And if the song bursts forth...

Question 1:

The technique of positive thinking is not a technique that transforms you. It is simply repressing the negative aspects of your personality. It is a method of choice. It cannot help awareness; it goes against awareness.

Awareness is always choiceless.

Positive thinking simply means forcing the negative into the unconscious and conditioning the conscious mind with positive thoughts. But the trouble is that the unconscious is far more powerful, nine times more powerful, than the conscious mind. So once a thing becomes unconscious, it

becomes nine times more powerful than it was before. It may not show in the old fashion, but it will find new ways of expression.

So positive thinking is a very poor method, without any deep understanding, and it goes on giving you wrong ideas about yourself.

Positive thinking was born out of a certain Christian sect in America which was called Christian Science. To avoid the word 'Christian', so others can also be allured to it, they slowly dropped that old label and simply started talking about the philosophy of positive thinking.

Christian Science - which is the original source - proposed that anything that happens in your life is nothing but a thought projection. If you want to be rich, think and grow rich. It is by thinking positively that you are rich, that you are getting richer, that dollars will start coming towards you.

I am reminded of an anecdote. A young man met an old lady on the road. The old lady asked, "What happened to your father? He is not coming to our weekly meetings of Christian Scientists - and he is our oldest member, almost the founder of our society."

The young man said, "He is sick and feeling very weak."

The woman laughed. She said, "It is just his thought and nothing else. He is thinking he is sick - he is not sick. And he is thinking he is weak - he is not weak. Life is made of thoughts; the way you think, you become. Just tell him to remember his own ideology that he has been preaching to us.

Tell him to think healthy; tell him to think full of vigor."

The young man said, "I will give the message."

After eight or ten days the young man met the woman again, and she asked, "What happened?

Didn't you give the message? - because he is still not coming to the weekly meeting."

The boy said, "I gave the message, madam, but now he thinks he is dead. And not only does he think he is dead, my whole neighborhood, my family, even I myself think he is dead. And he is no longer living with us; he has gone to the graveyard!"

Christian Science was a superficial way... it may help in a few things; particularly those things which are really created by your thought can be changed. But your whole life is not created by your thought.

Positive thinking came out of Christian Science. It talks now more philosophically, but the base remains the same - that if you think negatively, that is going to happen to you; if you think positively, that is going to happen to you. And in America that kind of literature is widely read. Nowhere else in the world has positive thinking made any impact - because it is childish.

"Think and grow rich" - everybody knows this is simply foolish. And it is harmful, and dangerous too.

The negative ideas of your mind have to be released, not repressed by positive ideas. You have to create a consciousness which is neither positive nor negative. That will be the pure consciousness.

In that pure consciousness you will live the most natural and blissful life.

If you repress some negative idea because it is hurting you.... For example: if you are angry, and you repress it and try to make an effort to change the energy into something positive - to feel loving towards the person you were feeling angry with, to feel compassionate - you know you are deceiving yourself.

Deep down it is still anger; it is just that you are whitewashing it. On the surface you may smile, but your smile will be limited only to your lips. It will be an exercise of the lips; it won't be connected with you, with your heart, with your being. Between your smile and your heart, you yourself have put a great block - the negative feeling that you have repressed.

And it is not one feeling; in life you have thousands of negative feelings. You don't like a person, you don't like many things; you don't like yourself, you don't like the situation you are in. All this garbage goes on collecting in the unconscious, and on the surface a hypocrite is born, who says, "I love everybody, love is the key to blissfulness." But you don't see any bliss in that person's life. He is holding the whole of hell within himself.

He can deceive others, and if he goes on deceiving long enough, he can deceive himself too. But it won't be a change. It is simply wasting life - which is immensely valuable because you cannot get it back.

Positive thinking is simply the philosophy of hypocrisy - to give it the right name. When you are feeling like crying, it teaches you to sing. You can manage if you try, but those repressed tears will come out at some point, in some situation. There is a limitation to repression. And the song that you were singing was absolutely meaningless; you were not feeling it, it was not born out of your heart.

It was just because the philosophy says to always choose the positive.

