bed and tell me how good it was going to be."

Philosophy is pseudo-religion. Religion is true philosophy, because religion leads you into the world of seeing, knowing, experiencing.

Exactly in that sense, Pythagoras has coined the word 'philosophy'. 'Sophy' means SOPHIA; 'philo' means love: love for the ultimate wisdom. That was the meaning given by the man who coined the word 'philosophy'; he was Pythagoras. He had travelled all over the world. He had been to India, he had conferred with great mystics of the East, he had met seers, enlightened people. It was he who first coined the word.

The original meaning is beautiful, but it got lost. When it fell into the hands of the Greeks it started having a totally different meaning, because the Greek mind is analytical, logical, rational. There are only two types of minds in the world: the Greek and the Hindu. The Greek mind is logical, the Hindu mind is illogical. The Greek mind is intellectual, the Hindu mind is intuitive. The Greek mind has given birth to philosophy and science, the Hindu mind has given birth to religion and poetry.

The Greek and the Hindu exist in each person, because each person has two minds in him. The brain is divided into two hemispheres, one is Greek, another is Hindu. The left side of your brain is Greek, the right side of your brain is Hindu. I am using the words 'Hindu' and 'Greek' metaphorically; don't take it literally. Your left-side brain, which is joined with your right hand, calculates, thinks, analyzes. Your right-side brain, which is joined with your left hand, intuits, sings, loves.

The religious person goes through an inner conversion from the Greek to the Hindu. He moves from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere. All yoga and all other techniques of meditation are nothing but bridges to take you from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere. Once you have reached the right hemisphere, the world of poetry, the world of beauty, the world of love, opens its doors. Then God is. No proof is needed, one simply feels. It is a feeling. It is a feeling in the guts. One simply knows, for no other reason. And once you are centered in the right hemisphere of your brain you can use the left hemisphere also, but now it will function as a servant. And the left hemisphere is a good servant but a bad master.

I am all for religion, because as I have seen, life is far, far more than logic can comprehend. Life is so vast and your capacity to think is so tiny. Life can be envisaged only through love, not through logic.

You will have to melt into existence. You will have to dance with it, sing with it. Dancing with the trees in the wind, singing with the river in the flood, having a communion with the clouds and the stars, you will know what God is - not by thinking about Him.

The third question:

DEAR OSHO, I LOVE YOU. IN A Sannyas MAGAZINE YOU SAID THAT YOU ARE NOT A PERSON.

THEN WHAT ARE YOU?

THE question is from Prem Bindiya. She is a small girl, ten years old.

Bindiya, nobody is a person, although everybody believes that he is a person. Nobody can be a person, because we are not separate. We are like waves in the ocean. No wave has a personality.

Yes, it has a form, but it is not separate from the ocean. It is one with the ocean, you cannot separate it from the ocean. You cannot take the wave away from the ocean; it will disappear, it will not be a wave at all. It can only be a wave in the ocean, with the ocean. It is not separate, it is part of the dance of the ocean. It has no personality. Yes, it has a certain individuality because it is different from other waves - unique it is! - but it is not separate from the existence. And it is not separate from other waves either, because they are all joined together in one ocean.

When I say I am not a person, Bindiya, I simply mean I am not separate from existence. I am one with the trees and one with the rocks and one with the earth and one with the sky. I am a presence not a person, and so are you, and so is everybody else. To believe in the person is to believe in the ego.

And I can understand your question: this is how every child is being brought up, for centuries. Your question is relevant.

You say, "I LOVE YOU. BUT IF YOU ARE NOT A PERSON, THEN HOW CAN I LOVE YOU?" We have been told that we can love only persons. The truth is just the opposite: you cannot love the person. Persons can only fight, persons can only be in conflict, because wherever two egos are, there is conflict, a CONSTANT war - sometimes hot, sometimes cold, but the war continues.

Sometimes the warriors are tired so they maintain a certain peace. Whenever they are back again and their energy is there again, they start fighting.

You can see it happening with all kinds of lovers - a continuous fight, a kind of intimate enmity, together and yet not together. Why is this fight there? - because of two egos. Two persons are there, and of course each person wants to dominate.

