The Master Is A Metaphor

The first question

Question 1:

Man has always been afraid of two things, life and death. He is afraid of life because life brings death; he is afraid of death because death ends life. Hence there have been only two taboos in the world: one is sex - sex represents life; the other is death. All the societies of the world have been repressing two things.

If you watch people's faces, their beings, you will come to know about two things: that they don't take any note of 'death, and death is everywhere. Death is the way life exists on the earth. And death is beautiful; it is only through death that life renews itself; otherwise life would become so rotten. It is death that goes on giving it new garments, new abodes; otherwise life would be in ruins. Death is very creative. You only see the disappearing body, you don't see the new appearance.

And whatever is death on one side is sex on another side. Death and sex are two aspects of the same coin, and they are always together. If you deny one, you automatically deny the other.

This is something very important to be understood, because I would like you to live your sex in totality and your death too in its totality. A man is in truth only when he is capable of living life and death both, without any inhibition. Life exists only between the polarity of sex and death. If both are denied - as they have been denied down the ages - then man becomes apathetic. Great apathy arises; man becomes indifferent to things, man becomes boredom.

Have you observed the fact? Each time you go deeply into love, each time you attain a sexual orgasm, what happens afterwards? A sadness settles; you fall into a deep valley of darkness.

That's why people make love and then they go to sleep, to avoid facing that dark, deep valley. It is inevitable because sex brings you to the highest peak of life, to the greatest peak of radiance, joy, to the climax. You vibrate at your maximum. But that can only be for a moment, and then suddenly all starts disappearing, you start falling back. And the fall is going to be deep and steep.

It is not so only in man. Animal watchers also say animals look very sad after making love. When you make love, life takes a flight, and when life is very much there you become aware, in contrast, of death too. Awareness happens only in contrast. That's why in the night you can see the stars in the sky, not in the day. In the day there is no contrast; the sunlight is so much, you cannot see the stars in the day. But in the night, when the sun is gone and all is dark, stars start appearing. What happens? The contrast of darkness is needed for them to appear, just as you write with white chalk on a blackboard.

If you move deeply into life, love, sex, suddenly you will become aware of death surrounding you from everywhere. That's why man became afraid of sex and religions became repressive of sex. It is not just an invention of some theologians; there is some deep psychological reason for it. Man became aware of one thing: that whenever you move to the peak of love, suddenly you become aware of the deep, deep, abysmal valley surrounding it. And fear takes grip of you, you start feeling nauseous, shaky; trembling arises in you. How to avoid this trembling? The only way that was found was to avoid the peak, so that you never come across the valley - avoid sex, so you never become aware of death.

You will be surprised to know that it is really death that has made people afraid of sex. And all the people who are afraid of sex are cowards, naturally. It has to be so. It is because of the fear of death that they have become inhibitive of sex; hence they are cowards.

And the second taboo is death: don't talk of death; it is thought to be unmannerly. Don't bring death into a conversation; it is thought to be uneducated, vulgar. Keep death out of life, as if it doesn't exist. At least believe that it doesn't exist. That's why cemeteries are made outside of the town, so that we don't come across them; or cemeteries are made in such a beautiful way - gardens, flowers, marble graves - to hide the phenomenon of death. And people believe in the immortality of the soul - not that they know - but only so that they can go on living with this illusion that death is unreal.

Just as in the moment of sexual ecstasy you become aware of death, the same happens when you are dying or you are on the verge of death: you become aware of your whole sexuality, of your whole sexual being. It is a well-known fact that when people are hanged, the last thing that happens to them is ejaculation. When a person is murdered on a gallows, the last thing that happens is ejaculation. Why? Death brings the other pole into vision.

People who are dying almost always die with sexual fantasies surrounding them, and that is natural because this is the way they will enter into another womb immediately. Here they are dying, the body is disappearing, they are losing their roots in this body, and their fantasy is already searching for a new womb, for a new body, for a new sexuality. In the moment of death people become aware very much of sexuality. The dying person almost always has an erection; even old people, very old people, will have erections when they are dying. What happens? Life is trying to assert itself at the last moment too. Life is trying to overcome death.

People try to avoid sex, to repress sex, so that they can forget all about death. And then at the moment of death priests have invented rituals - they go on repeating mantras and sacred scriptures into the ears of the dying man so he is still kept engaged, so that he does not become aware of his sexuality. But these are just foolish inventions of man which don't work, which can't work.

You must have heard about William Randolph Hearst, the great newspaper tycoon. He is an example. He tried through power and wealth to build a wall between himself and the human condition. A fairyland world was constructed on his orders where the mention of death was prohibited, and everything was arranged to create the illusion that life would never end. Hearst, in his later years, showed himself to be a weakling and a fool - naturally, because he avoided life to avoid death. He remained stupid.

