The Taste of the Pudding

Man is born a slave, and remains a slave all his life - a slave of desires, lust, a slave of the body, or of the mind, but all the same, slavery continues. From the moment you are born to the moment you die, it is a long struggle against slavery. And religion consists of being free. Religion is freedom, freedom from all slavery. But man goes on playing with himself, goes on fooling himself, because that is easy.

To be completely free is very difficult. It will need a crystallization within you, it will need a center.

And right now there is no center in you, you are not a crystallized being - you are just a chaos.

You may be like an assembly, but you are not like an individual. Sometimes one desire overpowers you and then that becomes the chairman of the assembly. Only a few minutes later the chairman is gone, or thrown, then another desire overtakes you. And you get identified with each desire; you say, "I am this."

When sex is in the chair, you become the sex; when anger is in the chair, you become the anger; when love is in the chair, you become the love. And you never remember the fact that you cannot be this or that - sex, anger, love. No! You cannot be, but you get identified with the chair, whatsoever is powerful in the moment you move with. And this chairman goes on changing, because whenever a desire is fulfilled temporarily it is thrown out of the chair. Then another, which is next to it, thirsty, hungry, demanding, becomes the chairman. And you get identified with every desire, with every slavery.

This identification is the root cause of all slavery, and unless this identification disappears, you will never be free. Freedom means the disappearance of identification with the body, mind, heart, whatsoever you call it. This is the basic fact to be understood: that man is a slave, born a slave, born crying and howling for some desires to be fulfilled. The first thing a child is going to do when he is born is to cry. And that remains your whole life - crying for this or that. The child cries for milk; you may be crying for a palace, or for a car, or for something else, but the crying continues. It stops only when you are dead.

Your whole life is a long cry - that's why there is so much suffering. Religion gives you the keys to make you free, but you being a slave, and the life of slavery being convenient, comfortable, you create mock religions which don't give you any freedom, which simply give you new types of slavery.

Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam, as they are, organized, established, they are new sorts of imprisonments.

Jesus is freedom, Mohammed is freedom, Krishna is freedom, Buddha is freedom, but not Buddhism, not Mohammedanism, not Christianity, not Hinduism - they are mock. So a new slavery is born: not only are you a slave to your desires, your thoughts, your feelings, your instincts, but you become slaves to the priests. More slavery happens out of your mock religions, and nothing changes in you.

I have heard, once it happened: Mulla Nasruddin was very much hounded by his creditors. He had taken much money from many people, and there was no way to get rid of them. So he asked his lawyer, and as lawyers do, he suggested, "Do one thing, Nasruddin, because there is no way out:

make arrangements for a mock funeral with you in the casket. Let the whole town know that you are dead, and then escape from this town. All your creditors will know that now you are dead, and they won't bother."

It looked workable, it appealed to him. Nasruddin arranged a mock funeral. He was in the casket, the whole town gathered to say goodbye to him. The first creditor very sadly said goodbye, then the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth.... But the ninth creditor pulled out a gun and hollered and said, "Nasruddin, I know you are dead, but still I will shoot you, just to have a little satisfaction." Nasruddin jumped out of the casket and said, "Hold on! You, I will pay!"

You cannot play with death, you cannot mock death, you cannot fool death. How can you live in a false way if you cannot even die in a false way? If you cannot die in a false way, it is almost impossible to live in a false way. You create more misery around you, nothing is solved through it; everything becomes more and more a riddle.

The more you try to solve, the more insanity is created, because within your heart you know that it is false. You go to the temple... have you ever really gone to the temple? It is a mock religion, just to show to others that you are religious. But is this going to help? Then this temple also becomes a slavery - ritual is slavery. Then this priest also exploits you because he knows your weakness.

With religion we have played the greatest game, and the game is that we have molded fetters out of freedom. That's why a man like Jesus or Krishna is dangerous: he is not going to give you a mock life, he will give you the real thing.

That's why Jesus says:

WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME IS NEAR TO THE FIRE....

What fire does he mean? The fire in which you will not remain. You will have to disappear completely.

This crowd that you are cannot be allowed to remain, because this has been your misery, and this is your misery and anguish. This crowd has to disappear, disappear in a crystallized center.

Fire is an alchemical term; anything that needs to be crystallized will have to pass through fire. If you want to make something out of gold, the gold will have to pass through fire. First it will have to become liquid, then it will be purified - it will be pure gold - and then you can mold it into anything else. But it will have to pass through fire. And the same is going to happen to a disciple: the master is a fire, and you have to become completely liquid so that all that was wrong is burned, and all that was right has become liquid and one. Then you will crystallize.

First a master is a fire, and then infinite coolness happens through him. But the beginning is fiery, and that creates fear. It is easy to approach a priest - he is as false as you. There is no danger, you know it well. It is easy to pass through a ritual, you know it is mock. But to come to Jesus is difficult:

you are coming near a fire; the nearer you come, the more you will feel burned. When a disciple comes really close - that's what a disciple does: gathers courage, and comes nearer and nearer, and allows the fire to work - he passes through a furnace. Jesus is a furnace.

