New skies to fly in

Question 1:

Christianity and all other religions are on their deathbed. They are trying desperately to survive, but their survival is almost impossible; and the impossibility comes because they are not religions, they are pretenders.

The true religion can only be one.

It is such a simple thing to understand. Can you think of science as Christian science, as Hindu science, as Mohammedan science? It will be simply idiotic. Science is science. It is an enquiry into the objective world without any prejudice. How can it be Christian, how can it be Hindu?

Religion is an enquiry into the subjective world without any prejudice. How can it be Christian or Jewish or Buddhist?

Truth is one, and religions cannot be many.

What is dying is their "many-ness," and out of this death will arise a simple religiousness with no adjective to it. Can't you think of a man just being religious, just as you think of a man being scientific? If we can visualize a man being truthful, being sincere, being authentic, being nonviolent, being compassionate - he is a religious man.

Religion is not something to be believed in but something to be lived, something to be experienced...

not a belief in your mind but the flavor of your whole being. Whatever you do will have a religious quality to it, just as a scientific mind is bound to do everything in a scientific way, even sometimes to the extent of absurdity.

I have heard about Herodotus, a Greek mathematician, who was the first to discover the law of averages; and because he was the first man in history to discover it, he was so full of it that he was looking at everything through the law of averages.

One day he had gone for a picnic with his three or four children and his wife, and they had to cross a small stream. His wife said, "Take care of the children."

He said, "Don't be worried. Have you forgotten that you are the wife of Herodotus? First, I will take the average depth of the stream and the average height of the children; and if the average height is more than the average depth, there is no problem." His wife had no understanding of averages, but she was really worried that some accident is going to happen: "What nonsense is he doing?"

He went with his instruments to a few places: he checked the depth of the water, and then he measured the height of all four children. Somewhere the water was shallow, and somewhere it was very deep; but when it comes to averages... An average is not a truth - because in that average that shallow water will make the deep water less deep.

One child was tall, one was a small baby, but an average... Herodotus said, "There is no problem at all, we can cross the stream. Our children are capable: their height is higher than the river is deep."

The poor wife did not agree, but she could not argue with Herodotus. But she was very alert that some child may be drowned, so she was behind the children; Herodotus was ahead. And then one child started drowning. The wife saved the child and said to Herodotus, "This child is drowning!"

He said, "Then there must have been a mistake in my calculations." And rather than helping the child and the other children, he went back to the bank where he had calculated on the sand the average depth and the average height of the children.

He said, "There is no mistake. How is it happening?"

His wife said, "Don't be mad! At least don't destroy our picnic. Once in months you come with the family; still your science is a disturbance."

They somehow crossed the stream, but he was continuously worried - not about the children - he was worried that the calculations were right and still this boy started drowning? It seemed that he was angry at the boy: "How could you dare to drown, going against mathematics?"

The wife said, "The boy does not know mathematics - he's so small."

This is going to the extent of absurdity, but a scientific mind remains scientific even when to be scientific is not needed. But it never becomes Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan.

A religious man will be religious in his actions, relations, in his thoughts and feelings. He does not need a church or a synagogue or a temple. What he needs is a clarity of vision, a silence of the heart, an experience of his own being - because his experience of his own being will make him aware that the whole world is divine; that everything that exists is at different stages of evolution, but there is in it the potential of life and the potential of consciousness. Even in a stone statue of Buddha the potential is there to blossom into a real Buddha because the whole existence is full of divine consciousness.

A religious person also can go to absurd lengths, just like Herodotus - but these are exceptions.

These are eccentric people. They are not the rule; in fact they prove the rule.

In India, there was a great Mohammedan saint, Sarmad, and he had some kind of wound in his chest. He would not take any medicine, and the wound was growing - not only growing, there were worms in it. They were becoming bigger, they were eating his heart. And Mohammedans - he was a Mohammedan - five times a day bow down to God. So sometimes those worms would fall from his wound onto the earth and he would put them back into the wound. Now this is going to the extreme.

Religiousness does not mean that you cannot take medicine because it will kill germs and there will be violence.