You will remain stupid if you avoid the real human situation. Whatsoever it contains, whatsoever is implied in it, has to be encountered, has to be lived through. That is the only way to go beyond it.

Given the human reality, the only alternative to courage is a flight from reality. That's how escapism arises. Millions of people have been escaping to the monasteries, to the Himalayas, to the caves.

Why? - to avoid life so that they can avoid death. Millions of people have been searching for immortality, hoping that there must be some way to become immortals.

And I am not saying that the soul is not immortal. It is, but you don't know anything about the soul.

And your efforts to be immortal simply show that you are not yet aware of your soul, because the soul need not become immortal: it is! But it is not a question of believing in immortality. It is a question of exploring, and exploration goes through real life situations. And these two are the greatest life situations: sex and death.

It is through sex that life arises, it is through death that life disappears. Sex is the door from where life enters, and death is the door from where life disappears. These two doors have to be explored in their totality. And those who have looked into it have found that these two doors are not two; it is one door. From one side it is entrance, from the other side it is exit.

The so-called monk, the so-called old idea of sannyas are all escapisms, cowardly, utterly cowardly.

Running away, however, is never a solution. It is rather a form of weakness and cowardice. Minor forms of this weakness are called neuroses, and the acute forms of this weakness are called psychoses.

And your so-called religions have been teaching you only these two things: neurosis and psychosis.

Neurosis is a mild form, a mild dose of cowardliness, of not facing life as it is, and psychosis is the acute. The fully grown neurosis becomes psychosis; then you start escaping to the monastery, then you drop out of life - but this is not the way to go beyond. The way beyond goes through life, and life is utterly beautiful. Sex and death, both are beautiful.

You ask me, "Why am I so much afraid of two groups here, the Tantra and the Encounter?"

Tantra is based on life; tantra is the art of life, of love. Tantra is the method to encounter your sexuality, your sensuousness, your sensate being. And you are afraid of it because you have been taught that there is something wrong in your sensuousness. You are afraid to encounter your sensate being, your physical being. You are afraid to encounter your body and others' bodies, and you are afraid, deep down, that if sex reaches to a climax, then you will have to face the ultimate terror of death. It is better to avoid the peaks and walk on level ground - no peaks, no valleys. Live a mediocre life of no peaks and no valleys. Live an unintelligent life, stupid, boring, dull, drab, placid.

But one thing is good about it - that you will not encounter two things: the ecstasies of the peaks and the agonies of the valleys. But you will not grow either.

Growth happens only when one moves from peaks to valleys and valleys to peaks. Growth happens only in that constant pilgrimage between darkness and light and from light to darkness. When one rises on the waves of the ocean and falls back, and again rises and falls back and slowly, slowly attains a certain balance, in that balance one transcends peaks and valleys both, becomes a witness. That witnessing is meditation.

So not only are you afraid of Tantra, people are afraid.

And Encounter is facing your fears - and all fears are based in death - facing your anger, facing your violence, facing the possibility that death is there, that death cannot be denied. So Encounter and Tantra are frightening because they bring you against two taboos which have been cultivated for centuries: Sex and death.

Just the other day I was talking to you about Geet Govind from Esalen. When he came here, I had given him only two groups, Encounter and Tantra, because that was my first insight into his being, that he was afraid of two things - sex and death. Although he had been a disciple and a colleague of Fritz Perls, he had not learned anything. Although he is the founder of Esalen, he must have been avoiding his own deep problems. I had given him these two groups. If ke had passed through these two groups he would have attained to a great insight - a satori was possible - but he escaped, he ran away.

In the Encounter group, after just twenty-four hours, he wrote a letter to me: "I don't want to participate in it. There is too much violence. I cannot cope with it." I gave him a message, "Then if you cannot cope, drop out of it." Receiving my message he must have become aware that dropping out of it was cowardice, so just to keep face, he tried to continue in it; but he remained only on the periphery, he didn't get involved in it. He was there more as a spectator than as a participant. He did not expose his own hidden fears and violences. He did not expose that he is afraid of death. He did not encounter the possibility of his own death.

Rather than encountering the possibility of his own death, he started being angry at the Encounter group that is being run here. That is a "transference"; it is a well-known phenomenon to psychoanalysts. If the psychoanalyst brings the patient to a certain point that the patient wants to avoid, if the psychoanalyst pushes a button that the patient has been avoiding his whole life, the patient immediately becomes angry at the psychoanalyst. Rather than seeing the truth of his wound, when his wound is touched he thinks he has been offended, he has been hurt. He immediately becomes angry with the therapist - and that's what happened to Geet Govind.

If it had happened to somebody else it would have been understandable. But a man who runs a prestigious institute like Esalen, who is the founder, if he could not understand the simple phenomenon of transference, then who is going to understand? Not only did he fail, but through him he betrayed Fritz Perls too: that if living with him for so many years and being his disciple he could not understand the simple phenomenon of transference, what else could he understand? And remember, trees are known by their fruits; the Master is known by the disciples. He has, through his cowardice, condemned his own Master.

