Via Confusiva

The first question:

Question 1:

GOURISHANKAR BHARATI, ALL statements are of the moment. No statement can contain eternity.

And those who claim that their statements ARE eternal are simply lying. They don't know what they are saying.

The moment can contain only the moment. So whatsoever I say at the moment belongs to the moment. It is a flower of THAT moment. If it is raining, I say it is raining. Later on it may not be raining. The clouds may disperse. It may become sunny.

Yes, my statement is contradicted by another moment - but it is contradicted only if it was claiming that it has to be true for ever.

I am not giving you dogmas. A dogma is a statement with the claim that it is true for ever. I give you only momentary flowers. I am not giving you a system that will remain for ever and for ever true.

That is what has happened in the past, and man has suffered enough because of it.

What Buddha said was HIS response to HIS moment. What Mohammed said was HIS response to the life that he encountered. It can't be true for ever. And if it has to be true for ever, then life will never change, then life will become stagnant. That's why people who believe in dogmas become stagnant. Their life is no more a flow, they are not river like. They become frozen. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, they are frozen people. They have lost track of all that goes on constantly changing .

Except change, nothing is eternal.

If I was creating a dogma here, then I would never contradict myself. You would be happy with that!

because you would have something to cling to. You have not come here to become enlightened, Gourishankar - you have come here to become knowledgeable. My effort is not to impart knowledge to you: my effort is to awaken you. I can't allow you to cling to any statement - hence I contradict.

I am always in a hurry to con-tradict, so you don't have any time to cling to anything. I want to take all knowledge away from you. I want you to be left alone, in utter emptiness and its purity, and its virginity.

That's why my moment IS FOR the moment. It does not claim anything beyond it. Each statement that I make is only FBI)r THIS moment. Enjoy it! Just enjoy the rose that has bloomed this mowing - be full of its fragrance, sing it, dance with it, cele-brate it. You are fortunate you have been able to see THIS flower. But don't hope that you can keep it for ever. Unless it is a plastic flower it can't be eternal. Only false things can be eternal, artificial things can be eternal.

The reality is changing, it is flux, it is a river. Tomorrow I don't know what I will say. I don't remember what I said yesterday. I am in no way concerned with my past, and not concerned with my future either. This moment is ALL for me. Nothing else exists beyond it. I am UTTERLY disconnected from the past... and have no plans for the future. When the tomorrow comes we will see. And what I am saying to you now is not going to become an obligation for me to go on saying it for ever. I have no obligation to confirm my past again and again. Yesterday is gone, so are the statements that were made yesterday.

But I understand YOUR problem. Your problem is: Then in what to believe? How to believe? But who is telling you to believe in anything? Rejoice! Don't believe. Can't you see the difference? The emphasis is different. I am not telling you to believe in anything.

Of course, if I am telling you to believe in something, then I have to persist again and again with the same thing; I have to say it again and again. That will be a kind of hypnosis. When something is repeated constantly, you become hypnotized by it. I am not here to hypnotize you. I am here for just the opposite thing: to dehypnotize you - not only of the statements that I have made in the past but of the statements of all the enlightened people that have ever existed.

I have to destroy your knowledge, your belief. I have to destroy anything that you can cling to. Only nothing has to be left there....

One sannyasin has done well. He has called my path VIA CONFUSIVA - that's right. That's perfectly right. It is neither VIA NEGATIVA nor VIA POSITIVE - it is VIA CONFUSIVA.

If you can be so much confused that you drop ALL belief, out of that confusion will come clarity.

When do you feel confused? When exactly? Whenever one of your beliefs is attacked - you become suspicious: Now what to believe in? Whenever a doubt arises... but how is a doubt possible if there is no belief?

The man of no-belief cannot doubt either. There is nothing to doubt. 13y destroying your belief I am destroying the very pos-sibility of doubt. Can you see the point? Doubt is a shadow of belief. It looks like the opposite - it is not. Only believers can doubt. If you believe in God, doubt can arise.

But if you don't believe in God, from where can doubt arise? how can doubt arise? A man without any kind of belief will be without any kind of doubt too. That is clarity.

When I say something and it goes against your belief, doubt arises: Now what to choose? You have put so much at stake with your belief, you have lived with it for so long, and now suddenly doubt arises! It shakes you up. It makes you frightened.

And if I go on saying contradictory things every day, great courage is needed to listen to me, Gourishanker, a great heart to contain, great love to understand me, and an intense desire to know, a passionate desire to know: "Whatsoever the cost, I am going to know. If all beliefs are to be destroyed and all systems have to be dropped and all religions to be thrown into the fire, I am ready.

But I am going to know."

When this passionate desire is there, you will meet with me. Then you will understand my contradictions. It is a device. It is creating a situation. I will not allow my people any possibility to believe in anything, not even in me. When ALL belief has gone, what is left? You are just like a mirror reflecting all the moods of life, reflecting all the climates. Summer comes and you are summer... and winter comes and you are winter... and day comes and you are day... and the night comes and you are night.

This I call totality. And to live in totality is to live in God.

All that I am saying is not a kind of doctrinizing - it is not at all. Its purpose us totally different. But the purpose is SO different, that's why such questions arise. When you go to listen to somebody else, he is there to propound a philosophy; he is explaining his philosophy to you. I am not explaining because I have no philosophy. I am utterly anti-philosophic.

When you go to a priest he is there to explain to you a certain dogma that he believes in; he is there to convert you. I am not here to convert you: I am here just to destroy you.