I am absolutely against positive thinking. You will be surprised that if you don't choose, if you remain in a choiceless awareness, your life will start expressing something which is beyond both positive and negative, which is higher than both. So you are not going to be a loser. It is not going to be negative, it is not going to be positive, it is going to be existential.

So if tears are there, they will have a beauty; they themselves will have a song. You need not impose any song on them, they themselves will be out of joy, out of fulfillment - not out of sadness, failure.

And if the song bursts forth, it is not against tears, despair; it is simply the expression of your joy...

not against anything, not for anything. It is simply the flowering of your own being; hence I call it existential.

Positive thinking has led America into a very wrong path; it had made people hypocrites. It is the most influential philosophy in America, and in fact, it is not even a philosophy, it is just rubbish. It does not understand the psychology of man, it is not grounded in the findings of psychology; it is not grounded in the deeper findings of meditation. It is simply giving people hope - people who are losing all hope. It is giving people ambition.

The poor man thinks that if he goes on thinking, then suddenly out of the blue, a Cadillac will appear in his porch - although right now he has no porch. First he has to think of a porch! Positive thinking will create a porch, then positive thinking will bring a Cadillac. And even if it happens, please don't sit in such a car; it is dangerous. There is no car, and there is no porch - that man is hallucinating.

He is not in his senses.

Everything has to be earned. There is a famous book by Napoleon Hill, THINK AND GROW RICH, and his whole emphasis is that if you think really hard, you will become rich. Millions of copies have been sold because he is a good writer, one of the best that America has produced. He writes well, convincingly.

But I have told you before that when his book was first published, he was at the bookstall so that the publisher could introduce him to the customers, and he could put his signature on the books.

And it happened that Henry Ford just came in - he was looking at books, he loved books - and he inquired, "What is happening? What is this man doing?"

He found out that this was Napoleon Hill, a great writer, and his new book was just published. "He will be very happy to be introduced to you." So Henry Ford went to him. The publisher introduced Napoleon Hill, saying, "He has written this book, THINK AND GROW RICH."

Henry Ford looked at the cover, at the title, and asked Napoleon Hill, "Have you come in your own car, or in a public bus?"

It seemed so irrelevant, but when Henry Ford was asking, Napoleon Hill had to say, "Yes, I have come in a public bus."

Henry Ford returned the book and told him, "When you have thought enough about a beautiful car and it appears in your porch, then bring this book to me. I am Henry Ford - I don't need this book.

I know you cannot grow rich by thinking. You can cheat poor people by this book. Everybody wants to become rich, so the book will sell well, and perhaps by the book sales you may become rich, and you may purchase a car. But remember, that is not the condition. I will accept the book if the car appears by your thinking."

The car never appeared, he could never go to Henry Ford. And that old man was very strange; he used to call once in a while on the phone and say, "What happened about the car? If it has not appeared yet, withdraw the book from the market. It is sheer cheating!" And the whole book is about positive thinking - only think positive thoughts.

And you can see the difference: what I am doing here is... all thoughts are useless - positive or negative. They are two sides of the same coin. You are not to change from the negative to the positive; you have to go beyond both. You have to drop them both, you have to become a thoughtless consciousness. And out of that consciousness, whatever you do will be right. Whatever you do will have tremendous beauty. Whatever you do will be satisfying.

Question 2:

The energy can be transformed, but only after you have lived it naturally. If you have not expressed it naturally - sex energy, sexually - you cannot move towards transformation.

When sex is expressed as pure sex - and there is no sin in it, there is no need to feel guilty about it; this is the way your bodies are made, this is the way your biology functions - express it. Just by expressing it naturally, there will come a moment when the compulsion to express it as sex will disappear. That is the turning moment, now transformation is possible.

First, natural expression to the satisfaction of the natural instinct in you, and then transformation is possible, because now the energy will not compel you to express it as sex; it is satisfied. It has known what sexual experience is. Only after this, the transformation is possible, and the transformation will happen through meditation.

So whenever you feel energy in you, and no desire to express it sexually, simply sit silently and meditate. Meditation will make the path for the energy to move higher, and you will know that the same energy which was expressed as sex, ultimately is expressed as samadhi, as superconsciousness. It is the same energy - just the label of expression goes on changing. But if something remains incomplete, you will be dragged again and again to it.

