You just have to gather courage

Question 1:

The ancient saying, "As above, so below," or vice-versa, contains one of the most fundamental truths about mysticism. It means that there is no above, no below, that existence is one.

Divisions are created by the mind.

Existence is divisionless.

Divisions are our projections, and we get so much identified with divisions that we lose contact with the whole.

Our mind is just a small window opening towards the vast universe, but when you look always from the window, the frame of the window frames the sky outside - although there is no frame on the sky, it is frameless. But to your perception the frame of the window becomes the frame of existence.

It is something like... once in a while it happens to people who use glasses that they have their glasses on their nose and they are looking for them. And they have even forgotten that they cannot see without the glasses, so if they are looking and seeing, it is an absolute certainty that the glasses are in place.

But if you have been using glasses for years, slowly, slowly they become part of you, they become your eyes. You don't think of them as separate from you. But each pair of glasses can give its own color to the things it sees. You are the seer behind - the glasses cannot see themselves. Things outside don't have the color that the glass is imposing upon them, but you have become so identified with the glasses.

I used to live with a man - he was a very nice man - who had glasses from his very childhood, and now they had become thicker and thicker. He was so accustomed to them that he would go to sleep with his glasses on. When one day I saw him sleeping with the glasses on, I woke him and said, "This is too much! Do you need these glasses for dreams? You can see dreams without glasses."

He became aware that he had completely forgotten that those glasses were separate from him. For fifty years continuously they have been there, and he cannot see without them, so even to go to his bed he has to use them, and slowly, slowly, he started sleeping with his glasses on.

His whole world depends on his glasses: if they are green, everything will look green; if they are blue, everything will look blue; and he will believe that what he is seeing cannot be wrong.

Man's mind also is only an instrument. The glasses are outside the skull - the mind is inside the skull, so you cannot turn it off every day. And you are so close to it within, that the very closeness has become the identification, so that whatever the mind sees is thought to be the reality. But mind cannot see the reality; mind can see only its own prejudices. It can see its own projections displayed on the screen of the world.

I have told you, once it happened that I was traveling from Bombay to Calcutta, and on the railway station hundreds of people had come to see me off. As the train moved, I went in. It was an air-conditioned coupe, and there was another man also in it. He simply fell flat, touched my feet.

I said, "What are you doing? You don't even know me."

He said, "There is no need to know you when there are so many people to see you off; and many of them are very rich people of Bombay - I know them."

I said, "It is your joy - if it feels good, you can touch my feet - but I am a Mohammedan."

He said, "My God! You are a Mohammedan? - you must be joking!" He tried hard to console himself for touching the feet of a Mohammedan. He said, "I am of the highest caste of Kashmiri brahmin.

Are you really Mohammedan?"

I said, "There is no question about it - I am saying it myself."

He said, "But the people who had come to see you off, they did not look Mohammedan" - Mohammedans use special caps, a special dress, a special language - "they were all Hindus."

I said, "They were all Hindus, but because I can give you the number of the horse who is going to win the next race, those people, just to know who is going to win the race next time, were harassing me."

He said, "My God! I will have to take a shower."

I said, "You will have to."

He went, he took a shower, he changed his clothes and he came back. He said, "Is it really true?"

I said, "I was just joking! I am of the highest class of Hindu."

He fell at my feet again, and I said, "You don't understand at all. I had told you that I am a Mohammedan...."

"But," he said, "just now you were saying...."

I said, "I was just joking."

He said, "It is so cold, and I have to take another shower. And why are you making a fool of me?"

I said, "I have not done anything - you started the whole game."

He went again, took a shower, came back and didn't say anything to me; he sat in his seat and wouldn't even look at me. But I called the servant and told him, "From my suitcase bring the SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA" - that is the Hindu's bible.

And the man jumped up from his corner and touched my feet. He said, "I have a certainty that you are a Hindu and just joking."

I said, "The night is cold, and again you have made the same mistake. And even if I am a Hindu, you need not touch my feet."

He said, "How can it be? a saint who can see the future - which horse is going to come first in the race... I have to touch his feet."

I said, "That is your decision, but the SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA is really not the SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA."

