Love is death

The first question:

Question 1:

THAT'S WHY - if you have deep love for me, there will be deep resistance also. They balance each other. Wherever love is, there is resistance too. Wherever you are tremendously attracted, you would like to escape also from that place, from that space - because to be immensely attracted means you will fall into the abyss, you will no more be yourself.

Love is dangerous. Love is a death. It is more deathly than death itself - because you survive after death, but after love you don't survive. Yes, somebody else is born, but you are gone. Hence the fear.

Those who are not in love with me, they can come very close, and there will be no fear. Those who love me, they will be afraid of taking each step; reluctantly they will take those steps; very hard it is going to be for them - because the closer they come to me, the less will be their ego. That's what I mean by death. The moment they have come REALLY close to me, they are not - just as I am not.

Coming closer to me is coming closer to a state of nothingness. So even in ordinary love there is resistance - this love is extraordinary, this love is unique The question is from Anand Anupam. I have been watching her. She IS resisting. The question is not just intellectual, it is existential. She has been fighting hard... but she cannot win. She is blessed because she cannot win. Her defeat is certain, it is absolutely certain. I have seen that love in her eyes; that love is so strong that it will destroy all resistance, that it will win over all efforts of the ego to survive.

When love is strong, the ego can try but it is already a losing battle for the ego. That's why so many people live without love. They talk about love, but they live without love. They fantasize about love, but they never actualize love - because to actualize love means you will have to destroy yourself utterly.

When you come to a Master, it is either utter destruction or nothing. Either you have to dissolve into me and you have to allow me to dissolve into you, or you can be here but nothing will happen. If the ego remains, then there is a China Wall between me and you. And a China Wall can be broken easily, but the ego is a more subtle energy.

But once love has arisen, then the ego is impotent - and I have seen this love in Anupam's eyes. It is there. It is going to be a great struggle, but good! - because those who come very easily don't come. Those who take a long time, those who fight inch by inch, only they come.

But nothing to be worried about. The journey is going to be a long journey. Anupam will take time, maybe years, but nothing to be worried! She is on the right track. AND she has crossed the point from where she could have gone back; she has crossed the point of no-return. So it is only a question of time.

She is available to me. I never force anybody - because there is no need. And it is good to give them time and enough rope, so they come on their own. When surrender is out of freedom it has a beauty.

But you can trust it is coming, it is on the way. In the deepest core of your being it has already happened; now it is just a question of time, so that the deepest core informs your superficial mind.

In your heart you have already come to me. Only in the mind is there struggle. At the center you have already come closer to me; only on the periphery there is fighting going on. The headquarters have really already surrendered.

You must have heard about a Japanese soldier who was still fighting: the Second World War was over, so many years had passed, and twenty years after the Second World War he was still fighting - he had not heard that Japan had surrendered. He was somewhere in the deepest forests of Indonesia, and still thinking that he belonged to the emperor of Japan and the fight was on. He must have been mad! He was hiding and escaping and killing people - alone!

When just a few years ago he went back to Japan, he was given a hero's reception. He is a hero in a way. He was unaware - but he must be a man of great will. He had heard from others - it was not that he had not heard; how can you avoid for twenty years? that Japan had surrendered, the war had finished. But he insisted: "Unless I receive an order from my commander, I will not surrender."

Now, the commander was dead, so there was no way to receive an order from the commander - and he was going to fight his whole life. It was very difficult to catch hold of him; he was very dangerous - but he was caught.

Exactly that is the case with Anupam: the headquarters have already surrendered, the commander is dead! Just on the periphery, somewhere in the forests of Indonesia you are fighting, Anupam. But sooner or later, howsoever mad you are, you will receive the news.....

The second question:

Question 2:

THE FIRST THING: you are not in a prison - nobody is, nobody ever has been. The prison is make-believe. You are unconscious, certainly, but you are not in a prison. The prison is a dream, a nightmare, that you have managed to see in your sleep. So the basic question is not how to come out of the prison; the basic question is how to come out of the sleep. And there is a great difference in how you articulate the question. If you start thinking, "How to come out of the prison?" then you will start fighting with the prison - WHICH IS NOT - then you will be moving in a wrong direction.

That's what many people have been doing down the centuries. They think they are in a prison, so they fight with the prison, they fight with the guards. they fight with the jailor, they fight with the system. They fight with the walls! They go on filing the bars of the windows; they want to escape from the prison, they try to unlock the prison but it cannot be done, because the prison exists not.

The jailor and the guard and the bars and the locks are all imagination.

You are in a deep sleep and you are seeing a nightmare. The basic question is how to come out of sleep.

I have heard:

No durance vile could be more pathetic than that suffered by the drunk who was found wandering agonizedly around and around on the sidewalk outside the fence which encloses a public park, beating upon the bars and screaming: "Let me out!"