The ego is a deep desire to dominate. The ego is a deep desire that says, "I am special, higher, bigger, greater than you." And both are trying to do the same. Conflict is necessary, inevitable. Love cannot exist in such a state.

Love exists between two presences, not between two persons. Then there is no conflict; there is great harmony, melody, music, rhythm. When there are no more egos and both feel one with existence, they can be one with each other.

Bindiya, love is possible only when you disappear. I have disappeared, and my work here is now to help you to disappear too.

You ask me, " THEN WHAT ARE YOU?"

I am not a person, I am a presence. I am a nobody. I am a kind of nothingness, emptiness. The host has disappeared, and the disappearance of the host has made the Guest appear. I am not, God is.

I cannot love you, but I am love. You can partake as much as you like, you can drink out of me as much as you like. I cannot be in a love-relationship with you because relationships exist only between egos. But I can share. It will be a relating, not a relationship. It will not be static, it will be a flow. And it will have no motivation in it: I love you because I am love. There is no motivation, no desire to get anything back from you. It is enough that you accepted my love.

And I know this time, just two days ago, Bindiya had come to see me. She has come back after a long time, and I could see great love in her eyes. I had to call her close, I had to hold her face in my hands and pour my love into her eyes. She is a small sannyasin, but because she is small she is still capable of receiving. Because she is small, still uncontaminated, still unpolluted, still uncorrupted, something natural is still there.

And you are fortunate, Bindiya, that you have become a sannyasin so early - now nobody will be able to corrupt you. Now you will become able to protect yourself against this corrupted society, against all kinds of corruptions. The church corrupts, the state corrupts, the educational system corrupts. You have become a sannyasin at the right time. You will be able to see all the games that are being played around you. You will become more and more intelligent, more and more loving, and less and less a person.

Those who are really with me are on the way of disappearing, evaporating. Just as in the early morning sun the dewdrops start disappearing... that is the way for the disciple to disappear when he is in a close love-relationship with the Master.

The fourth question:

Question 3:

Narayana,

HE HAD to declare it, because God WAS dead. The God that had been worshipped for thousands of years was dead; not the real God, but the God that the human mind had created - the God that was in the temples and the mosques and the churches and the synagogues, the God of the Old Testament, the God of the Vedas. Man has outgrown those concepts.

Nietzsche simply declared a fact. Of course, he was as shocked by it as everybody else was. He himself was not ready to accept it. In fact, for his whole life he struggled to accept it. He tried to convince himself by arguing that God is REALLY dead, but it was difficult for the poor man. It would have been difficult for anybody. And he was a man of steel; he was no ordinary man, he was really a strong man, but still it was too much. He had to suffer tremendously because he was the first to declare it, and to be a pioneer is always dangerous. He went through a nervous breakdown. The last part of his life was a state of madness. He risked much for this declaration.

In his great book, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, this parable appears....

'God is dead' is now almost a cliche. But when Nietzsche used that phrase it was like an earthquake, a thunderbolt from the skies - it shattered man's illusions. But it is only half of his message, remember; the other half has been almost forgotten. He declared 'God is dead' because he wanted to declare the coming of a new man. He called that new man 'overman' or 'superman'. He said: If God continues to live the old way, man cannot assert himself in total freedom. Man cannot grow, man cannot mature. He will always remain dependent on the father-figure. God as the great father is dead: this is half of the message.

The other half is: now be on your own, stand on your own. Now become mature. Enough of this dependence! Enough of this stupid praying! Enough of your rituals! Stop these games!

Man has been playing many, many games in the name of God, and priests have been exploiting man in the name of God. Nietzsche put an end to all that; the world has never been the same again.

Although Nietzsche suffered much for his declaration, he has served humanity in a tremendous way:

he heralded a new age.

The OLD God is dead - that is a very basic requirement for the new God to appear, a new vision of God, more in harmony with the modern, contemporary consciousness. The God of the Old Testament was perfectly right for the people who invented it. It was perfectly right for the people Moses was talking to; it was a language that they understood. Now thousands of years have passed; God needs new garments, and you go on and on putting the old, rotten garments on Him.

