To Create a Balance

The first question:

Question 1:

I am sorry. I apologize - because dogs are so innocent. It is not fair at all.

The second question:

Question 2:

Neurosis has never been so epidemic in the past as it is now. It is almost becoming a normal state of human mind. It has to be understood.

The past was spiritually more healthy, and the reason was that mind was not fed so many things simultaneously; the mind was not overloaded. The modern mind is overloaded, and that which remains unassimilated creates neurosis. It is as if you go on eating and stuffing your body. That which is not digested by the body will prove to be poisonous. And what you eat is less important than what you hear and see. From your eyes, from your ears, from all your senses, you go on receiving a thousand and one things each moment. And there is no extra assimilation time. It is as if one were constantly sitting at the dining table, eating, eating, twenty-four hours a day.

This is the situation of the modern mind: it is overloaded; so many things are burdening it. It is not any surprise that it breaks down. There is a limit to every mechanism. And mind is one of the most subtle and delicate of mechanisms.

A really healthy person is one who takes fifty percent of his time to assimilate his experiences. Fifty percent action, fifty percent inaction - that is the right balance. Fifty percent thinking, fifty percent meditation - that is the cure.

Meditation is nothing but a time when you can relax utterly into yourself, when you close all your doors, all your senses, to the outside stimulus. You disappear from the world. You forget the world as if it exists no more - no newspapers, no radio, no television, no people. You are alone in your innermost being, relaxed, at home.

In these moments, all that has become accumulated is assimilated. That which is worthless is thrown out. Meditation functions like a double-edged sword: on the one hand it assimilates all that is nourishing, and it rejects and throws out all that is junk.

But meditation has disappeared from the world. In the old days, people were naturally meditative.

Life was uncomplicated, and people had enough time just to sit and do nothing, or look at the stars, or watch the trees, or listen to the birds. People had intervals of deep passivity. In those moments you become more and more healthy and whole.

Neurosis means you are carrying such a load in the mind that you are dying under it. You cannot move. There is no question of your consciousness flying. You cannot even creep - the burden is too much. And the burden goes on increasing every moment. One cracks up. It is very natural.

A few things to be understood. Neurosis is the mouse endlessly trying the dead end, not learning.

Yes, not learning is neurosis - that is the first definition. You go on trying the dead end.

You have been angry. How many times have you been angry? And how many times have you repented of being angry? Still, let there be a stimulus and your reaction will again be the same. You have not learned a thing. You have been greedy and greed has created more and more misery. You know it - greed has never given anybody blissfulness - but you are still greedy, you still go on being greedy. You don't learn.

Non-learning creates neurosis, is neurosis.

Learning means assimilation. You try one thing and then you find that it doesn't work. You drop it. You move in another direction, you try another alternative. This is wise, this is intelligent. Just knocking your head against a wall where you know perfectly well there is no door is neurosis.

People are getting more and more neurotic because they go on trying the dead end, they go on trying that which doesn't work. The man who is capable of learning never becomes neurotic - cannot become. He immediately sees the point that this is a wall. He drops the whole idea. He starts moving into other dimensions. There are other alternatives available. He has learned something.

It is said of Edison that he was trying one experiment in which he failed seven hundred times. His colleagues became desperate. Three years were wasted and he went on trying new alternatives again and again. And every morning he came with great enthusiasm - the same enthusiasm that he had come with on the first day. And three years were wasted.

One day his colleagues gathered together and they said to him, 'We don't see the point. We have failed seven hundred times. It is time to drop the experimentation.' Edison is reported to have said, 'What are you saying - failed? We have learned that seven hundred alternatives were wrong alternatives. It has been a great experience! Today I am not going to try the same experiment, I have found another one. We are coming closer to the truth. How many false alternatives can there be? There must be a limit. If there are one thousand false alternatives, then seven hundred have already been dropped and only three hundred are left. And then we will be reaching the right point.'

This is learning. Trying one experiment, seeing that it doesn't work, trying an alternative, seeing that it doesn't work, the wise man drops it. The fool clings to it. The fool calls it consistency. The fool says, 'I did it yesterday and I am going to do it today, too. And I will do it tomorrow.' He is stubborn, pig-headed. He says, 'How can I leave it? I have invested so much in it. I cannot change it.' Then he goes on insisting on it and his whole life is wasted. And as death comes closer, he is desperate, he is hopeless. Deep down in his guts he knows perfectly well that he is going to fail. He has failed so many times and he is still trying the same thing without learning anything at all.

This creates neurosis. The man who is capable of learning will never become neurotic.

A disciple will never become neurotic. A disciple means one who is capable of learning. Never become knowledgeable; always be in the process of learning.

Knowledgeability drives people neurotic. It is not just accidental that professors, philosophers, psychiatrists, scholars, easily go mad. They have learned and they have reached the conclusion that there is no more to learn. The moment you decide that there is no more to learn, you have stopped growing. To stop growing is neurosis - that is the second definition.