Scientific or religious minds have to be alerted not to go to absurd lengths. But there is no need for somebody who is scientific or religious to belong to an organization, and to be against other organizations and to believe that, "Only we have got the truth; nobody else has ever found reality, we have the monopoly."

This kind of attitude and approach is dying. It is good news, because its death will bring a new birth of a consciousness which will be simply religious.

I cannot understand why there should be so many religions. There are three hundred religions on the earth; there are not three hundred truths. And they have all been fighting for centuries, killing each other in the name of truth - destroying each other, murdering, burning living people in the name of love, in the name of compassion, in the name of nonviolence. Beautiful names and ugly realities - this is the whole history of your religions.

The story you mentioned is beautiful. The whole story is worth looking into, because it has so many implications.

First, Jesus is born to poor parents - to a carpenter father. That indicates that religion has nothing to do with scholarship. Joseph, Jesus' father, was absolutely uneducated; his mother was uneducated.

They were uncultured, simple villagers. They were not rabbis - learned, wise in the ways of the old, traditional paths - they were utterly simple people. If Jesus had not been born to them, you would never have heard their names.

To me, it means truth is born out of simplicity, not out of knowledge, not out of great degrees, respectability, fame, power. Truth is very humble, so humble that when Joseph and his wife Mary came to the annual festival in the capital city, Jerusalem ... they were so poor that they could not manage to get a place to stay. Every door was closed.

They tried to convince people. Joseph said that his wife was pregnant and any day, any moment, the child could be born, and he was utterly helpless: "Be kind, be merciful - just a small corner anywhere." But it is a strange world: people talk about beautiful things, but there is no mercy, no compassion, no love. A pregnant woman alone in the night, on the road...

It was not that there was no space anywhere in the whole capital. Yes, it was true that there was no space in the hearts of the people of the capital. It was not a question of a space in the houses, it was a question of a little space in the heart.

There is an old saying: "The emperor may have the biggest palace in the world, but there is no space in it. And the poor man may have a small hut, but there is enough space." And the proverb is born out of a story.

A poor man lives in a small, one room cottage with his wife. It is raining hard and the night is becoming darker, and somebody knocks on the door. The man says to the wife, "You are close to the door, please open it - some guest."

The wife is reluctant. She says, "There is not space enough. Two persons can hardly sleep here.

Where is a third, a stranger, going to sleep?"

The husband said, "Don't call him a stranger. When he has knocked on our door, he is a guest.

Open the door and I will show you how we can manage. If two can sleep well, three can sit; but the guest cannot be turned back on such a night."

The door is opened. The man comes in. They are all sitting talking - because there is no space to sleep - and again, another knock. And the owner of the house says to the man, who is now near the door, "Open the door. Some other guest has come. The night is really terrible."

Even this man, who has just come inside, is angry at the owner. He says, "What are you saying?

There is hardly any space. Where are you going to put the man?"

The owner says, "If I had listened to this argument before, you would not be inside. And you are only a guest, so don't try to argue with me; simply open the door. Another guest has come. We are sitting at ease; if a fourth person comes, we will be sitting a little more close, more tight. It will be really good. It is getting cold, and to be tight, to be close, will be warmer. And who knows what beautiful stories the new guest is going to bring? For the whole night we have to sit up."

Finally the door is opened, and another man comes in; now they are sitting so tightly. And then suddenly a donkey comes to the door, hits the door with his feet. They are all puzzled: Who is outside? The owner says, "There must be another guest. Open the door."

The last man is sitting near the door now. He says, "This is simply stupidity! We are sitting so tightly - we cannot manage to have another one here."

The man says, "I am the owner. No guest can go away from this small house. We are sitting. If somebody comes in, we all will be standing; then there will be space."

They all think this man is crazy. They open the door and a donkey comes in. The strangers want to throw him out, but the owner says, "No. It is not a question of man or donkey. It is a question of terrible rain, a dark night; and the poor fellow - where will he go? He can stand just in the middle of us and we will gossip. What harm can he do? And you have forgotten the old saying, "The emperor's palace, although very big, has no space because his heart is very small. The poor man's hut is very small but has enormous space because his heart is enormous."

