The Path of Intelligence

The first question:

Question 1:

Enlightenment is always through surrender, but surrender is achieved through intelligence.

Only idiots cannot surrender. To surrender you need great intelligence. To see the point of surrender is the climax of insight; to see the point that you are not separate from existence is the highest that intelligence can give to you.

There is no conflict between intelligence and surrender. Surrender is through intelligence, although when you surrender intelligence is also surrendered. Through surrender intellect commits a suicide. Seeing the futility of itself, seeing the absurdity of itself, seeing the anguish that it creates, it disappears. But it happens through intelligence. And especially in concern with Buddha, the path is of intelligence. The very word buddha means awakened intelligence.

In the Heart Sutra one-fourth of the words used mean intelligence. The word buddha means awake, bodhi means awakening, sambodhi means perfect awakening, abhisambuddha means the fully awake, bodhisattva means ready to become fully awake. All go back to the same root, budh, which means intelligence. The word buddhi, intellect, also comes from the same root. The root budh has many dimensions to it. There is no single English word that can translate it; it has many implications. It is very fluid and poetic. In no other language does any word like budh exist, with so many meanings. There are at least five meanings to the word budh.

The first is to awake, to wake oneself up, and to awaken others, to be awake. As such, it is opposed to being asleep, in the slumber of delusion from which the enlightened awakens as from a dream. That is the first meaning of intelligence, budh - to create an awakening in you.

Ordinarily man is asleep. Even while you think you are awake, you are not. Walking on the road, you are fully awake - in your mind. But looked at from the vision of a Buddha, you are fast asleep, because a thousand and one dreams and thoughts are clamoring inside you.

Your inner light is very clouded. It is a kind of sleep. Yes, your eyes are open, obviously, but people can walk in a dream, in sleep, with eyes open. And Buddha says: You are also walking in sleep - with eyes open.

But your inner eye is not open. You don't know yet who you are. You have not looked into your own reality. You are not awake. A mind full of thoughts is not awake, cannot be awake.

Only a mind which has dropped thoughts and thinking, which has dispersed the clouds around it - and the sun is burning bright, and the sky is utterly empty of clouds - is the mind which has intelligence, which is awake.

Intelligence is the capacity to be in the present. The more you are in the past or are in the future, the less intelligent you are. Intelligence is the capacity to be here-now, to be in this moment and nowhere else. Then you are awake.

For example, you are sitting in a house and the house suddenly catches fire; your life is in danger. Then for a moment you will be awake. In that moment you will not think many thoughts. In that moment you forget your whole past. In that moment you will not be clamored at by your psychological memories - that you had loved a woman thirty years before, and boy, it was fantastic! Or, the other day you had been to the Chinese restaurant, and still the taste lingers on, and the aroma and the smell of the freshly cooked bread. You will not be in those thoughts. No, when your house is on fire you cannot afford this kind of thinking. Suddenly you will rush to this moment: the house is on fire and your life is at stake. You will not dream about the future, about what you are going to do tomorrow. Tomorrow is no longer relevant, yesterday is no longer relevant, even today is no longer relevant! - only this moment, this split moment. That is the first meaning of budh, intelligence.

And then there are great insights. A man who wants to be really awake, wants to be really a Buddha, has to live each moment in such intensity - as you live only rarely, rarely, in some danger.

The first meaning is opposite to sleep. And naturally, you can see reality only when you are not asleep. You can face it, you can look into the eyes of truth - or call it God - only when you are awake. Do you understand the point of intensity, the point of being on fire?

Utterly awake, there is insight. That insight brings freedom, that insight brings truth.

The second meaning of budh is to recognize - as to become aware of, acquainted with, to notice, give heed to. And so a Buddha is one who has recognized the false as the false, and has his eyes opened to the true as the true. To see the false as the false is the beginning of understanding what truth is. Only when you see the false as the false can you see what truth is.

You cannot go on living in illusions, you cannot go on living in your beliefs, you cannot go on living in your prejudices if you want to know truth. The false has to be recognized as false.

That is the second meaning of budh - recognition of the false as false, of the untrue as untrue.

For example, you have believed in God; you were born a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. You have been taught that God exists, you have been made afraid of God - that if you don't believe you will suffer, that you will be punished, that God is very ferocious, that God will never forgive you. The Jewish God says, "I am a very jealous God. Worship only me and nobody else!" The Mohammedan God also says the same thing: "There is only one God, and no other God; and there is only one prophet of God - Mohammed - and there is no other prophet."

