Only One Ecstasy

The first question:

Question 1:

ANURAG, THERE ARE NOT TWO REALITIES. All duality is only in conceptualization. Reality is one. It is mind that divides: the lower and the higher, the good and the bad, the internal and the external, heaven and hell. It is mind that divides! But reality remains un-divided. It is all one.

You cannot Denmark where the inner ends and where the outer begins. There is no possibility of demarcation.

The internal is the external, and the external is the internal. They are absolutely one.

To see this is to be free of all division and of all schizophrenia.

It is good to divide for intellectual purposes. It is good to categorize to understand things. But to know reality one has to drop all categories, all mind concepts, because they limit. They have to limit to define. You cannot define the unlimited. You have to divide and cut into pieces. Only parts can be defined: the whole cannot be defined.

But the moment you cut the whole into pieces, it is no more real. The whole remains the whole.

Just listen to these words of Lao Tzu:

THE GREAT TAO FLOWS EVERYWHERE, TO THE LEFT AND TO THE RIGHT.

ALL THINGS DEPEND UPON IT TO EXIST, AND IT DOES NOT ABANDON THEM.

TO ITS ACCOMPLISHMENTS IT LAYS NO CLAIM.

IT LOVES AND NOURISHES ALL THINGS, BUT DOES NOT LORD IT OVER THEM.

The Tao goes on flowing - to the left, to the right, to the sinner, to the saint, it is available. It goes on raining on all. It makes no distinctions of higher and lower, of the accepted, the chosen, and the rejected, the condemned. THE GREAT TAO FLOWS EVERYWHERE.... It knows no boundaries.

It jumps from one thing into another. From man into woman, from yin into yang. The yin goes on yanging and the yang goes on yinning.

There are moments... have you not watched in your own being? You may be a man ordinarily.

Sometimes you are not a man at all: you are a woman. You may be a woman ordinarily, but sometimes you are a man. The Tao goes on flowing. Nothing can obstruct it. There are female moments in every male's consciousness, and there are male moments in every female's consciousness. Man and woman are together, undivided, two aspects of one coin.

THE GREAT TAO FLOWS EVERYWHERE, TO THE LEFT AND TO THE RIGHT.

ALL THINGS DEPEND UPON IT TO EXIST...

It is an invisible ocean of energy, of consciousness, of bliss - SATCHITANANDA - it is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss. But even these three words are not three things. The idea of the trinity in Christianity. is beautiful, but there are not three Gods - there is only one God. Three faces. The Hindu idea of Trimurti is even more beautiful: one God with three faces. In fact, the God has as many faces as there are people.

The God means the whole. Where are you going to put the God? In the external reality or in the internal? When you love, your beloved becomes part of your internal reality. Is he or she external to you? Are you external to him or her? All those old categories start disappearing - that's the beauty of love, because it makes you aware of the invisible unity of all.

TO ITS ACCOMPLISHMENTS IT LAYS NO CLAIM.

God remains silent. Tao remains silent. It lays no claim.

IT LOVES AND NOURISHES ALL THINGS, with no distinctions, BUT DOES NOT LORD IT OVER THEM.

That is another thing so nice about Tao, about the real God: it is not bossy! The moment your God becomes bossy, your ego has entered in your God, you have falsified God. That's how many Gods have become untrue Gods. Your mind has corrupted them. You have brought all your nonsense to the concept of God. You have poisoned the very concept.

THE TAO LOVES AND NOURISHES ALL THINGS, BUT DOES NOT LORD IT OVER THEM.

Thus the Tao is something purely helpful - never coercive. The Taoist never speaks of obedience, but only of BEING IN HARMONY with the Tao. The internal and the outer are in harmony, in absolute harmony. They are notes, two notes, of the same music - two musical instruments in the same orchestra, in absolute harmony: Being in harmony is the way of Tao.

In the moment of awakening to the real, one realizes, not that one SHOULD not rebel against Tao or God, but that one simply CANNOT.

You cannot be otherwise! Notwithstanding what you go on believing. You may think of yourself as an individual - you are not, because you are not separate. Your thinking is just YOUR thinking. It is a private idea. It corresponds to no reality at all and, hence, it will create misery for you.

This idea of internal and external has created much misery for man, because then people start dropping the external. That's how the idea of renunciation arose: "Renounce the outer and be the inner!" But how can you do it?

There is an apple on the tree. It is external. If you eat it, it becomes internal: it will be your blood, your bones, your marrow. When does it become internal? How does the external become internal?

And one day you will die, and all that was inside you will be again outside, back into the earth. It will nourish some apple tree, more apples will grow.

You breathe in and it becomes internal. Then you have to breathe out. WHERE does the breath become internal? Watch. That's what Buddha says: Watch your breathing - and see where it becomes internal and where it becomes external again. Just watching your breath, all distinctions will disappear. You will see it is the same circle. The internal is the external, and the external is the internal.

The moment you see this in your breath circle, you have solved a great problem, a great dichotomy is dissolved. Then you are no more a body or a soul. Then you don't talk about these words. Then all these words are just childish - maybe useful, but they have no reality, no truth. Just useful, utilitarian.

You ask me, Anurag: HOW DOES THE INTERNAL WORLD OF EXPERIENCE RELATE TO THE EXTERNAL REALITY?