That night, when Joseph was taking Mary on his donkey from one house to another and was refused... that shows our barbarousness, that shows our inhumanness. And all these people may have been very religious people - going to the synagogue, very particular, reading the TORAH, full of wisdom. But as far as their action is concerned, it doesn't show any wisdom, it doesn't show any understanding.

Finally he finds some poor man who says, "I don't have much, just the stable of my horses. If you want to stay in the stable, you can." Something is better than nothing. It was almost nothing, but being on the street... It was humiliating to give birth to a child in a stable with donkeys and horses, but there was no other way: Jesus is born in a stable.

One need not have a palace to become religious. It doesn't matter where you are; what matters is what you are.

And you have said the same is happening with me - that I have knocked on doors, not only of one city but around the world. I have not harmed anybody, but all doors are closed. My ideas seem to be dangerous to them. And my ideas can be dangerous only to those who are mediocre, who don't have any intelligence. If they have any intelligence, my ideas will give them new dimensions to think about, new skies to fly in; new flowers will blossom in their being. But to a mediocre mind they are dangerous. They are dangerous simply because he cannot understand them.

Moreover, nobody wants anybody to have more intelligence than him. Nobody wants anybody to have more insight into reality than they have. The politicians are against me, the religious leaders are against me. It is a tremendous experience to see how poor the world is as far as intelligence is concerned.

If I am wrong, prove me wrong. That will give me joy.

If I am right, then have the courage to accept it; that will help the evolution of man. But they are not ready even to listen.

That reminds me of my grandfather. Out of the whole family he was the most friendly towards me.

But he was not an intellectual, he was a farmer. I used to go with him to his farm, and he would put earplugs in his ear. I discovered it only later on - just one day one of his earplugs fell out. I said, "What is the matter?"

He said, "You say strange things I don't know anything about, and I don't want to appear ignorant.

And to say anything to you is dangerous because you immediately argue. So I have found this strategy. You go on talking; nobody is listening. I simply go on accepting whatever you are saying as if I am listening."

"But," I said, "you could have told me that you don't want to listen. Why should I waste my breath?

And then you have to be unnecessarily deceptive."

He said, "Now you are saying that, but if I had said, ?Don't say anything,' you would have argued. And I know that I don't have any argument which can defeat you. I am old, and I enjoy your arguments, but many of those things I don't understand." And he really did enjoy them. He used to take me... if any saint was visiting the town, he would take me, he would specially take me and say, "Now, come on; put this man right!"

I said, "You don't want to listen to me."

He said, "I don't want to because I don't want to argue with you and be defeated - I'm your grandfather! But I enjoy it very much that my little boy is putting the saint... giving him such slapping arguments and making him feel so embarrassed before the crowd. I feel proud!"

The closing doors of the countries... behind them are the great powers, the greatest powers that have existed in the world: America and the Soviet Union. Both are against me. And it is very strange, because they are enemies - at least one should be with me. But they are both against me for the simple reason that I love to call a spade a spade, and they are all standing on lies - lies which have been told for centuries, so they have become almost truths.

Jesus was not allowed even to be born... Those people were not aware of who they were rejecting - so they can be forgiven. They were rejecting just a poor carpenter, a donkey, and a young wife on the donkey - pregnant. And who wants unnecessary trouble? They were not aware that a man like Jesus is going to be born, so whatever they did was done in ignorance.

But the doors that are being closed to me are not closed in ignorance; they are closed in the full knowledge that if I am accepted I am going to transform the younger generation. I am going to give new dreams and new hopes to the young people, which can prove dangerous to the old vested interests - politicians, priests and others. It is being done with full knowledge, and it has become now a world conspiracy - it is unprecedented.

Never before was the whole world unanimously agreed against one single individual who has no power except the power of his vision, of his eyes, of his realization. But this is nothing to be sad about. It is really something to celebrate, because they have accepted their defeat.

They have accepted that they are inferior. They have accepted it - each country is informing the other country that, "This man is dangerous," and I have not harmed even a single ant! What dangers are they talking about? And they are not lying, they are perfectly right. The danger is that I can cut their roots, which are rotten. They are carrying corpses; they have made the whole world stink.

