Live is on the razor's edge

Question 1:

Prem Paigambar, it is an old association, and a misunderstanding, that to be a nonconformist is to be a rebel. The nonconformist is a reactionary; he acts out of anger, rage, violence and ego. His action is not based in consciousness. Although he goes against the society, just to be against the society is not necessarily to be right. In fact most of the time to move from one extreme to another is always to move from one wrong to another wrong.

The rebel is a tremendous balance, and that is not possible without awareness, alertness, and immense compassion. It is not a reaction, it is an action - not against the old, but for the new.

The nonconformist is only against the old, against the established; but he has no creative conception of why he is against it, no vision of the future. What will he do if he succeeds? He will be at a loss, and utterly embarrassed. He has never thought about it. He has not felt the embarrassment because he has never succeeded. His failure has been a great shelter for him.

When I say reaction, I mean your orientation is basically dependent: you are not acting out of freedom and independence. It has very deep implications. It means your action is just a by-product; it also means that your action can be controlled very easily.

There is a small story about Mulla Nasruddin. He was a nonconformist, a fundamental reactionary, an absolutely negative mind. If his father would say, "You have to go to the right," you can be certain he would go to the left. Soon the father became aware, and then there was no problem. When he wanted him to go to the right he would say, "Please go to the left," and he would go to the right. He was disobeying, he was nonconformist, but he was completely unaware that he was being dictated to, ordered, controlled and doing actually what his father wanted him to do.

Slowly slowly, he also became aware - "What is the matter? Before, my father used to be very angry that he had told me to go right and I went left. I am continuing to be as disobedient as ever, but now he never complains."

Soon he figured out the strategy. One day the old father and Nasruddin were both crossing the river with their donkey, and on the donkey was a big bag of sugar. The bag was leaning more towards the right, and there was a danger that it might slip and fall down into the river.

The father was behind and he knew, "If I say, 'Move the bag towards the left,' I have got such a strange son that he will move it immediately towards the right, and the bag will fall into the river and all the sugar will be lost."

So he shouted, "Nasruddin, move the bag towards the right," hoping that he was going to move it to the left according to the old experience. But by this time Nasruddin had also figured it out. He said, "Okay," and he moved the bag towards the right and the bag fell into the river!

The father said, "What happened, are you no longer disobedient?"

He said, "Now I will decide each time whether to be obedient or not. I will not have a fixed philosophy but I will move according to the situation, because you have been cunning with me, you have been cheating me. I'm your son and still you have been cheating me! You have been ordering me in such a way that I should disobey. From today onwards be alert - I may obey, I may disobey. From today I am not going to be predictable, controllable, in your hands anymore."

The nonconformist is always in the hands of the society and the establishment. The establishment just has to be a little more clever and cunning, and then he can use the nonconformist very easily, without any difficulty.

But the establishment can never use the rebel because he is not reacting to the establishment. He has a vision of the future, of a new man, of a new humanity. He is working to create that dream, to transform it into reality. If he is against the society, he is against it because the society is a hindrance to his dream.

His focus is not on the establishment; his focus is on an unknown future, a potential possibility. He acts out of his freedom, out of his vision, out of his dream. His consciousness decides which way to go.

That is the difference between reaction and action: reaction is always determined by your enemy.

Perhaps you have never thought about it - that in reaction the enemy is in a dominating position, he is deciding your action. What you are going to do, the enemy can decide.

The rebel is simply beyond conceivability to the old establishment, the rotten society and the dead humanity; because it cannot have even a fragmentary view of the great dream that the rebel is carrying in his soul. All his actions are coming out of that dream. They go against the society, but that is just a coincidence. He is not against the society, he is for a new man. His approach is positive, not negative.

He is not angry against the old society, he is full of pity and compassion. He knows how much the old man has suffered, how much and how long he has lived in misery. How can he be angry? He cannot even complain.

He is creating the new world so that this misery and this suffering and this ugly society disappears and man can live more naturally, more beautifully, more lovingly, more peacefully, enjoying all the riches that existence makes available, all the gifts of life which are invaluable.

Freedom, love, silence, truth, enlightenment, the ultimate flowering of your being - all are available to you. The hindrances just have to be removed. All the old structures were creating more and more hindrances and obstructions against your growth. If the rebel is against those obstructions, it is to enable the new man to live without fetters, to live without imprisonment, to live outside the concentration camps and to live a life as free as a bird on the wing... as free as a rosebush dancing in the rain, in the sun; as free as a moon moving in the sky beyond the clouds in utter beauty, blissfulness and peace.

The rebel is a totally different kind of man from the nonconformist. It was good that you recognized that to be a nonconformist is not to be a rebel. Never forget it, because to be a nonconformist is very easy, but to be a rebel needs a tremendous transformation in your being.