He said, "What? Then what is it?"

I said, "What does it have to be - it is the KORAN SHARIF. There is only one book in my suitcase, and you will see - let the servant bring it." He went to bring it: it was the KORAN SHARIF. One man had continually been at me for years that I should speak on the KORAN SHARIF, the bible of the Mohammedans. This time he had brought the best translation, just published. So I said, "Then let the book come, and you will see."

And when the book came he said, "My God, you are really a Mohammedan. I feel like killing you!

- three times I have taken a cold shower, and again I have to take a cold shower. You could have simply said, 'Bring the KORAN.'"

I said, "This is my own way. You don't have to dictate to me."

Before taking a shower he tried to find the conductor. But the conductor was not in the compartment, so he took a shower. And while he was taking a shower the conductor came in, because the man had asked for him. I was there, I told him the whole thing. He laughed loudly. I said, "When he asks you to change the compartment and put him into some other compartment - there are seats vacant, but you simply say that those seats are booked; passengers will be getting on at the coming stations.

"And say to that man, 'He's neither Mohammedan nor Hindu; he is a Christian - and in fact he is a sudra who has turned into a Christian.' " And to touch the feet of a sudra - a sudra is the lowest Hindu caste - after touching even the shadow of a sudra you have to take a bath... just the shadow!

He came out. Seeing the conductor he was very happy. He took him aside and he told him, "This man seems to be crazy or something. Four times I have taken a shower - and the night is getting colder and colder, and the water is ice cold. And he goes on deceiving me: he finds ways, and I get caught in them. I don't want to go inside. You just give me a seat somewhere else."

The conductor said, "What do you think he is, Mohammedan?"

The conductor said, "I have known him for years. He is a sudra who has turned and become a Christian."

The man said, "My God, a sudra! I feel like jumping out of the train and finishing myself! Four times I have touched the feet of a sudra. Never in history has any Brahmin done that. Now I cannot go inside the compartment."

But the conductor said, "I am sorry, all seats are booked. You will have to. Don't touch his feet - he does not tell to you to. Does he tell to you to?"

He said, "No, he does not say anything, but he manages it in such a way that I feel like touching them."

The conductor said, "Now you be alert. Now you have taken a bath, just go in. Just don't look at him. Don't give him any chance."

He would not look at me. I tried to ask how the water was. He simply said, "Just keep quiet - because I am an angry man. You have fooled me four times. And the conductor said you are a sudra. Either I will kill myself or I will kill you."

I said, "I know what has happened - that conductor is such a joker! He must have told you, 'He is a sudra. I have known him for many years and he has become converted to Christianity.' "

He said, "Yes, he told me."

I said, "You are so gullible - anybody says something, and you believe it."

So he said, "What finally have I to decide?"

I said, "You don't have to decide at all - just go to sleep."

He said, "I cannot sleep with a sudra. And four times you have deceived me, and I am afraid you can do ANYTHING."

I said, "I will not do anything... but do you want the number of the horse?"

He said, "You have got me in your hands because that's why I have been touching your feet and taking a cold shower. But I will take the number only if you are a high-caste Brahmin."

I said, "There is no question about it. Let the next station come and you will see." me - with many flowers and garlands - and he was convinced that they were all Hindus.

When I came back he was smiling and was saying, "Please forgive me. I have been telling you that you are this and that; just forgive me." And he touched my feet again!

I said, "You are a fool! First you should have taken the number of the horse. You have committed the same mistake again."

Then he freaked out, shouting all over the compartment. The conductor came, the servants came:

"What is the matter?"

He said, "Nothing is the matter. I am a fool!" He asked the servants, "Does this man travel in the air-conditioned class often?"

They said, "Often - he is almost always traveling, and always in the air-conditioned class."

"And does he know anything about horse racing?"

Those people said, "He knows nothing about horse racing! Are you talking nonsense? He talks about meditation, he talks about consciousness, But horse racing?"

He said, "My God, he is deceiving in that too - that those people are after him for a number. I can sleep in the corridor, but I cannot go inside the room. I cannot look at him. Seeing him, something goes wrong in me."