The world was very different in the past, obviously. About six weeks' worth of sensory stimuli six hundred years ago is what we now get in a day. Six weeks' worth of stimulation, information, we are getting in a single day - about forty times the pressure to learn and adapt. Modern man has to be capable of learning more than man has ever been before, because there is more to learn now.

Modern man has to become capable of adapting to new situations every day because the world is changing so fast. It is a great challenge.

A great challenge, if accepted, will help tremendously in the expansiOn of consciousness. Either modern man is going to be utterly neurotic or modern man is going to be transformed by the very pressure. It depends on how you take it. One thing is certain: there is no way of going back. The sensory stimuli will go on increasing more and more. You will be getting more and more information and life will be changing, with faster and faster rhythms. And you will have to be capable of learning, of adapting, to new things.

In the past man lived in an almost static world. Everything was static. You would leave the world exactly as your father had left it to you. You would not have changed anything at all. Nothing was changed. There was no question of learning too much. A little bit of learning was enough. And then you had spaces in your mind, empty spaces, which helped people to remain sane. Now there is no more empty space, unless you create it deliberately.

Meditation is needed today more than ever before. Meditation is needed so much that it is almost a question of life and death. In the past it was a luxury; few people - a Buddha, a Mahavira, a Krishna - were interested in it. Other people were naturally silent, naturally happy, sane. There was no need for them to think of meditation; in an unconscious way they were meditating. Life was moving so silently, moving so slowly, that even the most stupid people were capable of adapting to it. Now the change is so tremendously fast, with such speed, that even the most intelligent people feel incapable of adapting to it. Every day life is different, and you have to learn again - you have to learn and learn again and again. You can never stop learning now; it has to be a life-long process.

To the very point of death you will have to remain a learner, only then can you remain sane, can you avoid neurosis. And the pressure is great - forty times greater.

How to relax this pressure? You will have to go deliberately into meditative moments. If a person is not meditating at least one hour a day, then neurosis will not be accidental, he will create it himself.

For one hour he should disappear from the world into his own being. For one hour he should be so alone that nothing penetrates him - no memory, no thought, no imagination; for one hour no content in his consciousness, and that will rejuvenate him and that will refresh him. That will release new sources of energy in him and he will be back in the world, younger, fresher, more able to learn, with more wonder in his eyes, with more awe in his heart - again a child.

This pressure to learn, and the old habit of not learning, is driving people crazy. The modern mind is really super-loaded, and no time is given to digest it, to assimilate it into one's own being. That is where meditation comes in and becomes more significant than ever. Without giving time for the mind to rest in meditation we repress all of the messages that are pouring in continuously. We refuse to learn - we say we have not got time. Then the messages begin to accumulate. If you don't have time enough to listen to the messages that your mind is receiving continuously, they start accumulating - just like files accumulating on your table, piles of letters accumulating on your table, because you have not time enough to read and answer them. Exactly like that your mind becomes cluttered - so many files waiting to be looked into, so many letters to be read, to be answered, so many challenges to be taken, to be faced.

I have heard...

Mulla Nasrudin was saying one day, 'If something wrong happens today, I will not have time for at least three months to look into it. So many wrong things have already happened which are waiting there. If something wrong happens today,' he said, 'I will not have time to look into it for three months at least.'

A queue. You can see that queue inside yourself - and the queue goes on growing. And the bigger the queue, the less and less space you have; the bigger the queue, the more and more noise inside - because everything that you have accumulated demands your attention.

This usually starts at about the age of five when real learning virtually stops, and this lasts until death. In the old days it was okay. Five or seven years were enough to learn all that you would need in your life; that would do. Seven years' learning would do for seventy years of life. But now that is not possible. You cannot stop learning because new things are always happening and you cannot face those new things with old ideas. You cannot depend on your parents and their knowledge, you cannot even depend on your teachers in the school and the university, because what they are talking about is already out of date. Much more has happened. Much water has gone down the Ganges.

This was my experience. When I was a student I was surprised at my professors' knowledge because it was thirty years old. It was when they were young that they had gathered it from their teachers. Since then they had not looked at what had happened That knowledge was absolutely useless. I was constantly in conflict with my professors, I was thrown out of many colleges, expelled, because the professors said that they could not cope with me. And I was not creating any trouble, I was simply making them aware that what they were saying was out of date. But that hurts the ego.

They had learned it in their own university days and they were thinking that the world had stopped then and there.

Now students cannot depend on teachers and children cannot depend on their parents, hence a great rebellion is on the way all over the world. It has nothing to do with anything else. Students cannot respect their teachers anymore unless those teachers continuously learn. They cannot be respected. For what? There is no reason. And children cannot respect their parents because the approach of their parents looks very primitive. Small children are becoming aware that what their parents say is out of date. Parents will have to continuously learn if they want to help their children to grow and teachers will have to continuously learn. Now no one can stop learning. And this speed is going to grow continuously.