To be a nonconformist is so cheap. Look at the punks - these are nonconformists - who have cut off their hair on both sides, just keeping a small line of hair in the middle, and that too they have painted in psychedelic colors. Young men, young women... young men with half their mustaches shaved off and the other half painted, or the full mustache painted in the whole rainbow of colors - these are the nonconformists! It is very easy. You can have the buttons of your pants in the back, and you are a nonconformist. It will be a little difficult, it will need a little discipline, but it is very cheap - and very stupid, too.

A woman who is an actress and a model in Italy was sitting at the main crossroads in Rome, naked, asking people to become members of her political party. Those who were willing to become members of her political party could play with her breasts and kiss her. There was a crowd, and people were standing in a line enrolling as members of her political party. Just in a single day she enrolled ten thousand people!

Now she has declared that she is going to run in the election for membership in the parliament. And the way she is going to campaign and persuade people to vote for her, is that she will be sitting in a convertible car, naked; she will stop the car for whoever wants to vote for her, and hug the man, kiss the man.

This is certainly nonconformism! She will become a member of the parliament; she can even become the prime minister of Italy if she simply tells all the members, "If you vote for me to be the prime minister of the country, I will make love to you in this very parliament hall." She is one of the most beautiful actresses in Italy, and the most beautiful model in the whole of Europe.

It is easy to be nonconformist, but what can she deliver to humanity? Her kisses won't help, neither will her tits. All this is good as a joke, but she cannot bring a blissful existence to the world or to her own country.

The nonconformist down the ages has done every kind of stupid act. It annoys people, irritates people, but it does not help any transformation in the world. And you, as a sannyasin, should not be interested in this kind of circus, in this kind of stupid entertainment. You can become famous very easily....

One man in America, Robert Ripley, in the beginning of the century, became world-famous in three days - and he did nothing. He just walked backwards in New York, keeping a mirror in front of him in both hands so he could see behind him, and he moved backwards. Naturally he attracted attention.

Everywhere a crowd gathered; all the newspapers published his photo. He became headline news - he was the first man who had traveled the whole of New York City backwards. It became such a famous act.

Finally he traveled the whole of America backwards, creating great news everywhere. People were welcoming him like a saint, and all that he was doing was carrying a mirror. It is good for a circus, but it is not going to help to bring any new values in life, any new colors, any new flowers, any new blessings to people.

It is good that you have understood it - but don't forget it. And it is significant that the same night you had a dream where "I saw myself being persecuted for living rebelliously."

You have been a nonconformist but you have never had any dream of being persecuted, because the nonconformist at the most becomes an entertainment, a laughingstock. Who cares to persecute him? Who has time to persecute him? But just the idea, the change in your mind that real rebellion is a totally different thing, immediately brought a dream. This is significant. Your unconscious immediately warned you to be careful!

To be a nonconformist is simply an old accepted thing. It is part of the establishment and the old rotten society. Nonconformists have always existed, nobody has crucified them. They are not a danger to the society or the vested interests.

It was a warning from your unconscious that you saw yourself being persecuted in a dream. "... and I became afraid. Waking up, I realized that what I used to think of as rebellion was actually a safe game for me, well within acceptable limits. Now I see that the rebellious spirit you are talking about is something very scary, and yet something I tremendously long for. Is feeling this insecurity part of becoming a rebel?"

First, it is certainly risky, dangerous. It is only for those who have the lion's heart, who have guts and who have the dignity of human beings. It is not for all.

Only a few rebels are needed to create a rebellious society; the others will follow suit, but they will not, on their own, be rebellious. If the rebellious people create a society, the crowds - just as today they are part of the society - will become part of the rebellious society. But they cannot do anything on their own, for the simple reason that it is scary.

But as far as I am concerned, and my people are concerned, anything that is dangerous, risky, scary, should be accepted as a challenge to your manhood; should be accepted as a challenge to your courage, to your spirit, to your very soul. It is dangerous - that's why it should be longed for. A man who lives without danger does not live at all. The only way to live is to live dangerously, always moving on a razor's edge. Then life has a freshness, youthfulness, and a moment to moment intensity, a moment to moment totality, because the next moment is not certain at all.

Those who are living conveniently, comfortably, a middle-class life... the term "middle-class" is abusive; one should not live a middle-class life. These are the people who go on clinging to the past, clinging to corpses, clinging to rotten principles, meaningless rituals, because they are afraid even to raise a question. Their convenience is more valuable than sincerity. Their so-called middle- class comforts are more valuable to them than a life lived with intensity and fire.

A sannyasin is taking initiation to become a flame, with a longing to live dangerously, dropping all conveniences, comforts, moving always into the unknown.