It does not relate! because they are not two. They are one. It often becomes a great question. But the question is basically false, so all the answers that have been given. are false. Once you start by a wrong question, you will arrive again and again at wrong conclusions.

For at least five thousand years, man has been puzzled by one thing: the body/mind problem. How do they relate? First you divide... division is false. There is no body and no mind separate. It is body mind. It is one entity. The mind is only a way of looking at the body, and the body is also a way of looking at the mind. It is the SAME reality looked at from different angles. It is not two. But once you have thought that body AND mind are two, then the problem arises: How do they relate?

Just watch a small action: you think to raise your hand - how do you do it? Such a simple phenomenon, raising your hand up - how do you do it? Philosophers have been puzzled and have not been able to answer it, how it happens, because of this internal and external: they are the mind and the body is being raised - how can the body follow the order from the mind?

Mind is invisible, immaterial; body is visible, material - how can matter follow mind? What is the link? How is it translated into body language? How does it correspond? But to me, basically the problem is wrong: there are not two entities in you - it is all one. Then the problem disappears.

You ask me how the internal relates with the external reality. There are not two realities. There is no question of internal and external. They don't relate. They are one. How do two lovers relate with one another? If they are lovers, they don't relate - they are simply one. In love they know the unity.

If they are not lovers, then they relate. Then relationship is not much. It is more conflict and less relating. It is more fight than being together.

If love has happened, in that moment it becomes absolutely clear that there is no division. Then they start functioning in a harmony. And not that the harmony has to be imposed from the outside. No, it comes of its own accord, with no effort, with no cultivation, with no conditioning. It simply happens.

As trees grow upwards... just like that. As birds can fly... just like that. As flowers can bloom... just like that. It is natural.

The internal and the external are in absolute harmony. There is no division. But man has created the division and has created much anxiety about it. Drop the division, and go beyond anxiety.

Dropping dualities one becomes religious. Don't think yourself separate from the world. That's why Zen people say: The world is Nirvana. There is no other enlightenment.

That's why the other day I was talking about Zorba the Buddha. Zorba is extrovert, Buddha is introvert. Zorba has no idea who he is, Buddha has renounced the world, he only thinks about who he is. His whole consciousness moves inward. Zorba is interested in women and wine and dance and song; his whole energy moves outward.

To me, the Perfect Master will be one who has no divisions. He flows in all the directions - internal, external - because there is no problem at all. It is all one flow. To be in this one flow is to know God.

The second question:

Question 2:

IT IS. THIS WHOLE LIFE IS STRANGE. Things happen here, strange things. I can understand your problem. No husband can ever believe that anybody can fall in love with HIS wife - although he can fall in love with somebody else's wife and there is no problem. But somebody falling in love with HIS wife? and he is so fed up with the woman? and he cannot see any beauty in her? and all ugliness has surfaced?

A man came home and saw his partner making love to his wife. The partner was very much afraid:

"Now there is going to be trouble." And the man came and tapped on his shoulder and said, "Come with me to the other room. I would like to have a word with you."

And the partner was trembling: "Now there is going to be danger - maybe some fight or something."

And the man took him into the other room and closed the doors and said, "Tell me one thing: I HAVE to, but why you? What has happened to you? Have you gone crazy or something?"

I can understand your problem: somebody falling in love with YOUR wife? Let me tell you one anecdote:

Two men were playing golf one morning, but could not play as quickly as they wanted because there were two women playing the hole ahead of them who were moving too slowly.

Finally, out of their frustration, one of the men began walking towards the women to ask them to stop gossiping so much and to play golf, or to please get out of the men's way.

He got within a hundred feet of the women and all of a sudden stopped, turned around and ran back to his friend.

"You'd better go," he said. "One of them is my wife and the other is my mistress."

So the second man started walking towards the women. He got within a hundred and fifty feet of the ladies, and he too turned around and ran the other way. He got back to his friend and said, "Small world!"

The third question:

Question 3:

ANANDA PREM, THE JEWISH CONCEPT OF GOD AS FORMLESS and the Zen concept are not the same. Zen has NO concept of God - because how can you have a concept of a formless God?

That is absurdity! The moment you have a concept you have created a form. That's why Zen never talks about God, Buddha never mentioned God at all. He has been asked again and again, but he keeps mum, he will not say.

If you talk about the formless God, what are you saying? What do you mean by 'formless God'? If you contemplate on the formlessness of God you will be surprised: either you have to drop the idea of God like Buddha, like Zen, or you have to create some form. Either the formlessness can remain and God has to go, or God can remain but then the formlessness has to go.

So remember it: Zen has no idea of God. Formlessness cannot be called God. The moment you call it by any name, you have given it a certain form; the formlessness is falsified, is destroyed. It is no more formless. About the formless God you can be only silent. You cannot even say THAT much - that God is formless. That is profane! that is sacrilegious! You cannot define in any way: Not even are you allowed to say that God is indefinable because that becomes a definition. You have said something, you have ALREADY said something. And you are saying nothing can be said.

Buddha is very logical in that way. Zen is very clear. Judaism is not so clear. It is AGAINST creating forms of God, that is true - but its being too much against simply shows it is obsessed with the idea of form. That's how Mohammedans are also obsessed, because they are an offshoot of Judaism.