His mind has a prejudice, and that prejudice decides every decision. He has a greed; that greed decides. But these are subjective feelings - they have nothing to do with objective reality.

You don't see the world as it is. You see it as your mind forces you to see it. And this you can see all over the world - different people are conditioned in different ways, and the mind is nothing but conditioning. They see things according to their conditioning - and that conditioning is a certain color.

We make distinctions: We make somebody superior, somebody inferior; man is more powerful, woman is less powerful; somebody is more intelligent, somebody is less. Races have been claiming they are the chosen people of God. Every religion is claiming that their book is written by God himself. All these things, layer upon layer, make your mind; and unless you are able to put the whole mind aside and see the world directly, immediately, with your consciousness, you will never be able to see the truth.

Mind is polluted by every society for its own interests, given ideas which have no correspondence with reality, but help a certain society to feel egoistic, superior. And you cling to the mind because that mind gives superiority to you too.

In this world the greatest courage is to put the mind aside. The bravest man is one who can see the world without the barrier of the mind, just as it is. It is tremendously different, utterly beautiful. There is nobody who is inferior and there is nobody who is superior; there are no distinctions.

One Zen master, Hui Hai, was asked, "What do you think about the inferior and the superior people?"

He said, "Just outside my door there is a small rose bush and there is a big, one-hundred-foot-high, hundreds-of-years-old cedar, but I have never heard them talking about superiority or inferiority. The rose bush is a rose bush, the cedar is a cedar. Neither the cedar says, 'Look! I am one hundred feet high and you are just a small bush. You don't count. I will live for hundreds more years; many like you will come and go,' nor does the rose bush say to the cedar, 'Although you are so huge and so big and so ancient, you have not been able to produce a single rose flower. All your life is useless, meaningless. You have not created anything to give as an offering to existence. I am a small rose bush but look at my flowers.'

"No, there has been no discussion. I have been hoping that some day the discussion will be there; but the rose bush is happy as it is, and the cedar is happy as it is, and there is no comparison because they are totally different. You cannot compare different things."

In existence there are only unique things; no comparison is possible, no distinction is possible.

And once you can see it with your own eyes, it is such a revelation, it brings such peace and benediction to your heart - that in existence there is nobody higher, nobody lower, nobody superior.

The biggest star... and you can conceive how big the biggest star is. Our sun is a star; it is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth, and it is considered to be a very mediocre star, a middle-class fellow. The bigger stars which you see in the night as stars are also suns; they have their own solar systems and they are thousands of times bigger than our sun. But the smallest blade of grass and the biggest star in the whole of existence are respected by life equally. They both are fulfilling some need. The world will be less if this small blade of grass is destroyed, it will be less green. And no star can replace it, take its place.

Existence is absolutely communistic: everyone is unique and equal. All distinctions are because of our bourgeois mind. And you can go on making distinctions, as many as you want; and those distinctions have been the causes of wars. Millions of people have died for those distinctions, which do not have any relevance as far as reality is concerned.

The man who knows, also knows that existence is one. Its expressions are millions, but the spirit that is expressed is the same. It is one godliness with an infinite variety of creations. To see it as it is makes you free from complexes.

Ask the psychoanalyst. Most of his patients are suffering from either an inferiority complex or a superiority complex. And you cannot convince them... it takes years; the person who suffers from an inferiority complex still goes on finding reasons why he is inferior. Somebody is more beautiful, somebody is more intelligent, somebody is richer, somebody is taller, somebody is stronger, somebody is never sick - always healthy.

Unless you uproot the very idea of comparison it is impossible to free a man from his inferiority complex, and his inferiority complex creates competitiveness. He wants to prove that he is not inferior. In the first place he accepts that he is inferior; and then in the second place he starts fighting with the ghost - which does not exist anywhere - the idea that he is inferior. So he fights elections, he becomes a president or a prime minister; but that ghost is there, it never leaves.

Then there are, at the other extreme, people who feel they are superior. That, too, is a disease.

Because they have to prove their superiority continuously, they have to condemn everybody, criticize everybody. And it is very easy to criticize, very easy to condemn.