They are preparing nuclear weapons just to commit a global suicide.

I just want to wake them up: "What you are doing in your sleep is dangerous."

We are in a special time:

Either man will die or a new man will be born.

The people who are closing their doors on me are for the old man - and the old man is going to die.

It has lived long enough. It has lived posthumously; it has already died and just goes on walking out of old momentum.

I stand for a new man with a totally different kind of character, with different qualities. They are afraid that the youth - the younger people who want to go on an adventure, who want to discover, who want to travel into new spaces of being - can be impressed by me. In their language, they can be "corrupted" by me. It is the same language they used against Socrates in Greece - that his life had become a danger because he was corrupting the youth and their minds.

I was arrested in that same land. I was not thinking that after two thousand years they would condemn me with the same crime - that I could not stay a single moment more in Greece because my presence was corrupting the younger generation. Neither was Socrates corrupting the younger generation. There is not a single word which can prove that he was a corrupting influence. Yes, it was dangerous to the older generation because he was saying things which the older generation was not capable of understanding, and was threatened by.

Whatever I am saying to people is very simple... just an effort to wake them up so they can see with their own eyes that the old is either dying or is dead, and now it is time to bring in a new concept of man.

The old concept was repressive. The old concept was based on fear. The old concept was full of greed, ambition, desire.

That's why we have lived all through these centuries going from one war into another war.

In three thousand years, five thousand wars have been fought on the earth. Anybody looking from another planet will think that this planet, earth, has gone mad! In three thousand years, five thousand wars? And in between, whatever time you have, you have to prepare for the new... as if the whole function of life is to prepare for war and then to fight, die and kill; and then again prepare. And now they have come to the very culmination, to the ultimate preparation.

Somebody asked Albert Einstein, "Can you say something about the third world war?"

He said, "No, but I can say something about the fourth."

The questioner was puzzled. He said, "You cannot say anything about the third, and you are ready to say something about the fourth? What do you mean? Are you kidding?"

Albert Einstein said, "No. About the fourth, one thing I can say with absolute certainty: it will never happen. But about the third I cannot say anything. The fourth is not going to happen - the third will be enough to finish all living organisms on the earth. Then there will be nobody to prepare for the fourth."

I am carrying within me the vision of the new man - who will not be forced to be somebody other than himself, who will not be given an ideal that he has to follow, but a freedom so that he can realize his own potential. He will not be given ambitions. He will not be given an education which creates ambition - that is pure poison. He will be given something else - the ability to rejoice, to sing, to dance, to make his life a bliss... not in competition with anybody else, but a growth of himself.

He will not be given any hope of a heaven so that he can sacrifice this life to attain heaven - which nobody has seen, which is simply a fiction to befool people to sacrifice their lives in the name of nations, in the name of religions... and he will not be made afraid of hell, because there is no hell anywhere.

Freed from hell and heaven, freed from fear and greed, this small life that you have got can be turned into a paradise. This very earth is the lotus paradise. And you can enjoy each moment of your life to such an extent that through enjoyment you become aware of the divine.

Do you see the difference? The old man was taught that through torture you will attain to the divine:

"Torture yourself, your body." I cannot see any relationship; why should torture lead to the divine?

Torture will lead to more torture. It can lead to the devil, but it cannot lead to the divine. Only rejoicing, blissfulness, silence, peace, and harmony can lead you into the experience of the divine.

And for that, no sacrifice is needed.

All the old societies depended on sacrificing individuals; individuals were for the society.

The new man will turn all the tables. The society is for the individual, not vice versa. The individual is the highest quality in life, and society is just to serve the individual to realize himself. You cannot ask the individual to sacrifice himself because his religion needs it, because his nation needs it, because communism needs it, because fascism needs it. Sacrifice all of them and save the individual. They are only words, and the individual is the reality, the living reality, the only proof of any godliness in existence.

The doors are closed, but I will go on finding ways. Perhaps a window is left open. Perhaps somebody is courageous enough to take me in. In this big world there must be somebody. If Jesus was born in a stable... Even if a stable opens its doors for me, that will do. I can put dynamite into my words... from the stable into the whole society.