He became so angry. Not seeing his fears, not seeing his death-oriented cowardice, he started projecting all his violence and anger on the group. And he escaped before the Tantra group started, without telling anybody. He was to see me before he was to leave, but for that he would have had to do the Tantra group. He left without seeing me. He didn't even participate in Tantra. He didn't participate in Encounter either, but at least he was a spectator there. But in Tantra he was not even courageous enough to be a spectator.

Now he is talking against me, without understanding what he has done.

Man is made of two things: being and non-being. Man is a strange phenomenon. Something in him is very existential, and something in him is very non-existential. The existential is sex, and the non- existential is death; and man is a combination of sex and death. And unless you know both without any prejudice, you will not be able to transcend, you will not be able to become a real meditator.

One has to face these two facts. These are the ultimate facts of life, and these are the tests: if you face them, unafraid, they are holding the keys to eternal life. It is through them that you will be able to enter into the kingdom of God.

These two groups are very important groups. All the other groups are, in a way, a preparation for these two. But the fear is there. One has to go into these experiences in spite of the fear.

Just see how you are made with being and non-being. Something in you is present: that is your sexuality. That's why in deep sexual experience the past and future disappear and you are utterly present to the present moment and it becomes a moment of meditation. So is the case with death:

if death suddenly is encountered, the mind stops, all past and future disappear again.

If you have been in an accident, when you see that another car is coming and there is no way to avoid it and the accident is going to happen - just a few seconds more and you are gone - in those few seconds all thoughts disappear. Suddenly there is silence, utter silence. Silence that you have been seeking your whole life and were not able to attain, is attained. It comes from nowhere. Death makes you again present to the moment; it brings you to the moment.

These are the two most potential experiences. Please, don't be afraid and don't avoid them.

Geet Govind has written a letter to me too, "I will remain a sannyasin of yours only if you change the structures of the groups that are being run in Poona. Then I will believe you, that you are a Bhagwan, an enlightened person; otherwise you are just Mr. Rajneesh. "

You see the stupidity? You are making conditions for me. You are trying to bribe me - as if being called "Bhagwan" by Geet Govind is going to give me something, as if I am interested in being called "Bhagwan" by Geet Govind, or as if his sannyas is something immensely valuable for my existence.

Reading his letter I was reminded of T.S. Eliot's lines:

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

If you are afraid to face your sexuality - which is the beginning of your life, which is the source of your life - and if you are afraid to face your death and the fear that it creates - which is going to be the end of your life - you are nothing but a "hollow" man, a "stuffed" man, a "headpiece filled with straw. Alas!" You are not a real man yet if you cannot face these two things. These two things have to be faced.

In the new commune I am going to introduce another group which will be called Death, which will be a higher and more intense form of Encounter in which you will have to actually move through death.

You will have to pass through the experience of death, and if you can pass through it you will come out alive in a totally new sense.

I am preparing things. This is just the beginning, Geet Govind. This is just the ABC of the work. As more and more courageous people will be coming to me - and they are coming - as more and more uninhibited people will be coming to me - and they are coming - my methods will start becoming more and more intense. I will sharpen my sword!

And remember, if you avoid these two things, apathy is created. That's why you see so much apathy all around the world - people walking, moving, doing things, but with empty faces, with no joy, no cheerfulness, their eyes dull, non-expressive, their faces almost dead, just pulling, dragging themselves somehow, a great burden. Life is not a benediction for them but a great burden, a misery, a hell.

Who has done this? Who has poisoned the sources of human joy and celebration? The people who have taught you inhibitions.

If sex and death are repressed, you will become very apathetic, you will become very, very dull.

Your life will not have any streaming energy because the energy can be created only by this polarity:

sex and death. Between this polarity the beautiful tension is created which keeps your life energies flowing. If you avoid these two things you have avoided all. Then you live in vain. Then your life is nothing but an empty gesture - it means nothing.

And you will never be able to enter into the temple of God, because you are missing the very door, or you have misunderstood.

The haggard young man went to his psychiatrist and com plained of a recurring bad dream. "Every night," he said, "I dream of a sign on a door and I push it and push it, but I can't open it."

The doctor took notes frantically. "And what does the sign say?"

"Pull."

You can go on pushing, your whole life, but if the sign says pull.

God says live, love, live dangerously, love dangerously, and you remain frozen in fear. How will you enter into the temple of God?

Be aware of the poison that the priests have poured into your beings. Accept whatsoever is a fact.

But priests go on rejecting facts: they say Jesus was born out of a virgin mother just to reject the facticity of sex. They cannot conceive of Jesus being conceived through sexuality. These are the poisoners. And they go on doing the other thing also: they cannot conceive that Jesus died on the cross, they say he was resurrected.