Judaism is obsessed that there should be no statue of God in any temple. And Mohammedans have gone one step further: that if you find any statues, destroy them! free people of the forms of God! As if you can free anybody from the forms of God - because forms exist in the mind, not in the temples.

They are not in the statues but in the intellectual visualization of God.

Why should Judaism not permit the worship of forms? The very effort to deny forms shows that somehow you are still attached to the form. It is not formlessness! It may be an anti form attitude, but not formlessness.

Zen is really formlessness. And because of this, just as Prem says:

JEWISH RELIGION, LIKE ZEN, IS BASED ONLY ON THE FORMLESS AND DOES NOT PERMIT THE WORSHIP OF FORMS.

If God is formless, who are you to permit or not to permit? The very idea of permitting is destructive to freedom. Judaism has not given freedom to people. It is not just an accident that all the revolutionaries have come from the Jews. It is a rebellion. From Jesus to Freud, all the revolutionaries have come from the Jews. Why? No other religion has created so many revolution- aries - no other religion is so restrictive.

If a religion is free, the revolutionary has nothing to do there. Hinduism has not created any revolutionaries. Buddhism has not created any revolutionaries. Why? Because the freedom is so total! What is the point?

If Jesus had been born in India, nobody would have thought about him that he was a revolutionary.

People would have allowed, because there is no question - who is there to allow or not to allow? It is everybody's own choice.

Because Jews have not been allowing forms, Jesus was born. And Jesus became the form of God for Christians, for millions of people. And then it has been happening again and again.

Marx comes out of Jews, and Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud. Why? The religion is very restrictive. It does not have the flavor of Zen.

And when I am talking about Jews, I leave aside the Hassid Masters. They HAVE the flavor of Zen.

But Jews don't accept them either. They are thought to be rebellious. And whenever a religion becomes too much interested in permitting and not permitting, it becomes ritualistic, dull, dead. It becomes formal.

Just see the point: Jews talk about the formlessness of God and their whole religion has become absolutely formal! Just ritualistic. Nothing of the interior, nothing of the heart. Just a social formality.

I have heard:

The couple were registering at a small hotel in Vermont. They were asked to show their wedding license. The man flashed a fishing license to the near-sighted clerk and laid it on the desk.

After the couple went upstairs the clerk examined the license more carefully and rushed up after them. He banged on the door shouting, "If you ain't done it, don't do it! This a isn't the license fer it!"

Who can permit? Who can give you a license for anything? If there is any possibility to know God it is through freedom. It is through ABSOLUTE freedom.

You say: BUT COMING TO INDIA, I HAVE MOVED AWAY FROM THIS IDEA....

It is good that you have moved away from this idea - that was just an idea, not your experience.

But now you have moved to another idea, just the opposite. That's what has been happening to Jews down the ages. When they rebel, they move to the opposite idea. Just the opposite. It always happens. You react, and you move to the other extreme.

Now, Prem says she has moved away from this idea. You may have moved, but you have moved in the opposite direction. Now she is surrounded by all kinds of gods and goddesses: Ram and Krishna, Shiva.... In India you have millions of gods. They say there are more gods than people in India.

I have known people whose whole day is lost into worship ping. I used to stay with a man. He had at least three hundred statues in his small temple, his own temple. Three hundred statues of all kinds of gods and goddesses. And from four o'clock early in the mowing he would start worship ping - you have to take care of three hundred gods. Half the day was wasted in it. And he was in such a hurry he could not worship even one, because he knew, "Now there are still two hundred and ninety-nine waiting," and he had to rush to everybody. And he had to be careful, other-wise somebody may have become angry - those three hundred jealous gods. You have to pay the same attention to each.

He was getting crazy! I said, "You will go mad! Three hundred gods are too much."

Now Prem says she is feeling ecstatic. Yes, you will feel ecstatic because you have moved to the opposite polarity. It gives freedom. But this is not true freedom - soon you will lose it. Soon you will become tired. And then there is every possibility the mind will start moving to the other extreme agate. And the truth is just exactly in the middle, remember. The truth is just exactly in the middle.

In ancient Greece, on the temple of Delphi, there were two inscriptions. One is very well known, the other is not so well known. There must be some cause why the other never became so well known.

One was: Know THYSELF. And the other was: NEVER in EXCESS. But the other is not so well known, and they both are together. They each are as important as the other, of the same plenitude, of the same potential.

One can know oneself only if one lives a life of no excess, if one moves JUST in the middle.

Otherwise, one becomes a victim of extremes.

Now, from the idea of formless God you are becoming a victim of thousands of forms. Just exactly in the middle, where gods disappear; neither form nor formlessness, when there is utter silence - there is the home.

And Prem says: I EVEN HAVE NO DESIRE FOR ENLIGHTENMENT ANY MORE AND WOULD RATHER LOVE BUDDHA THAN BECOME HIM...

READING YOUR QUESTION, PREM, I started becoming worried about Buddha. It is perfectly okay, you will love Buddha - but what about Buddha? Your love will be your love, with all its poison. In fact, your love is not love at all. Only through light does love arise. Only after enlightenment does love flow. Before that it is just a false illusion of love.

You can go on loving Buddha, but you will never know what Buddha is - how can you love? Your love will be nothing but a kind of illusion, a hallucination.

You have loved people before, now you project the same illusory energy on Buddha. And if Buddha is alive he won't allow it. He will try to destroy it in every way, because he will think of you in this illusion, in this dream. You may feel good, but this is a dream all the same. Sooner or later you will awake and then you will see that you have been wasting your life.