That is your situation. You are not locked up, you are not imprisoned you are simply drunk. You THINK that you are imprisoned. This is just a thought. And I know why that thought arises in your mind: because you feel yourself so very limited from everywhere - out of the limitation the idea of prison arises. Wherever you move there is a limitation; you can go only so far and then you cannot go any further; then there must be a wall which is hindering you. So you infer that there is a wall all around; maybe not visible, maybe it is a glass wall made of very transparent glass; you can see through it, but whenever you move in ANY direction, again and again you stumble and you cannot go beyond a certain point.

This gives you the idea of a prison, that you are imprisoned. But this limitation is also because of sleep. In sleep you become identified with the body, so the limitations of the body become your limitations. In sleep you become identified with the mind, so the limitations of the mind become your limitations.

YOU ARE UNLIMITED. You are unbounded. AS you are in your pure being, no limitation exists - you are a god. But to KNOW that godhood, don't start fighting with the prison, otherwise you will never be a winner. And more and more you will be defeated, and more and more you will feel frustrated, and more and more you will lose self-confidence, more and more you will feel that it seems impossible to get out of it.

Start by becoming more aware. Start by becoming more alert, more attentive. That is the only thing that has to be done.

Being aware you will start feeling that the walls that were too close are no more so close; they are widening. Your prison is becoming bigger and bigger. The more your consciousness expands, the more you will see that your prison is no more THAT small - it is becoming bigger and bigger. More expansive consciousness and bigger space is available to you to move, to be, to live, to love. And then you know the basic mechanism: less conscious, and the walls come closer; unconscious, and the walls are just touching you from everywhere. You are in a small cell; even a slight movement is not possible.

Remember this phrase: expansion of consciousness. With that expansion, YOU expand. One day, when your consciousness is absolute and there is not a lingering shadow of darkness inside, when there is nothing unconscious in you, all has become conscious, when the light is burning bright, when you are luminous from the inner awareness - then suddenly you see that even the sky is not your limit, there is no limitation to you.

This is the whole experience of the mystics of all the ages. When Jesus says: "I and my father in heaven are one," this is what he means. He is saying: "I have no limitations." It is a way of saying the same thing, a metaphorical way, a symbolic way: "I and my Father in heaven are not two but one - I, staying in this small body and He, spread all over existence, are not two but one. My source and I are one... I AM as big as existence itself."

That is the meaning when the mystic of the Upanishad declares: "Aham Brahmasmi - I am the Absolute, I am God. " This is uttered in a state of awareness where no unconsciousness exists.

This is the meaning when the Sufi, Mansoor, declares, "Ana-el-Haqq - I am the Truth."

These great utterances are very significant. They simply say that you are as big as your consciousness never more, never less. That's why there is so much appeal in drugs, because they chemically force your consciousness to become a little wider than it is. LSD or marijuana or mescalin, they give you a sudden expansion of consciousness. Of course, it is forced and violent and should NOT be done. And it is chemical - it has nothing to do with your spirituality. YOU DON'T GROW THROUGH IT! Growth comes through voluntary effort. Growth is not cheap, not so cheap that just a small quantity of LSD, a VERY small quantity of LSD, can give you spiritual growth.

Aldous Huxley was very much wrong when he started thinking that he had attained through LSD the same experience as Kabir, or as Eckhardt, or as Baso - no, it is not the same experience. Yes, something is similar; that similarity is in the expansion of consciousness. But it is very dissimilar too; it is a forced thing; it is a violence on your biology and on your chemistry. And you remain the same!

You don't grow through it. Once the influence of the drug wears off, you are the same man again, the same small man.

Kabir will never be the same again because that expansion of consciousness was not just a forced thing - he has grown to it. Now there is no going back. It has become part of him. It has become his being. He has absorbed it.

But the appeal can be understood. The appeal has always been there; it has nothing to do with the modern generation. It has always been there... since the Vedas; man has always felt tremendously attracted towards drugs. It is a false coin; it gives you a little glimpse of the real in a very unnatural way. But man is always seeking expansion; man wants to become great.

Sometimes through money he wants to become great - yes, money also gives you a feeling of expansion; it is a drug. When you have much money, you feel your boundaries are not so close to you - they are far away. You can have as many cars as you want; you are not limited. If suddenly you want to have a Rolls Royce, you can have it - you feel free. When the money is not there, a Rolls Royce passes by, the desire arises... but the limitation. Your pocket is empty. You don't have any bank balance. You feel hurt - the wall; you cannot go beyond it. The car is there; you see the car; you can have it right now - but there is a wall between you and the car: the wall of poverty.