God is not dead. God cannot be dead! But the old concept is dead.

Zarathustra is entrusted by Nietzsche with the task of conveying the news of God's death to the world.

As he starts on his journey he meets an old hermit, a saint. The saint tells Zarathustra that he himself loves God but not man, because man is too imperfect. Zarathustra replies that he loves man, and then he asks the saint what he is doing in the forest. The saint replies, "I make songs and sing them; and when I make songs I laugh, cry, and hum: thus I praise God."

The two separate, laughing like young boys. But when Zarathustra is alone again he wonders to himself, "Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead!"

The old saint says he loves God, not man because man is imperfect, and Zarathustra says he loves man, and God is dead....

This is going to be the new religion. It has not yet become a reality, although a hundred years have passed since Nietzsche's declaration, although the declaration has spread all over the world like wildfire. But the destructive part has happened; the creative part has not happened yet: Nietzsche declares the superman.

Man has to be loved, because it is only through the nourishment of love that man can grow. Man has to know that he is alone, and he has to know that he has to depend on his own resources and not on some heavenly father. Once man takes responsibility, total responsibility on his own shoulders, a great revolution is bound to happen, because man has infinite potential to grow. Remaining dependent on some God, he has completely become oblivious to his potential, to his future, to his growth.

It is good that God has been discarded. Now man has to take his life in his own hands. And the beauty is, if you become responsible, responsible for yourself, if you declare your freedom - you have to declare it because God is dead; there is nobody higher than you - if you accept that now you have to seek and search your way, you have to grope for it on your own, life will take a new plunge into the depths of the unknown. Life will become again an adventure. Life will again be an ecstatic discovery of new facts, new truths, of new territories, of new peaks of joy.

And it is only by becoming an adventurer that you will come upon the new face of God - which will be far more true than the old, because it will be far more mature than the old.

Nietzsche remained in difficulty: on the one hand he continued to fight with the old God; on the other hand, in moments when he was not so strong, he became scared too.

Zarathustra says, Away!

He himself fled My last, only companion, My great enemy, My unknown, My hangman-god.

No! Do come back With all thy tortures!

To the last of all that are lonely Oh, come back!

All my tear-streams run Their course to thee; And my heart's final flame - Flares up for thee!

Oh, come back, My unknown god! My PAIN!

My last - happiness!

These words look almost insane: "My unknown god! My pain! My last happiness! Ah, come back!"

Nietzsche remained divided, split, schizophrenic. One part of him was still afraid: "Maybe God IS alive"; maybe he was wrong. Who knows? How could one be certain about such profound matters?

And he was the first to say it, so naturally he was scared. He wanted to get rid of the enemy. He called God 'the enemy', enemy of man, because God had been like a rock on the chest of man - your so-called God. I am not talking about the God of Buddha and Mahavir and Zarathustra and Jesus and Moses, no. I am talking about the God of the common masses, of the mob. Nietzsche is also talking about the mob.

The God of the crowds is an ugly concept: it shows much about your weaknesses, but shows nothing about the truth of existence. When you pray on your knees you simply show your weakness, not that you know what prayer is. When you go to the temple you go to demand something, to beg for something. You simply show your beggarliness but nothing about God. Very few people have known the truth of God.

If Nietzsche had met Buddha, Buddha would have perfectly agreed, and yet disagreed. He would have said, "You are right: God is dead, the God of the crowds. But there is another vision, the vision of the enlightened ones. Their God is not a person, their God is life in its essence. And how can life be dead? Trees are still green, birds are still singing, the sun is still there, the night still becomes poetry, love still happens. How can God be dead?"

God AS EXISTENCE can never be dead; God as a concept has to die many times. Each time man grows, the old concept has to be dropped. The old has been dropped.