The whole of Christianity depends on two dogmas: one is the virgin birth of Jesus, the other is his resurrection. One is against sex, the other is against death - and these are the only taboos. And the whole of Christianity depends on this pathological approach, this neurotic approach. In Jesus' life they have denied two things, sex and death, and Jesus is the example you have to imitate. You have to become like Jesus.

Jesus is born as much out of sex as anybody else. Jesus was not a freak! He was a normal human being, a natural human being - more natural than you are. And Jesus died as everyone dies. There is nothing wrong in death; anything that begins ends.

But still there is something which never begins and never ends! - that is God. And that is in you too.

But to know that which never begins and never ends you will have to know that which begins and ends. Only in contrast will you be able to know the eternal. You will have to experience time and its process of change to know the eternal and the unchanging and the absolutely abiding truth.

The second question:

Question 2:

It is not a question of great ideals or petty ideals, it is a question of imitating. What you imitate is immaterial; the important thing is that you imitate. If you imitate you become a carbon copy. If you imitate you have betrayed your authentic being. If you imitate you are no more your being, you are no more your soul, you are no more yourself. You have committed suicide - and this suicide is far more suicidal than when you destroy your physical body. This is destroying your very psychology.

Imitation means you will not live according to your own spontaneity, you will live according to somebody else as your image; you will follow somebody else's character, behavior, way of life.

You will have to impose. What will you do if you want to follow Christ; if you want to imitate Christ, what will you do? You will act like Christ! What else can you do? It will be a drama, it will not be a real, true life.

What will you do if you want to become a Buddha? You can take a begging bowl, you can use the same type of clothes he used, you can even walk like him - these are simple things, they can be learned - but you will be just a showpiece, not a Buddha. You will be just doing it on the surface, but you will remain the same deep down, deep behind it. Your reality will not be affected by it; it will be just a painted face, a mask, a personality. It will not touch your essence.

I am against all kinds of imitation because I respect the individual. Learn from everywhere. Learn from Jesus, learn from Buddha - they have something great to share with you. Participate in that sharing, but never imitate.

You are here with me - never imitate me! Listen to me, understand me, feel me, feel my love for you, drink this presence that is available to you, participate in this silence, but don't imitate. There is no need for you to wear the same clothes that I wear or to eat the same food. There is no need to follow my lifestyle.

But the idea has become very deeply planted in you. You have been told again and again and conditioned for it. Nobody has ever told you to be yourself. Everybody was giving you an example:

"Be like that. Be like Jesus, be like Buddha, be like Mahavira" - as if your whole purpose here is just to act somebody else's life and not to live your own; as if God has not given you a first-hand life but only a second-hand life. This is disrespectful to yourself and this is disrespectful to God too.

God has given you a life to be lived, and lived spontaneously, with no pattern. Don't become a slave and don't become an imitator. Love yourself, respect yourself, and try to live your life the way you feel it. And even if you are a failure you will be contented. And imitating somebody else, even if you succeed, you will remain empty inside, filled with straw and nothing else. Alas!

The person who will succeed in imitating Christ will be the person who has completely destroyed his possibility of growing. He has been playing, he has not been living. And howsoever intelligently you try to imitate, imitation is unintelligent. Intelligence never tries to imitate.

A cowboy boasted to the sheriff that he had the best horse in the world.

"I was riding him through a lonely stretch of the country when he stumbled over a rock. I fell from the saddle and broke my leg."

"Don't tell me," the sheriff said, "that the horse reset your leg! "

"Nope. But he grabbed me by the belt, dragged me home, and galloped five miles to fetch the doctor.

"

"I am glad everything worked out so well," said the sheriff.

"Not really. That dumb horse fetched a horse doctor! "

But what more can you expect from a horse? Even this is too much!

By imitating somebody, whatsoever you do will miss the point somewhere or other. At one stage or another stage you will miss the point, because imitation means you have already accepted living a stupid life.

A man checked into a hotel and was asked by the manager if he wanted a R.W.B.

"What is that?" he asked.

"Room with bath" ke was told. "You see, in the hotel business we try to abbreviate everything"

explained the manager. "Would you also like an R.W.V.?"

"What is that?"

"I told you we try in this hotel business to abbreviate everything - that means room with view."

"I will take an R.W.B. with an R.W.V." And he proceeded to his room where he took his shower and lay on the bed completely naked.

In walked the chambermaid, not knowing the room was occupied. She looked at him on the bed and he looked at her and said, "F.U.C.K. "

"What did you say?" she said in shock. He repeated "F.U.C.K." - whereupon she ran to the manager and told him about the naked man on the bed and what he had said.

Up came the manager and ordered the man to leave the hotel immediately.

"What did I do? What did I say that was wrong? You tell everybody to talk hotel talk so when she came in, I said F.U.C.K. - First You Could Knock?!"

Imitations won't do! You will get into trouble. You will have to live your life intelligently on your own.