Yes, there is excitement but there is no ecstasy. And don't think your excitement is ecstasy. They look alike. And the greatest danger in life is from things that look alike. Excitement looks like ecstasy - it is not. Ecstasy has NO excitement. It is a very tranquil state. Ecstasy is absolute silence, nothingness. It is enlightenment!

Now, you say: I EVEN HAVE NO DESIRE FOR ENLIGHTENMENT...

In a way that is good, because if you don't have any desire for enlightenment, enlightenment Becomes more possible. But the way you are speaking it seems that you are clinging, you are afraid.

It is not just a statement of no-desire: it is a statement of rejection. You are afraid of enlightenment, you are afraid to become SO conscious - because then all these illusory loves will disappear and all these mythological gods that you are surrounded with will look stupid. You will hove to throw them down in the river. You will hove to get rid of them, because they are un-necessarily occupying space.

You cannot love Buddha unless you become a Buddha! And to become a Buddha is what enlightenment is, and that's what ecstasy is.

Prem, you are not in an ecstasy. You may be in a heart-throbbing excitement, you may be enjoying this trip, but for how long? And these gods that you are surrounded with are all nothing but your projections. You have created them. You can put your energy into Ram, and then he becomes alive, but it is YOUR energy.

Why not become alive COURSES? Why put it in Ram and make him alive? Why go THAT far? And you say:

DOES THIS MEAN I AM STUCK SOMEWHERE AND NEED YOU TO BE A TOTAPURI TO CUT MY FOREHEAD?

I am not a Totapuri. Ramakrishna was too much attached to form, and Totapuri was too much attached to formlessness. I am not attached at all! To me both are the same. Attachment to form or to formlessness is the same. I am not giving you a formless god, I am not trying to substitute form by formlessness - no, I want you to drop both form and formlessness and just be... free of ALL illusions. In that JUST BEING is freedom. Meditate on these lines of J. Kerouac:

THERE IS NO WAY TO LOSE.

IF THERE WAS A WAY, THEN WHEN THE SUN IS SHINING ON THE POND AND I GO WEST, THOU EAST, WHICH ONE DOES THE TRUE SUN FOLLOW?

WHICH ONE DOES THE TRUE ONE BORROW?

SINCE NEITHER ONE IS THE TRUE ONE, THERE IS NO TRUE ONE WAY.

AND THE SUN IS A DELUSION OF A WAY MULTIPLIED BY TWO AND MULTIPLIED MILLIONFOLD.

SINCE THERE IS NO WAY, NO BUDDHAS, NO DHARMAS, NO CONCEPTIONS, ONLY ONE ECSTASY, AND RIGHT-MINDEDNESS IS MINDFULNESS THAT THE WAY IS NO-WAY ANYHOW SOME WAY.

Only one ecstasy. Ecstasy has nothing to do with form or formlessness. Ecstasy has nothing to do with Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism. Only one ecstasy. And what is that? I teach you only that, and what is that? That is being so utterly quiet, unmoving, not going anywhere, not desiring anything, not dreaming anything - gods or no-gods, forms or no-forms - no thought at all. The thought of form, the thought of formlessness, are all the same. Can't you be in that mirror like silence? nothing is reflected even! The mirror is empty. That is the one ecstasy.

That one ecstasy is God. The taste of it is God. God is not a person with form or without form. God is the taste on your tongue of that moment - of that moment of bliss, of that moment of Tao, of that moment when ALL stops, time stops, and the world stops.

I am not a Totapuri at all. He was very much obsessed with the formless, otherwise why should he bother to cut Ramakrishna's forehead? I would not have done that. For what? I am not in any way interested in changing you from one position to another position, from one philosophy to another philosophy. They are all points of view. My effort is to make you free of ALL points of view - Ramakrishna and Totapuri both.

And what happened? do you know? And that's what I am afraid of, Prem, it can happen to you.

Ramakrishna said after those six days, "The last barrier has fallen," and then he lived at least ten more years - and continued to worship Kali. And the day he died, he died with the name of Kali on his lips: "Jai Kali, Jai Kali!" The day, the moment he died, it was not the formless, it was again the form. What happened? For a few days he remained in that excitement of the formless, then he became tired and moved again.

No excess. No extreme. Be in the middle. Exactly in the middle is the door. If you think of time, then in the past there is no door, in the future there is no door - but in the present, because that is exactly in the middle. If you think of form and formlessness there is no door, but exactly between the two. Neither this nor that - NET I, NET I - just exactly between the two. Neither the soul nor the body. Don't become a spiritualist or a materialist. Don't think of the external reality or the internal.

Just exactly in the middle!

Always go on thinking of the middle, and slowly slowly relax in the middle and let the extremes dissolve. And you have wived home.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

CHIDVILAS, WE HAVE NOT even met in this life. What are you talking about - the past life? You have been here, I have been here, but meeting has not happened YET. I go on trying to meet you, and you go on escaping. You are very artful, skillful, clever. And you KNOW it! And to avoid THIS encounter you are interested in thinking about past lives.