This conditioning can go so deep in you that it can go on lingering even if you start disbelieving in God.

Just the other day Mulla Nasruddin was here, and I asked him, "Mulla Nasruddin, since you have turned into a communist, you have become a comrade, what about God?"

He said, "There is no God! - and Mohammed is the only prophet."

A conditioning can go so deep: Mohammed remains the prophet.

You have been brought up to believe in God, and you have believed. This is a belief.

Whether God exists or not has nothing to do with your belief. Truth has nothing to do with your belief. Whether you believe or not makes no difference to truth. But if you believe in God you will go on seeing - at least, thinking - that you see God. If you don't believe in God, that disbelief in God will prevent you from knowing. All beliefs prevent, because they become prejudices around you, they become thought-coverings - what Buddha calls avarnas.

The man of intelligence does not believe in anything, and does not disbelieve in anything.

The man of intelligence is simply open to recognizing whatsoever is the case. If God is there he will recognize - but not according to his belief; he has no belief. Only in a nonbelieving intelligence can truth appear. When you already believe you don't allow truth any space to come to you. Your prejudice is enthroned, already enthroned. You cannot see something which goes against your belief; you will become afraid, you will become shaky, you will start trembling. You have put so much in your belief - so much life, so much time, so many prayers, five prayers every day. For fifty years a man has been devoted to his belief; now suddenly how can he recognize the fact that there is no God? A man has put his whole life into communism, believing that there is no God; how can he come to see if God is there? He will go on avoiding.

I'm not saying anything about whether God is or is not. What I am saying is something concerned with you, not with God. A mind, a clear mind, is needed, an intelligence is needed which does not cling to any belief. Then you are like a mirror: you reflect that which is, you don't distort it. That is the second meaning of budh.

An intelligent person is neither a communist nor a Catholic. An intelligent person does not believe, does not disbelieve. That is not his way. He looks into life, and whatsoever is there he is ready to see it. He has no barriers to his vision; his vision is transparent. Only those few people attain to truth.

The third meaning of the root budh, intelligence, is to know, to understand. The Buddha knows that which is; he understands that which is, and in that very understanding is free from all bondage - to know in the sense of to understand, not in the sense of knowledgeability.

Buddha is not knowledgeable. An intelligent person does not care much about information and knowledge. An intelligent person cares much more for the capacity to know. His real authentic interest is in knowing, not in knowledge.

Knowing gives you understanding; knowledge only gives you a feeling of understanding without giving you real understanding. Knowledge is a pseudo-coin, it is deceptive. It only gives you a feeling that you know, and you don't know at all. You can go on accumulating knowledge as much as you want, you can go on hoarding, you can become very, very knowledgeable. You can write books, you can have degrees, you can have PhD's, DLitt's, and still you remain the same ignorant, stupid person you have always been. Those degrees don't change you; they can't change you. In fact your stupidity becomes more strong... it has degrees now! It can prove itself through certificates. It cannot prove through life, but it can prove through the certificates. It cannot prove in any other way, but it will carry degrees, certificates, recognitions from the society; people think you know, and you also think you know.

Have you not seen this? The people who are thought to be very knowledgeable are as ignorant as anybody, sometimes more ignorant. It is very rare to find intelligent people in the academic world, very rare. I have been in the academic world, and I say it through my experience. I have seen intelligent farmers, I have not seen intelligent professors. I have seen intelligent woodcutters, I have not seen intelligent professors. Why? What has gone wrong with these people?

One thing has gone wrong: they can depend on knowledge. They need not become knowers, they can depend on knowledge. They have found a secondhand way. The firsthand needs courage. The firsthand, knowing, only few people can afford - the adventurers, people who go beyond the ordinary path where crowds move, people who take small footpaths into the jungle of the unknowable. The danger is they may get lost. The risk is high.

When you can get secondhand knowledge, why bother? You can just sit in your chair. You can go to the library or to the university, you can collect information. You can make a big pile of information and sit on top of it. Through knowledge your memory becomes bigger and bigger, but your intelligence does not become bigger. Sometimes it happens when you don't know much, when you are not very knowledgeable, that you will have to be intelligent in some moments.

I have heard...

A woman bought a tin of fruit but she could not open the tin. She did not know how to open it. So she rushed to her study to look in the cookbook. By the time she looked in the book and found out the page and reference, and came rushing back ready to open the tin, the servant had already opened it.

