Chapter 24

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only.]

Q: WHY THOUSANDS OF DEAD RELIGIONS HAVE WEAK PREMISES, ETC.

PLEASE COMMENT.

A: It is not a tragedy. It is something of a fundamental, existential truth. The living Buddha is always going to be homeless, for the simple reason that it is very difficult to accept a contemporary human being as someone who is awakened. It goes against your ego, that you are asleep, and somebody else is awakened. It hurts you. Hence the living, awakened person is always condemned, poisoned, crucified.

But when he is dead, then things change completely. You can worship a dead Buddha, because he is not your contemporary. He is not your competitor. You can give him qualities which he never possessed. You can make him a god, which he never was. Now it is in your hands, whatever you want to make out of it. And then it is easy to worship him.

The dead is acceptable. The living is dangerous; because the dead in your hands can be changed according to your expectations, but not the living. With the living the situation is just the opposite. You are in his hands; he will change you. The dead cannot change you. You can change the dead. You are powerful over the dead saints, but over the living you have no power. Naturally you love your power.

When Gautam Buddha was alive, dozens of attempts were made on his life. And finally he died with food poisoning. He was condemned as much that you may not believe. He was passing through a village, the whole village gathered together; they abused him. They said ugly things, they used vulgar words. And he remained silent, listening to them. His disciples were getting furious; but because the master was present, they had to remain silent.

When the people of the village had ended insulting him, he asked them politely, lovingly, compassionately, "Have you said everything that you wanted to say, because I have to reach the other village. People must be waiting there, and I don't want anybody to be waiting for me unnecessarily. If you have to say something more, I will be coming back again from the same route, and I will have enough time for you. Then you can say whatsoever you want to say.

One of the men from the crowd said, "We were not saying things. We were condemning you. We were insulting you. We were abusing you."

Buddha said, "That is what you were doing on your part. But you have forgotten one thing. That I am not taking it at all. In the other village before your village, people had come with sweets and flowers to present to me, and I said, `I don't need.' They had to take them back. I ask you, what they will do with those sweets and flowers?"

Somebody in the crowd said, "Of course they will distribute in the village."

Buddha laughed and said, "What you will do? I refuse to take all your abuses.

Now go and distribute in the village. Give it to your children, to your parents, or whomsoever you want. Or keep yourself. I refuse to take. And you cannot give me anything which I refuse to take."

A living enlightened being is not in your hands. If you want to be related to him, you have to be in his hands. That needs guts. That needs courage. That needs intelligence. That needs capacity to risk all and everything.

Naturally, the living enlightened being is not worshipped. He is condemned, he is refused, he is not accepted. The same person, when he is dead, creates a great change in your mind. First, because you have condemned him while he was alive, you start feeling guilty. Whatever you have done was ugly, inhuman. To compensate, you start worshipping. You move to the other extreme. You make statues of the same person; but now it is within your hands, what to make of that man.

Do you know the statue of Buddha differs in different countries? In Nepal, it has a different shape, different face. It is Nepalese. In Japan it is certainly different.

The Japanese buddha has a big belly. The Chinese buddha is different. It is exactly like a Chinese, with the cheek bones protruding. The Indian buddha is totally different. And you will be surprised to know that none of these statues have any similarity to the real man, because for three hundred years no statue was made of Buddha. After his death there were no pictures, no cameras, no photographs, no paintings.

After three hundred years Alexander the Great came to India. He was a beautiful man. He impressed the imagination of the Indian artist. And the Buddha carries the face of Alexander the Great. A dead saint is in your hands. Whatever you want to do you can do with him.

You try with living, enlightened beings also to impose your ideas. Those who listen to you are not authentically enlightened, because they are being instructed by the unenlightened; they are following their own followers; they are being dominated by the ignorant. Your so-called saints, respectable, are not truly arrived to truth yet. They have simply fulfilled your expectations. Whatever your idea is how a saint should be, they are behaving in the same way. You will respect them, but they are false.