The problem with the contemporary mind is: the old has been dropped, half the purpose of Nietzsche's declaration is fulfilled. The other half is missing: man has not yet become rooted in his own being, hence there is great meaninglessness all over the world. Everybody is feeling a kind of dullness, sadness, frustration. Everybody is living nothing but a kind of long, drawn-out misery, anxiety, anguish. Life has become synonymous with a kind of agony. All that you can do is use pain killers, tranquilizers, somehow go on pulling yourself together till death comes and you can rest forever.

Sigmund Freud says that man can never be happy. At the most we can reduce his unhappiness a little bit. At the most we can make him normally unhappy. That is the goal of psychoanalysis: to make people normally unhappy, to help them not to become abnormally unhappy. What kind of goal is this? But this has happened, and Freud was simply stating a fact. Looking at the modern man, looking into the unconscious of the modern man - and he was the one man who had looked deepest into the conscious and the unconscious mind - how could he lie? He had to say the truth.

He came to understand that it is impossible for happiness to happen. How can man ever be happy?

- when God is dead, and when man has not searched for another vision, for another goal, for another star so that the journey can start again, the journey of meaning and significance. Without God, man can at the most be normally unhappy.

Freud's conclusion is part of Nietzsche's declaration.

My work here consists in doing the other half, hence I don't talk much about God. Hence even if atheists come and want to become sannyasins, I accept them with an open heart. Even they are a little suspicious of why I am accepting them. They say, "We are atheists. We don't believe in God.

Are you still ready to accept us as sannyasins? Can we still meditate?"

And I say to them: YOU are the persons who can meditate! The person who believes in the old God cannot meditate: he depends too much on God, he is never a grown-up person. Meditation needs a certain growth. You can meditate; God is not needed. God is not a prerequisite for meditation, but when you meditate, slowly slowly you become aware of God.

God is the ultimate revelation, not the prerequisite. God is not a condition to become a sannyasin, God is the ultimate realization of sannyas.

But then you will not be angry with Nietzsche, remember, because you will know that what he was saying is also true. He was talking about the concept of God.

Moses's concept of God is certainly dead. When Moses died, his concept of God died. In fact, it lived too long; for three thousand years it continued to prevail. That simply shows the stupidity of humanity. Otherwise the moment an enlightened person leaves the world, his concept of God will also disappear. If we have learned anything from the enlightened person, we will go ahead, further ahead. We will stand on the shoulders of the enlightened person and we will be able to look further ahead than him. We will create better visions of God, beautiful visions of God. We will come closer and closer to the truth.

And remember, one can ONLY come closer and closer to the truth. The moment you come absolutely to the truth, you disappear. Then only truth is.

Nietzsche says, "God is dead." I say: I am dead and God is alive, VERY alive.

That's what happens if you go on meditating: one day suddenly you find you are not, only God is.

The fifth question:

Question 4:

Wolfgang,

YOU are suffering from the ancient German disease, will to live, will to power, will and will and will.

You have fallen in wrong company here. Either escape or we are going to de-Germanize you, because here the message is surrender, not will.

Listening to me, you must have been misunderstanding. I am not teaching will to live. Will to live is already there, otherwise how would you be living? Wolfgang, you are alive! That's enough proof that the will to live is there. If the will to live leaves you, you will not breathe even a single breath more.

Who will breathe? For what? If the will to live leaves, your breath will leave you immediately. You are still breathing; the will to live is there. The will to live is not something to be learned, it is inborn.

What has to be learned is will to surrender. That is not inborn, that has to be learned. Will to live is a natural phenomenon, instinctive. Will to die is not instinctive; one has to learn it with great effort.

It needs tremendous courage to learn it, even to think of it.

Sannyas is will to die, so that God can live, so that you disappear, so that you are no more a hindrance, so that you are no more a rock in His way.

But you must be misunderstanding me. I am saying one thing, you are hearing something else. The German screen must be misinterpreting.

A fat man was seated on his front steps drinking a can of beer, when a busybody spinster from down the street began to berate him for his appearance.

"What a disgusting sight!" she said. "If that belly was on a woman, I'd swear she was pregnant!"

To which the man simply smiled and replied, "Madam it was and she is."

It is always possible to understand things in your own way. Words are very flexible. Words don't have any fixed meaning; they cannot have. The meaning is always provided by you.