So remember: all statements are of the moment, just as all flowers are of the moment. Spring comes... and there are so many flowers. And then the spring is gone, and you never go to nature and say, "You look very contradictory. Where are the flowers? And how can you go on contradicting yourself in this way?"

Tao is contradictory. It has to be. That is the dialectics of life. But you never go to nature! If a cuckoo is calling and then suddenly it stops for no reason at all, you don't go to the cuckoo and say "Why have you stopped? This is so contradictory! Calling so beautifully, and then falling into silence?

Either be silent or go on calling - be consistent!" But you don't say that.

In the rains the trees are green. In the summer the leaves will disappear and branches will be standing bare, naked, dry, against the sky. But you don't go to the trees saying "How dare you be so contradictory!"

I am part of this Tao. I am not a philosopher. So all my statements are of the moment, for the moment. Remember it. There is no need to believe in them. Enjoy them! Relish them! While the flower is there, drink its beauty. It will be gone soon. Before it is gone, celebrate its being.

Celebrate me! Rather than believing in me, celebrate me. That is the difference - the difference of emphasis. Let my presence be a feast to you. It should not become a prison. It should not become a definition of your mind. It should not fill you with ideas but with dance and song.

If you want to remember me, never remember me as a philosopher, as a priest - no, never. Those are dirty words for me. Remember me as a poet. You never go to the poet and say to him, "You are contradictory," because you understand. A poet has no obligation to be consistent. He can sing a thousand songs of different moods. When he is sad, he sings a sad song; and when he is happy, he sings a happy song. You don't go to him....

My being is more that of a poet. And if you really want to feel my presence, you will also have to learn the way of poetry. Art to me is the greatest religion - the religion of the future. A esthetics to me is prayer.

And second: there is no opposite for me. It looks contradictory to you; for me it is not. For me there are no contradictions at all, because each contradiction is nothing but a complement. There is no way to really contradict. The night does not contradict the day. It only gives rest to the day energy to be revived again in the mowing. If there was no night, there would be no day again. It is through the night that the day lives, regains vitality. And it is through the day that the night is born. It is through life that death arrives, and it is through death that life comes back again and again. They are not enemies: they are friends, partners in the same game, complement Aries.

So if you understand me with great love, you will see that those contradictions look like contradictions to you because your understanding is small. When your understanding is a little greater, when you have moved to a little higher stage of consciousness, those contradictions won't look like contradictions - they will be complement Aries . They will make whatsoever I am saying very rich. It makes them rich.

If you talk only of Zen, it has a kind of richness. If you talk only about Sufis, it has another kind of richness. But when you talk about both Sufis arid Zen, your richness is immense. It is more than the sum total of Zen and Sufism. It is not only Zen plus Sufism: it is Zen multiplied by Sufism - it is multi-dimensional.

Hence I go on speaking through different windows. Some-times I stand at the window that opens to the east and I talk about the east and the sun that rises and the morning. And sometimes I stand at the window that opens to the west and I talk about the evening and the sunset and the beauty of it.

And I go on changing because there are many many doors to the divine.

Jesus says: There are many mansions in my God's palace. There are millions of possibilities. That is the infinity of God, that you cannot exhaust him. But to take note of ALL possibilities certainly makes you infinitely richer.

So there are no opposites for me, but only complementaries.

AND THIRD: there is no answer, real or unreal. I am not giving you any answer as such. What I am giving you is an insight into the mystery of life, not an answer but an insight into the mystery of life.

If my answer provokes the mysterious in you, I have succeeded. If my answer becomes an answer to you, I have failed.

Don't take my answers as answers. I am not a schoolteacher. I have no answers to give you. That which I have to give you is the sense for the mysterious and the miraculous.

But I understand. It is difficult - I speak one language, you speak another language. When I say 'language' I don't mean English, German or French. I mean... my language comes from my being, your language comes from your being. We may be speaking the same language on the surface, but deep down it is almost untranslatable, what I am saying to you. It is impossible to translate it into your language. Then why am I saying it at all?

I am just crazy. I cannot resist. It is overflowing. There is no way to prevent it. I have to say it - just like a cloud is burdened with rainwater and it has to rain! Whether you are able to soak it in or not, that is not the point. Rocks may not be able to soak it in. Or, some soil may be able to soak it in and will be full of greenery and beauty will arise. But that is all undecided. It is an open thing. It may happen, it may not happen. It depends how you let me in.

I have heard a beautiful story:

A few years ago in France, an extraordinary meeting took place. Some leading philosophers from England and America had been invited to meet with their continental counterparts. They were to exchange ideas, share experiences, and discover the extent of possible 'communication' among them. In a very congenial atmosphere, meetings were held, discussions took place, and speeches were made. Many friendships must have been established and no little quantity of wine consumed, but apparently no philosophic communication took place.

For instance, Gabriel Marcel was trying to explain his ideas about God, grace and transcendence.

He continually met resistance from the audience, from other philosophers: "But what do you mean by that? But surely you don't mean this? How is it possible that...? Isn't it true that...? etc, etc.... "

After a while Marcel became exasperated, and the audience as a whole restless. Finally, someone in the audience asked Marcel why he did not simply say what he meant. Since he had been trying to do just this for some time, he merely replied, "Perhaps I can't explain this to you, but if I had a piano here I could play it."

And because there was no piano, no communication was possible.

But I am suspicious: even with a piano it may not have happened - because the other may not understand the language of music either.