And you are so unique that only you can live your life and nobody else. And you are so original that trying to copy somebody else is simply destroying such a tremendous gift of God.

Sing your song and dance your dance and love your love.

The third question:

Question 3:

Aikagro, there is a great difference between the two, although they both look very alike. The healthy love of oneself is a great religious value. The person who does not love himself will not be able to love anybody else, ever. The first ripple of love has to rise in your heart. If it has not risen for yourself it cannot rise for anybody else, because everybody else is farther away from you.

It is like throwing a stone in the silent lake - the first ripples will arise around the stone and then they will go on spreading to the further shores. The first ripple of love has to be around yourself. One has to love one's body, one has to love one's soul, one has to love one's totality.

And this is natural; otherwise you would not be able to survive at all. And it is beautiful because it beautifies you. The person who loves himself becomes graceful, elegant. The person who loves himself is bound to become more silent, more meditative more prayerful than the person who does not love himself.

If you don't love your house you will not clean it; if you don't love your house you will not paint it; if you don't love you will not surround it with a beautiful garden with a lotus pond. If you love yourself you will create a garden around yourself. You will try to grow your potential, you will try to bring out all that is in you to be expressed. If you love, you will go on showering yourself, you will go on nourishing yourself.

And if you love yourself you will be surprised: others will love you. Nobody loves a person who does not love himself. If you cannot even love yourself, who else is going to take the trouble? And the person who does not love himself cannot remain neutral. Remember, in life there is no neutrality.

The man who does not love himself hates, will have to hate - life knows no neutrality. Life is always a choice. If you don't love that does not mean that you can simply remain in that not loving state.

No, you will hate.

And the person who hates himself becomes destructive. And the person who hates himself will hate everybody else - he will be so angry and violent and continuously in rage. The person who hates himself, how can he hope that others will love him? His whole life will be destroyed. To love oneself is a great religious value.

I teach you self-love. But remember, self-love does not mean egotistical pride, not at all. In fact it means just the opposite. The person who loves himself finds there is no self in him. Love always melts the self: that is one of the alchemical secrets to be learned, understood, experienced. Love always melts the self. Whenever you love, the self disappears. You love a woman and at least in the few moments when there is real love for the woman, there is no self in you, no ego.

Ego and love cannot exist together. They are like light and darkness: when light comes, darkness disappears. If you love yourself you will be surprised - self-love means the self disappears. In self- love there is no self ever found. That is the paradox: self-love is utterly selfless. It is not selfish - because whenever there is light there is no darkness, and whenever there is love there is no self.

Love melts the frozen self. The self is like an ice cube, love is like the morning sun. The warmth of love... and the self starts melting. The more you love yourself the less you will find of the self in you, and then it becomes a great meditation, a great leap into God.

And you know it! You may not know it as far as self-love is concerned, because you have not loved yourself. But you have loved other people; glimpses of it must have happened to you. There must have been rare moments when for a moment suddenly you were not there and only love was there, only love energy flowing, from no center, from nowhere to nowhere. When two lovers are sitting together there are two nothingnesses sitting together, two zeros sitting together - and that is the beauty of love, that it makes you utterly empty of the self.

Remember again: just the other day I was saying, empty yourself in hugs, in kisses, in love, in embraces. Empty yourself! Pour yourself into love so that in your inner-world space is created - because God can enter only when there is space in you to contain him.

And great space will be needed, because you are inviting the greatest guest. You are inviting the whole existence into you. You will need infinite nothingness in you.

Love is the best way to become nothing.

So remember, egoistical pride, Aikagro, is never love for oneself. Egoistical pride is just the opposite.

The person who has not been able to love himself becomes egoistic. Egoistical pride is what psychoanalysts call the narcissistic pattern of life, narcissism.

You must have heard the parable of Narcissus: he had fallen in love with himself. Looking into a silent pool of water, he fell in love with his own reflection.

Now see the difference: the man who loves himself does not love his reflection, he simply loves himself. No mirror is needed; he knows himself from inwards. Don't you know yourself, that you are? Do you need a proof that you are? Do you need a mirror to prove that you exist? If there were no mirror, would you become suspicious of your existence?

Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection - not with himself. That is not true self-love. He fell in love with the reflection; the reflection is the other. He had become two, he had become divided.

Narcissus was split. He was in a kind of schizophrenia. He had become two - the lover and the loved. He had become his own object of love - and that's what happens to so many people who think they are in love.

When you fall in love with a woman, watch, be alert - it may be nothing but narcissism, and the woman's face, and her eyes, and her words, may be simply functioning as a silent lake in which you are seeing your reflection.

My own observation is this: that out of a hundred loves, ninety-nine are narcissistic. People don't love the woman that is there. They love the appreciation that the woman is giving to them, the attention that the woman is giving to them, the flattery that the woman is showering on the man.