So, one thing: learning has not to be stopped, otherwise you will go neurotic; because to stop learning means you are accumulating information which you have not assimilated, digested, which has not become your blood and your bones and your marrow. It will hang around you with great insistence to be taken in.

Secondly: you will need time to relax. This pressure is too much. You will need some time to disappear from this pressure. Sleep cannot help you anymore because sleep itself is becoming overburdened. Your day is so overloaded that when you go to sleep only the body falls limp on the bed, but the mind continues to sort things out. That's what you call dreaming: it is nothing but a desperate effort of the mind to sort things out because you won't give any time to it.

You have to relax consciously into meditation. A few minutes of deep meditation will keep you non-neurotic.

In meditation the mind unclutters, experiences are digested, and the overload disappears, leaving the mind fresh and young and clear and clean.

In the past the input volume was one-tenth of one's time and the meditative time was nine-tenths.

Now just the reverse is the case: nine-tenths input volume time and one-tenth meditative time. Very rarely do you relax. Very rarely do you just sit silently, doing nothing. Even that one-tenth time of unconscious meditation is disappearing. Once that happens, man will be utterly mad. And that is happening.

What do I mean by unconscious meditative time? You simply go into the garden, you play around with your children - that is unconscious meditative time. Or you swim in the swimming pool - that is unconscious meditative time. Or you mow your lawn, or you listen to the birds - that is unconscious meditative time. That too is disappearing because whenever people have time, they are sitting before their TVs, glued to their seats.

Now, tremendously dangerous information is being put into your mind by the TV. You will not be able to digest it. Or you are reading newspapers. All kinds of nonsense is being fed to you. Whenever you have time you put the radio or the TV on. Or someday you are feeling very good and you want to relax and you go to the movie. What kind of relaxation is this? The movie will not allow you relaxation, because information is continuously thrown into you.

Relaxation means no information is thrown into you. Listening to a cuckoo will do, because no information is fed to you. Listening to music will do, because no information is thrown into you.

Music has no language; it is pure sound. It does not give any message; it simply delights you.

Dancing will be good, music will be good, working in the garden will be good, playing with children will be good, or just sitting doing nothing will be good. This is the cure. And if you do it consciously, the impact will be greater.

Create a balance. Neurosis is an unbalanced state of mind: too much activity and no inactivity at all, too much masculine and no feminine at all, too much yang and too little of yin. And you have to be fifty-fifty. You have to keep a deep balance. A symmetry is needed inside you. You have to be an ARDHANA-RISHWAR, half man, half woman, then you will never go neurotic.

And that is the whole process of the book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. It will make you disappear as man, as woman; it will make you one whole, one unity; it will give you individuation.

Individuality is neither male nor female, it is simple unity. Strive to achieve it between time spent doing versus time spent not doing. This is wholeness. This is what Buddha called his Middle Way, MAJJHIM NIKAYA. Just be exactly in the middle. And remember, you can become unbalanced to the other extreme too; you can become too inactive. That will be dangerous also. That has its own pitfalls and dangers. If you become too inactive, your life loses dance, your life loses joy, you start becoming dead.

So I am not saying become inactive, I am saying let there be a balance between action and inaction.

Let them balance each other and you be just in the middle. Let them be two wings of your being. No wing should be bigger than the other.

In the West, action has become too great; inaction has disappeared. In the East, inaction became too great and action disappeared. The West knows affluence, richness, on the outside and poverty inside; the East knows richness, affluence, inside and poverty on the outside. Both are in misery because both have chosen extremes.

My approach is neither Eastern nor Western, my approach is neither male nor female, my approach is neither of action nor inactiOn, my approach is that of utter balance, symmetry, in you. Hence I say to my sannyasins: Don't leave the world. Be in the world and yet be not of it. This is what Taoists call WEI WU WEI, action through inaction - the meeting of yin and yang, anima and animus; it brings enlightenment. Imbalance is neurosis; balance is enlightenment.

The third question:

Question 3:

I have not said that - that all women are really soft, feminine and loving. Neither are all men aggressive, violent, ambitious, hard. Because deep down in you the consciousness is neither. The anima and the animus, the male and the female exist in your body chemistry. You can be a man physically, but deep inside you may have chosen the feminine part. A woman may be a woman physically but she may have chosen the masculine part - both parts are available - then the body remains feminine but the woman will become masculine.

That is what is happening to women connected with the Women's Liberation movement: they are dropping their feminineness, they are becoming as aggressive as man. They are trying to compete with all kinds of foolishnesses that man has. They want to have all those foolishnesses themselves, too - they cannot be left behind.

The idea of being equal is creating a foolish idea of being similar. To be equal does not mean to be similar. Equality is a totally different dimension; similarity is different.

Yes, a woman can choose her masculine part too much, she can become identified with it, then her softness will disappear. A man can choose his feminineness, then his hardness will disappear. The body will remain sexually male or female, but the quality surrounding the body, the vibe, will have to be that which you have chosen inside. A man can choose to be a woman inside, a woman can choose to be a man inside.

