No-Mind Innocence

The first question:

Question 1:

WHAT IS INNOCENCE? DOES BEING INNOCENT REQUIRE ONE TO LIVE A SIMPLE LIFE?

Anand Manohara, innocence is a state of thoughtless awareness. It is another name for no-mind.

It is the very essence of buddhahood. You become attuned to the ultimate law of things. You stop fighting, you start flowing with it.

The cunning mind fights, because it is through fight that the ego arises, and the cunning mind can exist only around the ego. They can only be together, they are inseparable. If the ego disappears, the cunning mind disappears and what is left is innocence. If you are fighting with life, if you are going against the current, if you are not natural, spontaneous, if you are living out of the past and not in the present, you are not innocent.

To live according to the past is to live an irresponsible life; it is the life of reaction. You don't see what the situation is, you simply go on repeating your old solutions - and problems are new every day, every moment. Life goes on changing and mind remains static. That is the whole problem: that the mind remains a static mechanism and life is a constant flux. Hence there can be no communion between life and mind.

If you remain identified with the mind you will remain almost dead. You will not have any share in the joy that overwhelms existence. You will not be a participant in the celebration that is continuously going on: the birds singing, the trees dancing, the rivers flowing. You also have to be a part of this whole.

You want to be separate, you want to prove yourself higher than others, superior to others, then you become cunning. It is only through cunningness that you can prove your superiority. It is a dream, it is phony, because in existence there is nobody who is superior and nobody who is inferior. The blade of grass and the great star are absolutely equal. Existence is fundamentally communist; there is no hierarchy. But man wants to be higher than others, he wants to conquer nature, hence he has to fight continuously. All complexity arises out of this fight.

The innocent person is one who has renounced fighting; who is no more interested in being higher, who is no more interested in performing, in proving that he is something special; who has become like a roseflower or like a dewdrop on the lotus leaf; who has become part of this infinity; who has melted, merged and become one with the ocean and is just a wave; who has no idea of the I. The disappearance of the I is innocence.

Hence innocence cannot require you to live a simple life, innocence cannot require anything of you.

All requirements are cunning. All requirements are basically to fight, to be somebody.

The so-called simple saint is not simple because he is fighting - fighting with his instincts, fighting with his body. He is continuously at war, never at peace. How can he be simple? He is more complex than the ordinary people are. His complexity is, of course, very subtle and invisible - he cannot even sleep peacefully.

Mahatma Gandhi was very much afraid of sleep for the simple reason that it was only while he was awake that he was able to repress his sexual desire. He believed in celibacy. He believed that celibacy was a basic requirement for a simple life, an innocent life. While awake he was able to repress, to control, to be the master of his instincts; but in sleep all control disappears - the mind goes to sleep. The controlling, fighting mind is no more in power and the repressed starts surfacing.

Hence sexual dreams. He was suffering from sexual dreams even when he was seventy, and he was afraid of sleep.

And saints have always been afraid of sleep. What kind of saints are these people? Sleep should be one of the most innocent things in life, and they are afraid of it. The fear is coming because of a certain requirement that they have imposed upon themselves which they cannot fulfill in sleep. In sleep sex will surface. You may start dreaming things that you don't like, but now you cannot have control over things.

It is because of this fact that psychoanalysis is more interested in your dreams than in your waking life. It is strange, it is ironical, but it is very indicative - indicative of the man and his repressions. You cannot trust a man while he is in the so-called awake state. You cannot trust him - he is bound to falsify things, he is bound to be phony. And it may not be that he is being deliberately phony; he may have become so accustomed to his phoniness that that's all that he knows about himself. He may have repressed his natural instincts so deeply, buried them so deeply underground, that he himself has become absolutely unaware of their presence. You cannot trust what he says about himself when he is awake; you can only trust his dreams.

Hence psychoanalysis has to go into your dreams, because your dreams show your reality more clearly than what you say when you are awake. What kind of awakening is this that your dreams are far more natural, far more authentic, than your waking life?

Mahatma Gandhi suffered to the very end from sexual dreams. He was very much afraid of sleep - as all the saints have always been. They always go on cutting down on their hours of sleep. And people think that if a saint sleeps only two hours he is such a great saint - he only sleeps for two hours! And the reason why he only sleeps for two hours is fear - fear of his own unconscious. It is not a simple life, it is very complex.

He goes on starving himself in the name of fasting, as if starving your body is going to help you in any way to come closer to God - as if God is a sadist and he wants you to be tortured. Do you think God is an Adolf Hitler, a Mussolini, a Genghis Khan, a Tamburlaine or a Nadir Shah? What do you think God is? No father would like his children to starve! But all religions, the so-called religions - Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Mohammedanism - all preach fasting, because fasting gives you great ego.