Yes, exactly that's what is happening here. What I am trying to say to you is a kind of music that I have heard. It has not been heard verbally. It is in the sound of the running water. It is in the wind passing through the pine trees. It is in the songs of the birds. It is in the silence of darkness. It is in the dancing rays of the sun. It is all over the place! But it is a music. And unless you are capable of understanding this music, you will not be able to understand me. You will go on misunderstanding me.

You say: IS THIS NOT FOOLING THE LISTENER?

You must have come here to gather some belief - and then certainly you will feel fooled, because you cannot gather any belief. On the contrary, whatsoever you had will start slipping out of your hands. If you have come to gather a little more knowledge, you will feel cheated. When you go, you will riot have more, you will have less. In spite of yourself you will have less. You will have lost something here. We rob people of their knowledge.

So you may feel that there is some kind of be fooling going on. When I say something, it looks so clearly, so absolutely right - and the next moment I contradict it. Then whatsoever I say to contra-dict it looks again right. But again I will contradict it!

Just think of the people, Gourishankar - you are here only for a few days - just think of the people who have been listening to me year in, year out. They have almost stopped listening, but a new kind of communication, a communion rather, has started. They are no more worried about my words.

That is no more a concern. They have lost that enthusiasm for words. I have destroyed it.

I have contradicted myself so much that now they are aware of it - there is no need to cling, tomorrow I will take it away. So what is the point? Wait for tomorrow. Slowly slowly, they have learnt the beauty of non-clinging. Slowly slowly, they have learnt how not to let my words interfere, and a direct communication, a communion... their energies start flowing with me. They can flow only when the word is no more important. Then something far superior takes place.

That's why I have been speaking so much. It is not to communicate with you through words: it is to destroy the meaning of the word itself. You will be surprised. The reason why I speak so much is that I want to destroy all meaning in the word. Listening to me, slowly slowly it disappears. And with the disappearance of the meaning of the word an existential connection arises. That is real initiation - when you start hearing my music, when you become attuned to my presence, when you breathe with me. It happens... it has happened to somebody.

Vasumati has written this:

TODAY AND FOR THE LAST FEW DAYS IN DISCOURSE, AS SOON AS YOU BEGIN TO SPEAK, MY BODY LIES DOWN ON THE FLOOR. AND SOMETHING STARTS TO HAPPEN. YOUR VOICE CARESSES ME, UNWINDS MY MUSCLES STRAND BY STRAND, GENTLY LULLS ME AND PULLS ME INTO YOUR SILENCE UNTIL I AM LIKE A PIECE OF SEAWEED IN THE WAVES OF YOUR INFINITE OCEAN. OH, OSHO, MY HEART DIES WITH YOU, RISES AND FALLS WITH YOU, BREATHES WITH YOU. CAN IT BE THAT I AM IN LOVE WITH YOU, GONE WITH YOU, WITH YOUR VIBRANT, WARM AND SCENTED PRESENCE? WHEN I AM NEAR YOU, ALL QUESTIONS SIMPLY DISSOLVE AND THERE IS NOTHING BUT MY HEARTBEAT, THE RAIN AND YOUR VOICE.

Yes, Vasumati, this is it. When words start disappearing, something far deeper, profounder takes place. Communion. The meeting of the Master and the disciple, not as two minds but as two presences, merging into each other, melting into each other, losing into each other.

Soon that moment happens when the disciple is no more separate, the Master is no more separate.

They have become one. That unity is the goal of all disciple hood. When that unity has happened, you have known the Master, you have drunk out of him, you have absorbed him. You have come home.

The second question:

Question 2:

THAT IS THE ULTIMATE SYNTHESIS - when Zorba becomes a Buddha. I am trying to create here not Zorba the Greek but Zorba the Buddha.

Zorba is beautiful, but something is missing. The earth is his, but the heaven is missing. He is earthly, rooted, like a giant cedar, but he has no wings. He cannot fly into the sky. He has roots but no wings.

Eat, drink and be merry is perfectly good in itself: nothing is wrong in it. But it is not enough. Soon you will get tired of it. One cannot just go on eating, drinking and marrying. Soon the merry-go- round turns into a sorry-go-round - because it is repetitive. Only a very mediocre mind can go on being happy with it. If you have a little intelligence, sooner or later you will find the utter futility of it all. How long can you go on eating, drinking and marrying? Sooner or later the question is bound to arise - what is the point of it all? Why? It is impossible to avoid the question for long. And if you are very intelligent, it IS ALWAYS there, persistently there, hammering on your heart for the answer:

Give me the answer! - why?

And one thing to be remembered: it is not that the people who are poor, starving, become frustrated with life - no. They cannot become frustrated. They have not lived yet - how can they be frustrated?

They have hopes. A poor man always has hopes. A poor man always desires that something is going to happen, hopes that something is going to happen. If not today then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. If not in this life then in the next life.

What do you think? Who are these people who have depicted heaven as a Playboy Club - who are these people? Starved, poor, who have missed their life. They are projecting their desires in heaven. In heaven there are rivers of wine. Who are these people who are imagining rivers of wine? They must have missed here. And there are KALPAVRAKSHAS - wish-fulfilling trees. You sit underneath them, desire, and the moment you desire, immediately it is fulfilled. Not even a single moment passes by between the desire and its fulfillment, no shadow between the desire and the fulfillment. It is immediate, instant!