And it is not a choice that you make once and forever, you can change it every moment. There are moments when a woman is very soft and there are moments when she can be very hard, very cruel.

There are moments when a man is very hard, aggressive, but there are moments when he can be very soft. Even a Ghengis Khan is very soft to his children. To his wife he is very soft.

I have heard...

The plain and strongly-built daughter of a Field-Marshal was engaged to be married to a young officer on her father's staff. 'Couldn't you do something for Frank now that he has asked me to marry him?' she asked her father one day.

'There's not much I can do really,' replied the Field-Marshal, 'except get him a medal for gallantry.'

He was undersized, meek, diffident, and subdued, and he had applied for a job as a night-watchman.

'Yes,' said the manager, dubiously, 'but the fact is we want someone who is restless and uneasy, especially at night - someone who thinks the worst of everybody, someone who sleeps with one eye open. The kind of person, in short, who, when roused, is the devil himself.'

'Alright,' said the meek lad, as he walked away, 'I'll send my wife.'

It depends on what you choose inside you. It is a choice. The body is not your choice, but the vibe that will surround your body is a choice. And if you choose consciously, you will have great freedom in your being, because you will know who you are and what you are doing with your body.

The body is tremendously potential - much can happen through it - but people take it for granted.

It is as if a beautiful guitar has been given to you as a present and you just keep it, not knowing the potential of it. You can play on the guitar, you can learn to play on the guitar, and great music will be born. And then it depends on you what kind of music it will be. You can create a music which is sad, you can create a music which is celebrating, you can create music which is violent, you can create a music which is soothing, loving, silent.

There are kinds of music. Classical music has a different quality: it soothes, it brings you to a silence, rest. Modern pop music makes you restless, sexual; it drives you into a kind of frenzy. But the instruments are the same - as are bodies.

A really wise person chooses to play what kind of music he wants to play on the body. You can make your body like a Buddha or you can become a Mohammed Ali. It depends on you. Look at Buddha's body - how soft, although he is a man; how feminine, although he is a man. He has chosen grace.

It depends on you. It is your choice. You are not confined by your chemistry. You can be confined only if you remain unconscious in your chemistry, otherwise your chemistry has infinite potential: it can be put to a thousand and one uses. And to learn how to use one's body, how to behave with one's body, how to relate with one's body, is a great art. Millions of people just take their body for granted; they never search for its possibilities. Their body remains a seed. It never becomes a Golden Flower.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Stilwell, I don't believe in repressing anything - not even the poisonous politics - because repressed, it remains in your system; sooner or later it will take you over. And the longer it has been repressed, the more dangerous it becomes, because the deeper it goes into your very source of being. And if you are poisoned at your very source, at the very centre, then it becomes really difficult to uproot it.

My approach about everything is to bring it to the surface. So I never nip anything in the bud, I help it to become a flower. And after the flowering, the flower starts withering of its own accord. That's the natural way.

So in my commune, nothing is prevented. Ambitions are allowed, accepted, as being part of human beings, their ignorance, their unawareness. But I make my people aware that these are games. So play them, but play consciously. Become more and more alert and never let them become serious.

If they don't become serious, there is no need to become afraid of them. The problem is that when a game becomes so serious then you forget completely that it is a game.

That's where the politician is lost. He thinks he is doing something very serious. He is doing something very silly, but he thinks he is doing something very serious. All that is needed is to make him aware that this is a game. If you want to play it, play, but don't become so serious about it.

Keep a little bit of humour. A sense of humour is one of the greatest keys to transform human personalities.

Yes, you are right! Here also - because these people come from the world and they bring all kinds of infections from the world. They are not coming here fresh, they have been already conditioned.

Ambition has already been put into them - their parents, the society, church, school, college, university. Everywhere they have been poisoned; they bring all that poison here. You cannot nip it in the bud otherwise they will become split and hypocritical. Then on the surface they will show humility, humbleness, and deep down they will think, 'There is nobody more humble than me' - and politics has come in. Deep down they will think, 'I am the greatest egoless person in the world' - but the 'greatest'.

Now a new kind of ambition has entered. It is the same ambition, now the direction is new. And it is more subtle, and, of course, more dangerous too. And now it is pious, because it is in the name of religion. So even the poison no longer looks like poison; it is labelled nectar. It is religious poison, pious poison, and it is more difficult to get rid of the pious poison.

So I don't repress anything and I don't help any kind of repression, I help people to bring whatsoever they have in them to the surface. I help them to be aware of it, to watch it, to see the foolishness of it, to see the stupidity of it - not because I say it is stupid, because if I say something and you only believe it, you will repress it. I help you - my function here is to help you become aware on your own. The day you see the stupidity of it, it will drop of its own accord.