Money gives you a feeling of expansion, a feeling of freedom. But that too is a false freedom. You can have many more things, but that doesn't help you grow. You don't become more - you have more, but your being remains the same. So is power: if you are a prime minister or a president of a country you feel powerful - the army, the police, the court, the whole paraphernalia of the state is yours. The boundaries of the country are your boundaries: you feel tremendously powerful. But that too is a drug.

Let me say to you: Politics and money are as much drugs as LSD and marijuana - and far more dangerous. If one has to choose between LSD and money, LSD is far better. If one has to choose between politics and LSD, then LSD is far better and far more religious. Why do I say so? because through LSD you will only be destroying yourself, but through money you destroy others too. Through LSD you will be simply destroying your chemistry, your biology, but through politics you will destroy millions of people.

Just think: if Adolf Hitler had been a drug addict, the world would have been far better; if he had been on LSD, or with a syringe in hand, we would have felt blessed, we would have thanked God "It is very good that he remains in his house and goes on taking shots and is stoned. The world can go on easily without him."

Money, politics, are far more dangerous drugs. Now, this is very ironical: politicians are always against drugs, people who have money are always against drugs - and they are not aware that they themselves are drug-addicts. And they are on a far more dangerous trip, because their trip implies others' lives too. A man is free to do whatsoever he wants to do. LSD can at the most be a suicidal thing, but it is never murder. It is suicide! And one IS free to commit suicide, at least one HAS to be free to commit suicide because it is your life; if you don't want to live, it is okay. But money is murder; so is power-politics murder - it kills others.

I am not saying to choose drugs. I am saying ALL drugs are bad: money, politics, LSD, marijuana.

You choose these things because you have a false idea that they will expand your consciousness.

The consciousness can be expanded very simply, very easily, because IN FACT it is already expanded. You are just living in a false notion: your false notion is your barrier, is your prison.

You ask: "I would like to become true..."

YOU CANNOT LIKE OR DISLIKE. It is not a question of your choice. Truth is! Whether you like it or do not like it is irrelevant. You can choose lies, but you cannot choose truth - truth is there.

That's why Krishnamurti insists so much on choiceless awareness. You cannot choose truth. Truth is already there! It has nothing to do with your choice, liking, disliking.

The moment you drop your choice, truth is there. It is because of your choice that you cannot see the truth. Your choice functions like a screen on your eyes. Your liking and disliking is the problem!

Because you like something, you cannot see that which is; and because you dislike something you cannot see that which is. Through like and dislike you are having colored glasses on your eyes and you don't see the real color of existence as It is.

You say: "I would like to become true..." That's how you remain untrue. YOU ARE TRUE! Drop likes and dislikes! How can you be untrue? Being is true. To be is true. You are here - alive, breathing.

How can you be untrue? Your choice: by choice you have become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. By truth you are not Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. By choice you have become identified with India, with China, with Germany, but by truth the whole belongs to you and you belong to the whole you are universal.

The total lives through you. You are NOT just a part. The total lives through you AS totality. Choose, like, dislike, and you go astray.

Now you say, "I would like to become true..." then in the name of truth also you will become untrue.

That's how a person becomes a Christian, because he thinks Christianity is true and"I would like to become true," so he becomes a Christian. Please don't become a Christian, don't become a Hindu. YOU ARE A CHRIST! WHY become a Christian? CHRISThood is your nature. Christhood has nothing to do with Jesus; it is as much yours as Jesus'. Christhood is a state of choiceless awareness.

So please don't start thinking in terms of desire: "I would like to become true." Now this is the way to become untrue. Drop this desire just be, don't try to become. Becoming is becoming untrue: being is truth. And see the difference!

Becoming is in the future; it has a goal. Being is herenow; it is not a goal - it is already the case.

So whosoever you are, just be that; don't try to become anything else. You have been taught ideals, goals - become! Always you have been forced to become something.

My whole teaching is: Whatsoever, whosoever you are, that's beautiful. It is more than enough. You just be that. Stop becoming and be!

And now, naturally, when you ask "I would like to become true, but what is it and how is it?" once you start thinking in terms of becoming, then certainly you want to know what the goal is: What is it? what is this truth that I want to become? And then naturally, when'goal' comes there,'how' also comes: How to attain it? Then the whole technology, methodology....

I am saying you ARE That. The mystic in the Upanishad says: TAT-TAT-TVAM-ASI-ASI - thou art That. ALREADY you are That. It is not a question of becoming. God is not somewhere in the future; God is just now, this very moment, within you, without you, everywhere - because only God is, nothing else exists. All that exists is divine.

So be! Don't try to become. Then one thing leads to another: If you want to become, then naturally the idea arises: What ideal? What am I to become? Then you have to imagine an ideal, that you have to be like this - Christ-like, Buddha-like, Krishna-like. Then you will have to choose an image, and you will become a carbon copy.