But when he comes out of it, the disciple is totally different: the crowd has gone, now he is a different, totally different metal. The baser metal has changed into the higher, the iron has become gold - it has been a transformation. When I say it has been a transformation, I mean it is discontinuous with the past. If there is a continuity there is no mutation, only modification. That's what you have been doing.

You go on modifying yourself a little bit here and there. It is a patchwork, but a patchwork is never revolution. And a patchwork is not going to help you ultimately; a patchwork is a patchwork - you are never transformed. Somewhere you change a little, but the totality remains the same. And the totality is so powerful that the new that you have made will not remain new for long. Sooner or later the totality will absorb it, and it will be old. You go on improving yourself, but no improvement can lead you to religion. Religion is not an improvement. Whom are you improving? You are the illness, you are the disease, and you are improving a disease. You may polish it, you may paint it, you may give it a mask - even the ugliness may not look so ugly - but the illness remains.

A transformation is a discontinuity with the past, it is not a patchwork; you completely dissolve, and something new happens. That's what Jesus says: a new birth, a resurrection. The old is gone and the new has come in. And the new is not out of the old, it is totally new - that's why it is a birth; it is not just the old, continuous, modified. No! The old is no more, and something has happened which was never there before. There is a gap: the old drops and the new comes, and there is no causal link. This is very difficult to understand, because the scientific training of the mind has given us an obsession with causality.

We think everything is caused - so even a Buddha is caused, a Jesus is caused, he is out of the past. No! If you think Buddha is out of the past you have missed the whole thing. The past is no more, Buddha is absolutely new - this man never existed before; Gautam Siddhartha was there, but this man Buddha was never there. The old has gone into nothingness, and the new has come out of nothingness. The new is not born out of the old, the new has come in the place of the old because the old is no more, and the old place is vacant, empty. The new has come from the unknown. The old has disappeared from the known, and the new, finding a place, an emptiness in the heart, has entered.

It is just like when your room is dark: it is closed, all the windows and doors are closed, it is as dark as if it were night. And then you open the window or the door. Suddenly the darkness has disappeared, now it is light, the sun has entered. What will you say? Will you say that the sun, this light, is caused by the darkness that was there? The darkness has changed into light? No! The darkness has simply disappeared from the room and light has entered. This light is not in any way related to the darkness, it is not caused by the darkness, it is totally new. It was waiting outside the gate; the doors opened and it entered - just an opening was needed.

Whenever you meditate you are creating an opening; when you pray you are creating an opening.

The old, the darkness, will disappear and the light will be there. And this light is no longer related to the past, just like darkness is not related to the light. They are discontinuous, they are different dimensions, they are different existences. Try to understand this, because this is the miracle that religion has always been insisting on. Science cannot understand it because science thinks in terms of modification, change, continuity. Religion thinks in terms of discontinuity, transformation, mutation.

You are not going to become a Jesus or a Buddha - you are the barrier. You have to be burned completely, you have to be finished completely. When Jesus descends into you, you will not be there. You will feel as if your past was just a dream that you dreamed, it was never you; the identity is broken.

Hence, Jesus is like a fire. If you come near a Jesus be ready to die, because Jesus cannot mean anything other than death to you. And rebirth is possible only if you die. If you are afraid to die, escape from a man like Jesus. Don't go near him - he is dangerous, he is like an abyss: you will feel dizzy and fall into him.

Jesus said: WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME, IS NEAR TO THE FIRE... near to death, near to dying; the old disappearing, the baser metal dissolving. And immediately he says another thing. If you can tolerate the heat, the fire of a Jesus or Buddha or Krishna, then the second thing will immediately become possible for you.

WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME IS NEAR TO THE FIRE, AND WHOEVER IS FAR FROM ME IS FAR FROM THE KINGDOM.

If you can pass through the fire of Jesus, if the disciple can pass through the fire of the master, immediately a new world opens before him: the kingdom of God, the kingdom of immortality, the deathless, real life.

So Jesus says: "Whoever is near to me is near a fire, and whoever is far away from me is far away from the kingdom." If you escape from Jesus, you are also escaping from the ultimate kingdom that can be yours. That is the problem: the attraction and repulsion with a master. Sometimes you feel to come near, whenever the kingdom attracts you - but when you come near you feel the fire, then you try to escape.

Once you are near an enlightened man this will remain a problem for you your whole life: to come near, then how to escape. Whenever you are far away you will think of how to again come near him and the kingdom - because whenever you are distant the the fire disappears - because that kingdom has to be achieved, that is the fulfillment. Without it you will remain unfulfilled; without it you will remain a barren womb, without giving birth to anything; without it you will remain futile, meaningless; without it your whole life will be just a nightmare, leading nowhere - running so fast and reaching nowhere. Immediately you start feeling how to bloom and how to flower.