So I have created all kinds of games here. Yes, there is a hierarchy too so people who want to play, they can play the game of hierarchy. But sooner or later - because the whole effort is to make them conscious - they become aware that this is a game. And the moment THEY see it is a game, they are out of it. Seeing something as a game makes you laugh at it - a hearty laugh at your own self.

And when a man can laugh at his own stupidities he is becoming wise. Laughter has to come out of awareness.

Ambitious people also laugh. Just the other day I was reading that when Jimmy Carter came to power he was laughing so beautifully that you could have counted his teeth. And some people have counted - eleven teeth were showing. Now only seven are showing. Now the smile is disappearing because his prestige is falling every day. People's expectations are not fulfilled: what he has promised he cannot deliver. Only seven! Soon you will see five, three, two. By the time he goes, the smile will have disappeared completely. You will not see a single tooth. This is not real laughter. Even this laughter is political, managed, practised, cultivated.

There is a different kind of laughter that comes to you when you see all kinds of foolishnesses that you have been in - and how seriously. When you see the whole ridiculousness of your life pattern, your whole gestalt and its stupidity - but not because I say or Buddha says or Master Lu-tsu says...

It is not a question of belief, it is not a question of somebody else's belief, it is not a question of somebody else's knowledge and you borrow it - borrowed knowledge never helps - it has to arise in you.

My effort here is to make you aware of all that is hidden in you. All that you have been doing unconsciously has to be done consciously, that's all. And sometimes miracles happen.

Once a professor came to me. His problem, and it was really a problem, because to be a professor and have such a problem is really difficult - his problem was that he walked like a woman. So whenever he passed by students would come and laugh and giggle and he felt really bad. What to do about it? And he had been to the doctors and the psychoanalysts and they could not help. They said, 'What can we do?' From his very childhood he had been walking that way. And he tried not to walk like that, and the more he tried, the more he failed.

There is a certain law - hypnotists call it the law of reverse effect. You try hard to do something and just the opposite happens.

So he was trying hard. His whole effort, his whole mind was concerned with not walking like a woman, but he was walking like a woman more and more. I told him, 'Just do one thing - because it is a miracle that you can walk like a woman, it is really a miracle.' He said, 'What are you saying?'

I said, 'It is a miracle! A woman can walk that way because of a different musculature. Because of the womb she walks in a certain way. No man can walk like that. You are unique!' He said, 'What are you saying? And everybody is laughing at me.' I said, 'You are really unique. You have done something miraculous. It is magical. You forget all about it. My suggestion is that you start walking consciously like a woman. Make it a point to walk like a woman.' He said, 'What are you suggesting? I have tried my whole life not to walk like a woman, then too I walk like a woman. And if I start walking like a woman what will happen?' I said, 'You just try in front of me.' And at least twenty, thirty people were sitting there. He said, 'Here?' I said 'Here. You try.'

He tried and he failed! He could not - he could not walk like a woman. And he looked very surprised.

He said, 'What happened?' I said, 'You have to understand the law of reverse effect. Now go to the university, anywhere, and consciously try to walk like a woman - because it is very difficult to walk like a woman unless you are a woman.' And since then he has not walked like a woman. He became conscious of it. It was an unconscious mechanism. Unconsciousness was the root cause of it. Just become conscious, and it disappears.

Man's problems are rooted in the unconscious. And what do you go on doing? You go on repressing those problems into the unconscious. Where else will you repress them? There is nowhere else to repress them. Whenever you repress something, you repress it into the unconscious. That's how the unconscious is created.

I don't have an unconscious because I never repress anything. The unconscious is created by repressions. The child does not have an unconscious. By and by he will have. And the old man has more of the unconscious than the conscious because he has been repressing his whole life.

The unconscious functions like a basement. Whatsoever is useless, you throw into the basement.

It accumulates there. It becomes a junkyard. That is what your unconscious is. And from the unconscious, things arise and take possession of you. All the ghosts that take possession of you come from the unconscious not from the graveyards. Your unconscious is the graveyard where those ghosts are born, and whenever they can find an opportunity, an occasion, to sneak up and possess you, they will possess you. And they possess with revenge, with a vengeance.

Now, to repress it is to help the unconscious more. That is the law of reverse effect. Your unconscious will become more and more powerful. You are feeding it and nourishing it. My whole approach is that consciousness is liberation. Awareness is the solution. Just become more conscious of whatsoever you are doing.

Once it happened...

A thief came to a great Master, Nagarjuna. He had come for a certain reason.

Nagarjuna used to live naked - one of the great Indian mystics and one of the greatest alchemists.

He would have been the right person to comment on THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER.

C.G. Jung was not the right person to comment on it.

He came into a great capital. The queen was a follower of Nagarjuna. She came with a golden begging bowl and told Nagarjuna, 'Give your wooden begging bowl to me. I will keep it as a treasure.

And I have brought this golden begging bowl for you.' She was afraid that maybe Nagarjuna would say, 'I don't touch gold, I am an ascetic.' But Nagarjuna was an enlightened person, he said, 'Okay.'