A real buddha is going to be condemned. He cannot be respectable in his contemporary world, because he will not listen to your suggestions. People go on giving me suggestions. They say to me, "Bhagwan, don't say this, this will create trouble." They don't understand that if I listen to them, then I am not the man to be a master. I will do what I feel spontaneously to do. If it creates trouble, then perhaps existence needs trouble at this moment.

If I have to remain homeless, no harm. Because anyway, every home is just a house. You have only an illusion that it is a home. Many people have lived before you in that house, and are gone. You will be gone soon. Somebody else will be living there -- your children. There is only stable home, that is in the graveyard.

There you go with a one-way ticket; you never return back. That is permanent abode. That is the only home. These homes that you think are your homes are just caravanserais. So when my people ask me, "Bhagwan is it okay if we arrange a hotel for you to stay, I say `Everything is a hotel;' and I have told my secretary, Prem Hasya, just today that Buddha remained without a home for forty two years, walking, moving from one village to another. You arrange one aeroplane for me, so I can go on moving around the world all the year round; no need for a house, no need for a home."

Q: BELOVED BHAGWAN, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR VISITING NEPAL.

QUESTION: YOU ARE THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SPIRITUAL BUSINESSMAN.

WHAT IS THE SECRET OF YOUR SUCCESS?

A: It is a very pertinent question; in the meeting of the top businessmen of Nepal.

First I would like to remind you, I am not a businessman. For the simple reason, I don't have even a bank account anywhere in the world. I don't have even pockets in my robe. I have not touched money for fifteen years. I remained in America for five years, but I have not seen a dollar bill.

How can you call me a businessman? Perhaps you may have heard that I have ninety-three Rolls Royces. In fact, I don't have even a Honda. Those ninety-three Rolls Royces belonged to the commune of the sannyasins in America. Not only they had those, they had three hundred other cars. They had one hundred buses, they had five aeroplanes. It was one of the richest communes that has ever existed in the world. And that's what pushed the American politicians to insanity. They could not tolerate that even their president cannot afford to have ninety-three Rolls Royces. But those Rolls Royces don't belong to me. I am not the owner of those Rolls Royces. I don't own anything; not a single rupee.

Just the other day, few American idiots must be staying in the hotel. When I passed by their side one ugly and fat and retarded woman said to the others, "This is the man who has ninety-three Rolls Royces." Strange, that people are not interested in my teaching, in me, in my way of life. They are interested in the Rolls Royces. It shows their mind.

I have been receiving thousands of letters from people around the world.

Everybody condemning me for having ninety-three Rolls Royces; yet thousands of letters reaching to me that Bhagwan, if you can give one Rolls Royce to me it won't make any difference to you. Ninety-three or ninety-two, what difference it will make to you? But to me it will be my lifelong dream fulfilled. And you will be surprised to know that I received a letter from a Bishop, who was continuously talking against me, and against the Rolls Royces. That's why I had come to know his name. And finally I received his letter, asking me that if I can donate one of the Rolls Royces to his church, it is a tax exempt charitable religious body, and he will be very glad.

I told to one of my secretaries to write to the Bishop, that I am absolutely willing.

Do you want a regular Rolls Royce, or would you prefer a long-stretch big Rolls Royce, a limousine. And immediately came the reply, if you are so compassionate, then a limousine will do. But unfortunately I had to inform him that I can give you anything, but they don't belong to me. You will be caught by the police.

My situation is like this: two beggars sitting under a tree, under the influence of opium, looking of the moon, full moon night, were talking business. One beggar said, "Tell me exactly how much you will take for the moon?"

The other beggar said, "Who told you that I am thinking to sell it?"

And you call me the most successful spiritual businessman? Spirituality and being a businessman is a contradiction in terms. Either you can be spiritual, or you can be a businessman. Because the whole art of business is, to give you less and take you more from you. That is the profit. In spirituality, there is only giving and no taking. I have not taken anything from anybody. I have given my love, I have given my understanding, I have given my experience, without any condition, to anybody who was thirsty, and ready, and open and receptive. But I have not put any condition on him, that he will have to pay for it.