That can only happen near a master, one who has flowered already. Only there will your seeds become uneasy, uncomfortable, in their dead cells. They will start fighting with the cells, and they will break down the cells and come out of the earth to reach to the sun. But that can only happen if you are ready to go through the fire. This is the problem for the disciple: when he comes to the master, immediately his whole mind-body thinks of escaping. He finds all sorts of rationalizations to escape; inside he argues continuously how to escape this man, this man seems to be dangerous.

When he escapes he starts feeling the desire again.

One has to decide. Decision is final because you cannot go back. Once you are in the fire you cannot go back. Once you are really intimate with Jesus, then there is no going back. A point of no return has come, because even when you are passing through the fire you can have glimpses of the kingdom. Then the fire is not fire, then you are happy and blessed. Then you are grateful to this man because he has become a fire for you. And now the glimpses are not far away, the kingdom is near.

Once you have had one glimpse of the kingdom, then all fire ceases to be fire. It becomes so soothing; you have never known anything in life as soothing as it is. But if you escape just at the boundary before jumping into the furnace, you will be in constant trouble - and you have been.

You are not new on this earth, nobody is new; you are as old as this earth, even older than this earth, because you have been to other earths also. You are as old as this universe. You have always existed, because all that is in existence remains in existence - there is no way to go out.

You are an integral part of this existence, you have always been here. You have been near many Buddhas, you have been near many Jesuses and Mohammeds. And this problem has always been the trouble.

You were attracted when you heard. When you were very, very far away, they became magnetic forces. Then you came nearer, and the nearer you came, the more fearful you became, because the fire was there. You decided to escape - that's why you are still wandering. But someday, one has to decide to go through the fire because there is no other way. And then you console yourself with false masters who are not fires: then you go to the priest, then you go to the temple and the mosque and the church; then you do rituals, all sorts of mock things just to escape Jesus and Krishna, because with them the real happens - and the real happens only through fire.

You have to be purified, you have to be really completely dissolved so there comes an emptiness.

And in that emptiness, the ray of creation, God's ray, enters, and then you are fulfilled. Then there is no misery, no dukkha, then there is no anguish. Then you remain in the bliss eternal, then the ecstasy is there. Not that it happens through something: then it is your nature, your very being. If ecstasy happens through something it cannot be eternal because that something can be lost; if it is caused by something outside then it cannot remain forever, it can be only momentary.

Ecstasy and bliss can remain permanently with you, eternally with you, non-temporally with you, only when you have come to realize them as your being - then nobody can take them. But that being needs a crystallization, needs a purification, it needs an alchemical transformation. The old must go for the new to come, the past must die for the future to be born. And this is the decision a disciple has to take.

WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME IS NEAR TO THE FIRE, AND WHOEVER IS FAR FROM ME IS FAR FROM THE KINGDOM.

Remember that wherever you feel fire, decide - this is the place to go and jump. Wherever you feel only consolations, escape from there - priests may be there but not a master. They always console you and that's why they appeal to you.

You come to the priest to be consoled because life is such a misery. The priest is therapeutic, he is a consoler. He listens to you and he says to you, "Don't be afraid. Just pray and God will do everything." He says to you, "Don't be afraid, God is compassionate. Your sins will be forgiven." If you are afraid of death, he says, "Don't be afraid, the soul is eternal, there is no death to it." If you feel too guilty, he gives you means and ways to feel guilt-free. He says, "Donate some money to the temple, donate some money to the church. Donation is good, because that is how you negate your sins, through donation. Do something good: make a hospital, a school, go and serve the masses, the poor, the downtrodden, the ill."

These are the ways to console you, but there is no transformation in it. You may leave your shop, your office, and become a social worker; you may go to the primitives and serve them, but you remain the same, the old continues. You may not exploit, you may start serving, but the old is there - it is a continuity.

You were greedy and you accumulated wealth. Now you donate, but you remain the same. You may have become fed up with greed, now it has become donation; first you were snatching from others, now you are giving - but you remain the same, the inner being has not come to any transformation.

People will appreciate you, the society will say, "Now you have changed," but this is no change. This is just throwing away guilt because you have become guilty of too much exploitation.

Donation becomes a release, it gives you a feeling that you are good, but this is only a feeling.

Because you have been bad you are just trying to balance the account; but you remain the same, the same cunning mind, thinking in terms of mathematics, balancing, calculation. What change has happened in you? The money was important before, the money is still important now. It was important, that's why you accumulated it; it is important, that's why you donate it.

Before, you felt you were doing a very good, successful job of it, accumulating, because it was the most significant thing - you were money-obsessed. Still you are money-obsessed: you are giving, and still you think that you are serving people by giving them money, but money remains meaningful.

It has changed: from positive, the greed has become negative. But you have not changed, you remain the same - first it was positive, now it is negative.

