The rebel is utterly innocent

Question 1:

Maneesha, the qualities of a rebel are multidimensional. The first thing: the rebel does not believe in anything except his own experience. His truth is his only truth; no prophet, no messiah, no savior, no holy scripture, no ancient tradition can give him his truth. They can talk about truth, they can make much ado about truth, but to know about truth is not to know truth. The word 'about' means around - to know about truth means to go around and around it. But by going around and around you never reach to the center.

The rebel has no belief system - theist or atheist, Hindu or Christian; he is an inquirer, a seeker. But a very subtle thing has to be understood: that is, he is not an egoist. The egoist also does not want to belong to any church, to any ideology, to any belief system, but his reason for not belonging is totally different from the rebel. He does not want to belong because he thinks too much of himself.

He is too much of an egoist; he can only stand alone.

The rebel is not an egoist, he is utterly innocent. His nonbelieving is not an arrogant attitude but a humble approach. He is simply saying, "Unless I find my own truth, all borrowed truths are only burdening me, they are not going to unburden me. I can become knowledgeable, but I will not be knowing anything with my own being. I will not be an eyewitness of any experience."

He does not belong to any church, any organization, because he wants not to be an imitator. He wants to remain pure and unpolluted so that he can search without any prejudice, so that he can remain open without any preconceived idea. But his whole approach is that of a humble man.

Just today, one of the sannyasins, Dr. Indivar, has asked a question. He is very much disturbed because when I come and go morning and evening, folding my hands and bowing down to the godliness within you all... his disturbance is created by those few sannyasins, who in deep love and trust, bow down - put their heads on the floor.

He is asking me, "Is it right that people should bow down before another man?" And his disturbance goes on increasing, because more and more people are bowing down. As far as I am concerned, it is everybody's freedom; nobody has asked anybody to bow down. And in his idea lives the old man - you can bow down to a god, but not to a man. That is the background implication.

It seems people listen to me, yet only words reach them - the meanings are lost somewhere in between. You can bow down to a tree, to a mountain, to a sunset, to a sunrise, to a full moon, to a starry night; your bowing down is nothing but an expression of your gratitude. It has no connection with any God. You can bow down in front of a man, in front of a child, even in front of a man like me, who is absolutely ordinary - with no pretensions of being a prophet or a savior, a messenger or an incarnation of God.

But why should he be disturbed? Nobody is telling him to bow down. What authority has he got to interfere in other people's lives, their way of living, their way of being, their behavior? Nobody is interfering with his life; nobody is telling him to do anything. Nobody has told these people to bow down.

He thinks - and without ever considering a simple fact - that people are imitating each other. On what criterion can he say that? Is he a thought reader? Is he a telepathist? On what grounds can he say that somebody is imitating somebody else - just because a few others are also bowing down?

But the same thing can be said about you, because many are not bowing down. You must be imitating those idiots. In what way have you thought that you are not imitating? It is their freedom to do what they feel like doing; it is your freedom to do or not to do. If you want, you can just move in the opposite direction. They are bowing down forward - you can go backward, you can lie down on the floor! If that gives you joy, it is perfectly acceptable.

He's asking, "... is not this too a kind of surrender?" It is not, because nobody has been asked to do it. Nobody is being rewarded for it, nobody is being promised any reward for it. And he is seeing only one side and is not aware about his blindness: that I, with my folded hands, am paying respect to the divineness in you. That, he is not seeing at all. About that he has no objection; that fulfills the ego.

But people showing their gratitude, showing their joy and ecstasy, is not surrender. They are not losing themselves, they are not surrendering their individuality, they are not losing their self-respect.

It is the most dignified and the most graceful experience, but only for those who deserve it.

Dr. Indivar, you don't deserve it yet, although you have been around here a long time. But these years have gone as sheer wastage if you cannot even allow people freedom to act according to their feelings. And you became offended.... Your question was full of arrogance, egoism, condemnation of others, and you have no concern with them. You should think about yourself!