Ask me why we have not met in this life. How is it going to help whether we met in the past life or not? Now we cannot go back to it; we cannot make anything out of it. It is finished. But this is how mind works. It escapes from the present. It finds ways either in the past or in the future. Those are tricks, strategies of the mind to save itself. Why should you be interested in-'past life'? It is finished, it is gone, it is no more! It has no existence anywhere, no validity. Even if we did meet, it matters nothing.

The only thing that matters is: I am here and you are here, but the meeting is not happening. If the meeting happens, you will become enlightened. And let only that be decisive. The day you become enlightened, the meeting has happened. Otherwise, what is the point?

And I know that you know it, because you have also asked another question which will make it clear.

Chidvilas asks:

I STRONGLY FEEL TO GO THROUGH THAT BEAUTIFUL INITIATION CEREMONY AGAIN! WHAT AM I MISSING WHICH I GOT WHILE YOU ALLOWED ME TO ENTER YOUR KINGDOM? PLEASE THROW SOME LIGHT ON THIS FEELING, AND ON MISSING.

You know it! You ARE missing. The initiation ceremony is not going to help - no ceremony is going to help. It is not a question of any ceremony. It is a question of risk. You have to be courageous enough to encounter me, to face me, to face the reality that I am making available to you. And you go on dodging. This way and that you go on running.

And your mind is full of knowledge. So you can always find excuses, explanations, rationalizations.

That's why the meeting is not happening. Now this is another effort out of your knowledge: you want to know whether we have met in some past life.

If I say yes, your ego will be strengthened. You will start thinking yourself very special. That is the desire in it. So even if we have met, I am not going to say it. All I am going to say is: Meet me now!

because there may be no other life for me again. You may not meet me again. No possibility. Don't miss THIS opportunity.

And remember: the initiation ceremony is not going to help. It has not to be just a ceremony - it has to be existential. You are initiated as a sannyasin, but that has not helped either. Just by becoming a sannyasin you don't become one. It is just a preliminary. It helps. It brings you a little closer. It makes you a little more open, a little more trusting. But it is not the end!

The real initiation is going to happen some day when you drop all your mind and you just look into me with no idea, with no knowledge, with innocence.

Remember Zusya and those children who looked into his eyes. The day you look into my eyes as if you are a child, innocent, with no past, with no future, then the meeting will happen.

And that meeting is going to transform you. I am waiting for it. I am working for it. I am surrounding you from everywhere. But up till now it has not happened - because of you. You go on escaping.

Stop escaping.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

BECAUSE THEY ARE. The word exactly describes what the V psychotherapists are doing - they shrink people. They shrink people from persons into patients. That's their work. They reduce.

When you go to a psychotherapist, you go as a person, with dignity. They reduce you immediately to labels: you are a schizophrenic, paranoid, neurotic. Immediately you are reduced! You are no more the same person with the dignity. A label has been put on you. You are a disease! You have to be treated.

By reducing you to a patient, the psychotherapist has become much bigger. The more he reduces you to smallness, the bigger he feels.

This is an old trip, only the names have changed. In the past it was the priest, now it is the psychotherapist. In the past, the priest was shrinking you - trying to create the guilt feeling, trying to create the feeling that you are wrong somehow, that you need to be changed, that you are not acceptable as you are, that you are getting ready for hell.

The whole effort of the priest was to reduce you to criminals, sinners. The priest was creating a kind of guilt feeling in you. Now the work has been taken up by the psychotherapist. The psychotherapist is the priest of the new age. He reduces you, he does not enhance you. He does not give you splendor, respect for your being. On the contrary, he makes you feel worthless.

And that's why we are trying to create a new kind of therapy here - in which you are not reduced to diseases, but enhanced, expanded. The psychotherapist is not there to label you as ill, but is there only to help you to know that you are not ill, that who says that you are ill? that you are carrying wrong notions about yourself. Who has told you that you are worthless? You are immensely valuable.

That is my whole effort here: to help you expand.

The psychotherapist and the priest and the so-called gurus, they have ALL been doing the same thing to people: they have been shrinking them. They have reduced humanity to worms, crawling on the earth, ugly, afraid of seeing their own faces in the mirror. Afraid to look into their own beings, because there is nothing but all that is wrong. Wounds and pus.

Here the effort is to create a totally different kind of therapy, true to the very meaning of the word.

The meaning of the word 'therapy' is that which heals. And what heals? Love heals. Love is therapy. Nothing else is therapy. Not psychoanalysis, not analytical psychology. Only love heals.

Healing is a function of love. But love expands your consciousness. It allows you to go higher and higher and touch the stars. It makes you feel respected. It makes you feel that you are needed in existence, that without you there will be something missing in existence, there will be a hole without you, unfulfillable. You are a must. This existence cannot be the same without you. You are not just an accident. You are essentially needed.

Let me remind you of Zusya again: Zusya is one of the most beautiful Masters - you can call him the Perfect Master. One day he was caught praying in the synagogue. Why caught? because the people felt very offended. He was saying to God, "Listen, I need you so you need me. Without you I will be nothing. And I say to you: without me yowl will be nothing. I am me because of you; you are you because of me."

The people were offended. They said, "What are you saying Zusya? Have you gone mad?"

He had not gone mad. This is the way one should have a dia-logue with God. This is not ego! not at all. This is a simple fact. Even a small leaf of grass is AS valuable as any star. There is no hierarchy in existence, nobody is lower and nobody is higher. We are ALL joined into one organic unity.