She asked, "But how did you do it?"

The servant said, "Madam, when you can't read, you have to use your mind."

Yes, that's how it happens. That's why farmers, gardeners, woodcutters, are more intelligent, have a kind of freshness around them. They can't read, so they have to use their minds. One has to live and one has to use one's mind.

The third meaning of budh is to know, in the sense of understanding.

The Buddha has seen that which is. He understands that which is, and in that very understanding is free from all bondage. What does it mean? It means you are afraid.

For example, these Heart Sutra talks are making many people feel fear. Many people have sent their messages: "Osho, no more! You make us afraid of nothingness and death." Prageet is very afraid. Vidya is very afraid, and many more. Why? You don't want to get rid of fear? If you want to get rid of fear you will have to understand fear. You want to avoid the fact that the fear is there, the fear of death is there.

Now Prageet, on the surface, looks a strong man - a Rolfer - but deep down he's very much afraid of death; he is one of the most afraid persons around here. Maybe that's why on the surface he has taken the stance of strength, power, a bully. That's what a Rolfer is!

I have heard that recently the devil in hell is appointing Rolfers: they torture people for their own sakes, and they torture very technically.

If you are afraid inside, you will have to create something strong around you, like a hard shell, so nobody comes to know that you are afraid. And that is not the only point - you also will not know that you are afraid because of that hard shell. It will protect you from others, it will protect you from your own understanding.

An intelligent person does not escape from any fact. If it is fear he will go into it - because the way out is through. If he feels fear and trembling arising in him, he will leave everything aside: first this fear has to be gone through. He will go into it, he will try to understand. He will not try how not to be afraid; he will not ask that question. He will simply ask one question: "What is this fear? It is there, it is part of me, it is my reality. I have to go into it, I have to understand it. If I don't understand it then a part of me will always remain unknown to me. And how am I going to know who I am if I go on avoiding parts? I will not understand fear, I will not understand death, I will not understand anger, I will not understand my hatred, I will not understand my jealousy, I will not understand this and that..." Then how are you going to know yourself?

All these things are you! This is your being. You have to go into everything that is there, every nook and corner. You have to explore fear. Even if you are trembling it is nothing to be worried about: tremble, but go in. It is far better to tremble than to escape, because once you escape, that part will remain unknown to you, and you will become more and more afraid to look at it because that fear will go on accumulating. It will become bigger and bigger if you don't go into it right now, this moment. Tomorrow it will have lived twenty-four hours more.

Beware! - it will have got more roots in you, it will have bigger foliage, it will become stronger; and then it will be more difficult to tackle. It is better to go right now, it is already late.

And if you go into it and you see it... And seeing means without prejudice. Seeing means that you don't condemn fear as bad from the very beginning. Who knows? - it is not bad.

Who knows that it is? The explorer has to remain open to all the possibilities; he cannot afford a closed mind. A closed mind and exploration don't go together. He will go into it. If it brings suffering and pain, he will suffer the pain but he will go into it. Trembling, hesitant, but he will go into it: "It is my territory, I have to know what it is. Maybe it is carrying some treasure for me? Maybe the fear is only there to protect the treasure."

That's my experience, that's my understanding: if you go deep into your fear you will find love. That's why it happens that when you are in love, fear disappears. And when you are afraid you cannot be in love. What does this mean? A simple arithmetic - fear and love don't exist together. That means it must be the same energy that becomes fear; then there is nothing left to become love. It becomes love; then there is nothing left to become fear.

Go into fear, Prageet, Vidya, and all others who are feeling afraid. Go into it, and you will find a great treasure. Hidden behind fear is love, and hidden behind anger is compassion, and hidden behind sex is samadhi.

Go into each negative thing and you will find the positive. And knowing the negative and the positive, the third, the ultimate happens - the transcendental. That is the meaning of understanding, budh, intelligence.

And the fourth meaning is to be enlightened and to enlighten. The Buddha is the light, he has become the light. And since he's the light and he has become the light, he shows the light to others too, naturally, obviously. He is illumination. His darkness has disappeared, his inner flame is burning bright. Smokeless is his flame. This meaning is opposite to darkness and the corresponding blindness and ignorance. This is the fourth meaning: to become light, to become enlightened.