But the beauty is that when you live dangerously and you don't have any certainty, any guarantee, any insurance for tomorrow, you live today to its fullest extent. You squeeze the juice of every moment to its totality, knowing perfectly well you may not have another chance.

You love, but your love is not superficial. You live, but your life is a fire. And even a single moment of intense love and living is more valuable than a whole eternity of futile worship, superstitions, dead ideals, slavery, bondage.

God is speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, and Moses is shaking his head in disbelief at what God is saying to him. With his face upturned to heaven he says, "Alright, God, now let me get this straight.

You are telling me that we are the chosen people, and you want us to cut off the tips of our WHAT?"

God, being a gentleman, cannot use the word. And Moses, being a prophet, also cannot use the word. So how they managed it is a mystery, because God remained silent. Perhaps it was Moses' own discovery - he had to answer to his people and he could not show his ignorance!

Jews have suffered only because of this strange idea that they accepted - that they are the chosen people of God. This seems to be absolutely... either Moses dreamed it, or he had taken marijuana on Mount Sinai - because I know marijuana grows on Mount Sinai. But something went wrong, and he went back with the idea, "We are the chosen people." Once this got into the heads of Jews it became part of their ego, and nobody raised a question.

I have looked into many Jewish scriptures, old and new, into many commentators - even very logical and very significant philosophers like Martin Buber - but nobody raises any question about this stupid idea that Jews are the chosen people of God. It is so comfortable, so convenient, but it has created their whole misery for four thousand years, because nobody else will accept it.

Everybody has his own idea. Hindus think they are the chosen people of God, and that God gave to the Hindus the first holy books in the world. Hindus were the first to become a civilized nation, and they have one of the most perfect languages, Sanskrit, which they claim is the only language that God understands. So if you are praying in any other language you are simply wasting your time.

Just here in Poona, a man is teaching women for the first time in history.... He thinks he is a revolutionary; he is just a nonconformist. He is teaching women Sanskrit rituals, what sutras have to be repeated in marriage, so then the woman priest can perform marriages - which has never happened in the whole of history. But the problem is that those women don't know - they are not even educated - they don't know the meaning.

The man was asked a few days ago by a journalist, "You are teaching these women these Sanskrit sutras, preparing them to be priests in temples, in marriages, in other ceremonies, but they don't know the meaning."

And do you know his reply? He said, "It is not a question of their knowing the meaning. God understands it, so whether they know it or not is absolutely meaningless. It is the right prayer - that I know - and it is the right prayer that God understands. The woman who is re-peating it is superfluous, whether she knows the meaning or not."

He thinks he is being very rebellious! - but nobody is condemning him; people are taking it as a joke.

And nobody will call those women to perform marriages. He can prepare them, and nobody will call those women into their temples to worship. He can go on preparing them - that does not matter unless temples call them to be priests, unless people start calling them for marriages, childbirth, death. That's why nobody is bothering about him.

But his answer shows a great fallacy that Hindus have carried for thousands of years - that Sanskrit is the language of God, the only language he understands and the only books that he has written.

And Hindus are God's chosen people; he has taken all his incarnations in the Hindu fold.

The Germans think that they are the purest race, and this was the conflict, this was why they wanted to destroy the Jews, because two peoples cannot be the chosen people of God; one has to be completely erased. When Adolf Hitler succeeded in killing six million Jews it became more and more certain to the Germans that he was right, because God was not protecting the Jews and he was not punishing Adolf Hitler either.

It is very cheap to conform to a society in which you are living, never asking any questions even if you feel that something is stupid. But just to save your convenience you are selling your soul. You are becoming a spiritual slave.

A rebel refuses to be enslaved in any way - not even by God... by man is out of the question.

Friedrich Nietzsche's statement that "God is dead and now man is absolutely free," is a statement of a rebellious soul. His argument is clear. In another place he says that "Man and God cannot coexist, because God will exist only with God as the creator and man as the created. We cannot tolerate this indignity, this insult; hence we declare that God is dead and man is supreme. Now nobody is above him."

Certainly these are dangerous paths. But those who have followed these paths have enjoyed life in its absolute glory, have lived life in utter ecstasy. Those who have remained middle-class sheep, crowds, waiting for the shepherd to come and to save them - their life is so lukewarm that it is neither hot nor cold. It is just a kind of tea which you would not like to drink - neither hot nor cold, just lukewarm.

Don't live a lukewarm life.

Harry's strong-minded wife, Martha, took him shopping to buy a pair of trousers. "Do you want buttons or a zipper?" asked the shop assistant.

"Zipper," replied Harry quickly.

"Very good, sir," said the assistant. "And do you want a five inch zip or a ten inch?"

"Ten inch," Harry said before Martha could interrupt.