And whether I do it or not, it is going to happen. Evolution cannot be stopped. Perhaps it may be delayed a little bit, postponed, but it cannot be stopped. It is only blind people who cannot read the writing on the wall - evolution cannot be stopped.

So it doesn't matter who becomes the vehicle, but truth should win and a new man should be allowed to appear - that is the only hope, not only for this earth but for this whole universe.

Question 2:

Nobody has the last laugh. Beyond the mind there is no laughter, no tears; it is eternal silence.

Everything that you experience and express is part of the mind, and enlightenment is the last thing.

After that, you are part of the whole universe. And I don't think you have ever heard the ocean laughing or the clouds laughing or the flowers laughing. In the whole universe there is no laughter.

"Strange," you will think. "If there is so much blissfulness then why is laughter missing?" You will have to understand the whole psychology of laughter.

First, you must understand that except man, no animal laughs. If you come across a cow laughing or a buffalo laughing, you will go mad. Then even if the Uruguay government says, "Stay here," you are not going to look back - where cows and buffaloes laugh, it is finished! You will think either this world is mad or you are mad! Only man laughs.

Neither can that which is below mind laugh... because it cannot see the ridiculousness of things.

For laughter, you have to see the ridiculousness of things. There is not enough intelligence in the buffalo to see the ridiculous, the absurd.

Nor above the mind, because above the mind, everything is accepted; there is nothing ridiculous. It is only the small space of mind in which you are able to see the ridiculous and you can laugh... and you can laugh only because you can cry, you can weep, you can have tears. Laughter is just the opposite polarity of tears.

Life is so miserable that even small opportunities to laugh you don't miss - because life is so empty, there is nothing. So small opportunities, which really don't have much... Somebody slips on a banana peel. Why do you start laughing? - because neither the banana peel has done anything nor the person who has slipped has done anything. It was absolutely natural; anybody would have slipped on the banana peel.

But small opportunities... and you cannot miss them, you have to laugh. Life is so miserable that these small laughters make it tolerable. They help; there is not only misery, there is laughter too - although it was just a small thing, not of much significance.

Beyond the mind there is no misery; hence there is no necessity for laughter. So once you go beyond the mind, nobody has the last laugh. You are beyond the mind; mind has no life, it cannot laugh. And you cannot laugh because there is no misery: you are part of this whole existence which is utterly silent.

Thousands of people can go on slipping on banana peels: this existence will not take any note of it.

Not a single tree will laugh. The moment you are also part of this universe there is nobody to laugh, there is nobody to weep; there is nobody as a separate entity. So you can laugh as much as you want before you become enlightened.

Laugh before! Don't wait, thinking that you can laugh after. Have as much laughter as possible - but before. Don't postpone it thinking that there will be eternity available: "First, let us have enlightenment and then we will sit and laugh. What else will there be to do?"

But then there will be no point in laughing; the whole situation of laughter is gone.

The mind was creating the misery, and to balance it the mind was picking up things to laugh about - to make you happy, to keep a certain balance between misery and laughter - because if there is one hundred percent misery, you cannot tolerate it; you will simply jump out of it. But it is not one hundred percent misery: there are moments when you feel very good, moments when you smile, moments when there is happiness, moments when you have a full-hearted laughter. These are the things which keep you in the mind and make you able to suffer the misery. It is a mind trick.

The more miserable you are, the more you will find things to laugh at. It is not incidental that Jews have the best jokes in the world because they have suffered the most. Since that unfortunate moment when Moses took them out of Egypt until today, they have been suffering and suffering - in different nations, among different races, in different ways. They have suffered so much that they had to invent something so that they could forget suffering at least for a moment. They have created the best jokes.

I was amazed by the fact that in India we don't have any jokes. All the jokes that people in India use are borrowed; none is of Indian origin, they are all from other countries. Not a single joke have I been able to find which is authentically Indian - because India has had a very peaceful, silent past.