The religions have a reason to repress sex. They all wanted to transform the energy, so naturally they thought that sex should be blocked, expressed in any other way; that blocked energy then could be transformed into spirituality. But they had no understanding about sex or energy or transformation.

Sex is not something of which you have only a certain quantity in you. It is produced every day, so if you express it sexually, it does not mean that you don't have any more energy left, so how will you transform it? Sexual energy is created every day. It is not a reservoir, not a bank, that if you take out something, that much is less. It is created every day by your living, by your movements, by your food, by your breathing, by the circulation of the blood - by your very life. It is a by-product of life.

But if you start stopping it forcibly, you will be doing a harmful act to yourself.

First, if you forcibly repress sex, your mind will continuously think of sex - sex and nothing else, because the energy that has been repressed is going to revolve in your mind.

Let me remind you that your sexual center is in your mind; genitals are just the extension of a center which is in the head. That's why you can dream about sex, you can fantasize about sex - and each fantasy will immediately affect your genital organs. You are thinking, it is in the head. The genitals are the extension of a subtle center in your head, so when you repress the energy, your head becomes full of it. Your sex becomes cerebral, mental, so you think about it, you dream about it. And this is an ugly state.

One man reached to a psychoanalyst's office and said, "Help me; otherwise I will die."

The psychoanalyst said, "You look perfectly healthy and young. Why should you die? What is the problem?"

He said, "The problem is, I continuously think of sex."

The psychoanalyst said, "It is not a big problem, everybody thinks of sex."

He said, "You don't understand...."

So the psychoanalyst said, "I will try and understand." He drew a line of the paper and asked him, "What is it? What does it remind you of?"

He said, "Don't joke with me! It reminds me of sex." A line? - even the psychoanalyst was a little shocked that a line reminded him of sex. And the man said, "I have read all the psychological books - this is a phallic symbol." And he was right, because that's what Freud's analysis says it is, it is a phallic symbol.

So he drew another figure, a triangle. The man closed his eyes, he said, "Don't! I don't want to think about that."

The psychoanalyst said, "It is just a triangle!"

He said, "It may be triangle, but think of Sigmund Freud and you will understand what I am saying.

This is my trouble."

The psychoanalyst said, "Okay." He drew a third figure - a circle. And the man jumped up from the chair. He said, "Stop! Stop! I am not a homosexual! And I have never seen such a pornographic psychoanalyst - you do nothing but make pornography!"

And just then from the window they saw a camel passing by, and the psychoanalyst said, "Forget about that. Look outside. What does that camel remind you of?"

He said, "The camel? It is the most dangerous animal; I don't want to have anything to do with camels! Anything to do with the camel, forget all about it."

The psychoanalyst said, "But this is strange."

He said, "Nothing is strange - everything reminds me of sex, and it is because of an idiot who has told me to repress, because this is the way: when you repress the energy, the energy level inside you starts going higher. It is not going higher, I am going lower! I have never had such fear of camels or other things, but now I cannot move outside, I cannot look at anything, because everything somehow manages to remind me of sex."

Repression will do you harm in that it will make your mind full of sex... no transformation but only an ugly, cerebral sexuality.

Natural sex is far more beautiful. It is simple and innocent.

Secondly, if you start repressing sex, you will never be able to transform it. Your whole energy will be split in two parts. Sex is your energy that has to be repressed, and the remaining energies of your life have to repress it, and nothing is left which can be transformed. Who is going to transform it? Who is going to be transformed?

Repression is the worst thing that religions have preached to people.

A natural sex automatically brings you to a point where you feel that it is a simple, biological phenomenon, and the old compulsion is gone. Through experience it goes; and now the energy will be there, but because you are not repressing it, it will not become cerebral, it will not make sex any problem for you.

With meditation you will be opening up higher doors of your consciousness, your superconscious.

And the energy always needs movement, it cannot remain static. And these new areas will be far more enchanting.

The sexual area you have experienced. It was good as far as biology goes, but it was an ordinary experience available to all the animals, to all men, to all birds. It was nothing special, nothing unique.

But if meditation makes a way towards superconsciousness, and energy is available, that energy will automatically start moving through the new channel that has opened up.

This is what I mean by transformation.