Who are these people? Starved, have not been able to live their life. How can they be frustrated with lithe? They have not experienced - it is only through experience that one comes to know the utter futility of it all. Only Zorbas come to know the utter futility of it all.

Buddha himself was a Zorba. He had all the beautiful women available I his country. His father had arranged for all the beautiful girls to be around him. He had the most beautiful palaces - different places for different seasons. He had ALL the luxury that is possible, or that was possible in those days. He lived the life of a Zorba the Greek - hence, when he was only twenty-nine he became utterly frustrated. He was a very intelligent man. If he had been a mediocre man, then he would have lived in it. But soon he saw the point: it is repetitive, it is the same. Every day you eat, every day you make love to a woman... and he had new women every day to make love to. But how long...?! Soon he was fed up.

The experience of life is very bitter. It is sweet only in imagination In its reality it is very bitter. He escaped from the palace and the woman and the riches and the luxury and everything....

So, I am not against Zorba the Greek because Zorba the Greek is the very foundation of Zorba the Buddha. Buddha arises out of that experience. So I am all for this world, because I know the other world can only be experienced through this world. So I don't say escape from it, Prabhu Maya; I will not say to you become a monk. A monk is one who has moved against the Zorba; he is an escapist, a coward; he has done something in a hurry, out of unintelligence. He is not a mature person. A monk is immature, greedy - greedy for the other world, and wants it too early, and the season has not come, and he is not ripe yet.

Live in this world because this world gives a ripening, maturity, integrity. The challenges of this world give you a centering, an awareness. And that awareness becomes the ladder. Then you can move from Zorba to Buddha.

But let me repeat again: only Zorbas become Buddhas - and Buddha was never a monk. A monk is one who has never been a Zorba and has become enchanted by the words of Buddhas. A monk is an imitator, he is false, pseudo. He imitates Buddhas. He may be Christian, he may be Buddhist, he may be a Jain - that doesn't make much difference - but he imitates Buddhas.

When a monk goes away from the world, he goes fighting with it. It is not a relaxed going. His whole being is pulled towards the world. He struggles against it. He becomes divided. Half of his being is for the world and half has become greedy for the other. He is torn apart. A monk is a schizophrenic basically, the split person, divided into the lower and the higher. And the lower goes on pulling him, and the lower becomes more and more attractive the more it is repressed. And because he has not lived the lower, he cannot get into the higher.

You can get into the higher only when you have lived through the lower. You can earn the higher only by going through all the agony and the ecstasy of the lower. Before a lotus becomes a lotus it has to move through the mud - that mud is the world. The monk has escaped from the mud, he will never become a lotus. It is as if a lotus seed is afraid of falling into mud - maybe out of ego that "I am a lotus seed! And I cannot fall into the mud. " But then it is going to remain a seed; it will never bloom as a lotus. If it wants to bloom like a lotus, it has to fall into the mud, it has to live this contradiction. Without this contradiction of living in the mud there is no going beyond.

You ask me, Maya: SOMETIMES WHEN YOU SPEAK, I GET THE VISION OF LIVING A KIND OF ZORBA THE GREEK LIFE - EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY - LUSTY AND PASSIONATE, AND I THINK THIS IS THE WAY. OTHER TIMES I FEEL YOU ARE SAYING THAT THE WAY IS TO SIT SILENTLY; WATCHFUL AND UNMOVING LIKE A MONK.

No. I will be the last person to make a monk out of you - otherwise, why are the monks and nuns so much against me? I would like you to become rooted into the earth. I am perfectly in agreement with Friedrich Nietzsche who says: "I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe in those who speak of other- worldly hopes! " Learn your first lesson of trust by trusting the earth. It is your home right now!

Don't hanker for the other world. Live this world, and live it with intensity, with passion. Live it with totality, with your whole being. And out of that whole trust, out of that life of passion, love and joy, you will become able to go beyond.

The other world is hidden in this world. The Buddha is asleep in the Zorba. It has to be awakened.

And nobody can awaken you except life itself.

I am here to help you to be total WHEREVER you are, in whatsoever state you are - live that state totally. It is only living a thing totally that one transcends it.

First become a Zorba, a flower of this earth, and earn the capacity through it to become a Buddha - the flower of the other world. The other world is not away from this world; the other world is not against this world: the other world is hidden in this. THIS is only a manifestation of the other, and the other is the unmanifest part of it.

The third question:

Question 3:

SEETA, THIS IS THE WAY TO UNDERSTAND ME. I am neither Sufi nor Zen. I am neither male nor female. I am neither positive nor negative. And I am here to help you to transcend ALL polarities.

Hence I speak on the polarities, so that you can understand them, so that you can become aware of them - so much so that you are not trapped by them.

I talk to you about Sufism and about Zen so that one day you can go beyond both. You have to go beyond all standpoints! You have to go beyond all kinds of principles, dogmas, paths, methods, techniques. To be with me is on the way towards transcendence. I am neither a theist nor an atheist, neither a Hindu nor a Mohammedan.

I am simply an awareness - full of love. You can also become that, because whatsoever I have become you can become, because wherever you are I was also there one day, with the same agony, the same suffering, with the same dichotomies - with the same problems! I was just like you.

That's why I say you can also be just like me.

To be with a Master is to be with a man who has been JUST like you, because only that man can help you who has been just like you. If a Master descends from God, he cannot be of much help - because he has never been a man. If God himself comes on the earth and moves amongst you, he will be of no help at all. That's why he has never tried. Or maybe he has tried and failed, so he has dropped the whole project.