A rebel respects his own independence and also respects the independence of everybody else.

He respects his own divineness and he respects the divineness of the whole universe. The whole universe is his temple - that's why he has left the small temples made by man. The whole universe is his holy scripture - that's why he has left all holy scriptures written by man. But it is not out of arrogance, it is out of a humble search. The rebel is as innocent as a child.

His second dimension will be not to live in the past, which is no more, and not to live in the future, which is not yet, but to live in the present with as much alertness and consciousness as he can manage. In other words, to live consciously in the moment. Ordinarily we live like somnambulists, sleepwalkers. The rebel tries to live a life of awareness. Awareness is his religion, awareness is his philosophy, awareness is his way of life.

His third dimension is that he is not interested in domination over others. He has no lust for power, because that is the ugliest thing in the world. The lust for power has destroyed humanity and has not allowed it to be more creative, to be more beautiful, to be more healthy, to be more wholesome.

And it is this lust for power that ultimately leads to conflicts, competitions, jealousies and finally to wars.

Lust for power is the foundation of all wars. If you look at human history... the whole of human history is nothing but a history of wars, man killing man. Reasons have changed, but the killing continues.

It seems reasons are only excuses. The real fact is that man enjoys killing.

In one of Aesop's fables - and those are some of the greatest fables in the world, so simple and so significant - a small sheep is drinking water from a mountain stream of crystal-clear water. A great lion comes and naturally becomes interested in the sheep - it is breakfast time but he has to find an excuse. So he says to the sheep, "You are dirtying the stream. Don't you understand that I am the king of the jungle?"

The poor sheep said, "I know, but your highness, the stream is not going towards you. I am standing below you and even if it becomes dirty by my drinking water, the water is going downwards - not towards you. You are making it dirty and I am drinking that dirty water. So your logic is not right."

The lion saw the point and became very angry. He said, "You don't have respect for your elders. You have some nerve arguing with me."

The poor sheep said, "I have not argued, I have simply said what was factual. You can see that the stream is going downwards."

The lion was silent for a moment and then said, "Now I remember. You belong to a very uncultured, uneducated family. Your father insulted me yesterday."

The poor sheep said, "It must have been somebody else, because my father has been dead for three months, and you must know that he is within your belly. He is no longer alive. You have made a lunch of him. How can he behave disrespectfully towards you? He is dead!"

That was too much. The lion jumped and caught hold of the sheep saying, "You don't know manners, you don't know etiquette, you don't know how to behave."

The sheep said, "The simple fact is, it is breakfast time. You simply eat me; there is no need to find any excuse."

In such simple parables, Aesop has done miracles. He has said so much about man.

Now why is Indivar disturbed? Because his own heart does not know love, his own heart does not know trust, his own heart is dry. He has not known the joy of tears. Seeing others overwhelmed with joy and gratitude, he feels inferior. He is inferior. To hide his inferiority, he finds all kinds of logic - that it is surrender, that this should not be so, that people are imitating each other. But you are not the guardian of people. Who has given you that responsibility? You are only responsible for yourself.

A rebel lives his life in total freedom; he does not allow anybody to interfere in it, and he never interferes in anybody else's life. I have not told anybody to do anything. If something happens to them, I cannot prevent them because that will be interfering, that will be dictating.

Just a few days ago we inaugurated a beautiful fountain in the memory of J. Krishnamurti. I have received a few letters from the followers of J. Krishnamurti, saying that before dying he said, "Don't make any memorial of me." Now it raises many questions. First it means he wanted to dominate others, even after his death. Whether you say, "Make a beautiful memorial for me," or you say, "Do not make a memorial for me," it does not make any difference. It is the same. You are trying to control the future - after your death too.

But nobody will see the implication of it. Why should he be concerned with what happens after his death? And what can he do? Living people have been going against me in the courts. Do you think now J. Krishnamurti is going to be in the court against me, saying that I have been hurting his feelings?