Just in the last few hundred years there have been invaders, but that has not mattered much because of a ten-thousand-year-old contentment - living peacefully with nature, harmoniously, no revolution, no rebellion, absolute acceptance of whatsoever was. India was a big country and the invaders had come in a small number. Even the invaders were accepted; otherwise, they would not have been able to conquer. But nobody cared; everybody was so content in himself.

Even today, when half of the country is starving, if you go to the starving people you will not see any complaint. They accept it: "Perhaps this is our destiny." Those ten thousand years have left such a contentment that it still goes on lingering.

Strangely all Indian stories, dramas, that have been created in the past, are only comedies, no tragedy. Not a single tragedy has been written in ten thousand years. And great masters, novelists, dramatists, poets, have been working; great literature has been created, but it is all comedy. Every story ends up in something beautiful, something good; no story ends up in something tragic.

Naturally, these people had no idea of suffering.

But Jews suffered tremendously; and there seems to be no end, the suffering goes on. Now, this creation of Israel is again a political strategy of Christian nations to create an endless source of suffering for the Jews. And the Jews have not been able to understand why Christian nations were so interested, after the second world war, in giving them Jerusalem - because it is a holy land to Christians too; they could have made it their own holy land. Why should it be returned to the Jews?

- who have not been in power there for centuries. And it was a Mohammedan country surrounded by an ocean of Mohammedan countries.

To give it to the Jews is one of the worst, most mean acts of Christian nations. It means they have put Jews in a state where they will be tortured continuously. Mohammedans cannot tolerate them; they will torture, they will fight - and they are a vast majority. And the Jews will remain continuously beggars before the Christian nations. So for both the Christians and the Mohammedans it is a joy - reducing the Jews to beggars for war material, for everything that they need. And their needs will be there continuously because Mohammedans are not going to leave Israel peacefully. They are going to fight.

Now Israel is like a wound, and all the Jews of the world are pouring their moneys, their wealth, into making Israel survive somehow. In the first place, it is not going to survive. In the second place, it will take all the Jews of the world to put in all they have to help it survive. So they will be losing their money, their productivity. They will be sending their young people to fight there, to be killed, kidnapped.

Now this is a grand strategy of Christian nations. Nobody has said it. I am saying it - and it is being said for the first time that it was a conspiracy. Things were perfectly okay. What was the need of a nation? Jews were perfectly happy in being in America or in other countries. What was the need to have your own country? - and a country which is going to be a continuous trouble, which will suck all the energies of the Jews and will keep them always with a begging bowl before the Christian nations.

On the one hand, the Mohammedans will be destroying them, invading them. On the other hand, the Jews will be pouring in all they produce, which will go to waste, and they will be always begging from the Christians. If you look at it, you can see how politicians can be mean, utterly mean.

In India there are not many Jews, very few. One Jew had become a sannyasin - an Indian Jew; otherwise I have amongst my sannyasins, forty percent Jews. One Indian Jew had become a sannyasin. I asked him, "Do you still think you are the chosen people of God, after four thousand years of torture?"

He said, "I think that we are the chosen people of God, but we don't want to be anymore. Somebody else should be. Enough is enough! We have carried this burden for four thousand years. Now we don't want to be the chosen people of God - somebody else should take the responsibility."

He was right. He was an old man, and he was right that this idea of the chosen people of God and four thousand years of constant suffering and murderous killings, gas chambers... Alone, Adolf Hitler killed six million Jews. This is the great gift of being the chosen people of God!

I say to my sannyasins, "Just be ordinary people. Never be special. Just be utterly ordinary and simple." The history of the Jews will give you a clear-cut picture that the moment you start thinking you are the chosen people, difficulties arise. Everybody is against you because they all think they are the chosen people.

Adolf Hitler would not have killed six million Jews... He had to, for the simple reason that he thought the Nordic Aryans, the Germans, were the chosen people of God, and the Jews were the only other contenders. So only one could remain alive - either the Nordic Germans or the Jews. And whoever survived would be the proof that God had saved his chosen people.

But the misery, although it was tremendous, has given beautiful jokes to the world, and Jews have been able to tolerate all kinds of sufferings by joking, telling stories, and not taking much note of what is happening all around.

The moment you pass the mind's borders, there is no question of laughter... only eternal silence.