So take everything at ease. Just remember one thing, that with your at-easeness with nature, meditation should continue. So whenever anything with nature is satisfied, energy is available; it will move into the paths meditation has created.

It is a simple process. In transformation you don't have to do anything. All that is needed is that there is no repression. Energy is available - there is no compulsion that it should go into the sexual ways - and a new way has opened up. The energy immediately becomes excited about moving into the new ways. And once it has experienced higher qualities of blissfulness, there is no question of repression; it never arises.

And remember the last thing, that even if you have experienced superconsciousness and higher levels through sexual energy, it does not mean that you cannot use the energy through the sexual channel. From the higher you can always come lower without any difficulty; but from the lower, to go to the higher, a great preparation is needed.

You will be surprised to know about a strange phenomenon that used to happen in India, in the Vedic times, five thousand years before - almost unbelievable.... If some couple found that they were incapable of producing children, then they would go to the great seers, the great masters who lived in the forest, in the mountains, and had their universities - thousands of students.

And they would ask the master, "We would like somebody who is no longer sexual to be compassionate on us and give a child to my wife." And it was an accepted phenomenon, there was no condemnation in it. But you can see a great insight - that somebody who has gone beyond sex has much more potentiality to give birth to a better child than an ordinary person.

It continued in India till Buddha and Mahavira's time. These were the two persons who brought repression and condemned this convention.

I am still for the vedic convention; that is absolutely closer to science. Buddha and Mahavira, both, are in favor of repression - and that is dangerous. It was not a repressive society in India before Buddha and Mahavira; it was a very different kind of society. Everything natural was accepted, and

if a couple was finding difficulty in having children, the best way was to find someone who had no sexuality in his sex, whose sex was just meditation. In that meditative act there is more possibility of having a better child than in any other way.

So remember it, Arpita: everything in life has to be accepted naturally, and by the side you continue meditating. And whatever energy comes to a point of satiation as far as nature is concerned, that energy will start moving towards meditation, on its own.

Transformation happens to you - you cannot do anything about it. You can simply prepare the ground.

Question 3:

It has always been one of the most important problems for people: what happens when a man dies?

There have been very few materialists in the past, most of the people were believers in a spirit, in a soul; the body dies but the soul remains. Different religions tried to explain what happens to the soul, but there were loopholes everywhere. And those loopholes gave the idea of ghosts.

For example, Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, all believe in one life, and then will come the final judgment days. But in between, what will happen to the soul? One person dies today; tomorrow is not the judgment day, the judgment day will be at the end of the world. So up to now all the Christians and all the Mohammedans and all the Jews asked, "What are these people doing? And where are they?" After judgment day a few will go to heaven, most of them will fall into hell; but in the meanwhile they are roaming around without bodies - ghosts.

And man has passed through such periods of fear. There was no fire at the time, the night was dark; no fire, wild animals, and above all, these ghosts. Because of the ghosts, people started worshipping their elders who had died, just to keep them satisfied, "We remember you - don't torture us."

In India, even today, every year there are a few days set aside for all the old generations who have died, and people throw sweets and fruits and other things towards the crows. I don't know how they have got the idea that those ghosts will come in the shape of crows, but the crows will eat the sweets and they will be satisfied.

Crows are ugly, they are black - I don't think there is anybody who loves a crow and has made a cage in his house and put a crow into it. You will think him mad. And crows are such a nuisance. If they remain silent it is good, but they don't remain silent, they are continuously vocal. Perhaps their ugliness, their blackness, their sound, all gave the idea that these are ghosts in the form of crows.

And every year people feed the crows; for two weeks they go to the river and worship their parents, their forefathers... and they don't know all of them because it is a long line, but they offer them

whatever they can. That offering goes to the brahmin, who does the worshipping. But they satisfy them every year, "Don't be worried about us. We are happy, you remain happy. There is no need to come here."

This kind of ritual must have come when people were very much in fear; fear of wild animals was tremendous. And there are schizophrenic people, people who have been thought up to now to be possessed by a ghost. They are psychologically sick; but for centuries they have been the proof that ghosts are there.