Ordinarily you are a darkness, a continent of darkness, a dark continent, unexplored. Man is a little strange: he goes on exploring the Himalayas, he goes on exploring the Pacific, he goes on reaching for the moon and Mars; there is just one thing he never tries - exploring his inner being. Man has landed on the moon, and man has not landed yet in his own being. This is strange. Maybe landing on the moon is just an escape, going to Everest is just an escape.

Maybe he does not want to go inside, because he's very much afraid. He substitutes with some other explorations to feel good, otherwise you will have to feel very, very guilty. You start climbing a mountain and you feel good, and the greatest mountain is within you and is yet unclimbed. You start going, diving deep into the Pacific, and the greatest Pacific is within you, and uncharted, unmapped. And you start going to the moon - what foolishness! And you are wasting your energy in going to the moon, and the real moon is within you - because the real light is within you.

The intelligent person will go inwards first. Before going anywhere else he will go into his own being; that is the first thing, and it should have the first preference. Only when you have known yourself can you go anywhere else. Then wherever you go you will carry a blissfulness around you, a peace, a silence, a celebration.

So the fourth meaning is to be enlightened.

Intelligence is the spark. Helped, cooperated with, it can become the fire, and the light, and the warmth. It can become light, it can become life, it can become love: those are all included in the word enlightenment. An enlightened person has no dark corners in his being. All is like the morning - the sun is on the horizon; the darkness of the night and the dismalness of the night have disappeared, and the shadows of the night have disappeared. The earth is again awake. To be a Buddha is to attain to a morning, a dawn within you. That is the function of intelligence, the ultimate function.

And the fifth meaning of budh is to fathom. A depth is there in you, a bottomless depth, which has to be fathomed. Or, the fifth meaning can be to penetrate, to drop all that obstructs and penetrate to the very core of your being, the heart. That's why this sutra is called the Heart Sutra - Prajnaparamita Hridayam Sutra - to penetrate.

People try to penetrate many things in life. Your urge, your great desire for sex is nothing but a kind of penetration. But that is a penetration into the other. The same penetration has to happen into your own being: you have to penetrate yourself. If you penetrate somebody else it can give you a momentary glimpse, but if you penetrate yourself you can attain to the universal cosmic orgasm that remains and remains and remains.

A man meets an outer woman, and a woman meets an outer man: this is a very superficial meeting - yet meaningful, yet it brings moments of joy. When the inner woman meets the inner man... And you are carrying both inside you: a part of you is feminine, a part of you is masculine. Whether you are man or woman does not matter; everybody is bisexual.

The fifth meaning of the root budh means penetration. When your inner man penetrates your inner woman there is a meeting; you become whole, you become one. And then all desires for the outer disappear. In that desirelessness is freedom, is nirvana.

The path of Buddha is the path of budh. Remember that 'Buddha' is not the name of Gautama the Buddha, Buddha is the state that he has attained. His name was Gautam Siddhartha. Then one day he became Buddha, one day his bodhi, his intelligence bloomed.

'Buddha' means exactly what 'Christ' means. Jesus' name is not Christ: that is the ultimate flowering that happened to him. So is it with Buddha. There have been many Buddhas other than Gautam Siddartha.

Everybody has the capacity for budh. But budh, that capacity to see, is just like a seed in you - if it sprouts, becomes a big tree, blooms, starts dancing in the sky, starts whispering to the stars, you are a Buddha.

The path of Buddha is the path of intelligence. It is not an emotional path, no, not at all.

Not that emotional people cannot reach; there are other paths for them - the path of devotion, Bhakti Yoga. Buddha's path is pure Gyan Yoga, the path of knowing. Buddha's path is the path of meditation, not of love.

And just like budh, there is another root, gya, at the basis of gyanam. Gyanam means cognition, knowing. And the word prajna, which means wisdom - prajnaparamita - the wisdom of the beyond, or sangya, which means perception, sensitivity, or vigyanam which means consciousness - these roots come from gya. Gya means to know.

You will find these words repeated so many times in the sutra - not only in this sutra, but in all the sutras of the Buddha. You will find a few more words, repeated very often, and those words are ved - ved means to know; from ved comes the Hindu word veda - or man, which means mind; manan which means minding; or chit, which means consciousness; chaitanya, which again means consciousness. These words are almost like paving stones on the Buddha Way. His path is that of intelligence.

One thing more to be remembered: the sutra, it is true, points to something that lies far beyond the intellect. But the way to get to that is to follow the intellect as far as it will take you.