God cannot commune with you. He has never been a man. He will not know where you are. He will not know how you are suffering. He will not have any compassion for you. He will have no understanding. And he has always been there where you would like to be. The distance will be vast.

Even if God confronts you, there will be such a gap between you and God that it will be unbridgeable.

Hence the meaning of a Master.

A Master is one who has bell just like you, w ho has arisen out of you, who has moved out of you and gone ahead. He knows all the pains of the journey. He knows the whole past of man. He understands - that's why he has compassion. And he can help, because he is still in the body. His one hand is still in the world, his other hand has roached God. He can become a bridge. A Master is a bridge.

Sect a, this is the way to understand me. Don't let it remain just in the mind. Let it become vibrant in each cell and fibre of your body. Let it become your heartbeat and your breathing.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY TO YOU, TO SHARE WITH YOU, but that something has never even been dreamt by you. They have to wise your language, but in such a way, with such nuances, twists and turns, that thy can give you an idea of something which is not contained by your language.

That's why mystics use language in a certain way, and different mystics decide in different ways.

Sufis have decided for parables; their message is all in their stories. Stories have a beauty. Even children can unduestand them. They can go to the lowest, who cannot understand anything higher, and even he can understand the story. He will understand according to his capacity, but if you go on meditating over the story... and one has to meditate over these stories. These are not stories that you read once and throw them away. They have great meanings hidden in them. You have to dig again and again. You have to meditate. Slowly slowly, new meanings arrive. As you grow in sympathy, in trust, in consciousness, in meditation, the meaning grows.

Sufis speak in parables. They have chosen that way because there are so many people in the world and at different stages of life, at different stations. Something has to be told which can be understood by all. Now, the parable has a beauty: it can be understood by all in different ways. It is very unlimited. Those who can't understand, even they can enjoy it. If today they enjoy it, tomorrow they may understand it.

Mahavir has chosen a different method. He does not speak at all. Language has been dropped.

Silence is his language. He simply sits with his disciples. Now this will be difficult; not all will be able to understand it - only the highest. It is said about Mahavir: his first sermon, of course in silence, was understood only by gods. That's a way of saying that nobody understood it. It took years for men, a few men, to understand him.

Jainism is the smallest religion as far as the number of the followers is concerned. Why? The reason is here: Mahavir didn't choose a method that can be understood by many people in many ways. He was a very very mathematical person - that is the reason behind it. He would like to be exact. He cannot use a parable. A parable is basically inexact. A parable has to be vague. So many meanings can be in it; no meaning in particular, and many mean-ings in it. It has to be a magic bag: you can bring out of it any meaning that you want. It will be understood by many people. Millions will be able to understand, even children will be able to read it. And something will happen to them.

Mahavir was very mathematical. Because he was very mathematical he would remain silent - because he knew that if he said something it would not be as exact as it is in him, so it was better not to speak. Silence is his language. Only a few very evolved souls could understand him.

Zen has a different method of its own. It does not use parables. It does not remain silent either. It uses khans, puzzles, riddles, which cannot be solved by the human mind. That is its way to destroy the human mind. It takes years.

Never be befooled when you read in books about Zen that the Master hits a disciple and he becomes enlightened immediately - you don't know the whole story. He was meditating for twenty-six years.

That part is not told in it. After twenty-six years he has earned the blow of the Master; it is not for everybody. Don't think that when you go to a Zen Master he will hit you on your head and you will become enlightened. He will not hit you at all. He will be very polite with you. He will say, "Sir, so great of you to have come to me! I rejoice in your presence." Don't think that he will hit you. It has to be earned. It takes YEARS to get that blow of the Master. That blow can be given only at the last moment.

When between you and reality there is only a very very thin layer left, so just one blow and the layer is broken and the bird is out of the egg.... But the bird has to be given a chance to mature in the egg first. Don't go breaking eggs before they are ripe, otherwise you will kill the bird. You will not be of any help.

Zen has its own methodology, very crazy, but of immense power.

YOU ASK ME: WHY DO THE MYSTICS SPEAK A LANGUAGE OF THEIR OWN?

They have to. Each mystic has to create a language according to his understanding, capacity, according to his past, his experiences. When Jesus speaks he speaks as a son of a carpenter.

Whey Buddha speaks he speaks like an emperor. That is their past. When you speak you have to use your past.

Buddha cannot speak the same way as Jesus. His terminology is bound to be different. He has never been to the forest, he has never chopped wood, he has never cut wood, he has never carried logs to the father's workshop. He does not know how the freshly cut wood smells. He cannot speak that language. He cannot use the parable of the shepherd and the sheep, the lost sheep. No, he has no understanding of the shepherd and the sheep. Jesus can use that parable.

Buddha speaks like a king - the language of the court, the language of philosophy, not the language of the common person. He has not been a common person - how can he speak that language?

So EACH mystic has to use his own language. And remember: speaking is precarious. People talk around the subject, interrupt, change the subject, do not understand, are silent. Words heal and wound, build up and sow confusion. To use the word is to use a very very dangerous weapon. It can be used for surgery; it can also be used to cut somebody's throat. And one has to be very skillful.

Many mystics have decided not to speak at all. And those who have spoken, they have also spoken continuously against speaking. And even if they were very very intelligent, very experienced with language, very articulate, then too....