And secondly, I laughed when I heard about those letters because a few of the writers of those letters are well known to me. They have been following J. Krishnamurti for forty and fifty years; they are as old as he was. But they show by their letters that they have not understood him. J. Krishnamurti had said his whole life, "Don't follow me!" Now if he says, "Don't make memorials when I am dead," then don't follow him - make memorials! That is a simple conclusion - if you understand him.

J. Krishnamurti never accepted anybody as his follower, and now these people are writing letters as followers of J. Krishnamurti. He denied continually, for almost seventy years, saying, "Nobody is my follower." Listening to him, reading him, having interviews with him - these people still have the wrong attitude: they think they are followers of J. Krishnamurti. But that is their business; I have no objection. That is something between them and J. Krishnamurti.

But one thing! And how many other things have they followed from J. Krishnamurti? Only one thing - not to make a memorial. In seventy years' teaching time, how many things have they followed? I know them; they have not followed a single thing. They have not even followed this most fundamental approach of J. Krishnamurti, "Nobody is my follower." They have followed nothing.

But this is very comfortable - not to make a memorial - and, particularly for Indians, it is very comfortable and consolatory that so much money is saved. "The poor fellow himself said it was good; now we can say that we cannot go against his will." But in what other matters have you ever followed his will?

A rebel simply lives his life in the moment, with awareness, with no desire to dominate, either while he is living or when he is dead. He does not have any lust for power.

He is a scientist of the soul - that is the fourth dimension. Just as science uses doubt, skepticism, inquiry, he uses the same methods for his inner search. Science uses them for objective reality, he uses them for his subjectivity. But he does not condemn doubt, he does not condemn skepticism, he does not condemn disobedience, he does not condemn a nonbelieving approach to reality. He enters within his own being with a scientific mind.

His religion is not superstitious - it is scientific. His religion is not a search for God, because to begin with God means you have already accepted a belief, and if you have accepted a belief your search is contaminated from the very beginning.

The rebel goes into his inner world with open eyes, with no idea of what he is looking for. He goes on polishing his intelligence. He goes on making his silences deeper, his meditation more profound, so that whatever is hidden in him is revealed to him; but he has no preconceived idea of what he is looking for.

He is basically an agnostic. That word has to be remembered because it describes one of his basic qualities. There are theists who believe in God, there are atheists who do not believe in God and there are agnostics who simply say, "We do not know yet. We will search, we will see. We cannot say anything before we have looked into every nook and corner of our being." He begins with, "I do not know." That's why I say he is just like a small child - innocent.

Two boys were discussing running away from home. "But if our fathers catch us they will hit us," said one.

"So," said the other, "we will hit them back."

"But we can't do that," said the first boy. "The Bible teaches us to honor our father and our mother."

"Right. Then you hit my father and I will hit yours."

Just an innocent and simple solution with no difficulty.

The rebel lives a childlike innocence, and innocence is the most mysterious phenomenon. It opens the doors of all the secrets of life.

Only a rebellious person is truly revolutionary and is truly religious. He does not create an organization, he does not create a following, he does not create churches.

But it is possible that rebels can be fellow travelers: they may enjoy to be together, to dance together, to sing together, to cry and weep together, to feel the immensity of existence and the eternity of life together. They can merge into a kind of communion without any surrender of anybody's individuality; on the contrary, the communion of rebels refreshes everybody's individuality, nourishes everybody's individuality, gives dignity and respect to everybody's individuality.

Question 2:

Dhyan Arjuna, yes, you are rediscovering your lost innocence. Religion is a rediscovery. It is something that we had known, that we had lived, but we have left far behind - so far behind that it seems almost as if it was not a reality but only a dream scene, just a faint memory, a faraway echo.

But if you become meditative that echo starts coming closer, the dream starts changing into a reality and the forgotten language of innocence is suddenly remembered. Hence it is not a discovery, it is a rediscovery.