In India, moving around the country, I have seen many trees which are famous for releasing you from the possession of ghosts. And what actually happens is really ugly. The person thinks that he is possessed of a ghost, and he behaves in a different way - he is really a split personality. Sometimes he is perfectly okay, ordinary; that is one personality. Everybody is split, but he is so split that he has become almost two persons in the body, and both need space for expression.

People are accustomed to one - when the other takes over, people think a ghost has taken possession. That is the ancient interpretation - they had no idea of split personality. So they take them to these trees; the person is beaten, badly beaten, so that he comes to his senses. And coming back to his senses means he has come back to his old personality.

The tree is worshipped because it is thought that the tree has helped, so a piece of the man's clothing is hung on the tree. So if you come across thousands of pieces of clothes hanging on a tree, that means thousands of people have been beaten under that tree. And with each person coming back to his personality, a big nail is hammered in, into the tree. That means that the ghost has been hammered in with the tree; now he cannot escape from there.

The beating is such that in most of the cases it helps; the person becomes afraid to move to his other personality because he has been given such good treatment. It is just an old way of psychological treatment, but it works.

I had a neem tree by my house - a very big neem tree. I just purchased a few big nails and stuck them all around the tree, and a few pieces of cloth I hung here and there on the tree. The next day people said, "What happened - because this tree was never thought...?"

But nobody knew, nor did my family know, what I had done. And the unknown is always fear-creating.

Why should anybody do it? - there was no reason - so something unknown had happened. And from that day, that small street by the side of my house became dangerous. After evening nobody would pass by there. They would go round about, almost a mile, to reach their homes, and from my place it was just a few feet away. But to pass under that tree was dangerous; who knows, sometimes a nail may become loose, and a ghost may get out.

My family had a suspicion about me; they started asking me, "Is it your work?"

I said, "I don't know anything about ghosts."

They said, "Nobody can come into the house, so it is somebody in the house who has done this.

And now you have prevented people from passing by here." And even the people of my family...

because just by the side of the tree was the well, and in the night, if water was needed, they would wake me up: "You go and pull up a bucket of water."

I said, "This is strange. Why should I be unnecessarily harassed?"

They said, "You are harassing the whole neighborhood."

I said, "If you know absolutely that I have done it, then you need not be afraid."

They said, "We know you have done it, but still the fear comes - because you won't admit that you have done it, it is just our guess. Whatever the case, you go and bring one bucket of water; it is needed right now."

The tree became so troublesome that one of the students who was studying with me used to go from that street - it was a small street, and the teacher lived on the other corner - he used to go there, and he would run from this side to that side; with closed eyes he would run.

I would tell him, "Don't be afraid - those are all very friendly ghosts."

He said, "Don't talk to me about ghosts! And when you say friendly, that makes me more afraid. I don't want any friendship!"

He told his teacher - he was an old man, a brahmin, and very well respected in the town. The brahmin said, "Don't be worried. I will give you a mantra: 'Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.' You just say, 'Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,' and pass that tree fast."

But the boy said, "I am becoming more afraid every day. You are not afraid?"

He said, "No, I am not afraid. I am a believer in God - I can go anywhere."

So the boy said, "Today you lead me. Anyway it is so late in the night" - it must have been ten o'clock - "you lead me out of the street."

I had told him, "Your teacher has given you this mantra; first tell him, 'You show me how to do it.'

Bring him one day."

He said, "I will bring him today."

So I was waiting; the boy and the teacher, with a lamp in his hand, came just looking all around to see whether any ghosts or anything were there or not. And the teacher said, "There is nothing. Just start, 'Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.'" And they both were repeating, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama."

I had simply to drop a tin can of kerosene oil - an empty tin can. I beat it first with my hand, and just dropped it on the teacher - it simply hit the teacher's head, and it was worth seeing how he ran away! And he would not remove it. Even with the tin can, he rushed towards the road, and a crowd gathered - I was also in the crowd.

And they said, "Now it is becoming too difficult! Such a respected brahmin, well versed in the ancient law - and the ghosts are not afraid even of him. And this is not right" - because when they removed the can, the teacher was smelling of kerosene because it was a fresh tin, I had just emptied it.

They all smelled him, and they said, "This is strange! And why were you going there? And what happened to your lamp?" The lamp was dropped there; in such a critical moment to remember it....