The statements of the Buddha seem hard and impossible to us who are full of ideas and understanding nothing. "That art thou" - a statement like a sea. You cannot walk on it, you cannot build on it. It runs like water through your fingers. "If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him" - a statement like a mountain. You cannot see through it, you don't know what lies behind it. You have no idea what it means, what it is all about.

Just a few days before, I received a letter from America. Some-body must have read in one of my books somewhere: "If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him." Now he was very angry. Must be a very poor Buddhist. He was so angry and annoyed that he wrote to me in great rage: "Who are you to tell us to kill the Buddha? How can you say such a sacrilegious thing? To kill the Buddha?

Buddha has to be worshipped, not killed. Buddha is the greatest man who has walked on the earth.

What do you mean by saying 'Kill the Buddha if you meet him on the way'?"

He was really angry. I can understand his anger. He does not understand Buddha, he does not understand these great statements. And it is not my statement either. Zen people have been saying it down the ages; it is more than two thousand years old at least. But he may not be aware of it. He must be thinking that I am somebody who is against Buddha. But Buddha is dead! If I am against him, how can I say kill him?

These statements ARE like mountains, great mountains. They are like Everest, very difficult to climb too - every possibility of never reaching to the understanding of them.

He could not understand, this American could not understand, because he must have been brought up in a Christian way, and then he may have become interested in Buddha. That is the prob-lem.

No Christian can say that: "If you meet Jesus on the way, kill him." That is not their language. They will think this is sacrilegious - that's what he writes in the letter: "This is sacrilegious! You must be an atheist, an irreligious person. You must be a Satan to say such a thing as 'Kill the Buddha."' His upbringing must be Christian; that is ANOTHER kind of language. He does not know the Zen way of saying things.

It is not said against Buddha - it contains Buddha's whole message! Buddha will absolutely agree with it. That's what he did when he was leaving the world. His last statement was exactly this. He said to his disciple, Ananda, who was weeping and crying, "Don't weep and cry for me! In fact I have been the barrier to you. Now the barrier is dying, you are free, and it may become more easy for you to be enlightened. Be a light unto yourself."

And Ananda had lived with Buddha for forty years, and lived unenlightened. And after Buddha was gone, within twenty-four hours, he became enlightened. What happened? He was clinging to the idea of Buddha. That very clinging was a barrier.

It happened in Ramakrishna's case too:

He was a worship per of Kali - the Mother goddess. And then he came across a very very strange man, Totapuri. A man like Totapuri very rarely happens in the world. He was like Bodhidharma.

A VERY strange man. Naked he used to walk, utterly free from all kinds of morality, ethics, rules, regulations. He was a PARAMAHANSA, a JEEVAN MUKTA - he was free in his life, absolutely free. Freedom was his quality. Just wandering around the Ganges, he came to Dakshineshwar.

Ramakrishna saw him, became interested in him. He had never seen such a freedom, and such grace and such beauty. And he asked him, "Help me."

He looked at Ramakrishna and he said, "Yes, I will help you. But the only thing is: you will have to destroy this Mother goddess."

Ramakrishna started shaking and trembling and perspiring. He said, "What are you saying? How can I destroy the Mother goddess? She is my Mother! She has helped me up to now. She is my all in all. She is my soul, my very heart. I will die!"

Totapuri said, "So better die, but kill this Mother. If you really want to have freedom, you have to destroy all connections and all attachments. And this is your attachment. You are not attached to your wife, so that is not a problem. You are not attached to money, so that is not the problem. You are not attached to the world, so that is not the problem. Your whole attachment is with this Mother, this idea of a Mother goddess. And I know, it is beautiful, but still it will keep you away from the truth."

Ramakrishna would sit in meditation in front of Totapuri, but the moment he would close his eyes, the Mother goddess was there with all her glory. And he would start swaying, and tears would come in his eyes. And he would forget all about Totapuri end his freedom. And Totapuri would shake him up and he would say, "You have again fallen into the dream. It is ALL dream! Why don't you take a sword and cut her in two pieces? Destroy her!"

It happened many times and Ramakrishna was not able... What to say about cutting? - he would forget all about Totapuri and the idea that he had given him. And he would look at the face of the Mother inside, and it was so alive and so beautiful, so full of light. It was no ordinary experience: it was the greatest vision, the ultimate vision of form, God as form, beyond which is only the formless.

Totapuri got fed up and he said, "Now, today I leave. Before I leave, you try once more, and I have brought this piece of glass."

Ramakrishna said, "For what?"

He said, "When I see that your tears start coming and you start swaying and you are feeling orgasmic, I will cut on your third eye with this glass. Blood will start coming. And I will cut DEEP, just to remind you that I am here!Just to remind you: take the sword and cut the Mother in two pieces."

And Ramakrishna said, "From where to bring the sword?"

And Totapuri said, "From where have you brought this Mother? From the same source - it is all imagination."

And that day Ramakrishna tried. Totapuri cut his third eye with that piece of glass. Blood started Flowing, and he pushed the glass deep into the third eye. In a single moment of awareness, Ramakrishna took a sword, cut the Mother in two pieces. The Mother disappeared, and it opened the door for the formless.

For six days he was in samadhi. And when he came back, the first words that he uttered were, "The last barrier has fallen. I am infinitely grateful to you, Master Totapuri - infinitely grateful to you. The last barrier has fallen."

This is the meaning when Zen people say, or I say to you, "If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him." In fact I should say to you, "If you meet me on the way, kill ME" - because you may not meet Buddha, you may meet me. 'On the way' means when you start moving from form to no-form, your Master will be the last barrier. You have become so attached to the Master. You have been in such love with the Master. You have enjoyed so many delights and ecstasies through him. It seems sheer ungratefulness to cut him - no, it is not. But this is a Zen way of saying a thing.