When they got outside, Martha was furious. "You," she said, "you and your ten inch zip! Why, you remind me of the man who lives next door to my father. Every morning he goes down to his garden, unlocks his garage, opens the eight-foot double doors and then wheels his bike out."

Don't live a life on a bike.

What I am saying certainly creates a feeling of insecurity. But what is security? Is there anything secure in life? Does security exist at all, or is it just an idea, a consoling idea that man has created for himself? What security is there?

The people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had gone to bed with absolute security; I don't think even a single person amongst those two big cities, two hundred thousand people, had gone to bed with any idea of insecurity. And by the morning there were only fires and dead bodies. Not a living thing was left, not even trees, not even birds, no animals, no man. All life simply disappeared. What security is there?

Do you think those six million Jews had ever thought that the gas chambers would be their end, that within a minute they would simply be going out of the chimneys as smoke in the sky? What security is there?

There has never been any security. Death can come any moment, and it always comes without any notice, without any warning. Still, we go on living with the idea of security, and whenever the idea of being a rebel, a rebellious spirit, arises, immediately we think of security. But you don't have any security!

The rebel understands it: there is no security - hence, don't ask for it. Live in insecurity, because that is an actual fact of life. You cannot avoid it, you cannot prevent it, so there is no need to bother about it. Don't waste time unnecessarily.

In the days when Disraeli and Gladstone were political enemies, the British houses of Parliament rang with their heated debates. Once Gladstone shouted at the prime minister, "Sir, you will come to your end either upon the gallows or of a venereal disease."

Disraeli adjusted his monocle and replied with unruffled calm, "I should say, Mr. Gladstone, that depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

Take life at ease. Be unruffled, and move with strength and power and dignity into the unknown, into the dark, joyously, dancingly. You have nothing to lose but everything to gain.

Question 2:

Samvedo, the secret is not much of a secret. It is an open secret... the true rebel has an understanding of the momentariness of life, of the certainty of death; hence nothing can make him afraid, nothing can make him compromise. In such a momentary life one is absolutely able to live without any compromise, and when death is certain, there is no need for compromise at all.

Because life is so short, the rebel can do whatever he is capable of with his total being, whatever he enjoys to create and whatever needs to be destroyed for that creation to happen. He is not destructive; even if he has to destroy it is always in the service of creation. And still he remains...

because he is not a reactionary, he has no complaint against anybody; he remains playful, because all creativity is playfulness. He is non-serious, because seriousness is also part of the old man.

The new man, the rebel, has a tremendous sense of humor. He can laugh in the face of death.

While living, while fighting, while creating or destroying, he is never serious, he is giggling with joy.

He is not a miserable person - that's what he is revolting against. He wants the whole world to be filled with laughter, he wants to create religions based on laughter as the most fundamental doctrine.

And what is there to be disturbed about - even if the whole world is against you? It really makes you stronger, gives you more nourishment, because it strengthens your conclusions that whatever you are doing is a rebellious act. Otherwise, the whole world would not be against you.

The very beauty of being a rebel showers one with flowers, because by being a rebel you go to your ultimate heights and to your ultimate depths.

After many years, the ultra-orthodox sect had built their giant computer in Tel Aviv. It was light-years ahead of all other machines, and it had been invented for the purpose of answering one question only. So that fateful day, in fear and anticipation, the question was fed to the mechanical brain, "Is there a God?"

The computer flashed, whirled and out came the answer: "There is NOW."

The computer is declaring himself God! Now, do you want to take it seriously?

"Goldberg, is it true that you have joined the Catholic church?"

"Yes," said Goldberg, "I joined it last week."

"But," said his friend, "you have always been a Jewish rabbi!"

"I know," said Goldberg, "but I have only got six months to live and I thought if anybody has got to lose a member, it had better be those buggers."

Take life as a beautiful joke. There is nothing to be serious about.

The late, unlamented, Adolph Hitler was at one time troubled by unusual dreams. He sent for his dream interpreter, who told him the forecast that he would die on a Jewish holiday. "But which one?"

asked the apprehensive Fuhrer.

"Any day you die will be a Jewish holiday," was the answer.

Just look around life. It is so ridiculous, so humorous. Only people who are blind can be serious; with eyes, it is impossible to be serious.

Harry was fixing his car outside his house. He had the hood off, the car up, and his head inside, when a drunk came by.

"What is the matter, old man?" the drunk asks Harry.

"Piston broke," said Harry.

"Ah," commiserated the drunk, "pissed and broke - so am I, so am I."

Just be watchful, look all around and you will be surprised how many beautiful things you are missing.

"Harry," asks his wife, "if we had a four-minute nuclear warning, what would you do?"

"Make love to you," answered Harry.

"Yes," said his wife, "but what about the other three minutes?"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.