Krishna has never been repeated. Can't you see a simple truth? Krishna has never been again.

Can't you see a VERY simple truth, that Buddha is unrepeatable? EACH being is unique, utterly unique - so are you. If you try to become somebody, you will be a false entity, a pseudo existence.

You will be a carbon copy. Be the original! So, you can only be yourself. There is nowhere to go, nothing to become.

But the ego wants some goal. The ego exists between the present moment and the goal. See the mechanism of the ego. The bigger the goal you have, the bigger the ego. If you want to become a Christ, if you are a Christian then you have a big ego - maybe even pious, but it doesn't make any difference. The pious ego is as much an ego as any other ego; sometimes even more dangerous than ordinary egos.

If you are a Christian, then you are on an ego-trip. Ego means the distance between you and the goal. People come to me and they ask: "How to drop the ego?" You cannot drop the ego unless you drop becoming. You cannot drop the ego unless you drop the idea, the ideal, the hope, the future.

The ego exists between the present moment and the future ideal. The bigger the ideal, the farther away the ideal, the more space the ego has to exist, the more possibilities. That's why a religious person is more of an egoist than a materialist. The materialist cannot have THAT much space as the religious person has. The religious person wants to become God! Now, this is the greatest possibility. What more can you have as an ideal? The religious person wants to go to MOKSHA, to heaven, to paradise - now, what farther shore can you imagine? The religious person wants to be absolutely perfect. Now ego will exist in the shadow of this idea of perfection.

Listen to me! I don't say you have to become gods - I declare you are gods. Then there is no question of any ego arising, there is no space left. You are not to go to heaven - you are already there. Just have a good look around... you are already there! It is a nowness, paradise is a nowness.

It is a function of the present moment.

The ego thrives when you have goals and ideals. And there are a thousand and one problems with the ego. On the one hand it feels very good to have great ideals; on the other hand it makes you feel guilty, continuously feel guilty, because you are always falling short. Those ideals are impossible; you cannot attain them. There is no way to attain them, so you are always falling short. So on one hand the ego thrives; on another hand guilt... guilt is the shadow of the ego.

Have you watched this strange phenomenon? An egoistic person feels very much guilty about small things. You smoke a cigarette; if you are an egoist you will feel guilty. Now, smoking is an innocent, stupid thing - very innocent and very stupid. Nothing worth feeling guilty about, but a religious person will feel guilty because he has an ego-ideal that he should not smoke. Now that ideal that he should not smoke and the reality that he smokes create two things: the ideal gives him a good feeling that "I am a religious person. I KNOW that I should not smoke; I even try, I try my best... " but he will also feel that he again and again falls. He cannot reach to the ideal, so he feels guilty. And the person who feels guilty will start making everybody feel guilty. It is natural: how can you just feel guilty alone? It will be too hard; it will be too burdensome.

So a guilty person creates guilt all around. He makes everybody feel guilty for small things, for irrelevant things. If you have long hair, he will make you feel guilty. There is nothing much in it; it is one's own life - if one wants to have long hair, good! If you are doing things in your own way he will make you feel guilty. Whatsoever you are doing he will find faults. He HAS to find faults - he is suffering from guilt. How can he suffer alone? When everybody is feeling guilty he feels at ease. At least one consolation that "I am not alone in the boat - everybody is in the same boat."

The trick to make others feel guilty is to give them ideals. This is a very subtle trick: the parents give an ideal to the child to "Be like this." They have never been like'this'; nobody has ever been.

Now they give an ideal to the child - this is a very subtle and cunning way to make the child feel guilty. Now, again and again the child will feel "I am not coming closer to the ideal; in fact, I am going farther away from it!" So it hurts; it keeps him down, depressed.

Hence you see so much misery in the world. It is not actual: ninety percent is because of the ideals that have been imposed upon you. And they don't allow you to laugh, they don't allow you to enjoy.

A man who has no ideals will never make anybody else feel guilty.

Just the other night, a young man came and he said, "I feel very very guilty about my homosexuality.

It is unnatural." Now, if he had gone to Mahatma Gandhi, or to the Vatican Pope, or to Puri's Shankaracharya, what would have happened? They would have really made him feel guilty. And he is ready! to fall into the hands of any torturer. He is ready; he is himself inviting. He is calling the mahatmas to come and make him feel guilty. Alone he cannot do that job very well, so he is asking the experts.

But he has come to a wrong person. I told him, "So what! Why do you say it is unnatural?"

He said, "It is not unnatural?" He was surprised and shocked. "It is not unnatural?"

I said, "How can it be unnatural? My definition of nature is: that which happens is natural. How can the unnatural happen in the first place?"

Immediately I could see he was coming out of the ditch; his face started smiling. So he said, "It is not unnatural? It is not a perversion? It is not some sort of abnormality?"