Two lovers were sitting on the sea beach, and it was a fullmoon night, and great waves were arising in the sea - it was a tide time. And the lover said loudly to the sea, "Now, roll into great waves!

Roll, rise into great waves!" And the great waves started rising, and the great waves started rolling towards the beach.

And the woman came closer to the lover, hugged him, kissed him and said, "I knew it before, that you are a miracle! Even the ocean follows your orders! "

This is what goes on happening. The woman flatters the man, the man flatters the woman - it is a mutual flattery. The woman says, "There is nobody as beautiful as you are. You are a miracle! You are the greatest that God has ever made. Even Alexander the Great was nothing compared to you."

And you are puffed up, and your chest becomes doubled, and your head starts swelling - although there is nothing but straw, but it starts swelling. And you say to the woman, "You are the greatest creation of God. Even Cleopatra was nothing compared to you. I can't believe that God will ever be able to improve upon you. There will never again be another woman so beautiful. "

This is what you call love! This is narcissism. The man becomes the silent pool and reflects the woman, and the woman becomes the silent pool and reflects the man; in fact not only reflects the truth, but decorates it, in a thousand and one ways makes it look more and more beautiful. This is what people call love. This is not; this is mutual ego-satisfaction.

The real love knows nothing of the ego. The real love starts first as self-love.

Naturally, you have this body, this being, you are rooted in it - enjoy it, cherish it, celebrate it! And there is no question of pride or ego because you are not comparing yourself with anybody. Ego comes only with comparison. Self-love knows no comparison - you are you, that's all. You are not saying that somebody else is inferior to you; you are not comparing at all. Whenever comparison comes, know well it is not love; it is a trick somewhere, a subtle strategy of the ego.

Ego lives through comparison. When you say to a woman, "I love you," it is one thing; when you say to a woman, "Cleopatra was nothing compared to you," it is another, totally another, just the opposite.

Why bring Cleopatra in? Can't you love this woman without bringing Cleopatra in? Cleopatra is brought in to puff the ego. Love this man - why bring in Alexander the Great?

Love knows no comparison, love simply loves without comparing.

So Aikagro, whenever there is comparison, remember, it is egoistical pride. It is narcissism. And whenever there is no comparison, remember, it is love, whether of oneself or the other. In real love there is no division. The lovers melt into each other. In egoistical love there is great division, the division of the lover and the loved. In real love there is no relationship. Let me repeat it: in real love there is no relationship, because there are not two persons to be related to. In real love there is only love, a flowering, a fragrance, a melting, a merging. Only in egoistic love are there two persons, the lover and the loved. And whenever there is the lover and the loved, love disappears. Whenever there is love, the lover and the beloved, both disappear into love.

Love is such a great phenomenon; you cannot survive in it.

Real love is always in the present. Egoistical love is always either in the past or in the future. In real love there is a passionate coolness. It will look paradoxical, but all greater realities of life are paradoxical; hence I call it passionate coolness: there is warmth, but there is no heat in it. Warmth certainly is there, but there is also coolness in it, a very collected, calm, cool state. Love makes one less feverish. But if it is not real love but egoistical love, then there is great heat. Then the passion is there like fever, there is no coolness at all.

If you can remember these things you will have the criterion for judging. But one has to start with oneself, there is no other way. One has to start from where one is.

Love yourself, love immensely, and in that very love your pride, your ego and all that nonsense, will disappear. And when it has disappeared your love will start reaching to other people. And it will not be a relationship but a sharing. And it will not be an object/subject relationship but a melting, a togetherness. It will not be feverish, it will be a cool passion. It will be warm and cool together. It will give you the first taste of the paradoxicalness of life.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Radha Mohammed, yes, adab is a tariqa, a method. It is the beginning of something very immense, of something utterly incomprehensible to the intellect. It is the first step of a great eternal pilgrimage.

To be with the Master is simply a lesson in how to be with God. That's why down the ages the Master has been called "God". It is very symbolic, it is a metaphor.

The word "metaphor" is beautiful. Meta means beyond, phor means going: that which takes you beyond. The Master is a metaphor - he takes you beyond himself. He is just a beginning, a jumping-board. To be with the Master is nothing but a discipline in how to be with God. God is not visible, the Master is visible; it is easier to learn from the visible and then move to the invisible.

Have you looked into children's books? We have to make big pictures, very colorful pictures for them. Words are few. If you have to teach the child M, you have to make a big mango, very juicy, colorful. The child is not interested in M. Something abstract - what does it mean to a child? But in the mango, he is certainly interested. Juices start flowing in his mouth the moment he sees the mango - so colorful, so full of juice. Now there is a way we can teach him about M through the mango. Mango becomes a metaphor. Slowly, slowly the picture becomes smaller and smaller and smaller, and one day it will disappear. Then M will work on its own. There will be no need again and again to bring in the mango to remind the child about the M.