The intellect has to be used, not discarded; has to be transcended, not discarded. And it can be transcended only when you have reached to the uppermost rung of the ladder. You have to go on growing in intelligence. Then a moment comes when intelligence has done all that it can do. In that moment say goodbye to intelligence. It has helped you a long way, it has brought you long enough, it has been a good vehicle. It has been a boat you crossed with: you have reached the other shore, then you leave the boat. Then you don't carry the boat on your head; that would be foolish.

The Buddha's path goes through intelligence but goes beyond it. A moment comes when intelligence has given you all that it can give, then it is no longer needed. Then finally you drop it too, its work is finished. The disease is gone, now that medicine has to go too. And when you are free of the disease and the medicine too, then only are you free. Sometimes it happens that the disease is gone, and now you have become addicted to the medicine. This is not freedom.

A thorn is in your foot and is hurting. You take another thorn so that the thorn in your foot can be taken out with the help of the other. When you have taken the thorn out you throw both; you don't save the one that has been helpful. It is now meaningless. The work of intelligence is to help you to become aware of your being. Once that work has happened and your being is there, now there is no need for this instrument. You can say goodbye, you can say thank you.

Buddha's path is the path of intelligence, pure intelligence, although it goes beyond it.

The second question:

Question 2:

You need not go through hell because you are already there. Where else will you find hell?

This is your ordinary state - hell. Don't think that hell is somewhere deep down below the earth. Hell is you. You, unaware, is what hell is. You, functioning unintelligently: that's what hell is. And because so many people are functioning unintelligently the world is always in anguish - so many neurotic people on the earth. And unless you are enlightened you remain neurotic, more or less. So many destructive people - because creativity is possible only when your intelligence is awakened.

Creativity is a function of intelligence. Stupid people can only be destructive. And that's what goes on: people go on preparing for more and more destruction. That's what your scientists do, that's what your politicians do.

I have heard a beautiful story:

After the second world war, God was very puzzled. He could not believe his own eyes.

Seeing Hiroshima, Nagasaki - he could not believe that he had created this kind of man. He started to think again, as if he had committed a mistake: he should have stopped with animals, he should not have created Adam and Eve - because man was becoming so destructive.

To give a last chance he called three representatives from the world, one Russian, one American, one English. Those were the powerful people after the second world war. He asked the Russian, "Why do you go on preparing for more and more destruction? If you need something, you just ask me and I will fulfill it immediately. But no more destruction."

The Russian looked very arrogantly at God and said, "Listen, first we don't believe that you are! We have our own trinity - Marx, Lenin, Stalin" - a very unholy trinity, but communists have that trinity. "We believe in them, we don't believe in you. But if you want us to believe in you, you will have to give us proof."

"What is the proof?" God asked.

And the Russian said, "You destroy America, you destroy it absolutely! Not a trace of this disease called America should be left behind. Then we will worship you, then our churches will start praying again, our temples will open. We will make new shrines for you."

God was very shocked... the very idea of destroying the whole of America!

Seeing Him silent, the Russian said, "And if you cannot do it, don't be worried. We are going to do it anyway. It will take a little longer for us, but we are going to do it! You don't need to look so sad. If you cannot do it, just say you cannot do it."

God looked at the American and said, "What's your desire? What do you want?"

He said, "Nothing much, a very simple desire - that there should be no place for Russia on the map. We don't want to see the U.S.S.R. on the map. Not much, just remove... Everything is okay; it is just this U.S.S.R. that hurts. It hurts very much, it drives us crazy, and we will do anything to remove it. And if you don't do anything, with your blessings we are going to do it!"

Now God was even more puzzled and confused. It was okay from the Russian representative, because they don't believe in God. It's okay. But America? America believes in God, so there seems to be no difference between the believer and the nonbeliever, between the capitalist and the communist, between the dictatorial and the democratic. There seems to be no essential difference, their desire is the same. He was thinking the English representative might be more human, understanding; at least he would be gentlemanly - and he was!

God asked him, "What is your desire? What do you want?"

The Englishman said, "We don't have any desire. Fulfill the desires of both of these simultaneously, and our desire is fulfilled!"

But this is how man has existed, down the ages: much more interested in destruction, destroying the other, than in living oneself, than in enjoying life. Man seems to be death-obsessed: wherever man moves he brings death, destruction.