And I told him, "It is not!"

"But," he said, "animals - they don't become homosexual."

I said, "They don't have that much intelligence! They live a fixed life. Whatsoever biology allows, they live that way. You can go and see a buffalo eating grass - she only eats a certain grass, nothing else. You can put the CHOICEST food - she will not bother; she will go on eating her grass. She has no alternatives. Consciousness is very narrow, almost nil. Man has intelligence; he tries to find new ways to relate, to live. Man is the only animal who finds new ways. Now, to live in a house is unnatural, because no animal lives - so is it a perversion? Or to wear clothes is abnormal, because no animal wears clothes is it a perversion? To cook food is unnatural - no animal has ever done it!

Is it wrong to eat cooked food? To invite people to your house for a drink or for lunch is unnatural because no animal ever invites any other animal - because animals in fact always go in privacy when they want to eat. You give something to a dog: he will immediately go into a corner and will keep everybody at the back, and will be in a hurry to eat. He will never invite, he will not call his friends:'Come on!' That is natural to a dog, but you are not dogs; you are far superior. You have more intelligence, you have more possibilities. Man makes everything in his own way - that is HIS nature."

He was relieved. I could see a great burden, a mountain that was on his head, was gone. I am not certain how long he will remain free and unburdened. Some mahatma may catch hold of him, and again put the same idea that "this is unnatural". Mahatmas are either sadists or masochists - avoid!

Whenever you see a mahatma, RUN as fast as you can before he puts some guilt in your mind.

WHATSOEVER YOU CAN BE, YOU ARE. There is no goal. And we are not going anywhere. We are simply celebrating here. Existence is not a journey, it is a celebration. Think of it as a celebration!

as a delight, as a joy! Don't turn it into a suffering! Don't turn it into a duty, a work - let it be play!

This is what I mean by becoming religious: no guilt, no ego, no trip of any kind - just being herenow...

being with the trees and The birds and the rivers and the mountains and the stars.

You are not in a prison. You are in God's house, you are in God's temple - please don't call it a prison; it is not. You have misunderstood. You have interpreted it wrongly. Listening to me also you can interpret many things wrongly. You GO on interpreting.

Two scenes... one:

The nurseryman who spoke at the garden club meeting placed emphasis on the advantage to be gained by the use of old horse manure for fertilizing spring gardens. During the question and answer period, a city lady who had been taking notes raised her hand. The speaker nodded to her and she earnestly enquired: "You said old horse manure was the best fertilizer. Would you mind telling me how old the horse should be?"

The second:

A hillbilly type woman brought her little boy to the county school. When questioned about her husband, she confided, "I never knew much about this boy's father. He came through here, courted me and we got married. Soon afterwards I found out he was a hobosexual."

"You mean homosexual," came the correction.

"No, sir, I mean hobosexual. He was just a no-good, passionate bum."

Each one has his own interpretation of words. So when I am saying something, I don't know what you are going to understand out of it. Each one has a private dictionary hidden in the unconscious.

That private dictionary goes on infiltrating, changing, coloring.

I have been telling you to become free. You have misunderstood me - you thought you are in a prison. Yes, I say "Become free!" Immediately you interpret it as if you are in a prison. The whole emphasis has changed. My emphasis was on YOU: Be free! Your emphasis has gone on the prison.

Now you say, "I am in a prison. Unless I get out of the prison, how can I be free?" My emphasis was:

Be free, and if you are free there is no prison. The prison is created by your habit of being unfree.

Look! The emphasis has changed - and it seems that it almost means the same. When I say "Be free!" what difference is there if somebody says "Yes, I am in a prison"? - a LOT of difference, a great difference. The whole thing has changed. It is a totally different thing when you say "I am in prison." Then the guard and the prison - they become responsible. Then unless they allow you, how can you get out of it? You have thrown the responsibility on somebody else.

When I was saying "Be free!" I was saying "You are responsible." It is YOUR thing to be free or not to be free. If you have chosen NOT to be free, then there will be a prison, then there will be guards and the prisoner. If you have chosen to be free, the guards and the prison and everything disappears.

Just drop the habit of being unfree.

How can you drop it? Freedom and consciousness go hand in hand: more conscious, more free; less conscious, less free. The animals are less free because.they are less conscious. The rock is even less free because the rock has no consciousness, almost nil. Man is the most highly evolved being, at least on this earth. Man has a little freedom then a Buddha has absolute freedom: his consciousness.

So it is only a question of the degrees of consciousness. Your prison consists of the layers of your unconsciousness. Start becoming conscious and there is no other prison.

And remember, the mind is very cunning. It can always find ways to befool you. It has learnt very many tricks to befool. The mind can just use another word, and you may not even see the difference - the difference may be so subtle that it is almost synonymous - and the mind has played a trick.