You were in sex, you lived a life of sex. Now you have become a brahmachari, a celibate; you are fed up with women and men, you are finished with all that. But are you really finished? It has become negative. Always remember that when the positive becomes negative it gives you a false feeling that you have changed. It is just like a man standing on his head: the man remains the same. First he was standing on his feet - that was more natural, sex is more natural - now he is standing on his head, he is doing shirshasan, now he thinks he has changed. But how, just by standing on your head, can you be changed? You can become a celibate but you remain the same, nothing changes.

It happened: One of Mulla Nasruddin's friends, Abdullah, was going on a haj, to Mecca for a religious pilgrimage. He was an old man and he had just married a young girl. The young girl was very beautiful. Of course, he was going on a haj, but he was very worried about his wife. There was every possibility she might not be faithful to him. What to do? So he purchased a chastity belt and locked up his wife. But where to keep this key? To carry it with himself on the haj would not look good, because this would be a burden on his conscience, that he didn't believe his wife, didn't trust her. And constantly the key would make him remember his wife and the possibility.... So he thought, and he went to Mulla Nasruddin, his friend.

Nasruddin was an old man now, almost ninety-nine, and everybody knew that he was finished with women. And when people are finished, fed up with women, they start talking of brahmacharya. He was always talking about brahmacharya, and condemning people who were still young, and he used to say, "You are wasting your life. This is useless, a wastage of energy and nothing else, and it leads nowhere."

His friend, this Abdullah, came to him and said, "Nasruddin, I am in trouble. My wife is young and it is difficult to trust her, so I got a chastity belt and I have locked my wife into the chastity belt. Now where to keep this key? You are always in favor of brahmacharya and you are my most trusted friend, my best friend, so you keep this key. Within three months I will be back."

Nasruddin said, "I feel very grateful to you that you thought about me in this moment of trouble, and I assure you that the key could not be in better hands. Your wife will be safe."

Abdullah left, easy in his heart now. There was no danger: the man was ninety-nine, one thing; then he was always in favor of brahmacharya, and for almost twenty years he had been preaching celibacy. Happy that things had worked out well, he left. But just one hour or so later, he heard a donkey galloping fast behind, coming towards him. When the donkey came near... Mulla Nasruddin was on it, tired from the hard ride, perspiring, and he said, "Abdullah! Abdullah, you gave me the wrong key!"

This is going to happen to the negative mind, it always happens. If you can change from the positive to the negative, you can change from the negative to the positive. These are two poles of the same mind. So you may be surprised that brahmacharis, celibates, monks, they are constantly thinking of sex, constantly condemning, constantly thinking about it. Both can be dropped, but you cannot do the impossible, choosing one and denying the other. Whosoever denies, affirms; whosoever suppresses, feeds.

You can throw the whole thing out, that's possible, but then you are neither a brahmachari nor one who indulges, you simply escape from both, you are neither. Then you are neither male nor female.

That's what Jesus means when he says 'eunuchs of God': when both the polarities have been thrown out. Otherwise, you can retain one polarity: from greed you can move to donations, charity, but the miserliness remains the same. I have seen misers, many types of miser.... Basically the types are two: the negative and the positive. The positive miser accumulates money, the society is against him; the negative miser donates, the society is for him - but the miser is the same.

Mulla Nasruddin died, and just six months later his wife was dying. And they were the most miserly couple in the valley. The wife called a neighbor, a woman, and told her, "Listen to me, Rehama, you have to bury me in my black silk dress. But the material is costly and the dress is almost new, so do one thing. Nobody will see it because I will be lying in the casket on my back. So cut the back portion of the dress and make a dress out of it for yourself."

The woman could not believe it. First she could not believe that Mulla Nasruddin's wife was becoming so charitable, and then she could not believe what nonsense she was saying.

Nasruddin's wife said, "I would be very happy to give you some gift before I leave, and this is my gift.

And I hate to destroy this material, it is so costly and so beautiful and so new. So just cut the back part of the dress. Nobody will see."

But the neighbor said, "Here we may not see, but there on the golden stairs, when you and Mulla Nasruddin walk and enter, on the golden stairs, then the angels will laugh."

Nasruddin's wife started laughing. She said, "Don't worry. They will not look at me, because I have buried Nasruddin without his pants!"

A man of greed remains a man of greed, a man of anger remains a man of anger, a man of sex remains a man of sex; just moving to the opposite pole makes no change, remember this. So you can move to the mock religion easily, because the mock religion always emphasizes the other pole.

If you are angry then the mock religion says, "Have compassion, love thy neighbor as thyself. Be friendly, don't be angry - and this will pay!" If you are greedy the mock religion says, "Have control of your greed, because this will pay in the other world." The appeal is again based on the greed, because this is going to pay. So donate, be charitable! If you give one rupee here in this world, you will get one million in the other. This is what mock religion is doing: it simply helps you to move to the opposite pole, it is easy.

Mind always likes to move to the opposite pole, because mind always gets fed up with one thing.