These two are the basic instincts: food and sex. Food is needed for your survival and sex is needed for the survival of the race. Both are basically needed for survival. If everybody fasts and everybody becomes a celibate, there will be no need for atom bombs! There will be no third world war - people will die of their own accord. Sex and food are deeply joined: food keeps the individual alive and sex keeps the race alive. That is their similarity: sex is food for the race and food is sex for the individual.

Hence, there is one more point to be remembered: if you repress sex you will start eating more food, because you will have to compensate. If you stop eating enough food which is necessary for the body you will become more and more sexual - you will have to compensate. And your saints are against both.

Your saints are suicidal. Of course, their suicide is a very very slow suicide; they are not even courageous enough to commit suicide in a single blow. They go on cutting themselves limb by limb, they go on destroying themselves slowly. They enjoy the whole process - they are masochists.

They torture themselves and they feel that by torturing themselves they are purifying themselves and becoming holier. They are simply becoming pious egoists! And the pious egoist is far more dangerous than the ordinary egoist, because the ordinary egoist has a very gross ego. He knows he has it, everybody else knows he has it.

The politician lives with the gross ego, but the saint, the mahatma, lives with a very subtle ego - and with such a facade of holiness that others will not be able to see it. He is so humble, he is so surrendered to God.... And he lives such a simple life - so little food, his clothes are... there are saints who don't use clothes at all.

Jaina saints live naked; their requirements are almost nil. Living a naked life in a cave, in a primitive way, they seem to be very nonpossessive. But that is only the appearance. Deep down they are hankering for heaven, deep down they are greedy. Deep down they are thinking that nobody is more humble, more pious than they are. Deep down they think of you as sinners and themselves as saints.

This is a very complex situation. This is a fight with themselves. They have divided themselves into two: the higher and the lower. Even in the body they have a division: the higher part and the lower part. Above the sexual organs the body is higher, below the sexual organs it is lower - as if the body were divided anywhere!

These stupid people should know that the body is one. The blood circulates continuously from the feet to the head, from the head to the feet: it knows no division. Life pulsates all over the body: the body is an orgasm, an organic unity, a deep ecstasy. But if you divide it you disturb its orgasmic quality. If you divide it you become schizophrenic.

As they divide the body, they divide the mind: the good mind, the bad mind, the sinner's mind, the saint's mind. And in this way they go on becoming more and more schizophrenic. This is not simplicity, this is pathology. And they live in misery; they will never know anything of joy, they will not know anything of laughter - they have condemned laughter as a sin.

That's why Christians say Jesus never laughed. They can't believe that Jesus laughed; that looks so profane, almost sacrilegious. Ask the Jainas. They don't say anything in their scriptures, but they will also agree with the Christians that Mahavira also never laughed. How can these ideas create simple human beings? Those who cannot laugh, those who cannot dance, those who cannot sing, those who cannot enjoy the very ordinariness of life....

I don't think that either the Christians or the Jainas are right. I know Jesus, he laughed; I know him not through the scriptures. I know Mahavira; if he cannot laugh, then who will laugh? I know them from my innermost being. But the people who have imposed on them the idea of no laughter, of no joy, are the people who have been driving the whole of humanity crazy, mad, insane. They have converted the whole earth into a mad asylum.

Manohara, you ask me: "What is innocence? Does being innocent require one to live a simple life?"

Innocence requires nothing; once it requires, it becomes complex. Innocence simply lives without any idea of how to live. Bring in the how and you become complex. Innocence is a simple response to the present. Ideas are the accumulated past: how Buddha lived - live like that and you will be a Buddhist; how Jesus lived - live like that and you will be a Christian. But then you will be imposing something upon yourself.

God never creates two persons alike; each individual is unique. So if you impose Jesus upon yourself you will be phony. All Christians are bound to be phony - and all Hindus, all Jainas, all Buddhists - because they are trying to be somebody that they cannot be.

You can't be Gautama the Buddha. You can be a buddha, but not Gautama the Buddha. 'Buddha' means awakened - that is your birthright - but Gautama is an individual. You can be a Christ, but not Jesus Christ; Jesus is an individual. Christ is another name for buddhahood; it is the ultimate state of consciousness. Yes, that is possible, that is your potential, you can bloom and flower into christ-consciousness, but you can never be Jesus, that is not possible - and it is good that it is not possible. But that's how so-called religious people have lived: trying to follow somebody else, imitating. Now, an imitator cannot be simple; he constantly has to adjust life to his ideas.