So when I am saying something, please don't interpret it. Just listen to it as attentively as possible; don't change a single word, not even a single comma. Just listen to what I am saying. Don't bring YOUR mind into it, otherwise you will hear something else. Always be alert about the cunningness of the mind. And you have cultivated that cunningness. You have not cultivated it for yourself, but you have cultivated it for others. We try to befool everybody; by and by, the mind becomes expert in befooling - then it starts befooling you.

I have heard:

A journalist died. Naturally, he was a journalist, and even in the president's house and the prime minister's house he had been immediately welcomed and taken in; no appointment was ever needed - he was a great journalist. So he rushed towards heaven - why should he go to hell? - but he was prevented by Saint Peter. And Saint Peter said, "Wait! No more journalists are needed here. We already have the full quota; we only need one dozen - in fact, they are also useless because there is no newspaper being printed in heaven."

In fact, there is no news! Nothing happens there ever. Things are going so smoothly, how can news happen? And what news can you think about saints' lives: they are sitting under their trees, Bodhi Trees, meditating. So the newspaper is not much of a newspaper, but just to have it published, just as a formality, the newspaper IS published, and every day it is written'ditto'... the same as before.

"We don't need any journalists - you go to hell. And there are always more and more journalists needed, because there is much news, and newspapers and newspapers... and new newspapers are being planned - I have just heard. You go there and you will have a great job and great joy!"

But the journalist wanted to be in heaven, so he said. "You do one thing: I know journalists... if I can manage to get some journalist to go to hell, will his place be given to me?"

Saint Peter took pity on him; he said, "Okay, how much time do you need to convert a journalist to go to hell?"

He said, "Twenty-four hours, just twenty-four hours."

So he was allowed into heaven for twenty-four hours. He immediately started circulating a rumor that "one of the greatest newspapers is being planned, and the chief editor is needed, the assistant editors are needed, the sub-editors are needed - and great is the possibility. But, you will have to go to hell."

For twenty-four hours he went round and round. He met all the journalists, and after twenty-four hours when he went to Saint Peter to see whether anybody had left, Saint Peter simply closed the door and told him, "Don't go outside because they ALL have left!"

But the journalist said, "No, then I will have to go - maybe there is something in it. You please don't prevent me. I will HAVE to go."

He himself has spread the rumor, but when twelve persons have believed then one starts believing it oneself.

That's how mind has become so cunning. You have been deceiving and deceiving... it has become such an expert in deception that it deceives you too.

The plaintiff in an accident-injury case, appearing in court in a wheelchair, won a huge settlement.

Enraged, the lawyer for the defence advanced on the winner in his wheelchair.

"You're faking and I know you're faking," he shouted. "So help me God, I'm going to follow you around for the rest of your life, until I get proof."

The lawyer knew it perfectly well, that that man was a fake, that wheelchair was a show. He was perfectly okay, there was nothing wrong in his body. So he said:

"So help me God, I'm going to follow you round for the rest of your life, until I get proof."

"Be my guest," responded the man in the wheelchair, with a smile. "Let me tell you my plans. First, I'm going to London for some clothes, then to the Riviera for the sun, and after that - to Lourdes, for the miracle."

Mind is so cunning; it can find a way out always. It can go to Lourdes.... But once you are playing these tricks on others, sooner or later you will be the victim yourself. Beware of your own mind.

Don't trust it, doubt it. If you start doubting your mind, that is a great moment. The moment the doubt about mind arises, you start trusting the self. If you trust the mind, you doubt the self; if you mistrust the mind, you start trusting the self.

That is the whole meaning of trusting a Master. When you come to me, it is simply a technique to help you to doubt your own mind. You start trusting me: you say, "I will listen to you. I won't listen to my mind. I have listened to my mind long enough; it leads nowhere, it goes round and round. It again and again takes to the same trip; it is a repetition, it is monotonous." You say, "I will listen to you."

A Master is just an excuse to get rid of the mind. Once you have got rid of the mind there is no need to trust the Master, because you will have come upon your own Master. The Master is simply a passage to your own Master. Via the Master, it becomes easy; otherwise the mind will go on deceiving, and you will not know what to do with the mind.

Listening to the Master, trusting the Master, by and by, the mind is neglected. And many times you have to drop the mind because the Master is saying something which goes against it - it ALWAYS goes against it! Neglected, mind starts dying. Not trusted, mind starts dying. It comes to its right size. Right now it is pretending. Right now it pretends as if it is your whole life. It is just a small, tiny mechanism good to use, very dangerous to make it your master.

The mind says "Become!" The Master says "Be!" The mind says "Desire!" The Master says "Delight!"

The mind says, "You have to go a long way." The Master says, "You have arrived, you are Saraha - you have shot the target already."