Christians will feel offended, Jains will feel offended, Hindus will feel offended, Mohammedans will feel offended - this is not the right way to talk about your Master!

Different mystics have chosen different ways of speaking, but if you look deep down the message is not very different. Containers are different but the content is not different. And everybody has to choose his way of speaking, and has to choose the way that his disciples will understand.

A psychology professor conducted an experiment to prove a point about work. He hired a man to hit a log with the reverse side of an axe. The man was told that he would be paid twice the amount he normally made. The fellow lasted half a day. He gave it up, explaining, "I have to see the chips fly."

Now, a man who cuts wood, if he is told to cut the wood with the reverse side of the axe, soon will lose his enthusiasm. He needs to see the chips fly - they keep his enthusiasm, they keep him moving, they keep his energy flowing. That is his language! He can work only in that language. That is his noe-sphere - without that he cannot function.

And each mystic has to speak according to himself and according to the disciples that gather around him. And each mystic attracts a certain kind of people. Can't you see it: here, a certain kind of people has gathered - the people of the future. You will not find orthodox people here, you cannot find. Impossible. You will not find the puritans here, the moralists. You will not find the hypocrites here. This is not the place for them! I am not the man for them.

One French orientalist went to see George Gurdjieff. Just once he went to see him. The orientalist used to live in Paris; Guenon was his name. And just close by, a few miles away from Paris, was Gurdjieff. But only once he went, for half an hour. And then he came back and he started talking against Gurdjieff - he talked his whole life against Gurdjieff. He used to say to people: "Flee from Gurdjieff as you flee from the plague - just flee from him! He is the most dangerous kind of disease on the earth." What happened? He was a moralist, very very puritan. And what he saw there in half an hour's time was very very different.

Gurdjieff used to force people who were not drinkers, he would force them to drink as much as possible. Now, that was his device. When a man is utterly drunk, he becomes very very real and honest. This is a very bad state of affairs, but this is how it is. People have become so false that to see their original face you have to wait... only when they are absolutely drunk. Then their masks slip by; they cannot hold them, they are so drunk. Everything becomes shaky and they start coming up in their true colors.

So each disciple had to go through that torture. It was torture for somebody who had not been drinking too much or who was against alcohol. Just think of Morarji Desai: if he had gone to Gurdjieff...! He would force people to drink so much that they would fall on the ground, start uttering nonsense, shouting, shrieking, abusing. And that was his way of watching them: then he would sit silently and watch, listen to them. Once he had understood your reality, then there was no problem - then the work started. But you reveal your reality only when you are drunk. Otherwise, you maintain your false face.

This moralist saw this happening, and he was aghast. He could not understand it. Sometimes orthodox people come here, but they escape; they never come back again. It is a different kind of commune. I can be understood only by the new man that is going to be born, that is on the way. The past cannot understand me. So I have to use the language of the future.

And you know, everybody has to use his own language.

I have heard:

If a lawyer wishes to give someone an orange, he might say, "I give you all and singular my estate and interest, right title and claim, and advantage of and in this orange, with all its rind, skin, juice, pulp and pips, and all right and advantages therein with full power to bite, cut, suck or otherwise eat the same orange, or give the same away, with or without its rind, skin, juice, pulp, pips, anything therefore or hereinafter or in any deed or deeds, instruments of what kind or nature whatsoever, to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding."

Now just one orange he is giving to somebody! But this is the way a lawyer speaks, the way of the law.

Two tramps are sitting underneath a tree. First tramp, lying on a park bench underneath the tree, "I just dreamt I had a job."

Second tramp, "Yes, you look tired."

There are languages and languages. The mystics also happen in all kinds of shapes and sizes.

And, of course, they have to use the language that they know, and the language that they would like to be understood by the people. And the language that they use has to be expressive of their experience.

Kabir speaks in one way, Krishna in another, Nanak in still another - they were people of different centuries, different atmospheres, different climates, AND they were talking to different kinds of people and different potentialities.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

"Preacher," complained an aggravated young waggoner, "I am at my wits' end about my horses.

They don't eat anything but hamburgers and french fries. Already they're so skinny I'm afraid they won't last much longer."

"Let me ask you something," said the preacher. "Do you pray every day?"

"Why, er-uh-not usually," the driver stammered.

"Do you always wash your hands before every meal?"

"Not always."

"And do you ask God's blessings before you eat?"

"No!" the driver answered tersely.

"Then all is perfectly clear," said the preacher. "It is irrevocably intertwined with the divine law of compensation. Since you eat like a horse, your horses eat like humans."

You ask, Deva Sharan: WHY AM I SO NICE TO OTHERS AND SO HARD WITH MYSELF?

It is the law of compensation. If you are so nice with others, you will be hard with yourself. You really want to be hard with others, but you are hiding it, you are repressing it. It becomes accumulated in you. And you can't be hard with others; you have been taught not to be hard with others. So finally, where are you going to pour your garbage? Only you are left.

It almost always happens: people who are nice to others are hard on themselves - they have to be. There are ordinarily only two types of people: the murderers and the suicides. Murderers are people who are dangerous to others, very dangerous - they can kill. And the people who are not dangerous to others tend to be dangerous to themselves - they can commit suicide.