Spirituality is just sharing something that you have got. And there is no need to take anything from the person you share, because the very nature of spiritual experience is such, the more you give it, the more it grows within you. There is no need to take it from anybody else. Just go on sharing, and you will be surprised that it functions against the ordinary laws of economics. In economics, if you go on giving things, soon you will be a beggar. But, in the spiritual economics, if you don't give, then whatever you have got, that will also die. To keep it living you have to keep it flowing. Don't make a pond of your spiritual experience. Let it be a river. Soon the river will reach to the ocean, and the whole ocean will be yours. And you need not ask for anything.

One thing I have to remind you in this reference; in Russia my sannyasins are being persecuted, just as they are persecuted in America, or in other countries. In Russia they think that my sannyasins are working for America, that I am representing capitalism; and in America they think that I am the greatest communist on the earth. It is a very strange situation. All kinds of labels have been given to me which are contradictory. They all cannot be true together.

Hindus think I am converting people perhaps to Christianity. Christians are against me because they think I am taking away their cream, their youth, out of the Christian fold. Naturally I am converting them into Hinduism. Looking at all these labels and condemnations, I thought I should have a look actually who am I? An agent of FBI, or an agent of KGB?

And then I remembered a small story.

An old man, very simple, found by the side of the road a small mirror. He had never seen such a thing in his whole life. He looked into the mirror. He said, "My God, this seems to be the picture of my father. I had never thought that that old man was so romantic; that he will have his picture to be taken. But it is good that I have found it. I will keep it as a memory. But I will have to hide it from my wife, because if she comes to know that this is my father's picture, she is going to destroy it immediately."

So he went in the house, very silently. The wife was surprised. He never comes so silently. There must be something going on. He went upstairs. The wife went on watching him. She also went upstairs slowly, without making any noise. She saw him hiding the mirror in a suitcase. She could not figure it out -- what can it be? But she said, how long he will be here. Soon he will have to go to work again.

And he had to go to work.

The moment he had to go to work the wife went up, opened the suitcase, found the mirror, looked into the mirror and said, "My God. Fifty years I have lived with this man, and this sonofabitch is running after this rotten woman. I will kill her."

Looking into myself I found that I am a mirror. Whoever looks into me finds his own face reflected.

You are a businessman, what can I do? When a monkey looks into the mirror, he finds another monkey there.

I am not a businessman at all. This is not the way of a businessman. I am certainly trying to persuade you to grow, to bring your potential to its ultimate height. I am not going to give you anything. I don't have any commodity to sell. I am simply trying to provoke in you a challenge.

(Tape side B) You have the real thing, but you are not looking at it. You have ignored it. You have the seed, which can become a beautiful flower and fill your life with fragrance. I will take away things from you which in fact you don't have. And I will give you only those things to you which you already have.

Now what kind of business is this?

Q: BELOVED BHAGWAN, WHY PEOPLE CALL RAJNEESHEES MAD PEOPLE?

A: They are mad. If you are sane, then my people are certainly mad. If you have eyes, then my people are blind; if you have found the truth, then my people are lost. It is all a question of relativity.

If you look at my people, you will find a totally different experience. First, there is no Rajneeshee in the world because they are not my followers. They are not Hindus, they are not Buddhists, they are not Christians, they are not Mohammedans, because all those people are followers. My people are my friends, they are not my followers. So there is not a single Rajneeshee in the whole world. They love me.

So first you will have to drop the idea of somebody being a Rajneeshee.

Secondly, have you loved somebody, ever? If you have not loved somebody ever, you will not understand that love is mad. Because love is not of the mind, it is of the heart. Love is not logic, it is not reason. That's why all lovers look mad.

But unfortunate are those people who have never tasted such madness.

There are other dimensions also. Perhaps you may have some creativity in you.

Have you loved music? Have you loved dancing? Have you loved painting, or sculpture; anything creative? And you will know that while you create the mind stops, and something bigger than the mind takes over.

One of the greatest painters, Vincent Van Gogh, was asked once that when you are painting you look like a madman. Vincent Van Gogh said, "I don't look, I am.