A really innocent person goes with life, he simply flows with life; he has no goal as such. If you have a goal you can't be innocent. You will have to be clever, cunning, manipulating; you will have to plan, and you will have to follow certain maps. How can you be innocent? You will be carrying so much rubbish from others. You will be just a carbon copy of Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira; you will not be the original.

Bodhidharma says again and again: Find your original face. And the only way to find your original face is to drop all imitation. Who is going to decide what the requirement is? Nobody can decide, and any decision is bound to disturb, because life may not turn out the way you expect it to. It never really turns out the way it is expected to. Life is a constant surprise; you cannot prepare beforehand.

Life needs no rehearsal.

You have to be spontaneous: that is innocence. Now, if you are spontaneous you cannot be Christian and you cannot be Hindu and you cannot be Buddhist, you have to be a simple human being.

Simplicity is not a requirement but a by-product of innocence; it comes just like your shadow. You don't try to be simple; if you try to be simple, the very effort destroys simplicity. You cannot cultivate simplicity - a cultivated simplicity is superficial - simplicity has to follow you like a shadow. You need not bother about it, you need not look back again and again to see whether the shadow is following you or not; the shadow is bound to follow you.

Attain to innocence and simplicity comes as a gift from God.

And innocence means becoming a no-mind, a no-ego: dropping all ideas of goals, achievements, ambitions, and living just as it happens in the moment.

So I don't tell you to be celibate. Yes one day celibacy can happen, but it will not be something to be practiced, it will be something that you will see happening. Yes, certainly, before one becomes a buddha one becomes celibate, but that is not a requirement, remember. Remember again and again: it is not a requirement that you have to fulfill so that then you will become a buddha. No, if you simply go on becoming more aware of your mind, as the mind starts disappearing and becomes more and more distant from you, as you become unidentified with the mind and you start seeing that you are separate, that you are not the mind, you will find many things happening with this disappearance of the mind.

You will start living moment-to-moment - because it is mind that collects the past; you cannot depend on it. Your eyes will be clear, not covered with the dust of the past. You will be free from the dead past. And one who is free from the dead past is free to live - to live authentically, sincerely, passionately, intensely. One can become aflame with life and its celebration. But the mind is continuously distorting, continuously interfering, continuously telling you, "Do this. Do that." It is like a schoolmaster.

A meditator becomes free of the mind. And once the past is no longer dominating you, the future simply disappears, because the future is nothing but a projection of the past. In the past you have experienced certain pleasures and you would like to repeat them again and again; that is your projection for the future. In the past you have been through many miseries; now you project onto the future that you don't want those miseries again. Your future is nothing but a modified form of the past. Once past is gone, future is gone. Then what is left? This moment... now.

To live in the now and in the here is innocence. You cannot follow religious commandments if you really want to be innocent. A man who constantly has to think about what to do and what not to do, a man who is constantly worried about what is right and what is wrong, cannot live innocently.

Even if he goes on doing the right according to his conditioning, it is not right. He is simply following others, how can it be right? It may have been right for them, but what was right for one person two thousand years ago can't be right for you today. So much water has gone down the Ganges! Life is never the same for even two consecutive seconds.

Heraclitus is right: You cannot step twice in the same river. And I say to you: You cannot step even once in the same river - the river is so fast-flowing.

An innocent person lives not according to certain requirements imposed by the society, church, state, parents, education, the innocent person lives out of his own being, responsibly. He responds to the situation that is confronting him. He takes the challenge, he accepts the challenge, and does whatsoever in this moment his being wants to do - not according to certain principles. The innocent man has no principles, no ideology; the innocent man is absolutely unprincipled. The innocent man has no character, he is absolutely characterless - because to have character means to have a past; to have character means to be dominated by others; to have character means that mind is still the dictator and you are just a slave.

To be characterless, to be unprincipled, and to live in the moment... just as the mirror reflects whatsoever is in front of the mirror, your consciousness reflects and you act out of that reflection.

That is awareness, that is meditativeness, that is samadhi, that is innocence, that is godliness, that is buddhahood.

Manohara, there is no requirement for innocence, not even the requirement to live a simple life. You can live a simple life, you can force a simple life upon yourself - it will not be simple. And you can live in a palace with all the luxuries, but if you live in the moment you will be living a simple life. You can live like a beggar and you will not be simple if your effort to be a beggar is something that you have imposed upon yourself. If it has become your character then you are not simple. Yes, once in a while it has happened that even a king has lived a simple life - simple not in the sense that he did not have the palace and the possessions - they were there - but he was not possessive.