This is real therapy. Therapy when it is real will be nothing but love. Therapy when real will help you to regain your con-fidence, will help you to bloom.

The word 'Buddha' comes from a root 'bodha'. In the ancient days, the word 'bodha' was used for the opening up of a bud. It comes from the world of flowers; then it was taken over. 'Bodha' means originally opening up of a bud and becoming a flower. Then it was taken in a metaphoric sense:

when a man opens up, blooms, releases fragrance and color and dances in the sky, he becomes a Buddha - he has opened up.

REAL therapy does not shrink you: it opens you up. It makes all that is yours available to you. It gives you your lost treasure. But as far as the modern psychotherapy is concerned, people are right in calling psychotherapists shrinks - they are.

And a strange thing is this: that they are AS ill as the people they are treating. Sometimes even more so. I have never come across a psychotherapist who is not mentally in some disturbance.

Maybe just to avoid his own mental disturbance he has become interested in other people's mental disturbances, and he is playing superior. And he is getting more and more ill every day.

I have heard:

A motion picture actor told his psychiatrist, "I'm attracted to men instead of women."

The shrink replied, "You've come to the right place, handsome!"

They are suffering from the same kind of problems, pretending to help people. Psychotherapy is one of the most bogus things that has happened to this age. But a totally different kind of orientation is needed.

People get in trouble - not that people are wrong but because people are brought up in wrong situations. Everybody is born perfectly healthy and normal, but is born in a neurotic society, where parents are neurotic, teachers are neurotic, priests are neurotic, politicians are neurotic. And they ALL jump upon the small child, and they start manipulating him. They drive him crazy.

We have not yet been able to develop a right kind of upbringing. The science remains very rudimentary, primitive. We have come from bullock-carts to jets, but as far as the rearing of a child is concerned, we are as primitive as ever. We have not evolved in that. Parents go on pouring their diseases into the children. And children are helpless victims. And in their own turn they will have nothing to give to their children - they will have to give their illnesses. That's all they have.

People are not neurotic: it is a neurotic atmosphere.

And, just by analyzing people's neuroses you are not going to transform them either. Just by analyzing, at the most you can help them to become a little more adjusted. You can make them feel that that's how life is. Freud says: There is no possibility of enjoyment in life - one can only endure it.

If you go through psychoanalysis, sooner or later you will see this is what life is: all this nonsense, all this rubbish, all these neurotic desires - this is what life is! One starts settling with it. One loses hope, becomes settled. What is the point of raging against it? It is to no purpose. There is no enjoyment possible.

Psychoanalysis is very pessimistic. It is very strange! People say Buddha is pessimistic, even Freud and people like that say Buddha is pessimistic. This is really strange. Buddha is not pessimistic, neither is Shankara, nor is Rumi. These people are NOT pessimistic, although they say that life is full of misery. But they say it only to make you aware that it should not be so, that it need not be so.

Life is misery, they say again and again, because life can be bliss. They simply provoke you to take your life in your own hands. It can be transformed into bliss. But they are not pessimists.

Freud is a pessimist. Psychotherapists ARE pessimists. They have accepted this is all that life is supposed to be; one has to live with it, one has to endure it somehow. They make people capable of COPING with it, but this is not much. Just to cope with it - and then comes death...?

No, life can be a dance. Life can be a song. A real therapy will not only help you to cope with hue:

it will help you to become more alive. It will help you to gain life abundant. It will help you to move towards SATCHITANANDA - it will help you to attain to eternal bliss. Only then is it therapy. But then it is no more a kind of shrinking - then it is expansion.

In fact, the original Hebrew word for heaven means expansion. When Jesus says: the kingdom of heaven is within you, he is saying metaphorically that if you expand, if you expand to the very ultimate limits of existence, this is what the kingdom of heaven is.

Real therapy will be of a totally different color, shape, flavor. This is why I am so much interested in therapy. You will not find anybody else in the whole of India so much interested in therapy. To have therapies in an ashram is unheard of, but my interest is deep in it, because I know therapy is doing much wrong to people. It has moved in a very very pessimistic dimension.

And therapy is the religion of the modern man. Just to go on talking about the Bible and the Koran and the Vedas is almost out of date, it is meaningless. It has no relevance. One has to talk relevant to the situation and to the real problems people are facing in their lives.

Therapy is one of the things that has to be changed, transformed, so that it can become a healing force, so that it can bring you towards more wholeness and holiness.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

RATNA, ALL PROBLEMS ARE out of unawareness. Unawareness Creates problems, is the ONLY problem really. So when you become alert, aware, problems disappear - they are not repressed!

And if you repress them you will never become aware, remember it; because a person why represses his problems will be afraid of becoming aware. The moment one who has repressed problems becomes aware, those problems will come up. Awareness will bring them to light.

It is as if you are hiding rubbish in your house: you will be afraid to bring light in, because then you will have to see all that you have been hiding there. You cannot bring light in.

I used to live in a village once, for a few days. There was a river, so dirty - just such a small river that you cannot even call it a river. And there was no other way, no other water supply. A guest came to stay with me. Now, I was a little puzzled: how to take him to that dirty river? So I took him early, four o'clock in the morning, and we enjoyed and we talked about the beauty because the moon was there and the river was really looking beautiful. And he enjoyed and he said, "I have never seen such a beautiful spot."