This neurotic society exists because individuals are neurotic. This world is ugly because you are ugly! You contribute your ugliness to this world. And everybody goes on pooling ugliness, neuroses, and the world becomes more and more a hell. You need not go anywhere else; this is the only hell there is.

But you can come out of it. By understanding how your mind is helping to create this hell, you can withdraw. And a single person withdrawing himself from creating this hell, noncooperating, rebellious, becomes a great source of bringing heaven on the earth, becomes a gateway.

You need not go to hell, you are already there. You need to go to heaven now.

And in fact when I say you need to go to heaven, what I mean exactly is that heaven needs to come to you. You be open to heaven. Let all your destructive energies be offered to creativity, let your darkness become a light, let your awareness become meditative, and you will become a door to God, and God can come through you into the world again.

That is the meaning of the Christian parable that Jesus is born to a woman, Mary, who is a virgin. This is a parable - significant, it has great meaning in it. But foolish people try to say that she was really a virgin physically. That is nonsense. But she was virgin: she was pure, utterly pure. She was heaven on the earth - only then could Jesus enter through her, only then could God extend his hand into the world.

You become a vehicle: let God play some instrument through you - a veena, a sitar. Let God play a song through you; you become his flute, a hollow bamboo. And that's what I have been telling you all these days: if you become a nothingness, you will be a hollow bamboo.

And you can become a flute, and God's song can descend unto the earth. It is needed very much. Even if a little health is possible through you in this mad world... It is needed very much, it is needed urgently.

The third question:

Question 3:

Madam, I don't believe you.

You don't know enough about yourself. I appreciate your love for me, but I cannot say that you would be able to recognize me.

I will tell you one real story.

I used to stay with a family in a certain city in India for many years - a very rich family, millionaires. He was very respectful to me, he was a follower. When I used to go to his town he would touch my feet as many times as possible - at least four, five times every day.

Then after seven, eight years, he wanted to come to visit the place where I used to stay in Jabalpur. He came. Just to puzzle him, just to confuse him, I went to receive him at the station. That he had not expected - that I would come to receive him at the station.

He used to fall at my feet. That day he touched my feet, but halfheartedly - because a great ego arose in him: that I have come to receive him. He used to come to receive me for seven years and each year at least three or four times I used to visit his town. He had not expected this. He had expected that somebody would be there to take him to me. But that I myself would come to receive him? - that was not even in his dreams. He must have argued inside:

"I am somebody, a millionaire..." That day he bowed down, but very halfheartedly. How can you bow down to somebody who has come to receive you at the station, with great respect?

We left the station, and when he saw that I was going to drive him back home, then all his respect disappeared. Then he started talking like a friend. The millionaire became very 'famillionaire'! And after three days, when he left - I had gone to say goodbye, to give him a send-off - he did not touch my feet.

And the family that I used to live with all knew that I was playing a joke on him, and the poor fellow had got hooked in it. They all laughed when the train left. I said "You wait. Next time, let him come - he will expect me to touch his feet. And it will be no wonder if he forces me to touch his feet."

That's how things go, that's how mind functions. You recognize me, you love me, but you don't know your own mind. And in that experiment I lost one of my millionaire followers. I have been losing many followers that way, but I go on experimenting.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Then don't surrender. Why unnecessarily create trouble for yourself? Who is telling you to surrender to a man in the first place? Don't surrender. Why do you start taking unnecessary troubles on your head? If you don't feel like surrendering, don't surrender.

Just the other day a woman asked me, wrote a letter saying, "I have come here, but I don't feel that this place is for me. What should I do?"

Go away! Get lost! Why bother?

And she also has asked, "Should I listen to my heart, or should I trust you?"

Listen to your heart, lady, and get lost as fast as you can. How can you trust me against your heart? Who will trust me? The heart trusts! If the heart is against, who is going to trust me? And why are you creating such a division in yourself? You will go schizophrenic - one part trying to surrender and forcing, and another part wanting to go. Either be here totally or go. If you can't surrender, don't surrender. Nobody is interested in your surrender.

And surrender cannot be done, you cannot force it. It comes when it comes. If you can't surrender to a man, that means you can't love a man. Out of love surrender comes naturally. If there is no love, surrender cannot be managed. Forget about it!

Maybe the questioner is a lesbian: perfectly good, surrender to a woman! At least surrender to somebody that you can surrender to. Maybe through that surrender you will learn to surrender to a man too. That's how one learns.

Each child is auto-sexual when born: he loves only himself, he cannot love anybody else.