Exactly like that, the Master is something visible, God is invisible. You cannot learn adab with the invisible, you will have to learn adab with the visible. You fall in love with a Master; it is very difficult to fall in love with God. Where is he in the first place? Who is he? Is he or not? But one can fall in love with a Master, and in that very love grace arises in you. Love always creates grace. That grace is adab.

When you love the Master you behave in a certain way. Love knows how to behave. It is not a question of an imposed discipline. It is not that it is enforced on you; if it is enforced, then you are not in the presence of a Master. It arises out of yu; it is part of yur love, it is part of your feeling heart.

You feel so much for the Master that when he is around, you immediately fall into the silence, into grace. A great elegance arises in you. Suddenly you forget all your worries, you forget all your past and future programs. For a few moments you are transported into the another world.

This is the beginning. Slowly, slowly this will become so deep-rooted in you that there will be no need for the Master to be present. Whenever and wherever you will remember the Master, immediately you will fall into the same space again. Then by and by there will be no need to remember the Master.

The remembrance will become like your breathing - it will be always there, in a subtle form. And then your whole life will become graceful. Then it will not only be a question of behaving gracefully with the Master. You will behave gracefully with whomsoever you are relating: in the marketplace, in the office, in the factory, wherever you are, wherever and with whomsoever. Now the Master has become your innermost core, you are always in the presence of the Master. Then slowly, slowly it will spread to trees, to mountains, to the sky, to the stars. Then you are entering into God. By and by, step by step, one day suddenly the Master is no more there, the disciple is no more there... only God is.

Adab is a discipline, but it brings you to a state of total spontaniety. It is a tariqa, a method - and a great method. It can be known only by those who love. It can be known only by those who have become devotees, disciples. It is available only to the eyes of love. It is such a subtle experience that if you come to the Master full of your knowledge and intellect you will miss it. It is such an exquisite feeling tht unless youur heart is open for it you will not have any taste of it.

That's why each Master finally decides to live with his own disciples only, because that is the only way to help people towards God. I am not interested in the mobs. I am not interested in people coming here out of curiosity. I am interested only in those people who are ready to die in my presence, who are ready to disappear into my love.

You are living adab. This silence is adab. Your hearts beating with me - you are breathing in rhythm with me - this is adab.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

Raviraj, you are missing the whole point. You are not getting what I am saying to you. You are listening through your prejudices, through your already arrived conclusions. You are not listening to me, not at all. You have not understood a single word uttered here.

You say, "Clothes of a particular color and the wearing of the mala is prescribed for sannyasins so that they are continuously aware of the final aim of life - bliss. "There is no final aim of life. That's what I am teaching: life has no aim, no purpose. It is not going anywhere; life is already there. The ultimate is the immediate, the immediate is the ultimate: that's what I am teaching. I am not saying that tomorrow you will attain to bliss - bliss is already here. If you are available it will explode in your being, if you are not available it will not explode for lives and lives.

Tomorrow has nothing to do with it. Bliss is a quality of the present moment. It is the essence of now, of here. It is the radiance of this moment.

But Raviraj, you are thinking in terms of desires, longings, succeeding somewhere in the future. The dress and the mala, the orange color, are not given to my sannyasins to be reminded of the ultimate goal of life, bliss; no, not at all. And they are not prescribed by me as a doctor prescribes a medicine.

In fact, they are not purposive at all. It is just that I am crazy. It is my eccentricity, that's all. There is no reason behind it.

It is not meant for people who are rationalistic. It is just a gesture from the disciple's side that he loves me so much that even if I tell him to do something crazy, he is ready.

It is not something utilitarian, as you say. You say, "Is it not possible to be aware of this aim"... there is none, no aim "... without wearing a particular dress? The utility is understood but the inevitability is not." There is no utility, there is only inevitability. What is that inevitability? Being with a crazy man, you have to become crazy! It is just a gesture of surrender from your side.

And that gesture is needed because I will be telling you so many absurd things. And if you cannot accept a simple phenomenon like wearing orange and the mala, when we will be moving into more dangerous spaces, when your reason will not support you at all, when your reason will in fact try to prevent you from going more into it, and I will be calling you forth, "Come on!" and you will see that ahead there is death, and the road ends in an abyss, and I am calling you, " Come along! " - then it will be very difficult. So this is just a gesture from the side of the disciple that he is ready to go with me.

When Ibrahim, a great Sufi Master, first went to his own Master - Ibrahim was a king, King of Balkh and Bukhara... when he went to the Master, the Master told him, "Undress immediately! " The Master's disciples were puzzled because he had never asked anybody to undress; why should he ask Ibrahim to undress? But Ibrahim immediately undressed. And then the Master gave one of his shoes to him and told him to go into the marketplace and go on beating on his head with the shoe, and laugh as loudly as he could.