So he took the golden begging bowl studded with valuable diamonds.

A thief saw Nagarjuna moving with the golden begging bowl, naked, and all those diamonds shining in the sun. He said, 'Look! How long can this man have this? Somebody is going to take it from him.

Why not me? This naked man cannot keep it long. From where did he get it?'

So the thief followed Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna was staying outside the capital in the ruins of an old temple where there were no doors, not even windows - nothing - just walls all falling down, just a small shelter. A little bit of roof was still safe. The thief said, 'How will he protect his valuable thing?

In the night at least he will go to sleep.'

So he waited outside by the side of the wall near a window. Nagarjuna wanted to have a little sleep in the afternoon - that was his habit. Seeing the thief following him, he knew perfectly well why he was following. He was not following Nagarjuna, he was following the golden bowl, so why force him to wait there? He was going to take it anyway. 'When I fall asleep,' thought Nagarjuna, 'he will take it, so why force him to wait unnecessarily?' He threw the begging bowl out of the window. The thief could not believe what was happening. But this man looked really charismatic naked, so beautiful, so divine-looking, with such a precious thing with him, and he had thrown it! Now the thief could not leave. He was so attracted by the person, so enchanted, almost hypnotized. He looked in through the window and said, 'Sir, can I come in and have a Little chit-chat with you?'

Nagarjuna said, 'That's why I threw the bowl outside - so that you could come in. You would have come in when I had gone to sleep but that would have been meaningless. Come in!' The thief came in and he said, 'Looking at you, seeing that you can throw such a valuable thing away so easily - and I know why you have thrown it, you have thrown it away i-or me - a great desire has arisen in me. Will there ever be a time when I will also be so detached, so aloof, so free of possessions as you are?' Nagarjuna said, 'The time has come. Accidentally you are already caught. I will give you the secret of how to become transcendental to the world, how to go beyond, how not to possess.'

The man said, 'But let me first tell you that I am a thief. And I have gone to many saints before, but they all say - because I am a well-known thief - they all say, "First stop stealing, only then can you meditate." So let me tell you first. You may not know.' Nagarjuna said, 'Then it simply shows that you have never been to a saint up to now. They must have been ex-thieves; otherwise who cares who you are? And why make it a condition that first you have to stop stealing? I will give you the meditation. It is very simple: you go on stealing. Just do one thing: do it consciously, do it with full awareness. When you are going to steal, move fully aware, alert to what you are doing. And after fifteen days you report to me.'

But by the seventh day the thief was back and he said, 'You deceived me. For seven days continuously I have not been able to steal. And it was not that I was prevented, I reach the places where great treasures are available, but I cannot do it. If I become aware, I start laughing at my foolishness. What am I doing - stealing things which will be taken away from me? Sooner or later I will have to die. The whole thing looks so childish. If I become aware, I cannot steal. If I steal, I lose my awareness. Both cannot go together.'

Nagarjuna said, 'Then you decide. Whichever you choose, you can choose. You can drop awareness and steal or, if you want to have awareness, then drop stealing.' And the man said, 'I have tasted awareness. It is impossible to drop it. I will drop stealing, because awareness is far more valuable, far more significant. I have only tasted a little bit of it, but it gives such joy. And I have been stealing my whole life, and I have accumulated many valuable things in my house, but they have never given me any joy. They only give me more and more fear.'

Awareness is the only secret key: it transforms. It doesn't matter what your illness is, awareness is the only medicine: it cures all illness. If you are politically minded - and everybody is... In some way or other everybody is trying to be more powerful than the other. Even in relationships politics continue - the husband tries to be more powerful than the wife, the wife tries to be more powerful than the husband - hence the constant conflict, even between parents and children. Everywhere there is conflict. It is all politics, different faces of politics.

So when you come to me I cannot expect you to come without politics - that is impossible. If you are without politics, you will not need to come - wherever you are, God will come to you. When you come here I accept all your human weaknesses. I have no condemnation. I don't tell you to repress; I don't want to make you feel guilty about anything. If you want to play the game of politics you are allowed to play it - with only one condition: become more and more alert while playing it. Have a sense of humour, and then all is well. Sooner or later it will wither away of its own accord.

And so is the case with sensuality, sexuality; so is the case with possessiveness; so is the case with everything that man suffers from.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

Saguna, you are a fool. You should have allowed it to happen. You missed a great opportunity. If at any time you again start feeling that you are dying in my presence, die immediately! That means your ego was on the verge of disappearing and something tremendously valuable was about to happen. You missed it.

But the first time it happens that way to everybody. One shrinks back in fear, escapes back into his ego, clings, holds. Where can you find a better place to die? If you can die in my presence you will attain to life, eternal life, life abundant. If you can die in satsang, in the presence of the Master, you will be resurrected.

But that courage has to be there. Gather your courage, and next time it starts happening, let it happen.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

No, not always. Sometimes it helps too.

Meditate on this story.