When I say something, the moment it reaches you it changes its color. You immediately dye it in your own color.

But one thing I must make you aware of is that if you want to learn will to live, you are in a wrong place. Here, I am teaching how to die - although one who is ready to die attains to life eternal, but that is another matter. That is something which happens as a consequence and cannot be used as a motive. You ARE in a wrong place.

The bank robbers arrived just before closing time and promptly ordered the few remaining depositors, tellers, clerks, and guards to disrobe and lie face down behind the counter. One nervous blonde pulled off her clothes and lay down on the floor, facing upward.

"Turn over, Maybelle," whispered the girl lying beside her. "This is a stick-up, not an office party!"

You have to be aware of where you are. You are not listening to Friedrich Nietzsche - will to power.

And you are not listening to Adolf Hitler either! You are in a totally different dimension.

I teach you how to die, because that is the only way that one attains to eternal life. When the seed dies in the soil, the sprout arrives. And when the drop disappears in the ocean, it becomes the ocean.

I teach you crucifixion, because resurrection follows; it inevitably follows. I cannot promise anything, because if you crucify yourself with the motive that you will be resurrected, then it will not happen.

One has to be unmotivated in the world of religion. One has to move for the sheer joy of it and for nothing else. One has not to be result-oriented, and that is the most difficult thing for the modern mind to do: not to be result-oriented. Whatsoever we do, we always do it for something else.

Everything is a means and has to be used for some end. And what I am teaching here is the end in itself; it is not a means to anything else.

Each moment is an end unto itself. Enjoy it, die into it, disappear into it, and then something miraculous happens: great eternal life descends in you. You will be surprised, because that was not your motivation.

I don't talk about what is going to happen, because that can create a disturbance in your mind; you can become too much interested in it. I only talk about what you have to do and I leave the outcome to the future. It will happen, because I know it is bound to happen. I don't tell the seeds, "Die so that you can become trees," because if the seeds are too interested in becoming trees they will not be able to die at all. If the dewdrop is too interested in becoming the ocean, he will become very hesitant, afraid to risk dropping into the ocean... who knows?

I persuade the dewdrop to disappear, because disappearance is a benediction. Disappear, drop yourself into the ocean, because dropping and dying into the ocean is the greatest orgasmic joy IN ITSELF. And if I can persuade the dewdrop to do this, it is going to become the ocean. That will be a surprise, a gift from the unknown.

The sixth question:

Question 5:

Prem Sharda,

IT IS natural, it is expected. The last time you were here, you were here without any expectations.

You were simply here, with no motivation. You enjoyed being in my presence. You were open, available, because you were functioning from a state of not-knowing.

Now, coming back, it is not the same thing. I am the same, the whole situation is the same, but you are not the same: now you are functioning out of a state of knowing. You are expecting things now which you were not expecting the first time.

This happens to almost everybody: the first time you come you are very innocent. My love simply reaches to you, there is no barrier. My compassion overwhelms you. You cannot believe it, it is unbelievable, it is too much. Then you go back with all those memories rambling in your mind: now those memories start becoming desires. Now those memories say to you, "Go back! Much more is going to happen. If the first time it happened so deeply, this time it will happen even more deeply.

The first time you were just an amateur, now you are an adept. So much more is going to happen."

For all these months that you have been away, you have been dreaming, desiring, fantasizing. Now you are here with all these fantasies, desires, expectations - and your eyes are dry, and nothing is happening.

You will have to drop your expectations. You will have to become innocent again. You will have to start functioning from not-knowing again, otherwise you will be unnecessarily creating a hell for yourself. And it will be an absolutely private hell, because others, just sitting by your side, are in heaven.

But don't be worried about it, this is absolutely normal and natural. This happens to everybody, Sharda; at least once, it happens. If you are intelligent then it happens only once, if you are not intelligent then it happens many times. Then each time you go and you come back again, you do the same foolish thing.

l cannot fulfill your expectations, I cannot fulfill your fantasies, I cannot fulfill your desires. I can fulfill you, but not your mind. Now you have brought a big mind with you. It will be difficult and hard to drop it, but there is no other way. You will have to drop it, and the sooner you drop it, the better.