Every child is born feeling the whole universe, not knowing his separation from it. It is by slow education that we teach him to feel separate. We give him a name, we give him an identity, we give him qualities, we give him ambitions - we create a personality around him.

Slowly, slowly, the personality becomes thicker through upbringing, education, religious teaching; and as the personality becomes thicker he starts forgetting who he used to be in his mother's womb - because there he was not a doctor, an engineer, there he had no name, there he was not separate from existence. He was so together with the mother - and beyond the mother there was nothing.

The womb was all, his whole universe, a very tiny experience of the ultimate reality.

What happens to the child in the mother's womb happens again to the sage when the whole universe becomes just a womb, and he becomes part of the womb. The child in the mother's womb never worries, "What will happen tomorrow?" He has no money, no bank account, no business, utterly unemployed, no qualifications. He does not know when night comes, when day comes, when seasons change; he simply lives in utter innocence, in deep trust that everything will be okay, as it has been before. If it is okay today it will be okay tomorrow.

He does not think this way, it is just an intrinsic feeling - not words because he does not know words. He knows only feelings, moods, and is always in a jubilant mood, rejoicing - absolute freedom without any responsibility.

Why does every child coming out of the womb give so much pain to the mother? Why is every child born crying? If you try to look deeply into these small matters they may reveal to you great secrets of life. The child resists getting out of the womb because it has been his home. He does not know any calendar. Nine months are almost an eternity - forever. Since he has known that he is, he has been in the womb, always and always.

Now suddenly his home is being taken away. He is being thrown out, expelled; he resists with all the power that he has. He clings to the womb, that is the problem. The mother wants him to be born sooner, because the longer he remains inside, the more pain she has to suffer. But the child clings, and he is always born crying - every child, without exception.

Only about one man, Lao Tzu, is it said that he was born laughing. It is possible; he was an exceptional man, crazy from the very beginning. Not knowing exactly what to do, that this is the time to cry, he laughed. And he remained that way his whole life, just doing wrong things at wrong times.

And the story of his whole life's strangeness begins with the laughter. Everybody was shocked because no child has ever done that.

But that is the only exception - which may be simply a myth, which may be just a retrospective idea.

Seeing Lao Tzu's whole life, the people who wrote about him must have thought that his beginning could not be the same as everybody else's; it has to be a little crazy. His whole life... his beginning has to be consistent with his life. Perhaps it is only a myth. But even historically, if he had laughed it is an exception, not the rule.

Why is every child born crying? Because his home is being deserted, his world is destroyed - suddenly he finds himself in a strange world amongst strange people. And he continues to cry because every day his freedom becomes less and less, and his responsibility becomes more and more weighty. Finally he finds there is no freedom left but only duties to be fulfilled, responsibilities to be carried out; he becomes a beast of burden. Seeing this with the clarity of innocent eyes, if he cries you cannot condemn him.

The psychologists say the search for truth, for God, for paradise, is really based on the experience of the child in the womb. He cannot forget it. Even if he forgets it in his conscious mind, it goes on resounding in his unconscious. He is searching again for those beautiful days of total relaxation with no responsibility, and all the freedom of the world available.

And there are people who have found it. My word for it is enlightenment. You can choose any word, but the basic meaning remains the same. One finds that the whole universe is just like a mother's womb to you: you can trust, you can relax, you can enjoy, you can sing, you can dance. You have an immortal life and a universal consciousness.

Dhyan Arjuna, what is happening to you is exactly a rediscovery. It has to happen to every sannyasin.

But they don't allow it.

People are afraid to relax. People are afraid to trust. People are afraid of tears. People are afraid of anything out of the ordinary, out of the mundane. They resist, and in their resistance they dig their own grave and they never come to juicy moments, to ecstatic experiences, which are their right; they just have to claim them.

A Jewish man living in Los Angeles goes to see a psychiatrist. He introduces himself as Napoleon Bonaparte, even though his file card shows his name to be Hymie Goldberg.