The third question:

Question 3:

THERE IS NO CIVILIZATION ANYWHERE - so how can I be against it? It exists not. It is just a pretension. Yes, man has lost his primitive, primordial innocence, but man has not become civilized - because that is NO way to become civilized. The only way to become civilized is to base yourself on your innocence, to base yourself on your primitive innocence, to grow from there.

That's why Jesus says: Unless you are reborn, unless you become a child again, you will never know what truth is.

This so-called civilization is fake, it is a pseudo coin. If I am against it, I am not against civilization - because this is not civilization. I am against it because this is not civilization at all. It is fake.

I have heard:

Someone once asked the former Prince of Wales, "What is your idea of civilization?"

"It is a good idea," replied the Prince, "somebody ought to start it."

I love the answer. Yes, somebody ought to start it - it has not yet been started. Man is not civilized; man only pretends.

I am against pretensions. I am against hypocrisies. Man only shows that he is civilized. Scratch him a little and you will find an uncivilized man. Scratch him a little and all that is good is just superficial, and all that is bad is very deep-rooted. It is a skin-deep civilization. Everything goes well; you are smiling and everything, and somebody just throws a word at you, an insult, and you are mad, and you are a maniac and you want to kill. Just a moment before, you were smiling; and just a moment afterwards, you are ready to kill, your murderous possibilities have surfaced. What kind of civilization is this?

A man can be civilized only when he has become really meditative. Only meditation can bring real civilization to the world. Only Buddhas are civilized.

And this is the paradox: that Buddhas are not against the primitive - they use the primitive as the base, they use the childhood innocence as the base. And on that base a great temple is erected.

This civilization destroys the innocence of childhood, and then it gives you just false coins. First it destroys your primal innocence. Once primal innocence is destroyed, you have become cunning, clever, calculating; then you are trapped, then this society goes on civilizing you.

First it makes you alienated from your own self. Once you are alienated, then it gives you false coins you have to depend on it. Real civilization will not be against your nature, will not be against your childhood. It will be a growth upon it. It will not have any antagonism towards primitive innocence, it will be a flowering of it. It will go higher and higher, but it will be rooted in the primal innocence.

This civilization is nothing but a maddening affair. Can't you see the whole earth has become a big madhouse? People have lost their souls, people are no more people - they have lost their self, they have lost their personality. They have lost all! They are just pretenders. They have masks; they have lost their original faces.

I am all for civilization, but this is not civilization. That's why I am against it. I would like a man really civilized, really cultured, but that culture can only grow it cannot be forced from the outside. It can come only from the within. It can spread towards the periphery, but it should rise, it HAS to rise, at the center.

This civilization is doing just the opposite: it forces things from the outside. There is a non-violent preaching all over the world - Mahavir, Buddha, Jesus, they all teach non-violence. They teach non-violence because they have enjoyed non-violence. But followers? - they have never enjoyed any moment of nonviolence. They know only violence. But they are followers, so they pretend to be non-violent, they force a non-violence upon themselves, they create a character. That character is just around them. It is an armour. Deep down they are boiling like volcanos ready to erupt. And on the surface they smile the false smile, the plastic smile.

This is not civilization. This is a very ugly phenomenon. Yes, I would like the non-violence to come from within, not to be cultivated from the outside, but helped. That is the root meaning of the word'education'. It is almost like drawing water from a well: education means to draw out; that is the root meaning of the word'education'. But what has education been doing? It never draws anything out - it forces in. It goes on forcing things in the head of the child; it is not worried about the child at all, it does not think about the child. The child is just used as a mechanism into which more and more information has to be fed. This is not education!

The child's soul has to be brought out. That which is hidden in the child has to be brought out. The child has not to be patterned; his freedom should be left intact, and his consciousness has to be helped to grow. More information is not more education! More awareness is education, more love is education. And education creates civilization.

This civilization is false; its education is false. That's why I am against it. I am against it because it is not really a civilization.

Question 4:

ONE THING: you have never been allowed to laugh; your laughter is repressed. It is like a repressed spring - any excuse is enough and it comes out. You have been taught to be sad, long faces; you have been taught to be serious.

If you are serious, nobody thinks that you are doing something wrong; it is accepted, it is the way things have to be. But if you are laughing, laughing too much, then people will start feeling embarrassed by you. They will start thinking something is weird:'Why is this man laughing'?" And if you are laughing without any reason, then you are mad; then they will take you to the psychiatrist; then they will hospitalize you. They will say, "He laughs without any reason! Only mad people laugh without any reason."

In a better world, in a more civilized world, in a really civilized world, laughter will be accepted as natural. Only when a person is sad will we hospitalize him.