There is no necessity to be divided in two categories, you can go beyond them. And that's my teaching. There is no need to decide A PRIORI that you have to be hard with others or you have to be nice with others. You have to be CONSCIOUS in yourself. It is not a question of being hard or nice to anybody - you have to be conscious inside yourself. And the first effect will be that you will be nice to yourself. The first ripple of being conscious is being nice to oneself - the first ripple of consciousness is self-love.

You wily be surprised to know this, because you have always been taught that self-love is a kind of selfishness - it is not. It is the foundation of all altruistic love. Self-love is the BASE of all possible love - love with your wife, love with your children, love with your God. Unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else.

Meditate over Jesus' saying: Love thy neighbor as thyself. But thyself comes first. People have started loving their neighbors and have forgotten that they don't love themselves. So when you love your neighbor and you don't find him very loving - and you have to love him because you have been taught, and this is good manners, and civilization and culture, respectability comes through it, and you love your neighbor - you will hate yourself. Then the law of compensation will work.

And if you hate yourself, how can you love your neighbor? You can only pretend; only on the surface can you show. Deep down, you would like to murder him. Deep down, you are full of hate. This is the situation that has happened to humanity.

My approach is totally different: Be conscious! And the first ripple will be self-love, you will love yourself, because you are closest to yourself. And it has to start there. Just as you throw a stone in a silent lake and ripples arise, first they arise just around the stone, and then they spread towards the bank. Then they go on spreading.....

Love yourself. For that you have to be very conscious. Only a conscious person can love himself, because only a conscious person knows that "I am not there, but God is." How can you love yourself?

You don't know who is there. You have not Even tasted anything there, you have not seen anybody there. It is all darkness.

And you have been taught that you are ugly, that you are worthless: "Improve upon yourself! Be this! Be that!" Nobody has told you to accept yourself. Everybody has been telling you to reject yourself, so you hate yourself and then you become hard with yourself. Hatred is hard. And then whatsoever you go on thinking about, Deva Sharan, that "I am soft and nice to others," that softness and niceness is hypocrisy, it is not true - it can't be true.

A real niceness for others can arise only if you are nice with yourself. Start from there. Forget all about what you have been told. Your priorities are all wrong. Don't put the other as more important than you. Nobody is more important than you. You are the most important person in the world, you are the center of the world. And I am not telling you to become egoistic: I am simply saying a truth - that each is a center to the whole world, to the whole universe. God exists in you, you have to be the cent r. I am not saying that others are not centers - everybody is. But how are you going to understand others' significance if you don't know your significance?

Love yourself. And out of that love a great love will arise for others, because they are also like you.

And the last question:

Question 6:

IT IS VERY simple.Just a few stories will make it clear to you:

Two music students were discussing their part-time jobs. Said one, "I work in the opera at night and carry a spear in one act."

His friend asked, "How do you manage to keep awake so late at night?"

"It's simple," replied the first. "The man behind me carries a spear too."

The second story:

Preacher Pitts had undertaken that morning to describe the terrors of hell to his congregation.

"Brothers and sisters," he intoned, "some of you have seen melted iron running out of a furnace, haven't you? It's white, sizzling and hissing. Well, in the place I'm talking about, they use that stuff for ice cream."

Reverend Walker stood before his congregation and in dynamic fashion pontificated on the wickedness of intercourse. After twenty minutes of ranting about the sin of sex, he raised himself to full height, leaned over the pulpit, and boomed:

"Brothers and sisters, if there are any among you who have committed adultery, may your tongue cleave to the woof of your mowf."

And if you make people afraid, you also become afraid. It works both ways. So it is not only that the priest has made you afraid - he himself has become afraid, he is also trembling.

Fear has been their trade secret. Create fear in people, and when people are frightened they are ready to become slaves, then they are ready to do anything. I I Walt you to be absolutely free of fear. There is no fear. This existence is yours, there is no hell - unless you decide to create one. Then it is a private affair. Then you can create it. But there is no hell! It is all heaven. And heaven is not in the end when you reach God, no. Heaven is ALL the way to, God. Each moment is heavenly. The whole journey is heavenly.

Heaven is a way of looking at things, and hell too. But in the past the fear has been used as a trade secret. AND joined with fear is greed. That is another side of the same coin. One side is fear, another side is greed. Both have been exploited. And a really religious person is one who is free of fear and greed.

And if you are free of fear and greed, you will be free from the exploitations that have been going on and on down the centuries. Because of it, religion has not been of any help to humanity; rather, it has been a curse, it has not been a blessing. Make it a blessing. Drop fear and greed. Live joyously!

Live in a heavenly way THIS moment, now.

Live... Love... be... and forget ALL fears. There is nothing to be afraid of. We are part of this existence. This existence is not antagonistic to us. It is very friendly. It has created us! How can it be inimical? And there is nobody sitting there counting your sins, and nobody is there to punish you.

God is not to be feared.

And if there is fear, you cannot love. Fear kills all capacity to love. In all the languages of the world, there are words like 'god fearing' - they are ugly words. Drop them. Never use them. Let this religion be a religion of love - be god loving. And then you are out of the grip and the trap of the priest.

And not only are you out of the grip and the trap of the priest - you will free the priest too. He is also suffering with you. Continuously talking to you again and again about hell and heaven, he also becomes convinced of it. It is not that only you are the victim - he is also a victim. It has become a nightmare to all.

This is what I mean by a new religious consciousness in the world: free of fear and greed. The whole energy has to be poured as celebration....