And the opposite gives the taste again, gives you the possibility to move again. A man who is eating too much gets fed up. The taste is lost, the body hungers no more, he cannot enjoy food, so he starts thinking about fasting. Not that he is changing - fasting will give him the taste again, the body will hunger again. Fasting is always good for those who are obsessed with food. Fast for two days and the hunger comes back, then you can be a glutton again.

Whenever you make love to a woman or a man, the body is satisfied - of course only for twenty-four hours, but the body is satisfied, you feel fed up. After making love, every man, every woman, thinks of dropping this whole nonsense, it looks so absurd. The peak has gone, now the valley has come and you think that you are deciding something; then you are wrong, you are not deciding anything.

Within twenty-four hours the body will again accumulate energy, and within twenty-four hours the taste will be back again and you will have to break your fast. A twenty-four-hour fast is needed for sex, and as you grow older, more time will be needed to break the fast. But when the energy is again full, you are again sexual.

Look at this polarity. Mock religion and real religion have this significant distinction: mock religion helps you to move to the opposite pole, which is not a transformation; real religion simply helps you to burn both the polarities completely. That's why real religion is real fire. Says Jesus:

WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME IS NEAR TO THE FIRE, AND WHOEVER IS FAR FROM ME IS FAR FROM THE KINGDOM.

And when desire, positive and negative, both disappear, the kingdom is there. The kingdom is not very far away, it is always there within you. Only because of the desires you cannot look at it; obsessed with desires, you cannot look at it.

When your eyes are not filled with desire this way or that way, when you are not moving in sex or against sex, when you are not obsessed with food or obsessed with fasting, when you are simply without desires, then your eyes have no smoke, they are clear, they can see, they have a clarity.

In that clarity the kingdom is there. The kingdom has always existed within you, but your eyes are filled, overfilled with desires. And desires bring frustrations, tears: desires create hope, dreams.

Your eyes are completely filled, that's why there is no clarity. Eyes not filled with desire, dreams, hope, frustration, simply empty - then you have the first glimpse.

Near a Jesus, near an enlightened man, you have to pass through a fire. That fire will burn all your desires - negative and positive both; of this world and that, both. It will burn all your hopes, because through hope, desire lives. In fact, it will burn all your future and past, it will leave you simply here and now; no more past, no more future, no more to look at. Suddenly the energy turns within, there is a conversion, a transformation. Nowhere to look outside: past is useless, dead; the future has not yet come - where to go? You have to go within. Energy has to move; finding no passage outside, the whole energy turns within. The kingdom of God is there.

JESUS SAID: COME TO ME, FOR EASY IS MY YOKE AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE.

This has to be understood very, very deeply and remembered, because this is going to help you.

Whenever you come to a man like Jesus, the problem arises in the mind: "Why surrender to this man? This looks like slavery." And then the whole thing looks very contradictory, because Jesus goes on saying, "I am here to liberate you, I am here to give you total freedom," and then he demands surrender. Looks contradictory: "Why surrender? Why should I surrender to another man?" And he says, "I am going to give you total liberation." This looks contradictory. "Then he should give it to me right now. Why should I surrender to anybody? Why should I make him a lord? Why should the guru, why should the master, be the lord of my soul and of my being? Why should I surrender?"

Jesus says:

COME TO ME, FOR EASY IS MY YOKE AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE.

He says, "Yes, I know this is how you will feel, that this too is a sort of slavery." Unless Jesus liberates you, how can you feel that this is really liberation?

You have known only slavery. Everywhere you have moved you have known slavery. In the name of love you have known slavery. And love promised that it would be a liberation, but it has not been.

Look at any wife, any husband - it has been a slavery, and the yoke has been very hard. You moved in the world in search of freedom, and everywhere you have created prisons, whatsoever you did.

In the name of liberty there are all sorts of slaveries: the nation is a slavery, the race is a slavery, religion is a slavery. Love - so-called love - is a slavery. And everybody is burdened with too many slaveries. Then comes Jesus and he also wants surrender. Of course your mind says, "This is again going to be a slavery."

Jesus does not deny it, because at this moment, in this state of mind, you cannot understand what liberation is. So he says: COME TO ME, FOR EASY IS MY YOKE.... That's all he promises you.

He does not say, "I will give you freedom right now." That may happen, but right now he gives only one promise. He says: ... EASY IS MY YOKE AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE.

In life, hard is your yoke, and in life, all around you, there are lords dominating and dictating to you.

And they are dangerous, ferocious; they are like lions jumping on you and murdering you. Jesus says, "At this moment, only this much can be said which will be understood by you: my yoke is not hard, it is not heavy." And when you think, "Why surrender?" then you are not choosing freedom. You are simply choosing your old slavery in the name of freedom, because your mind itself is a slavery, your desires are slaveries. And you cannot move beyond them without some help that comes from the outside.