Because while painting I forget all reasoning. I forget my mind, my intellect. I forget myself. The painter disappears. Only there is a creativity. The painting is there, but the painter is not." Naturally this will look mad. How painting can be there without the painter? Because we are accustomed of logical thinking, of dividing things.

One of the greatest dancers of this age was Nijinsky. Perhaps he was the greatest dancer of all the ages, because he had something which has never been seen in any dancer. He used to take jumps while dancing, so high that scientists said it is impossible, it is against the law of gravitation. You cannot jump that high. But what to do with this man? He jumps, he goes beyond the law of gravitation. And even more strange was the phenomenon when he had jumped high, gone beyond the limit of gravitation, he will start falling back. The ordinary way is, you fall fast with a thump on the ground. But that was not the way with Nijinsky. He will fall like a feather, very slowly, coming with ease, as if it is within his power, as if gravitation has no power over him. He was asked by the scientists, "How you do it?"

Nijinsky said, "Don't ask me that, because I have tried it. Whenever I try, I cannot do it. I have failed always, whenever I have tried. It happens only when I forget completely, and there is only dance and the dancer disappears. Then it happens.

I am amazed as much as you are amazed. I don't know how it happens. I must be mad."

The people who are with me are in deep love, in deep friendship. They are in great creativity, far greater than any painting, and far greater than any music, and far greater than any dancing. Because they are creating their own being.

They are creating their own soul. Yes, they are mad people. And they are fortunate that they have the guts to go out of your so-called sane intelligent, mundane world. Whoever has courage amongst you would also like to be mad, like my people.

This madness is not the ordinary madness when a man falls below his mind. It is an extraordinary madness, when a man rises above his mind. Both go out of the mind, but the ordinary madman goes down; the spiritual madman goes up, higher than the ordinary logic, reasoning, thinking. Just look at my people. You will not find more intelligent people anywhere. Their madness has a method in it.

Just look at me! Do you think I am mad? If I am mad, then I hope that you all should be mad. That will be the greatest blessing in your life.

Q: BELOVED BHAGWAN, WHAT IS THE MIND? HAD IT A BEGINNING OR AN END. AND A RELATED QUESTION: FINDING OUT ABOUT THE TRUE NATURE OF THE MIND, IS IT ENOUGH TO FREE US FROM THE CYCLE OF DEATH AND REBIRTH?

A: Mind has no beginning, but mind has an end. Meditation has a beginning, but meditation has no end. This is the whole circle of life. Have you understood?

Mind has a(*) beginning. Then all the religions had been looking for that beginning. Christians say that the world was created by God four thousand four years before Jesus Christ; that is six thousand years before today. Then certainly mind has a beginning. But it is strange. The great Christian theologians have never asked a simple question, that what God was doing for eternity, before six thousand years.

Secondly, why suddenly one day, it must have been January, Monday, why he began the creation? Why he created the whole world? What caused him to create it? Is there some bigger power than him, who ordered him to create it? Is there some desire hidden in his being, that he wanted to create it?

But God is desireless, and there is nobody above him. So why, at a certain point, suddenly, he started creating? He seems to be whimsical. And you cannot depend on such a God, because tomorrow he may start thinking to destroy. If he can create without any valid reason, he can destroy without any valid reason.

All the religions will say mind has a beginning, because the world has a beginning, because God created it. I say to you, mind has no beginning, because existence has never been created. It has always been here. And it is very simple.

Why make it complex? God created the world -- why? Because the world is there, a creator is needed, somebody should create it. But the question arises, who created the God? And then you say, God is never created. He has always been here. If God can be here, without being created, then why bother with God.

This existence is perfectly beautiful. It has always been here. Do not accept any unnecessary hypothesis.

That's why I say, mind has no beginning. Because existence has no beginning.

But mind has an end. It ends into meditation. You can call it, it gets transformed into meditation.

Meditation has a beginning, but no end. Then it goes on and on, for infinity, for eternity. Mind is a small thing. Meditation makes you part of existence. It allows you the freedom of becoming one with the whole. And to me that is the only way of being holy -- to be one with the whole.