I said, "That's perfectly okay, but never come in the day."

He said, "Why?"

I said, "Just don't come."

Naturally, he rushed, in the morning he went back. And he came from there saying, "Such a dirty place!"

But it was looking so beautiful.

If you repress, you will be afraid of becoming aware. That's why millions of people are afraid of becoming aware. Awareness will bring light into you, and then you will see all the scorpions and the snakes and the wolves... and that is frightening. One keeps oneself in darkness. At least one can go on pretending that there is no problem.

Awareness will release all that is repressed. Awareness NEVER represses - on the contrary, it releases repressions.

But Ratna's experience is true. If you become aware, problems disappear. Naturally, the question arises: Is not awareness repressing those problems? - because how can they suddenly disappear?

And when awareness is lost, centering is gone, and you are no more so conscious, again the problems pop up - and they are bigger than ever! So the natural conclusion is: awareness repressed them. It is not so.

When you are unconscious, you create problems. Unconsciousness has its own language - that is the language of problems. It is like when you are groping in darkness. One thing falls, you stumble upon another thing. These are problems because of the darkness. If light comes, you will not stumble upon the table, and nothing will fall. You can move easily now. You will be able to see. But when it is dark, try to move in your own house and many accidents will happen. You may not be able to find the door in the night. You may not be able to find where things are.

In darkness, the way you live creates problems. Darkness or unconsciousness only understands the language of problems; it has no solutions. Even if a solution is given to you, In your unconsciousness you will make a problem out of it. That's what goes on happening: if I say something to you, you understand something totally different. You understand from your standpoint.

A spinster schoolteacher on her summer vacation was visiting the reservation at Yosemite. She spotted a big brave standing against a tree and became very curious about his sex life.

"How does a great big man like you get satisfaction up here where there are no young squaws?"

she asked.

The Indian stared at her unbelievingly and then said, "You see cow?"

"Yes, I see cow... you don't mean?"

"Yes," said the brave, "me make love to cow. Also, you see horse?"

"Yes," said the spinster, horrified. "I see horse."

"Me make love to horse."

"Oh, dear!" cried the distraught old maid.

"No," grunted the Indian sadly. "No make love to deer. Run too fast."

Unconsciousness understands in its own way. That's why Buddhas are always misunderstood.

That's a natural fate. It can't be avoided. It is very difficult to understand a Buddha. It is very easy and natural to misunderstand him. To understand him will require great awareness on your part - because he lives in the world where there are no problems! where there are all solutions and solutions and no problems, all answers and no questions. And you live in a world where there are only questions and questions and no answers. You live so far away... as if you are living on different planets.

He goes on shouting from there, but whatsoever reaches to you is totally different. And you can always find rationalizations for whatsoever you understand. You can become very argumentative, defensive too.

William was seated in the witness stand. He had already calmly answered all the questions of the prosecuting attorney. Now it was the judge's turn.

"Does the defendant really expect this court of law to accept his story that the completely assembled still on his property was not being used for the purpose of producing illicit whiskey?"

"That's right, Your Honour!" said Gilliam. "I bought that as a novelty, a conversation piece. I do not now, nor have I ever, operated it as a still to produce whiskey."

"Hogwash!" howled the magistrate. "As far as this court is concerned, possession of the equipment is proof enough of your guilt!"

"Then, Your Honour, I guess you'd also better charge me with raping your daughter!"

"What!" screamed the judge. "Did you rape my daughter too?"

"No, sir," said Gilliam. "But she was at my place last night - and I sure got the equipment for it!"

Mind is very cunning and clever. It can argue in clever ways. It can even find rationalizations and proofs; it can give you the feeling that you have understood rightly.

But Ratna's question is of immense importance. It is of importance for everybody who is here.

Because this is a place where you have to become more and more aware. Awareness has to become the climate.

DO REAL PROBLEMS EXIST?

They exist only when you are unconscious - then they are real. If unconsciousness is there, they are real. Just as dreams exist when you are asleep - are they real? Yes, when you are asleep they are absolutely real. But when you are awake, you know they are unreal, they were unreal. They were part of sleeping consciousness. Exactly like that - problems exist if you are not centered, not alert. If you become centered, alert, watchful, a witness, problems simply dissipate, evaporate.

ARE ALL PROBLEMS JUST MIND GAMES?

Yes. They are all mind games. And 'mind' is nothing but another name for unconsciousness.

DOES AWARENESS MAKE PROBLEMS DISAPPEAR OR IS THERE A POSSIBILITY THAT AWARENESS BRINGS REPRESSION?

It depends on you. There is a little danger of it. If YOU FORCE awareness upon yourself, it will be repressive. If you allow awareness to take possession of you, it will be non-repressive. If you practice awareness, stubbornly, if it is a kind of will, then you will repress. Will always represses.

Will is the source of repression. Wherever will is, there will be repression.

So your consciousness has not to be out of will-power. It has to be out of understanding. It has to be relaxed. It has to be a kind of let-go. Not enforced. That is one of the most essential things to understand. If you try to become aware, you will repress.