You have remained in the prison so long that you think it is your home. And the prison is so well guarded that you cannot get out of it unless somebody who is outside the prison helps you, unless there is somebody who has got out of the prison and knows the way to get out of it.

A master only means this much: that he was also in the prison, the same prison in which you are, but somehow he has escaped; he found a door, he found a lock and key, some method, and he has escaped - now he can be helpful. If you are all asleep, you cannot get out of the sleep. Something from the outside is needed - even an alarm may be helpful, but still it is something from the outside.

But you can deceive yourself with an alarm, because you can dream that there is a temple and the temple bell is ringing; you can create a dream and go on sleeping. Somebody - not a mechanical device but somebody alive - a master is needed, who is awake, who will not allow your sleep to create new dreams, who will go on shaking you.

Jesus says, "Ultimately, freedom will happen to you, but right now I can only promise this much, that my yoke is not hard, it is easy, AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE." And you have chosen such hard lordships, all around you.

It happened: A very meek man entered an office, thin-looking, ill-looking, very humble. He said, "I have come to know that you need a night-watchman."

The manager looked at him dubiously and said, "Yes, we need a night-watchman, but we need a person who is continuously uneasy, and particularly at night. We need a person who never believes anybody, who is a skeptic, a born skeptic: whatsoever you do, he will never trust you. And he must be a person who is always searching for trouble, and who is always listening to what is happening all around; who is almost a neurotic, and once roused becomes a fiend incarnate!"

That meek and humble man stood up and said, "Then I will send my wife."

This is how a husband feels about a wife, and this is how a wife feels about a husband - the lordship is really heavy. But this is how, if you become aware, your every desire is heavy and goads you continuously towards futile goals. If you don't go there is trouble; if you go there is frustration. Each desire is a master, and millions are the desires. So you are a mess, you are a slave to millions of masters. It is hard, and every desire is goading you towards a goal of its own, not worried about you. And if you don't go there is trouble; the desire is not going to leave you so easily because it is a question of lordship. And if you go there is going to be frustration, because that goal may have been the desire's goal, but it was never your goal. And you don't know what your goal is, because you don't know who you are.

Surrender means choosing one master as the lord, against these millions of masters of desires and instincts. The lordship is gentle, it is gentle for many reasons: basically because one is the master.

It is always good to have one master. Even if you have two masters you will know trouble, and if the masters are millions you will be in constant confusion. Millions of orders will be received, and you will be pulled in every direction; you will become a chaos. That's how madness happens, because you cannot see what to do. Whom to follow and whom not to follow? Your greed says, "Just go on accumulating money." Your sex says, "Go on indulging in sex." But then there is a problem because there is conflict.

If you indulge too much in sex you cannot accumulate money. Misers are always anti-sexual, they have to be, because the same energy has to be converted into accumulating money. Misers are not lovers, they are very anti-sexual. And people who indulge in sex can never accumulate money, difficult. Even if their forefathers did, they will throw it away, they will find ways to throw it away.

One desire says, "Accumulate money, because money means security. Who is going to help you in your old age? Have a bank balance, that is protection." And then sex says, "But life is going, why think about old age? Your youth is being wasted, go and indulge before the moment is gone and energy is lost. Use it, enjoy it!" Sex says, "Be here and now, this moment, indulge!" And greed says, "Don't think of this moment, think of the long-range goal." There is conflict, and this is not only between two desires - every desire is in conflict with others. Anger says, "Kill immediately, murder this man!" But your own fear says, "Don't do this, because if you kill others, others will kill you. Be polite, smile. You are a good man, you are not a murderer, you are not a criminal." So what to do?

So many masters, and only one is the slave.

It is good if you choose one master. At least a million voices dissolve, only Jesus has to be followed, and you can throw all the responsibility on him. And he says: EASY IS MY YOKE....

Why is it easy? - because even if he asks you to surrender, he is asking you to surrender only so that you become free of your other masters. Once you are free of your desires he will throw this yoke also. This is just an interim arrangement, just a passage. Once you have thrown all the desires then this surrender is not needed. The master himself will say, "Now drop this surrender also, because you have become enlightened in your own light, in your own right."

JESUS SAID: COME TO ME, FOR EASY IS MY YOKE AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE.

JESUS SAID: WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH SHALL BECOME AS I AM AND I MYSELF WILL BECOME HE, AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM.

The surrender is a passage for the disciple to become a master himself. And if you totally surrender, in that very moment you have become one with the master, because then there is no conflict. Then there is no ego, the 'ego-trip' is finished, you have dropped out of it. And when you are not, that's what the surrender means: when you say, "I am not, you are, and lead me wheresoever.... I am not going to decide, you decide. I will simply follow like a shadow, I will be blind in my trust. Even if you say, 'Jump and die!' I will jump and die. No longer will there be 'no' coming from me; my yes is final and total and absolute." This absolute yes is surrender.