Sharda is a very intellectual woman, very clever, calculating, logical, rational: She functions as a money-therapist in the West. She helps people to get more money, to earn more, to create money, to attract money towards themselves. So you can understand, she has a certain very, very intellectual mind. She is not intuitive. It was a miracle that the first time she was here she fell in love.

Money-therapists are not expected to fall in love! I was also surprised.

Now the money-therapist is back again, and with all the ideas about how to have more - more of those experiences that had happened last time - -how to attract those same spaces again. That is creating trouble for you, Sharda. You have eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and paradise is lost. Please vomit it... just throw it out of your system. When you are here, just be like an innocent child, and not only with me - that is very easy, to be innocent with me - you have to be innocent with the commune too. Put aside your knowledge, put aside all your expertise about money.

The commune also functions through money - it has to function, there is no other way - but the commune moves in a very illogical way. That too creates problems for Sharda. To her expert eye, she cannot believe how things are happening: they can happen better, they can be done more methodologically.

But with me everything always remains a chaos. I love it! I never allow anything to settle, because once things settle people start dying, people start becoming zombies; so nothing is ever settled. I go on separating couples, I go on changing their rooms, their jobs - every possible way to unsettle you!

I never allow a single moment of respite, rest, so that you can say, "Now I have arrived." The moment you say "I have arrived" something is created for you so that you have to gather your luggage again and move.

Sharda's mind is bound to be in great difficulty; I can understand. I don't know anything about money, although money comes. I am not a money-therapist, but whenever money is needed, money comes: somebody simply comes with the money! And this has been so my whole life. I don't have a single rupee - you can see, I don't even have pockets! I have lived for many, many years without money. And I have not lived like a beggar; that is not my way! I live like an emperor, and without money. What Buddha could never manage, I am managing. He was an emperor; then he could not manage to live it, the freedom of a beggar. To live the freedom of a beggar he had to leave his kingdom. Then he lived free, but he had to live like a beggar, begging.

I am living in absolute freedom, and yet I am not living like a beggar. And I don't go outside my room, but things happen. I cannot tell you the secrets; in fact, there are none. I don't know myself - how it goes on. But once you disappear, God takes over. Then it is His responsibility and His worry.

I never worry about anything, and I don't think of anything as my responsibility. If this commune grows, good; if it disappears, very good! It doesn't matter either way.

But I can understand Sharda's mind: she must be feeling in difficulty. She wants to help the commune - good wishes, good intentions! - but then there will be conflict, because this commune is run with no scientific approach towards ANYTHING. It is a totally different approach - paradoxical, illogical, intuitive.

I am trying to get this whole commune to function through the right hemisphere of the brain. And Sharda, you are entrapped in the left hemisphere; that is creating the whole trouble. But now you have come for one year - that too is calculation. I wanted you to come forever. I wanted you to simply bum all the bridges there, but your money-therapist mind... yoU would like to manage both worlds. Who knows? - if you don't like it here you would like to keep the home back there so that you can always go back. You are moving in a rational way.

I wanted you to come back forever. That would have been a great chance for shifting from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere... because every risk throws you towards the intuitive, towards the supra-logical. Every risk is helpful in transforming your being. But you managed, you have come for one year; that is a compromise. One year is a long time, so you have felt contented that at least you are coming for one year. But one year is one year; it will be gone soon. And you know that you have a home there and you can always go back.

You have not yet entered into my boat. You are still keeping your separate boat. Nothing is wrong in keeping it separate, but then be conscious, be alert that you are doing it. Then you are only half-heartedly with me.

And you are no longer young. What is left there in the West? Even young people are here who don't want to go back. For them there is everything in the West; what is there in the East for them? They are young, and the West can supply everything that they would like to enjoy. You have enjoyed your life, you have seen everything there. America is finished for you!

Have a look again, a very dispassionate look at your mind, and you will find what I am saying.

You are still being calculating with me, and then distance remains. You have to be absolutely non- calculating. You have to be like Mukta.