Turgenev has a beautiful story. In one village there was a young man who was thought to be an idiot.

The whole village treated him as an idiot. He was tired of it, but there was no way to convince the village that he was not an idiot. From where had they got the idea? And once they had got the idea they were proving it in every way... every small fault was a proof, solid proof, that the idiot could not do anything else, it was expected. If anybody else had done it, it would have been just a mistake.

One wandering monk was passing through the village. The boy was suffering too much. He went to the monk and asked, "What am I to do?"

The monk said, "I will tell you a simple formula. Practice it, and when I come back from my pilgrimage - it will take one year - then report to me what the situation is. You will be the wisest man in this town in one year's time."

The formula was simple - the young man could not believe it. He said, "Just a simple formula?"

The old monk said, "You simply do it. Just now go and do it, and you will see how it changes the whole thing."

The formula was that if somebody says, "What a beautiful sunset," you immediately ask, "What is beautiful in it? Prove it. Don't talk nonsense. What evidence have you got that the sunset is beautiful? What is the criterion of beauty?" Somebody says, "That book is great." Immediately jump on them - whether you have read it or not, that does not matter - "That is all rubbish. Who says it is great? Prove it! On what grounds? What are your arguments for its greatness?"

Just go on criticizing, condemning any statement anybody in the town makes. You just watch and immediately jump on it, criticize it, condemn it, and ask for evidence. Nobody can prove that the sunset is beautiful. What proof is there? If somebody says to you, "This woman is beautiful," and you say, "I don't agree," there is no way to convince you - because beauty is not something that can be measured, weighed; there is no criterion.

After one year, when the monk came back, the people of the town met him as he was coming to the town and said, "You should see our young man, he is the wisest man we have ever seen!"

He said, "I know!"

And that boy came, fell at the old monk's feet and said, "You are really a miracle-maker - just such a simple formula, and the whole town asks my advice. Everybody thinks I am the most intelligent, the most learned, the most educated, the most well-read. Suddenly, in one year, I have become the wisest man of the town - and I'm really the same old idiot, nothing has changed."

But it is difficult to prove that you are superior. Anybody can condemn it. What criterion have you got for your superiority?

Even Adolf Hitler could not prove that the nordic Germans were the most superior people in the world, that they were born just to rule over the world, that in comparison to nordic Germans, everybody is sub-human - only they are superhuman. He convinced the Germans, and they enjoyed the idea. But nobody else in the whole world was convinced of this nonsense - everybody laughed.

And their failure in the second world war proved that they were not born to rule over the world. Hitler killed six million people with this superiority complex - because to kill the inferior people is good for the earth, they are an unnecessary burden. But the people he was killing were Jews - who have been carrying the same idea for centuries, that they are the only chosen people of God.

But they have not been able to prove it to anybody else. It is impossible. You can believe it yourself, and you will suffer for it, because everybody whom you are trying to condemn, whom you are trying to make inferior, is going to be revengeful. So Jews have been tortured for four thousand years continuously. They are still tortured, but they will not leave that idea of superiority; that is their disease.

And if anybody - a person like me - says, "That is your disease. Drop this idea. There is nothing wrong in being a Jew; simply drop this idea that you are the chosen few of God, because that makes the whole world your enemy," they are not going to drop it because that is their cherished ego. They cannot prove it - they cannot drop it.

It is like the situation when you swallow something - you can neither swallow it nor can you take it out, it is just stuck in your throat. And you are dying because you cannot breathe. Unless your throat is cleared, you will not be able to breathe.

This superiority complex has destroyed the Hindus. The Hindus have the same idea - that God created them, that God has chosen them as His people, that he has given his own written book to them, that they are the highest and the purest people. Because of this nonsense, the people who were intelligent enough - even among the Hindus - went out of the Hindu fold. The Buddhists, the Jainas, they left the fold, saying, "This is an ugly idea."

But the trouble is, if somebody gets some fixed idea, and there is some investment in the idea - howsoever crazy the idea may be - you cannot prove it wrong. The man may like to suffer, but he will not leave the idea. All religions do the same, all nations do the same, all races do the same.

I am reminded of a mad man. His madness was really special: he thought that he was dead.