What does it mean? It means now the ego cannot persist in you, there is no meaning to it and there is no feeding it. If this can be done, then even in a single instant, when you are not, the doors are open and Jesus has entered you, the light of the Buddha has penetrated you.

Why are you afraid of surrendering? - because the doors will be open, you will become vulnerable.

You are afraid of the outside world; you have lived in your dark room, closed, for so long that you have become attuned to it, you have become one with the darkness. You are afraid of the light.

When you open the door you may not be able to see the light at all. It may dazzle you so much that you may close your eyes. The fear is that if you surrender then you enter on an unknown path. And the mind is always afraid of the unknown. And the unknown is God, the unknown is Jesus! He is just a messenger of the unknown, just a ray from the sun. The sun may be very very far off, but the ray has knocked at your door. Surrender means to open the door.

WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH....

This is very symbolic and very meaningful. Lovers drink from each others' mouths. That's what a kiss is: a deep kiss is drinking the wine of the body from each others' mouths. It is one of the most intoxicating things, no alcohol can compete with it. But the same phenomenon exists on the spiritual level also: a disciple drinks from the master's mouth. It is not a bodily phenomenon, it is at the deepest core, where the disciple meets the master's being, where they embrace each other, where they kiss each other. This is what Jesus means:

WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH SHALL BECOME AS I AM AND I MYSELF WILL BECOME HE, AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM.

Jesus has used the symbolic terms of drinking and eating very much. He says, "Eat me, drink me, absorb me completely in you." That's what the meaning of eating and drinking is: let me move within you, digest me so completely that I become part of your being - and then there is no disciple and no master, the distinction is no longer there. Then there is no lord and no slave, then the disciple has become the master. Then I am you, then Jesus is you. Then he has become you, you have become him; then the distinction is no longer there. The distinction has never been there from the side of Jesus, it has been from your side.

Surrender means that you also dissolve that distinction, you are ready to meet. It is just like lovers:

even in ordinary physical love you have to surrender your ego - maybe for a moment, but you have to do it; maybe just for a moment, but you have to become one with the lover, the beloved. For one moment your bodies are not two, they have become one whole, one circle. For a moment your bodies meet and mingle into each other, fuse into each other, they are not two separate existences.

After a moment they will be separate existences, because bodies cannot meet eternally, but souls can meet eternally. Bodies are solid, they can come closer and closer, but there is no merging really.

Souls are not physical, they are not solid. They are just like the light when you burn a candle in your room: the room is filled with light; you burn another candle in the room, the room is filled with more light. Can you make any distinction between where the light of the first candle ends and the light of the second candle starts? No, there is no distinction; lights meet and mingle and become one. The spiritual is just like light.

When the disciple allows the master to penetrate, it is just like a sexual penetration on a higher level:

the disciple has become the feminine part. That's why surrender - because a woman is at her peak when she surrenders, she is in love when she surrenders. She is not aggressive, she is a passive pole. And a man is aggressive. He has to reach and penetrate, only then is the meeting possible.

The disciple has to become just like the feminine: passive, allowing, not creating any hindrances, surrendered. The master has to be like a male phenomenon. That's why you can understand the phenomenon that there have been very few female masters. It is almost impossible, rarely has it happened, and whenever it has happened - one, two, three cases in the whole history of man - those women were not woman-like at all.

It happened once in Kashmir: there was a woman, her name was Lalla. And in Kashmir they have a proverb that Kashmir knows only two names, Allah and Lalla. She was a rare woman, but you cannot conceive... she was not a woman at all: she lived naked, her whole life she moved naked. A woman hides, a woman is shy, a woman is passive - she was very aggressive, she was just a male mind in a feminine body. She had disciples, but it has happened only rarely, very rarely.

Women masters are rare because it is impossible, but women disciples number four times more than men disciples, the ratio is four to one. Mahavira had fifty thousand monks; forty thousand were women, nuns, and ten thousand male monks. And you cannot compare with a feminine disciple, impossible; a man can never become so surrendering, because his whole mind, the type, is aggressive. The feminine mind can easily surrender, surrender comes easily - it is her very being.

So you cannot find better disciples than feminine minds, you cannot find better masters than male minds. But this should be so, because on every level the polarity remains.

On the physical level you meet a lover; the woman surrenders, she never takes the initiative. And whenever a woman takes the initiative she is not womanly, and no man will love her. If a woman comes and proposes, you will simply be put off. She waits; she may be thinking and dreaming, but she will wait. The proposal must come from the man; he should take the initiative, he should be aggressive. And she will behave in such a way that she seems absolutely innocent, does not know what you are talking about - but she has been planning and planning, and waiting and waiting for when you will come and propose.

Mulla Nasruddin and his wife were sitting on a park bench hidden behind a row of palms. Suddenly a young couple came on the other side of the palms. The young man immediately started to talk in a very romantic way, in a very poetic way. Mulla Nasruddin's wife became fidgety, uneasy. She said, whispered in Nasruddin's ear, "It seems that young man is not aware that we are here, so you whistle to make them aware. And the young man seems so much in love that I feel that he is just about to propose."