She comes from a very rich family. She is Greek, basically logical, but the day I told her, "Finish things there and come," she said, "Okay." And she FINISHED EVERYTHING and has never looked back. Even when her father was dying, and he was asking again and again for her to come at least to see him, she was not willing. I had to push her to go. I had to simply order her to go, but she was not willing to go. She had completely forgotten, as if that other world had never existed. This is the way to be with me! This is the way to become part of my heart. This is the way to melt in me.

And with no expectation - she has not asked for a single experience. She has not asked for a single thing in all these years she has been here, and she had given everything to the commune!

Only such surrender, such trust, such unmotivated love, can bring the transformation that you long for.

Sharda, your longing is right, but you will have to change your mind. Your mind is wrong; it is expert in things which are hindrances here.

The last question:

Question 6:

Avinash,

IN THE first place, why should you ask that she should be faithful to you? It is from there that doubt arises. The very desire that your wife should be faithful TO YOU is the beginning of doubt. Why?

Who are you that she should be faithful to you? She should be faithful to herself, you should be faithful to yourself.

That's what love is. If you love the woman, you would like her to be faithful to herself, because you would like her to be authentic. You would like her to be an individual in her own right. Why should you demand that she should be faithful to you? Who are you? - just a stranger. YOU need not be faithful to her, you have to be faithful to yourself.

This is my basic approach; it has to be understood well. Down the ages it has been said: be faithful to your husband, be faithful to your wife, be faithful to this and that. Nobody has told you: be faithful just to yourself. And that's exactly what my message is: be faithful to yourself. Then doubt disappears.

Doubt is not good, but doubt is a by-product of a desire, a wrong desire - that she should be faithful to you. And how can you except anybody to be faithful to you? In that very expectation, you are asking something so unnatural that doubt will arise. Who knows? - she may come across a beautiful man, far more beautiful than you are. And you know there are men who are far more beautiful. Fear, doubt, are bound to be there. Who knows? she may be getting fed-up with you!

In fact there is every possibility that you yourself are fed-up with yourself. You know how ugly you are, how ugly your habits are; she must have come to know by now.

In the beginning things are different. When you meet a woman on the beach, just for a few hours things are different. The full moon creates great illusions, and the ocean, and the vibrant air, and the silence, and the night, and the unknown territory... the woman. She is unknown to you, you are unknown to her; both would like to explore each other's geographies. You are tremendously interested, she is, but once you have travelled the geography so many times, the same contours....

You know you are fed-up with your wife, so deep down the doubt arises that she may be fed-up with you.

Don't ask for faithfulness, ask for freedom. Give freedom so that you can have freedom. And if out of freedom you go on loving each other, it is beautiful. Out of freedom everything has beauty. But out of a certain duty, if she even remains faithful to you, it has no value. When she comes across a beautiful man on the road and a longing arises in her heart to know this man, to be with this man, but she knows this is not right - she represses it. She has already gone away, she is no more with you. You may be holding her hand in your hand, but she is no more with you. Her whole being has gone in that moment. She may not ever do anything, but in her fantasy, in her imagination... You cannot control her fantasy, you cannot control her imagination. In her dreams she may be making love to other people. And who makes love to one's own husband in a dream? Have you ever heard of such a foolish woman or a foolish man? Have you ever made love to your own wife? - one always makes love to other people's wives in dreams.

In dreams you are free and private. The magistrate is not there, the policeman is not there, the wife is not there, nobody is there. You are again free. So just on the surface you can fulfill formalities.

The doubt is arising because you have a wrong expectation in the first place. I cannot help you to drop the doubt unless you drop the desire that your wife should be faithful to you. Drop the desire that your wife should be faithful to you. Drop that, and then if you can create the doubt, it will be a miracle. Then how can doubt arise?

We never go to the very root of problems, we only go on changing the symptoms. My help is available to you only to go to the deep root of the problem, to the very foundation of it. Change it there!

And you say, "I KNOW FOR SURE THAT MY WIFE IS UTTERLY FAITHFUL TO ME."