"So what seems to be the problem?" asked the doctor.

"Well, Doc, actually everything is great. My army is strong, my palace magnificent and my country is prospering. My only problem is Josephine, my wife."

"Ah," says the doctor, "and what is her problem?"

Throwing his hands up in despair, the man says, "She is thinking she is Mrs. Goldberg."

In his tensions, in his anxieties, in his problems, man loses himself in the crowd. He becomes someone else. He knows that he is not the role he is playing; he is somebody else. This creates a tremendous psychological split in him. He cannot play the role correctly because he knows it is not his authentic being, and he cannot find his authentic being. He has to play the role because the role gives him his livelihood, his wife, his children, his power, his respectability, everything. He cannot risk it all, so he goes on playing the role of Napoleon Bonaparte. Slowly, slowly he starts believing it himself. He has to believe it, otherwise it will be difficult to play the part.

The best actor is the one who forgets his individuality and becomes one with his acting; then his crying is authentic, his love is authentic, then whatever he says is not just the prompted role, it comes from his very heart - it looks almost real.

I have heard Mulla Nasruddin and his wife had gone to see a movie and the hero hugs his beloved, kisses her, and Mulla Nasruddin's wife says to him, "You never do this to me."

Mulla said, "You don't understand. This is just a film, not reality, and this is all acting."

The wife said, "Perhaps you don't know, but the woman who is playing the role of the heroine is the wife of the hero in real life."

Mulla Nasruddin said, "My God, then he is really an actor! Up to now I was thinking he is just an ordinary actor. He is really an actor... his own wife, and he is showing so much love."

When you have to play a part, you have to be deeply involved in it. You have to become it. Everybody is playing some part, knowing perfectly well that this is not what he is supposed to be. This creates a rift, an anxiety, and that anxiety destroys all your possibilities of relaxing, of trusting, of loving, of having any communion with anybody - a friend, a beloved, a master. You become isolated. You become, with your own decisions, self-exiled, and then you suffer.

So much suffering in the world is not natural; it is a very unnatural state of affairs. One can accept once in a while somebody suffering, but blissfulness should be natural and universal. But you have to deserve it, and for deserving you don't have to do some great acts - go to the moon or climb Everest.

You have to learn small secrets. But there are people who are not ready to learn small secrets - it is against their egos to learn anything. I have been getting rid of such people continuously, because they are unnecessarily wasting their time and occupying other people's places.

Just the other day one man wrote, "I enjoy very much when you come in and I enjoy very much when you go back, but in the middle, sitting for one or two hours, I don't enjoy at all." Now what to do with such a case? If there are many such cases I can manage a special session for them: I will come and I will go and they are free. There is no need to sit in between. But these stupid people go on hanging around my neck unnecessarily.

Hymie sees an old friend standing on the other side of the road from the Thames Bridge. "David, what are you standing there for?"

"I am going to jump off that bridge. My wife has left me, my children won't speak to me, and I am bankrupt."

"So why stand there?"

"The traffic. I could get killed crossing the road."

He wants to commit suicide by jumping from the bridge and he is afraid of the traffic.

Such is the wavering mind of man - one moment one wants to commit suicide, the next moment one wants to live. There is no decisiveness. And without decisiveness, your life will remain wishy-washy.

It cannot become a splendor.

Question 3:

Kaveesha, I can understand your problem. It certainly is inconceivable that anybody should even think of stopping on the way when bliss is growing, when life is becoming more and more juicy, when love is showering, when it is spring all over the path. In this fragrant, blissful state, it should be natural to go on and on, because the farther and deeper you go, the more light is yours - the more life is yours.

But still, what seems to be inconceivable happens almost without fail to everybody. It is one of those strange things to which man is vulnerable. You know that man clings to misery; in fact clinging becomes his habit, his second nature. Whatever is known to him he clings to, even though it is misery, suffering; it is better to be miserable than to have nothing and be lonely. If man cannot even give up his misery... then what to say about blissfulness?