First his family laughed, and said, "This is the most outrageous thing one can think of. You are alive - you argue about your being dead. That is enough proof that you are alive."

But there was no way to convince the man. He would not go to the shop. He would wake up when he wanted, he would go to sleep when he wanted. He said, "What can I do? You cannot control a dead man's behavior. I am dead."

Finally they took him to a psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst said, "Don't be worried, I have cured many cases - leave him with me." First he tried to tell him, "You are not dead. You have walked here and you are sitting here on the chair. How can you be dead?"

He said, "Where is it written that dead people don't walk?" Even the psychoanalyst was at a loss!

The man said, "Show me some evidence, where it is written that dead people don't walk, that they don't sit on chairs, that they don't talk. I am a living proof that dead people can walk."

The psychoanalyst saw that the man seemed to be difficult! He took out a paper knife and just cut the man's hand a little so blood came out. And before cutting his hand he asked the man, "What do you think: do dead men bleed?"

The man said, "I have heard that they do not bleed."

So he cut his hand and blood came out. The psychoanalyst was very happy and he laughed. He said, "Now, what do you say?"

The man said, "That simply means that that proverb is wrong. Dead men do bleed - the proof is here." Once you get identified with a certain idea, then you are sick.

All identification is mental sickness.

In fact, mind is your sickness.

And to put the mind aside and just to look silently - without any thought, without any prejudice - into reality is a healthy way of being acquainted with reality. And you will find a totally different reality.

The finding of the real will release you from many stupidities, many superstitions. It will clean your heart of all kinds of rubbish that generations have poured into you. Diseases go on from generation to generation; you inherit the whole past with all its stupid ideas. Otherwise, there would be no distinction, there is no comparison.

And once you are free from making comparisons and distinctions, you are light, your whole existence is light. You lose all heaviness. You become so light that you can open your wings and fly.

Question 2:

It is possible that to you it may seem that I have retained the small child's capacity to dream. But that is not the reality. I have certainly retained the innocence of the child, but anything that I have said, or done, or will do, is not a dream; and it is never "off-the-wall." It looks off-the-wall because you think in very utilitarian terms.

I am not a utilitarian. I am a poet, who does not compose poetry, who composes living beings.

My effort is not to materialize a dream - I don't have any dream - but to help you to see that your utilitarian life is not all: that much more is possible, it is just that you have not dared to cross the mundane line; that everything is possible, you just have to gather courage.

And courage with innocence makes you capable of being a visionary, not a dreamer - and there is a great difference between dream and vision.

Dreams happen while you are asleep. They are part and parcel of our spiritual sleep. A vision is the equivalent when you are fully awake. Then you can see things which to others may look off-the-wall, but to you they are just in the tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, just a question of a little time, and they will be realities.

The politicians and the religious leaders are afraid because they know that whatever I am saying is going to happen. All their efforts are against the current. They can make a little delay, but they are moving against the current.

For example, my vision of ocean cities is going to happen - whether we make the first ocean city or somebody else makes it. But the earth is becoming smaller, and the population is becoming bigger.

Except for the ocean there is no place where these people are going to live. And if the whole world becomes full of people, houses, roads, then where are you going to produce food?

I am a very realistic person, not a dreamer. When I say ocean cities I speak of a simple reality: If all the people of the world move to ocean cities, around the earth, and the whole earth is used for production - for food, for vegetables, for everything else - we can support a bigger population than is present today, without any difficulty.

The ocean also has an infinite capacity for providing food, which has not been explored. It grows a certain kind of vegetation, deep down, thousands of feet down, that can be used as food. And it has been found in experiments that it is full of the vital elements needed for food. And this is simply wild growth. We can manage - just the way we have managed on the earth - to grow food underneath the oceans.

Once man was a hunter, and he never thought that he would live in cities, and that he would not be a hunter, but a farmer, a shopper, a professor. For millions of years man remained a hunter, but a time came when the population became too much, and it became difficult to survive through hunting.

Then some visionary must have given the idea: "We have not used the fruits which are growing all around. To support a greater population, use fruits."

Then somebody else may have given the vision: "Why just use wild fruits? We can cultivate food.