How can you be so sure? You are just trying to convince yourself by using these words, that "I am sure" - just using great words to hide something! You are not sure. See the cunningness of the mind. You are not sure, hence you are using the word 'sure': "I KNOW FOR SURE THAT MY WIFE IS UTTERLY FAITHFUL TO ME." Just faithfulness won't do? Utterly faithful? Is there some doubt?

Why UTTERLY faithful?

A circle is simply a circle. You cannot say that this is a complete circle, UTTERLY circular. If it is a circle it is a circle! You cannot call it a perfect circle, because if it is not perfect it is not a circle, it must be something else.

Watch, meditate on these words.

"BUT STILL," you say, "I DOUBT. SOMEWHERE DOUBT GOES ON LINGERING."

You doubt your wife? Are you certain about your faithfulness towards her? Maybe that's why the doubt arises. You may be fooling around, if not actually, then in imagination. And then naturally the inference is there that your wife may be fooling around, if not actually, at least in imagination. And the male ego is such that it cannot allow even the wife to fool around in imagination.

The story is told of Mulla Nasruddin, who got married and spent a pleasant honeymoon with his bride. But one day he came to the office with a rather glum expression on his face. When his fellow clerks asked him what was bothering him he said, "Gee, I pulled a terrible boner this morning.

Getting out of bed I, like an absent-minded jackass, laid down a ten rupee note on the table."

The other man consoled him. His wife wouldn't think anything of it, they assured him.

"That isn't what bothers me." he answered. "She gave me three rupees change!"

It may be your own mind. When a beautiful woman passes by, does something happen to you or not? Only in two cases will nothing happen: either you are dead or enlightened - which mean the same! Otherwise something is bound to happen. And then the suspicion: the same must be happening to your woman too, because she is as unenlightened as you are and as alive as you are.

Maybe the doubt is there because you are not loving her as much as she would like you to love her.

And it happens to couples - how can you go on having the same peak of love that was there in the beginning, the honeymoon peak? One has to come down. Sooner or later one has to come down from the hills to the ordinary, mundane life. Sooner or later one has to forget ali poetry, fantasy, romance. And then a fear arises: maybe gave himot loving her as much as I should, I am not taking as much care as I should? Maybe this will become an opportunity for her to move with somebody else?

Look into yourself....

A husband comes home and finds his wife in bed with a man. He is furious and wants to leave at once. The wife pleads, "Give me a moment to explain. This man came to my door an hour ago and asked for something to eat. I gave him a sandwich. I noticed that his shoes were worn out, so I looked in your closet and found a pair that you haven't had on your feet for five years, and I gave him the shoes to put on. Then I saw that his jacket was very tom, so I went back to your closet and found a jacket that you haven't worn for eight years. When he took his old jacket off to put yours on, I saw that his shirt was falling to pieces, so I opened your bureau drawer and gave him a shirt that you haven't worn for the past twelve years. Then as this man was going out of the door he turned to me and asked, "Is there anything else around here that your husband doesn't use?"

Avinash, it is not a question of your wife, it is a question of your own mind. Just look deep down...

have you been with her? For how long have you not been with her? - I don't mean physically, I mean spiritually. For how long have you not seen her face? - just remember; for how long have you not looked into her eyes? Figure it out, and you will be surprised that for years you have taken her for granted, and that may be the cause of your doubt.

Remember, problems are always part of your mind. Go deep into them. In the first place, don't ask that she should be faithful to you; that is violent. Nobody has the right to ask anybody to be faithful towards him. Help her to be faithful towards herself.

And secondly, look inside your own being. Are you still in love with her? If you are, then the doubt is not possible. The doubt simply reflects that your love has disappeared. Life has become a drag; you have started taking her for granted. Love is no more there. Now it is only a hangover, hence the doubt. Bring the love back, bring the poetry back, bring the romance back.

And those who are intelligent, they can bring it back every day. Every morning they can look at the wife, at the husband, with fresh eyes.

Go on dying to the past experiences, so that you can remain available to the present, fresh, young, utterly intelligent, and then life has a totally different flavor. Then these stupid things don't arise in the mind at all.