Nasruddin said, "Why should I whistle? Nobody ever made me alert, nobody whistled when I was proposing."

A woman is a waiting, she is a womb. Her body, her being is a patience, passivity. And the same happens at the higher level of spirituality: there also she is a waiting. And a disciple has to become like a woman. He has to fall in deep love with the master, and then there will be a meeting, a merging of higher spiritual beings. And that merging is just like a sexual penetration again - more existential, absolutely non-bodily. And from that meeting the disciple is born again; he becomes pregnant from that meeting, pregnant with himself. Now he carries his own new being in his womb. The whole apprenticeship, the time when he is near the master, is the time to carry the pregnancy. It can be done only in deep trust; if you doubt it is impossible, because then you will defend, then you will make an armor around yourself, then you will try to protect yourself.

JESUS SAID: WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH SHALL BECOME AS I AM AND I MYSELF WILL BECOME HE, AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM.

Once surrender has happened completely, the master becomes the door for you. Then a different world of light, life and bliss opens - satchitananda Hindus have called it. The true existence, the true consciousness, and the true bliss, satchitananda, becomes possible for you. The master becomes the door, and once you have attained this you are enlightened. Now you can help others to pass through your fire. Now you can help others to have a glimpse of the absolute, or to reach the ultimate and be dissolved in it.

But before you can become a master you have to be totally a disciple. Before you can teach you have to learn, and before you can help you have to be helped. You have to allow somebody to help you deeply. And that deep help is possible only when you are not there, because you are the disturbance, you are the hindrance. You continuously create barriers for your own growth in fear of the unknown. You cling to the known and then there can be no meeting, because the master is one who is unknown. You remain in the world of the known, the past - the master is the unknown. And a meeting of two points is possible: the unknown meeting the known. The known will dissolve, the known will burn, the known will be found no more, just like the darkness dissolves, disappears, when the sun enters.

Be a darkness before a master - humble, knowing your ignorance well, ready to surrender and wait - then Jesus can transform you, Buddha can transform you. In fact, Jesus and Buddha are just catalytic agents. Your surrender transforms you, they are just excuses. If you can surrender even without a Buddha, without a Jesus around you, if you can surrender to the cosmos, the same will happen. Then it will be difficult for you to surrender because there will be no object to surrender to.

It will be more difficult - that's why I say Buddha, Jesus, they are just excuses.

And then I would like to tell you of one very strange phenomenon that sometimes happens: even surrendering to a wrong master, sometimes you become enlightened - the master himself is not enlightened. It has happened, it can happen again, because the basic thing is to surrender. The transformation comes through surrendering, the master is just an object. Right or wrong does not make much difference.

When you surrender, the door opens. So don't bother much where to surrender, simply think about more and more surrendering. That's why even before a stone statue it can happen, or before a tree it can happen. It happened before the bodhi tree - that's why Buddhists have been preserving that tree for so long, because it happened before the tree itself. Just the feeling that Buddha attained under this tree, and you surrender to the tree.

Surrender is the thing, everything else is just a help towards it. If you can find a right master, so far so good; if you cannot find one, don't bother much. Surrender anywhere you like, but let the surrender be total. If the surrender is partial, even a Jesus or Buddha cannot help you. If the surrender is total, then even if they are not there, any ordinary man can also be helpful to you.

This emphasis has to be remembered, otherwise the mind goes on playing tricks. It thinks, "How should I be certain that this master is right? Unless I am certain, how can I surrender?" And you cannot be certain before you surrender, there is no way to be certain. If you want to be certain about the taste of the food, then the taste of the pudding is in its eating. How can you be certain without eating it? There is no way.

You have to eat Jesus, you have to drink Jesus - that's the only way. You will be transformed because you believed, because you trusted and surrendered, and then many hidden dimensions will be open to you. The life that you see is not all; it is such a minute, atomic part of the whole. The pleasures that you have known are just rubbish. Not even a single ray exists in them of the bliss that is possible, that is your birthright.

All that you have accumulated is junk - if you can come to know the real treasure that is hidden within you. All your life is a begging, and the emperor waits just within your heart - this is what Jesus calls the kingdom. Don't be a beggar, you can be kings! But then one has to dare. A beggar need not dare, but to become a king one has to dare and pass through transformations. Surrender is the gate.

I will repeat the words:

JESUS SAID: WHOEVER IS NEAR TO ME IS NEAR TO THE FIRE, AND WHOEVER IS FAR FROM ME IS FAR FROM THE KINGDOM.

JESUS SAID: COME TO ME, FOR EASY IS MY YOKE AND MY LORDSHIP IS GENTLE.

JESUS SAID: WHOEVER DRINKS FROM MY MOUTH SHALL BECOME AS I AM AND I MYSELF SHALL BECOME HE, AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM.

Enough for today.