Sadness is illness: laughter is health. So, because you have not been allowed to laugh. any small excuse... jokes are excuses to laugh; you can laugh without being called mad. You can say, "Because of the joke...." And a joke has a mechanism: it helps you uncoil. The whole mechanism of a joke is very complex in a way simple-looking; deep down very complex. A joke is not a joke! It is a difficult phenomenon. In a few words, in a few lines, it can create such a change in the whole climate. What happens?

When a joke is told, first you start expecting that there is going to be some laughter. You are ready for it. You autohypnotize yourself; you become alert. You may have been dozing and sleeping, but now there is a joke you become alert. Your backbone is straight; you listen attentively. You become more aware. And then the story goes on in such a way that it creates more and more tension in you. You want to know the conclusion. The joke goes on one plane, and there seems to be nothing much like a joke in it, and then there is a sudden turn.... That sudden turn releases your spring. You become tense and tense because you are waiting and waiting and waiting... and you see that there seems to be nothing much in it. And then suddenly it is there! And it is so suddenly there, so out of the blue, that you forget your seriousness, that you forget who you are, that you become a child again in that suddenness - and you laugh. And your repressed laughter is released.

Jokes simply show that the society has forgotten how to laugh. In a better world where people will be laughing more, we will miss one thing: the joke. There will be no need - people will be laughing and people will be happy. Why? Each moment will be a moment of laughter. And if you can see life, it is ALL joke. But you are not allowed to see! Blinkers have been put on your eyes; you are only allowed to see so much. You are not allowed to see the ridiculousness of it - it IS ridiculous!

Children can see it more easily; that's why children are laughing more easily and more loudly. And they create embarrassment in parents, because they can see the whole nonsense of it. And the blinkers are not yet fixed. The father goes on saying to the child, "Be true, always be true!" And then a man knocks on the door, and the father says, "Go and tell him that father is not at home." Now the child... the father cannot see what is happening, but the child laughs. He cannot believe what is happening - this is ridiculous! And the child goes to the stranger knocking on the door and he says, "Father says he is not at home." He takes the whole juice out of it. He enjoys every bit of it.

We live with blinkers. We are cultivated in such a way that we don't see the ridiculousness of life; otherwise it is ridiculous. That's why sometimes even without a joke, in some small thing... for example: Ford slipped and fell on the ground. Why did people who were standing there have a good laugh? They may not have shown it, but they had a good laugh.

Just think: if a beggar slips on a banana peel, nobody will bother; but a president of a country slips on a banana peel - the whole world will laugh. Why? Because the banana peel brought things right!

That banana peel showed to the president that he is as much a human being as a beggar. And the banana peel makes no difference at all. Come beggar, come president, come prime minister, makes no difference. A banana peel is a banana peel; it does not bother.

If an ordinary man falls, you will have a little laughter but not much, because he is an ordinary man; he never tried to prove that he is more than life size - so there is not much laughter. But if a president slips on a banana peel, suddenly the ridiculousness of it, the reality of it, that this man was thinking that he was at the top of the world - whom were you trying to befool? - even a banana peel is not befooled. And you laugh.

Watch... wherever you laugh, the ridiculousness of life has entered through your blinkers. You are again a child. A joke brings you back your childhoodness, your innocence. For a moment it helps the blinkers to slip from the eyes.

Listen to a few jokes:

One of the local men was found dead under unusual circumstances. Therefore a coroner's jury was impanelled, and the foreman called the woman in whose bed the man had died to testify. The foreman assured her that all present knew each other, and that she should just tell in her own words what had happened.

The woman related that she and the man, now deceased, had met in the local pub, and when 'time' was called had gone on to her place to have another drink. One thing led to another and they ended up in bed together. Suddenly she noticed a strange look in his eyes which she described to the coroner's jury in these words: "Coming, I thought, but going he was."

And the second:

An old deacon having occasion to spend a night at a hotel was assigned a room containing three single beds, two of which already had occupants. Soon after the light was extinguished, one of these began to snore so loudly as to prevent the deacon from getting to sleep. The tumult increased as the night wore away until it became absolutely fearful. Some two or three hours after midnight the snorer turned himself in bed, gave a hideous groan and became silent.

The deacon had supposed the third gentleman asleep, but at this juncture he heard him exclaim, "He is dead! Thank God, he is dead."

And the last is a very precious one - meditate over it:

One day, when Jesus was walking through a village, he came upon an angry mob who had backed a woman up against a wall and were getting ready to stone her.

Raising his hand, Jesus quieted the mob and then said solemnly, "Now, let that one who is without sin cast the first stone."

Immediately a little old lady picked up a big rock and hurled it at the woman. "Mother," said Jesus between gritted teeth, "you exasperate me."

And the last question:

Question 5:

I - and in love with orange? God forbid! I hate it! That's why I force you to wear it. It is a sort of punishment for not being enlightened yet.