The disciples Were even more puzzled and confused: "What is going on? Has he gone completely mad?" They had always suspected that he was a little crazy, but now this was too much!

But Ibrahim went - in his own capital town where he had always moved in a golden chariot, where he was respected like God - naked, beating on his own head with a shoe and laughing. You can just imagine the scene. It created a circus - the whole capital gathered, people Were laughing, people were throwing banana peels and rotten onions and tomatoes, and they were enjoying, and they were having fun: "What has gone by?" Their king! "And what is he doing?" And the more they were throwing banana peels and tomatoes, the more he was laughing.

When he went back, the Master hugged him and he said, "You are accepted as a disciple." His other disciples asked, "What is the matter? What is the secret behind it?" The Master said, "You need not worry - this much was needed. He has been a great king, with all his ego. This much of a gesture was needed from his side so that I could be convinced that he was ready to go into the supra-rational, where there would be no possibility of convincing him. If he can do such an absurd act, then I am convinced. "

Raviraj, you are saying, "Osho, if you can convince me of its inevitability, I will wear it happily."

I am not going to convince you. You will have to convince me that you are ready to go crazy with me. It is not a question of me convincing you, it is a question of you convincing me.

And remember again, this is just the beginning. Soon Ibrahims will be coming! You please be in a hurry, because my demands will go on growing more and more. As the work goes deeper more and more demands will be made. It is not a prescription, it is a demand! And I am not here to convince you about its rationality, because if I convince you about its rationality - and I can convince you.... In fact, anything can be made to look rational. Any absurd thing can be made to look rational - that is such an easy game! I can convince you of the utility, of the inevitability and everything, but that will all be just bullshit.

The real truth, the simple fact, is that you have to show a simple gesture from your side that you will not ask for reasons. You have to convince me, not I convince you. It is your problem that you are missing bliss, it is not my problem. Why should I bother to convince you? I am not suffering from any problems - I am bliss. You are suffering.

You have to give me a few indications that you are ready to take the jump. By wearing orange and the mala you give me a little proof that you will not be demanding reasons for each and everything, because that will not be possible.

As the journey deepens, reasons and rational explanations become absolutely futile, meaningless.

And as you start soaring higher you go beyond rationality completely. This is a journey into super- reason, or irreason. This is a journey beyond mind. And you are asking me, "For bliss, I will wear them. If you convince me of its inevitability, I will wear it happily. "

I am not going to convince you. If I convince you, the whole point will be lost. If I convince you and then you wear it, then you have not shown the gesture. It is out of your own conviction, out of your own reason that you wear it; you have not dropped your reason, your mind. It is your conclusion. It is utterly meaningless. And then again and again you will be asking me - and there are things which are going to happen to sannyasins about which nothing can be said, they can only be experienced - then I will be in trouble. I don't want to start that kind of process at all.

And you say, "For bliss, I will wear them."

Your whole motivation is very ordinary. Your mind is full of desires. You may be thinking that you are having spiritual desires - for bliss, for God, for truth - but all desires are worldly. Yes, even the desire for God and bliss and truth is worldly. If you want to become a sannyasin you have to become a sannyasin for no reason at all, for no desire, for no motivation. At least in your life do one thing without any motivation, for the sheer joy of it. And from there starts bliss.

If you can do a single thing, even a single thing, for the sheer joy of doing it you will be surprised - bliss simply starts pouring on you. Not to live through motivation is the way of bliss.

But there are people who are continuously thinking of gaining this, of gaining that, whose whole idea of life is through motivations. They may be worldly, they may be other-worldly; in my observation there is no difference between them. Live through motivation and you are living in the world of misery, live without motivation and you are a sannyasin.

A rabbi was giving a very serious sermon in the temple when he came to the word "Moses" and from the congregation came a loud voice, "He was a stupid jerk." The rabbi could not believe his ears and thought he was hearing things, so he continued until again he mentioned Moses and again the loud voice cried, "He was a stupid jerk!"

With that the rabbi stopped and dared the man to identify himself and prove his remark. "Certainly I can, and will," replied the apparently rebellious Jew.

"You remember when God told Moses to lead our people out of the land of Egypt and Moses led our people to the Red Sea? So what happened? - God parted this Red Sea so Moses could lead our people across. So what happens? - the stupid jerk at the top of the procession leads our people and when he gets to the other side he makes a right hand turn into the desert. If he had made a left hand turn, we would have been up to our asses in oil wells!"

Please don't be a Jew! And out of a hundred people, ninety-nine point nine percent are Jews - continuously greedy, continuously thinking of gaining this and that. Can't you allow a few moments without desire? And to be without desire is to be in bliss.

Bliss cannot be desired. It is impossible to desire bliss because desire creates misery. Bliss happens only when you have understood the process of desire, when you have seen it through and through - that all desire ends in misery. When you have seen it, desiring disappears. And in that very moment, instantly, immediately, all is bliss.