Somebody said, "Go and bring his lamp," but nobody was ready to. So I told his student, "You can go. You know the mantra, 'Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.'"

He said, "That mantra is useless! Even my teacher could not... he was repeating the mantra, and just as he was repeating the mantra, the can came down with a noise, and got fixed onto his head."

My father told me, "I know... because a new can has come into the house - where is it? Certainly you are part of it. And now the only way to keep this neighborhood free of fear is to cut this tree down."

I said, "I have no objection, but can you find any man who is capable of cutting the tree?"

He said, "I knew it - that that's why you were agreeing, because nobody will be ready" - and nobody was ready to cut it.

There were many woodcutters in the town. They said, "That tree we cannot touch. Releasing those ghosts... who knows, whether they will start coming to our home, or follow us, or possess us."

My father was ready to give double the price. They said, "Whatever you want to give us - you find somebody else." They suggested, "You enquire in some other town for somebody who does not know anything about the tree."

But anybody who came from another place, looking at the tree with the nails and the pieces of clothes hanging from it, would simply refuse. There was no way.

I told my father, "I am the only person - if you want, I can cut this tree. But then don't tell me if your whole house becomes full of ghosts. They are living in the tree - leave them alone. And they are peaceful people, they don't harm anybody. They just did that to the teacher because he was saying a mantra against them. He started the antagonism. They were not... they are peaceful ghosts."

My father said, "I know they are peaceful ghosts, but we also have to live in this house. Nobody now can sleep on the terrace." In the summer in India people sleep on terraces or outside. "Nobody is ready... except you, nobody goes to the terrace in the night," because the tree was spreading its branches on the terrace.

And things started happening which I had not done; people managed it themselves. Somebody would suddenly fall there, near the tree. The reason may have been that it was raining and it was slippery, and he slipped. But the whole blame went on the tree, that the ghosts were now slipping people up.

It came to a stage that even in the day the street was blocked, nobody was going there. And people were angry because they had to go so long round about to reach to their home from the main street; and it was so close by the small street.

There is no such thing as a ghost. The ghost is in your fear; and the fear can be created by anything.

And once it is created, it becomes difficult to get rid of it.

In fact all these three religions are wrong about souls. The moment a person dies, he immediately - within two, three seconds - enters into another womb. Only a few people remain in the unembodied state - very bad people like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, because they cannot get such a bad womb, so they have to remain hundreds of years; or very good people remain for hundreds of years waiting to find a right womb. But they are rare. The good ones will not do any harm to anybody; and the bad ones have done so much harm in their life that now they are repenting, feeling guilty.

A few people of these two types may be around the earth, but they are not going to hurt anybody or harm anybody. The whole idea of ghosts has arisen out of fear - and anything can create fear.

People passing by the side of a graveyard will run. If it is night, they will be afraid to go that way.

Just small things... it is really your fear that becomes the ghost. If you don't have any fear....

In the East, because transmigration of the soul is a fact accepted by all the religions, there is not so much fear of ghosts. England is the most ghost-haunted place - and this question is from Chetana!

So many houses in England are ghost-haunted, but it is strange that this happens only in England; in other places, very rarely. But in England there are so many houses which are ghost-haunted.

It seems for a long time England has been doing as much evil in the world as possible; otherwise you cannot create an empire. Millions of people have been murdered and butchered; and whenever you do so much evil, you cannot remain unaffected. The fear of the unknown - that you have killed so many people....

In my town there is a beautiful ashram of the followers of Kabir... which is rare, because there are very few followers of Kabir. The man who was there as the chief of the ashram, Satya Sahib, was really a sincere man, and a seeker. He died. The ashram has many beautiful things; it has caves, and it has underground caves, so deep that half the cave is filled with water, so you can have two parts in the cave. Half the cave is just a little higher, where you can go for bathing, for drinking or for anything else; the water is there, constantly flowing. And there are many caves.

Satya Sahib was a man of great discipline and had a good following. But he died - I had not seen him but I knew his follower, Sahibdas. He had no qualities of his teacher, but was very much knowledgeable. I used to go to him with my father - my father was a friend of his teacher.

One day he started talking about ghosts; somehow the topic came up, and he said, "There are no ghosts."