Felix Simons was a nice guy but a social flop. Although he was thirty-five, he had never conquered his childhood habit of bedwetting. Finally, one of his friends told him, 'Look, Felix, you might as well know the truth. We're all very fond of you, but nobody can stand to come into your house because it smells, and you're driving your wife up a wall. Why don't you see a psychiatrist about your problem?

Enuresis is not too uncommon and it can be cured. Get it over with once and for all!'

Felix was convinced. After six months of treatment he ran into the same friend.

'Well, Felix, did you take my advice?'

'Yes,' answered Felix, 'I've been seeing a psychiatrist three times a week for six months now.'

'Well, have you had any results?'

'Oh,' beamed Felix, 'great results!'

'You don't wet your bed anymore?'

'I still do, but now I'm proud of it!'

Psychoanalysis helps only in this way. It makes you proud of things you have been guilty about. Religion has created guilt in people. Psychoanalysis has moved to the other extreme - psychoanalysis is a reaction to religious guilt. This has to be understood.

Religion has done a great wrong to humanity. It has wounded the human heart by creating guilt. It lives on guilt - the whole religious world. Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, these are only different names for the same trick - how to create guilt in people. Once you have created guilt in people, they are caught in your net; you can exploit them. Guilt is the spider's net. Make people feel guilty and they are in your power. Then you can manipulate them. You can force them to surrender. You can force them to do things for you, for the church, for the priest. They are guilty. They are afraid they are going to suffer, they want to find a way out.

First create guilt, then they are bound to come to you, because they will have to find a way out of guilt. Then tell them to pray, then tell them to do some ritual, some mantra. But first the guilt has to be created.

I have heard...

Two persons were doing great business. They were partners. The business was simple. One would enter a town in the night and throw coal tar on people windows, and after two, three days, the other would come to clean. And he would make it known in the town that he knew how to clean coal tar from the windows. By the time he had cleaned the windows, the other would have prepared another town for him. Then he would go to the other town. They were doing really great business. They were partners.

Religion depends on creating guilt. First throw coal tar on people's hearts and then tell them how to cleanse it. And then they have to pay for it.

Psychoanalysis is a reaction. I don't call it a revolution but only a reaction. It reacted against this whole business and it started doing the opposite: it makes you proud of your things. It says, 'This is perfectly normal. If you are wetting your bed this is perfectly normal. There is nothing wrong in it.

You should be really proud of it.' It gives support to you as you are.

Religion condemns you as you are. Psychoanalysis convinces you that you are the only way you can be, and you are perfectly right, you are okay. That is the message of psychoanalysis. Both are wrong. Neither do you need to feel guilty nor do you need to feel perfectly okay. If you feel guilty you will fall victim to the church, to the priest, and they will exploit you. If you start feeling you are perfectly okay, you become dormant; your growth stops.

You have to know one thing: that life means evolution, growth, life means going higher and higher - to new planitudes, to new planes of being. There is no need to feel guilty for what you are, but there is every need to have a tremendous longing to rise higher, because you are a seed, a potential, and you can become God. If you accept yourself as you are and you settle with it, you will remain a seed.

You will never become a tree and you will never be able to have a dialogue with the stars. You will not be able to play with the wind and the rain and the sun. You will remain shrunk into a seed. But there is no need to feel guilty. A seed is a seed - there is no need to feel guilty - but the seed has to become a tree. There is really a great need to inquire into one's potential. Never feel guilty, never feel proud. Just feel tremendously happy that a great opportunity has been given to you to grow.

And this whole life is a challenge to growth. That is true religion and that is true psychology too - because a true religion cannot be anything other than a true psychology. I call that psychology 'the psychology of the Buddhas'. It does not make you feel guilty; it accepts you, it loves you, but it doesn't make you feel proud to be as you are. It gives you a great challenge to be more than you are. It gives you a divine discontent. It makes you aflame with a desire to go higher and higher - not higher than others, but higher than yourself. Tomorrow should not be just a repetition of today - that is the meaning of divine discontent. Today should not be just a repetition of yesterday, otherwise you have not lived. Today must bring some new gifts to you, some new flowers, some new rays. Some new windows MUST open today.

To feel guilty means to remain possessed by the past; to feel proud means to remain wherever you are, whatsoever you are. To have a divine discontent means to grow, to search, to seek, to explore.

And life is nothing but an adventure, a constant adventure, into the unknown.

So I don't want you to feel guilty and I don't want you to feel proud. When you drop both, real life begins.

And the last question:

Question 7:

It is not only difficult, it is impossible. It is really a miracle if sometimes it happens, because two persons are two persons. Their past experiences are different, their gestalt is different, their knowledge is different, their personalities are different. They are two worlds. They speak different languages; it may be the same language, but they speak different languages. They give different meaning to words, different nuances, different shades and different colours.