For example, anger has arisen, and you try to become aware of the anger - stubbornly, forcibly, violently, aggressively. activity, with will. With that effort, anger will recede. It will fall into the reservoir of your unconscious. It will move into the basement of your being, and will wait there. When your effort is gone... and effort cannot be continuous, because effort tires. You can make effort, will for a moment, for a few moments, for a few hours, or for a few days, but sooner or later you will need a holiday. You will be tired of the whole effort. And the MOMENT you are on a holiday, the anger will come back, and with greater force - because while it was repressed it became pressurized. And whenever any energy is pressurized, it gains energy, it becomes more condensed. So whenever the lid is off your effort and will and the weight is removed, it will explode into violent rage.

That's what happens to people who cultivate things. They can repress their anger but they will be creating only rage. Anger is momentary. Rage is chronic. Anger is nothing to be worried about - it comes and goes. It is just a breeze. But rage is dangerous. It becomes part of you. It becomes your foundation. It is always, there. Don't you know people who are always angry? And they may not show their anger at all, and they are always angry. Whatsoever they do, they do in anger. The anger is constantly flowing underneath them like an undercurrent. It has become underground. But it affects their love, it affects their friendship, it affects their very vise. They become repulsive, they become ugly. And they may not be angry at all, not showing anger.

Ordinarily what happens is that people who become angry for small reasons are good people, they are never in rage. You can trust them: they cannot murder or commit suicide. They will never gather that much poison. Small poison is created, thrown away. They are always fresh, healthy. Situations create anger, but they don't collect it, they don't accumulate it - they are not hoarders.

The so-called good people, respectable people, saints, etcetera, they are the really dangerous people - they go on accumulating. One day it is going to explode. And if-it is not going to explode, it has to become their very life-style. Chronic it will be.

Never bring awareness through willpower. Anything brought by will-power is going to be wrong - let that be the criterion. Then how to bring awareness? Understand. When anger comes, try to understand why it has come; try to understand without any condemnation, without any justification either, without any evaluation. Just watch it. Neutral you should be.

Just as you watch a cloud moving in the sky: in the inner sky an anger cloud moves - watch it. See what it is. Look deep into it. Try to understand it. And you will find there is a chain: the anger cloud disappears, but because you looked deeply into it, something else has been found - maybe ego was hurt, that's why you become angry. Now watch this ego cloud, which is more subtle. Go on watching it. Get deep into it.

Nobody has ever been able to find anything in the ego. So if you go deep into it, you will not find it; and when you have not found it, it is no more. Then suddenly there is a great light - out of understanding, out of penetration, out of witnessing, with no effort, with no will, with no conclusion that it should be like this or should be like that. A neutral witnessing. And awareness arises. And this awareness has beauty and benediction. This awareness will heal you And if this awareness comes, you will never be tired of it, because it has not been forced in the first place. So there is no need for any holiday!

Just think: the Christian, the Jewish God, after six days was tired and had to rest on the seventh day. In the East we don't have any conception for God's rest. Why? It looks a little hard on him. The Eastern God goes on working, goes on working - no holiday. Why is there no holiday in the East for God? In fact, the holiday that happens here in the East, in the offices, in the schools and colleges, has been brought from the West. Otherwise, there was no question of holiday at all, because life was seen from a totally different vision. It is play, not work.

The Jewish God MUST have got tired. Six days work, such a long work, and such a failure! Must have got tired. And finally, in the end, he created man, and since then he has not created anything.

It indicates what has happened to him: he became so fed up with his own creation that after man he stopped it. He said, "Enough is enough!"

But the Eastern God is a continuum of creativity. It is play - LEELA. Then it is possible. Let your awareness be a play. Effortless, relaxed, and then it can become a continuum, it will be there, it will not be lost.

My feeling is that Ratna must be making this effort too much. That's why she says:

I FIND THAT WHENEVER I FEEL A LITTLE MORE CENTERED AND AWARE THAN VISUAL, I DON'T FEEL ANY PROBLEMS, BUT WHEN I AM NO MORE CENTERED, ALL THE OLD PROBLEMS ARE BACK AND THEY LOOK EVEN BIGGER. IS THIS REPRESSION?

There must be a little bit of it, otherwise those problems will never come back. Once you have looked into any problem deeply, relaxedly, it is finished for ever. Because ALL anger is the same. If you have looked into one anger situation deeply, you have understood it for ever. It is finished, you are treed from it And all that energy that was getting involved in anger will be yours. And all that energy that was getting involved in greed is yours. Suddenly one finds oneself a great reservoir of energy.

Then one can dance, overflow, with joy. Then life is no more an endurance but becomes enjoyment.

Then life is a celebration.

Unless your awareness is without will you will be repressing. And repression can be very subtle.

Then always, when the awareness is gone, the repressed thing will come, and in a bigger form, with vengeance. It will take revenge.

Ratna, don't force awareness on yourself in any way. Let it grow. Become more relaxed, calm, quiet, accepting One has to accept all - the good and the bad, success and failure, love and hate ALL one has to accept. In that acceptance, relaxation happens. And awareness is nothing but the fragrance of relaxation. It is the flowering of let-go.

Then problems disappear and disappear for ever....

Question 7:

The last question:

BRENDA, I DON'T KNOW, and I don't think anybody knows, or anybody has ever known. Buddha, Christ, Krishna, nobody And it is beautiful that nobody knows, because once it is known all joy will be lost. It is a mystery. It is infinite mystery. There is no way to demystify it. There is no way to KNOW what it is. All knowledge fails. Innocence succeeds, because innocence can say "I do not know."