I said, "That is not right. Even your guru, Satya Sahib, has become a ghost."

He said, "What!"

I said, "I have seen him, just standing on his grave. And if you want to see him, I can make arrangements."

He said, "To see him? He was dangerous even when he was alive - I don't want to see his ghost.

But how did you come to see him?"

I said, "I was just passing by, and he was standing, naked, on his samadhi. And as you know, I just enquired, 'What are you doing, Satya Sahib - standing naked here on such a cold morning?'"

And he said, "For a ghost there is no cold, no hot; everything is perfectly good - clothes are not needed."

Sahibdas said, "This is all nonsense! You are just making it up."

My father said to him, "Don't listen to him! He has made my house almost into a haunted house - people are afraid to pass. He never told me that he has met your teacher - and he was my friend."

I said, "I did not tell you because you would not believe that he has become a ghost, poor fellow."

But Sahibdas, his disciple, became interested, although he was afraid: "What is the truth?"

So he called me one afternoon, and he said, "You just tell me the truth - what is the truth?"

I said, "I have told the whole thing. All that I can do is, I can make some arrangement. I have met your guru again."

He said, "What!"

I said, "Yes, he was again standing there - just a coincidence. I go for a morning walk, and he was standing, naked, and I told him this time, 'Your disciple does not believe that you have become a ghost.' He said, 'He is an IDIOT! He never believed anything I said.' I said, 'I have given him the opportunity to see you. What can be done so that he can see you?'

"He said, 'Just bring him in the night, midnight, when the watchtower of the city makes it twelve.

Bring him, and he will see me here. But because he is such an unworthy disciple, I will have to cover myself with a cloth, a white cloth. I don't want to show my face to him, nor do I want to see his face.'"

"Whenever you want, I can arrange..."

Sahibdas said, "He is angry?"

"He is certainly very angry. He said, 'Don't touch my clothes and don't come close to me.' He has shown me the place, 'Stand there, near the tree' - there was a tree - 'near that tree. And don't come close, because I am really angry: my disciple has proved absolutely unworthy. And in anger, you know, a man can do anything.'"

So that night, at twelve o'clock, I had to persuade one of my friends, who was the same height, to stand there with a white cloth covering him, and I took Sahibdas. And as the watchtower clock gave

the signal of twelve, Sahibdas looked and said, "My God! He is standing there! He is so angry that if we go near him, he can do anything!"

I said, "You can go near him, but he has said that he will do anything - I don't know what he will do - that he will jump upon you, or he will hit you or something." I had given the friend a good staff and said, "If he comes, just give him a good hit." He had a clean-shaved head, the way the Kabir followers keep their heads, clean-shaved. "Just give a good hit on his head, and that will be enough, with the fear and all, and he will become unconscious. And I will call over everybody concerned, my father and others, and say, 'Look!' "

And that happened. He went close, got a good hit, fell down, and became unconscious. When I brought my father and other people with lamps and torches, they saw Sahibdas lying down by the side of the grave. He would open his eyes and just look at the grave - the afterimage was still there - and would close his eyes again, because he was still seeing...

My friend had disappeared; I had told him, "You disappear; otherwise people will beat you very badly. You simply give the hit and disappear." And the place was such, almost a jungle type - "You can disappear very easily."

It took almost one hour to bring Sahibdas back. My father asked him, "What happened?"

He said, "Your son was right; we unnecessarily suspected him. He has shown me my guru - he was standing here! And he had told me, 'Don't go near him because he is very angry.' But even when he was alive, he never hit me that hard! He hit me with a staff so hard on my head" - there was blood on his head - "And the fear of his ghost... I fell, and then I don't know what happened."

He became so afraid - it was outside the town, the ashram - that he left the town the next day.

We have never heard about him or what happened to him. But one thing is certain, he must have remained believing in ghosts, spreading the story of ghosts.

I have enjoyed showing many people ghosts - which is very easy. They have believed it; and the reason is the basic fear within you. Otherwise, I have not come across any ghost, and I have been in search of them.

Now psychologists are working on it, and finding different reasons for happenings that were unaccountable before; now they can be explained. But one thing is certain: ghosts don't exist.

They are just as much a creation as God - out of fear.