Then the child becomes homosexual: he loves somebody like him, he cannot love the opposite. Then, still growing, he becomes heterosexual: now he can love the opposite. That's what Jesus says: "Love your enemy" - enemy means the woman. Enemy means the opposite; that is the highest in love. Then a moment comes when sex disappears, the person becomes asexual. But that is the highest point, and it can be reached only through these stages. Maybe the questioner is hooked somewhere in homosexuality. Nothing is wrong. Wherever you are, in whatsoever stage you are, be loving, be surrendering. Out of that stage the other stage will come, will grow on its own accord. Don't force it.

I am not here to make you feel guilty, I am not here to create any kind of rift in your being.

I'm all for relaxation, because only through relaxation will you come to know who you are. So whatsoever is easy, go into it. Don't be a masochist and don't try to create troubles for yourself. Move happily, in a relaxed way. And whatsoever is easy for you right now, go on doing it. Through it something better will happen, but only through it. You cannot suddenly jump out of it.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

That is the point: otherwise, how will you transcend? The universe is needed to transcend.

The misery is needed to transcend, the darkness is needed to transcend, the ego is needed to transcend - because only when you transcend there is joy, benediction.

I understand your question. It is a very ancient question, asked again and again and again - because it puzzles the mind. If God has created the world, then why has he created misery in it? He could have given you bliss as a gift. Then why has he created ignorance? Is he not potent enough to create enlightened beings from the very beginning?

He is, and that's what he is doing. But even God is not potent enough to make impossibles happen. Only the possible is possible. You can only know what health is when you are capable of being ill; otherwise you cannot know it. You can only know light when you know what darkness is. You can know relaxation only when you know what tension is, you can know freedom only when you know what bondage is - they go in pairs. Even God is not potent enough to give you simple freedom. With freedom, in the same package, comes bondage. And you have to go through bondage to have the taste of freedom. It is just like if you are not hungry, you cannot enjoy food.

What you are asking is: "What is the need for hunger? Why can we not go on eating without hunger?" Hunger creates the pain, hunger creates the need, and then you eat and there is joy. Without hunger there will be no joy. You can ask the very, very rich people who have lost their hunger: they don't enjoy their food, they cannot. It is the intensity of hunger that brings joy. That's why once you have eaten, for six, seven, eight hours you have to fast to enjoy food again.

Existence is dialectical: darkness/light, life/death, summer/winter, youth/old age - they all go together.

You ask: "What is the point of the physical universe if men's destiny is ultimately to transcend it?"

Precisely, that is the point. The universe is created for you to transcend. Otherwise, you will never know what transcendence is. You can remain blissful, but you will not know what bliss is. And to remain blissful without knowing what bliss is, is not worth it. And the knowing is possible only through the opposite - that's why.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

Anurag, you seem to be an est-hole. Blah, blah, blah...

The seventh question:

Question 7:

Because tomorrow you may not be. The next moment you may not be. And sannyas is nothing but a vision of living this moment utterly, totally, absolutely.

Sannyas simply means that you will not postpone life anymore. Sannyas simply means that you will not live in dreams anymore, that you will take hold of this moment and squeeze the whole juice out of it right now. That's what sannyas is: it is a way of intense living, of sensitive living.

And remember, life is very accidental. One never knows.

Listen to this story.

A salesman came home unexpectedly one day, and the first words he said when he came in the door were, "Where is he? I know he is here! I can feel it in my bones!"

His wife, who was cleaning the dishes at the time said, "Who are you looking for?"

Salesman: "Don't give me that. You know who I am looking for, and I will find him!"

He looked in the closet, under the bed, and in the attic. He happened to glance out of the second floor apartment window and saw a young light-haired man get into a red convertible.

"There he is!" he said, and grabbed the refrigerator and rolled it to the window and pushed it out. He crushed the fellow in the car and died of a heart attack himself.

Saint Peter: "What happened to you, young man?"

Young man: "I got crushed to death by a fridge."

Saint Peter: "And you?"

Salesman: "While pushing a fridge through a window I died of a heart attack."

Saint Peter to the third man: "What did you die of?"

Third man: "Well, I was sitting in this fridge, minding my own business, and..."

Life is very accidental. One never knows from where the fridge will come. Somebody may be sitting in it, minding his own business... That's why I say become a sannyasin: this is the only moment to live, and there is no other moment.

Enough for today.