You are asking, if we can understand the workings of the mind, will they disappear? Certainly, absolutely. The only way for the activities of the mind to disappear is to be a witness to them. Just see them, clearly. Without any judgment. Just be a watcher, uninvolved, unattached. And those activities start disappearing, like shadows. And when mind is no more in action, that is what we call meditation. When mind is not functioning, you have arrived at the beginning of meditation.

And you are asking, will it deliver us from death? Will it deliver us from being born again and again? Certainly, because it is only ignorance that keeps you being born again and again. Because you are always dying with a desire unfulfilled. That unfulfilled desire takes you into a new form. Existence is very compassionate. It does not want you to be discontented. It does not want you to be unfulfilled in any desire.

When you are dying, if you are hankering for something, something that you always wanted but you could not get, something that was always in your mind, haunting you, and you were not able to find it, existence will give you the right form in which your desire can be fulfilled. Existence is very favorable, very friendly. You are children of it. It has to be friendly to you. And if you are crying for toys, teddy bears, it will provide you with teddy bears.

I am reminded of an old Jewish man who was on his deathbed, a very miserly man. His four sons had gathered and they were worried, when the old man dies, what arrangements have to be done; how they should be done? The man has not died yet. He is listening to their talk. They are whispering.

The first son said that, "Our father always wanted a Rolls Royce, but being a miser he could not manage. At least when he dies we should bring a Rolls Royce to carry his dead body to the cemetery."

The second son said, "You are just being stupid. For a dead man what difference does it make whether you are carrying him in a Rolls Royce, or in a Ford? It doesn't matter. The dead man is dead. He will never know the difference. Why waste money?"

The third man said, "Even Ford will cost money. My suggestion is, we should phone to the municipal corporation, and they can bring their truck in which they go on throwing beggars and others into the cemetery. A dead man is dead, whether he is your father or your mother, it does not matter."

Before the fourth was going to speak, the old man somehow managed to sit up in the bed and said, "Wait! Just find out where my shoes are."

They said, "But what you are going to do with shoes. You were going to die."

The man said, "I am still alive. Just give me my shoes. I will walk to the cemetery.

You are all for wasting money."

Now this man, what do you think? If he dies he is going to be born, his whole life he must have repressed thousands of desires, even at the point of death he is concerned about money.

A man of meditation dies without any desires. He dies in silence. Hence there is no question of his being born in another form. And a man of meditation knows that death is a lie, that death has never happened; it only appears from the outside. You see somebody dying, from the outside, but you don't know that is happening inside the man. His inner being never dies. But most of the people live unconsciously. Naturally they die unconsciously, unaware that death has not happened.

Death has never happened in the whole eternity. Death is just an outsider's observation. The meditator observes from within. He sees himself, his body dying, his mind dying, his heart drowning. The beats are going farther and farther away, and the breathing is drowning. He goes on seeing all this, and he also goes on seeing that it is not affecting him at all. It is only the body and its components which are decomposing, falling apart. But his own being is intact.

This experience of immortality takes him to the universal shore. This whole existence is full of consciousness. When I said, there is no God who created the world, please don't misunderstand me. When I am denying a God outside existence, there is a purpose. The purpose is, I want God to be inside existence.

An outsider God is not of much value. A God inside everything, in the stones, in the stars; all that exists is overflowing with divineness.

The moment you understand your own immortality, now there is no rebirth for you. You have become part of the universal godliness, you have become one with the whole. Just like in the early morning sun, a dewdrop slips from the lotus leaf into the ocean, and disappears. On the one hand it disappears in the ocean.

On the other hand, it becomes the ocean. Both the things happen simultaneously.

Be ready to disappear. That is the only way to become all. Lose small boundaries, so then you can become one with the unbounded. It is your birthright.

Q: BELOVED BHAGWAN, THE WESTERN MIND SEEMS TO WANT TO REDUCE EVERYTHING, NO MATTER HOW SUBTLE, TO THE KNOWN. THE EASTERN MIND SEEMS TO WANT TO REDUCE EVERYTHING, NO MATTER HOW CONCRETE, TO THE UNKNOWN. CAN WE HELP EACH OTHER?