Misery is certainly a consolation - at least you have something. People brag about it, people exaggerate their misery. They may have a small sickness, and they pretend - perhaps they have tuberculosis. Niskriya was suffering from a small misery - his girlfriend - and he pretended that he was paralyzed. I asked my personal physician to go and look at Niskriya, and see what has happened. He checked, and he said, "He is not paralyzed - no sign of any paralysis; he is just pretending." Why should he pretend?

For three days he remained paralyzed. I think, seeing that he had become paralyzed, the girlfriend must have moved on to some other misery; because there are so many miserable people there is no need to cling to Niskriya. Alone, now he is perfectly okay; his paralysis is gone.

It has happened many times - not one time - that people have been paralyzed for ten years or twelve years.... Their house caught on fire, and they suddenly ran out with everybody - outside the house.

They forgot completely that they were paralyzed, not supposed to be able to run out - and they had not moved from their bed for ten years! When the crowd saw them outside the house, running, and people reminded them, "What has happened to you? - you were paralyzed," they immediately fell down, paralyzed again. Just because of the fire, they forgot.

People exaggerate their misery; they make it as big as possible. Because they are not ordinary people they can't have small sicknesses, just a little cold, or a headache - these are for ordinary people. They have very special... Just any small thing will happen, and they have cancer.

When I was teaching in the university, one woman professor always wanted a lift. Her house was just on the way, so I used to take her with me. And the whole way she was talking about so many diseases that I wondered where she got all those names from, because many of those names I had never heard of; they were all Greek, Latin.

One day I had gone to see a friend who was a Supreme Court judge; there I saw that woman's husband for the first time. He himself was a Supreme Court advocate. He told me, "I have been seeing you suffering every day, because each morning my wife stands out and waits for you. And she must be telling you that she has terrible diseases - don't believe her! In the beginning, I used to believe her; I used to rush to the doctors, to the experts, and they told me that she's just enjoying having great miseries, great sicknesses.

"And then I found that she finds all those names in a medical encyclopedia. She learns all the details, all the symptoms, and then she starts talking about it - that this is happening to her. Sometimes she has even deceived doctors, because the symptoms she describes are so accurate. But as they examine her more, there is no such disease."

I said, "I don't listen to her. She is not my wife - it is your problem. Why should I interfere in anybody's problem? She continues talking about all kinds of diseases - in fact she has made me very learned about many sicknesses I was not aware of."

Kaveesha, man clings to anything that he has, and he makes much fuss about it. It is just a desire to be special, to be extraordinary - just a poor desire, just a pitiable condition. Because of this habit, I have to remind sannyasins, "While on the path, don't stop," because they will find something small, a little wildflower, and they will think they have found the lotus paradise of Gautam Buddha... because less than that is not possible for such great men like them. They will stop there, they will cling to it, they will not go further. They have to be pushed continuously. It is inconceivable, but this is the trouble with man; much is inconceivable about him, but it is factual.

The police car stops Levy on the main highway. "Sir, do you know your wife fell out of the car five miles back?"

"Ah, thank God, officer. I thought I had gone deaf."

Five miles... there was so much silence; otherwise the wife was constantly chattering, so he was worried. What seems to be inconceivable is possible.

"These are extra strong pills, Mr. Cohen," the doctor advised him. "Take one on Monday, skip Tuesday, one Wednesday, skip Thursday, and so on. I will come round next week to see you."

When the doctor calls, he is met by a weeping Mrs. Cohen. "He's dead," she tells him.

"What!" said the doctor in surprise. "There was very little wrong with him. The pills should have cleared it up."

"It was not the pills," wailed Mrs. Cohen. "It was the skipping."

He was skipping the whole day. It would kill anybody.

So, Kaveesha - even if something seems impossible, be gullible and believe it.

It can happen.

Man is a very strange animal.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.