Just watching nature, how these fruits fall, how new trees grow out of the seeds... we can manage it better than nature - we are nature's conscious hand." Cultivation came in.

And that's how, slowly, slowly, man has developed things. But first it was always a vision, and people laughed at it, because they were only accustomed to the past, the old way. But the old way had come to an end - something had to be done. So these visionaries who appeared to be off-the-wall had to be listened to. Unwillingly, reluctantly, people followed them and found that they were right: we cultivated the whole earth. Now the earth is in a situation where it cannot feed the whole population sufficiently. The ocean is available. Life can be shifted to the oceans very easily.

Just last night I was asking Jay - because I am planning for it - about the platforms which people use in wartime for their aircraft. Huge platforms floating in the ocean are used for hundreds of planes to land and take off. And underneath the platform, five or six thousand people can live; they have cabins underneath the platform.

I loved the idea. Just one platform, and five or six thousand people, with all the luxuries: with television, with telephone, with radio, and your own airport on top of you - a meeting place, a mandir. And there is no problem, it simply just has to be done. One person does it, and you will see many others following.

And the tremendous silence of the ocean... and you are under no government; just twelve miles off shore and you are really free. No government is over you, and you can prove that six thousand people can live without any government, without any police, without any courts, without any legal experts - without all that paraphernalia - in immense harmony.

And on the huge platform you can make lawns, you can make gardens; you can have the beauty of the earth too. So you are not closed up in the cabins; you can come out on the platform, and you have miles of tennis courts, a golf course, swimming pools, lawns, beautiful trees. All this can be managed on the platform. If it can keep hundreds of planes, it can easily bear the weight of earth that we will bring to it and the trees. And you can get your food from the nearby port. Small boats can go and come for your food and your daily needs.

The idea can become a world-wide phenomenon. It is not a dream. Once people see that it works, then around the earth there can be many cities, vacating the earth for production. People can go in the day to work on the earth, and at evening come home to the ocean. And it seems to me very logical: man was born in the ocean, and perhaps it is time to come back home.

I don't see it as a dream; it is just a reality which has to be dared. And it is always that somebody has to be the pioneer; then others will follow. Then for them there is no difficulty, they can see that people are living beautifully. A whole university can float; there is no need for them to destroy the earth with their campuses.

Finally, if we exhaust the ocean too - which will take many thousands of years - there is always a possibility of having floating cities in the sky. All scientific facts are available on how a city can be floated in the air. People will be coming to the earth for production and taking their production back, but they will be living high in the sky.

And these should be adventures, great ecstasies for people, rather than starving and dying like in Ethiopia - one thousand people dying and starving every day, and nobody has any idea what to do.

When I started speaking in India the population was only four hundred million. And I was from the very beginning for birth control; I was condemned because religions are against it. I was for the pill; I was stoned, efforts were made to kill me, because I was "destroying their morality."

If they had listened to me they would not be in such a trouble. Now the population is nine hundred million - more than double. And by the end of this century, India will have a population of one billion, eight hundred million.

There is no possible way to feed this population - these people are going to die. Fifty percent of the people will be dying, and when fifty percent of people die, you can understand what will happen to the remaining fifty percent: they will be living in a graveyard. Everywhere will be corpses. Nobody will be there to burn them.

It is not my dream. I have all the facts from scientific experiments, that cities can be floated in the sky: but for that, the time has not come.

But for cities in the ocean the time has come, and it is particularly a blessing that existence has given us the chance to be the pioneers - because no country will accept me and my people, but the ocean belongs to no country.

We are going to do it. And only when you see with your own eyes, only when you are living on the ocean, then will you understand that it was not a dream, that it was a vision.

Dreams cannot be fulfilled - dreams are unconscious. Visions are conscious. Dreams happen to all sleeping people; visions happen only when you are awakened. A vision is a reality that can be managed; you just have to have courageous people with you. And I have the best, the most intelligent, the most courageous people with me.

Never think anything I say is off-the-wall. It may appear to be to you - that is just because you compare it with the old, trodden path. I see it happening.

So just wait a little and you will be on the ocean.