A: The existence can be divided in three categories: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. What is known today was unknown yesterday; what is unknown today may become known tomorrow. So there is not much difference between known and unknown. It is only a question of time.

Science, that means the West, believes only in two categories -- the known and the unknown. And as a corollary, scientific mind of the West believes that there will come a day when we will have reduced everything into the known, and there will not be left anything unknown. That is one of the basic assumptions of scientific inquiry. We are everyday discovering more and more, and the unknown is shrinking, becoming smaller and the known is becoming bigger.

Naturally one can conceive somewhere in the future a time is bound to come when everything will be known. But if it is true, then that will be the death of humanity. If all is known, then there is no adventure left. If all is known then there is no more any challenge. Then life will be very empty. If everything is explained, there will not be anything mysterious. And to lose the miraculous, you will lose something tremendously valuable.

It is the unknown, undiscovered, that goes on challenging you to progress, to evolution, to reach new heights, new peaks of consciousness. But if a day comes that all is known, everything is reduced into simple formulas, then there will be no romance, there will be no poetry, there will be no beauty, there will be no joy.

There will be nothing left which is valuable.

But fortunately the West is not right. The division between the known and the unknown is not complete. The East has a threefold division -- known, unknown, unknowable. It agrees with the West that the unknown can become known, but the unknowable will always remain unknowable. There will always be mystery around human consciousness. There will be always mystery around love, friendship, meditation, consciousness. We may be able to know all that is objective. But the subjectivity, the innermost core of human consciousness, will remain always a mystery. And this has been the persistent effort of the East, to make it clear to the whole world that the unknowable should not be denied, otherwise you will take all juice out of human life. You will create robots out of human beings, you will destroy them, and they will be just machines and nothing more.

And modern science, for the first time in the history, has started to agree with the East. As modern physics has entered deeper into matter, into electrons, neutrons, protons, the physicist has become puzzled. Things seem to be becoming mysterious. Up to now he was thinking the unknown is turning into known.

Now he is not of the same opinion. Now he is saying that we are entering into something of which we have never thought about, the unknowable.

(Tape side C) So there is not much difficult of bringing East and West closer. They are already coming closer. Just the Eastern meditators have to understand the latest scientific researches, and the scientists of the West have to understand the deepest explorations of meditation. And this is not difficult. And they will come to a synthesis which will not be just forced. It will come out of the experience, naturally, spontaneously.

I am educated in the ways of the West. I have been a professor of philosophy and logic, teaching Western philosophy and Western logic. From Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. But, in my own individual life, I have been working deeper and deeper into meditation, reaching farther and farther into my own inner space. And I have found the center of the cyclone. I can see it absolutely clearly that the time has come when East and West can join together in a combined effort, because the search has led both to the same point, the unknowable.

The unknowable can be called the truth, can be called the nirvana, can be called liberation. These are different words.

I am reminded of Albert Einstein's last words. Before he died, he said to his friends that "If I am born again, I would not like to be a physicist. I would rather like to be a plumber." They were surprised, a man of the calibre of Albert Einstein wants to be a plumber? For what? Einstein died, he could not answer them, but I can answer them. He had explored the objective world, the outside world, as much as any man in the whole history. He has found the atomic energy. But he himself remained unknown to himself. He knows so much about the matter, and he knows nothing about his consciousness. This is the reason he wants in his next life some simple job like a plumber, which does not need any intellectual effort, so that he can devote his energies for inner exploration.

In my vision, in the future, there will be only science; no religions. And the science will have two wings, just like a bird; one wing for objective inquiry about the matter, about the outside, about the other. And the second wing for inner inquiry, to find out what it is which is living in me, which is conscious in me; to discover the interiority of my own being, my subjectivity. Science will have two aspects, just like every coin has two aspects.

There is no need for any religion -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist, Jaina, Jew; there is no need. Science is enough. And it can do both the work. One side for the outside, and the other side for the inward pilgrimage. That is going to be the meeting point between East and West. And sooner it happens, the better.