When you are looking at a rose flower and if there are five persons looking at the rose flower, don't think for a single moment that you are looking at the same rose flower - you cannot; only five Buddhas standing beside the flower will be able to look at the same rose flower. You cannot, because five Buddhas means five zeros, five no-minds. Only two no-minds can commune because there is nothing to hinder now, nothing to interpret with. It is direct.

But when five minds are standing beside the rose flower they only believe that they are looking at the same rose flower, because they have different ideas of the rose, different experiences of the rose, different past impacts of the rose. All that is there in their eyes, layer upon layer. This rose is so far away, so distant.

For example, one may have loved a woman who was obsessed by roses, but she betrayed him. Now the rose will only remind him of that betrayal and the woman. That is not the others' experience.

The other may have seen a dead man garlanded with a rose garland. The rose will remind him of death - he may feel a little fear. The third may have his own experience of the rose. It will depend.

And that's how it is with each experience .

Only two no-minds can communicate. Even without words, communication happens. It is a communion. But minds are bound to clash, conflict.

I will tell you a few stories.

First:

Seated in an elegantly appointed restaurant, Chico Marx was studying the oversized menu when the head waiter approached his table. The waiter folded his hands in front of him and with proper Continental demeanour enquired, 'And what is your pleasure, Monsieur?'

'Girls,' Chico replied. 'What's yours?'

The second story:

The young husband and his bride flew to Miami for their honeymoon and for days neither hide nor hair was seen of them. On the morning of the sixth day, they entered the dining-room for breakfast.

As the waiter approached them for their order the bride turned to her husband and said coyly, 'You know what I'd like, honey, don't you?'

'Yes, I know,' he replied wearily, 'but we have got to eat some time too!'

And the third story:

The boss had been after his secretary for almost a year. He had been suggesting all kinds of things to her. On this particular evening he was unusually persistent.

'Oh, come on!' he said. 'Let's go out and have supper, then go to the theatre, then to a nightclub and then we will go up to my apartment.'

The blond clipped back, 'I would like you to comprehend that I am adamant and didactic in my refusal of your salacious, mendacious and denigrating proposition.'

The boss said, 'I don't get it.'

The secretary answered, 'That's just what I have been trying to tell you.'

Language is the problem. Different experiences, different minds, different pasts, different patterns, different habits, different personalities.

You ask me why it is difficult to communicate. It is not only difficult, it is almost impossible. If once in a while it happens, feel tremendously fortunate. Yes, once in a while it happens. When you are deeply in love with somebody, it happens. Then language is not needed, then your very presence, your very vibe communicates. Then, for a moment, in deep love, you slip out of your minds. In deep love, for a moment you become Buddhas, you become no-minds.

So only in rare moments of love does communication happen, otherwise it is always a quarrel, a subtle conflict. You say one thing, the other understands something else. The other says something, you understand something else. If you really want to communicate, become more and more loving - because love is needed, not language. Language is a barrier, love is a bridge.

If you really want to communicate, start slipping out of your mind. Become more and more zeros, no-minds, and suddenly you will see miracles happening.

It is happening here. The new people who come here are not in tune with me. For a few days I say something, they understand something else. But as they become more and more open to my love, communication starts happening. To those who have really lived long with me and have become intimate, to those with whom the barrier of language has disappeared, just a look in their eyes or just a touch of my hand, and there is communication - not only communication, but communion.

That's why just recently I have started a new way of communing with my sannyasins: just to touch them, just to let them feel my energy. The more you become intimate with me, the less and less words will be needed - because you will start hearing me, and then there will be no need of words. I will continue to speak for those who will be coming - more and more will be coming, thousands are on the way - but those who have been here with me long enough or deep enough... And depth can happen even in a single moment. It is not only a question of time, it is a question of intensity.

Sometimes it happens that when a person comes to me for the first time, the first moment of contact, and he becomes intimate as if he has been with me for many lives. And not only do I feel that, he also immediately feels that he has come home, that this is the place he has been searching for his whole life or for many lives. Then communication immediately happens, then there is no conflict.

In fact, the moment that there is communion and there is no conflict is the moment of your real initiation. Then what I say is secondary, what I am becomes primary. Then you relate to me directly.

Then you are not distracted by my words - because I am not a consistent man, I contradict myself.

And I contradict myself deliberately to help you to get rid of your expectation of consistency, to help you to get rid of language. Listening to me contradicting myself again and again, slowly slowly you will see that words are only games; you will not be serious about words. The day that awakening has happened in you, you relate to me directly. Then there is no medium needed; then you are bridged.

I am in love, I am love. The moment you are in love and you become love, communion happens.

Communion is a function of love, not of language. In fact, language functions as a hindrance, not as a help.

Remember it: to be with me is to be with an emptiness, a nobody. I have nothing to offer to you, I have nothing to teach you, I have no philosophy. I am, but I have no philosophy. I am, but I have nothing to offer. I am, but I have nothing to teach. And you have to learn to be with this l-amness.

And then you will know what communion is.

Communion is a phenomenon of love, a flowering of love. It has nothing to do with language, with words - not at all; it is silence.