This has to be understood: you may not have any possessions yet you may be possessive.

Possessiveness can exist without possessions. If that is so, then the opposite is also true:

nonpossessiveness can exist with all kinds of possessions. One can live in the palace and yet be totally free of it.

There is a Zen story:

A king was very much impressed by the simple and innocent life of a Buddhist monk. Slowly slowly he accepted him as his master. He watched - he was a very calculating man - he inquired about his character: "Is there any loophole in his life?" When he was totally convinced logically - his detectives informed him that "this man has no dark spots in his life, he is absolutely pure, simple. He really is a great saint, he is a buddha" - then he went to the man, touched his feet and said, "Sir, I invite you to come to my palace and live there. Why live here?"

Deep down, although he was inviting the saint, he was expecting that the saint would refuse, that he would say, "No, I am a simple man. How can I live in the palace?" - even though he was inviting him! See the complexity of human mind: he was inviting him, he was expecting that if the invitation were accepted he would be greatly joyous, and still there was an undercurrent: that the saint, if he were truly a saint, would refuse, that he would say, "No, I am a simple man, I will live under the tree - this is my simple life. I have left all the world, I have renounced the world, I cannot come back to it."

But the saint was really a saint - he must have been a buddha. He said, "Okay. So where is the vehicle? Bring your chariot and I will come to the palace." He said, "Of course, when one comes to the palace one has to come in style. Bring the chariot!"

The king was very much shocked: "This man seems to be a cheat, a fraud. It seems that he was pretending all this simplicity just to catch hold of me." But now it was too late; he had invited him and he could not go back on his own word. Being a man of his word - a samurai, a warrior, a great king - he said, "Okay, now I am caught. This man is not worth anything - he did not even refuse once.

He should have refused!"

He had to bring the chariot, but he was no longer happy, he was not joyous. But the saint was very happy! He sat in the chariot like a king, and the king sat in the chariot very sad, looking a little silly.

And people were watching in the streets: "What is happening? The naked fakir...!" And he was really sitting like an emperor, and the king was looking very poor compared to this man. And he was so joyous, so bouncing with ecstasy! And the more ecstatic he was, the more sad the king became:

"Now, how to get rid of this man? I have become caught in his net on my own. All those detectives and spies are fools - they could not see that this man has a plan." As if he was sitting under that tree for years so that the king would become impressed! All these ideas came into the head of the king.

The king had arranged the best room for the saint, if he would come. But he did not believe that he would ever come. You see the split of the human mind: you go on doing one thing, you go on expecting something else. If the man had been cunning he would have simply refused. He would have said, "No!"

If you take money to Vinoba Bhave he closes his eyes, and deep down you say, "Now, this is a saint!"

But if you bring the money to me I will take the money and I will not even thank you! Then you will be very much shocked: "What kind of man is this?"

I was moving in the Impala and people started writing to me: "You should not move in the Impala."

I said, "That is true. So," I told Laxmi, "find something else, something better, because in America the Impala is just a plumber's car." So Laxmi has brought a Buick.

Now people are saying, "Are you going to move in the Buick?"

I told Laxmi, "This won't do. Find something better, because the Buick is a pimp's car in America!"

So now Laxmi is bringing a Cadillac.

The king had arranged the best room. The saint reached the room - he had been sitting under the tree for years - and he said, "Bring this, bring that. If you have to live in the palace you have to live like a king!"

The king was getting more and more puzzled. Of course, he had invited him so whatsoever he asked for was brought. But it was heavy on the heart of the king, it was becoming heavier every day, because the saint started living like a king - in fact, better than the king, because the king had his own worries and the saint had none. He would sleep in the day, in the night. He would enjoy the garden and the swimming pool and he would rest and rest. And the king thought, "This man is a parasite!"

One day it was unbearable. He said to the saint.... The saint had gone into the garden for a morning walk, and the king also came and he said, "I want to say something to you."

The saint said, "Yes, I know. You wanted to say it even before I left my tree. You wanted to say it when I accepted your invitation. Why did you wait so long? You are unnecessarily suffering. I can see you have become sad. You don't come to me anymore. You don't ask the great metaphysical, religious questions that you used to ask me when I used to live under the tree. I know - but why did you waste six months? That I can't see. You should have asked immediately, and things would have been settled then and there. I know what you want to ask, but ask!"

The king said, "I want to ask only one thing. Now what is the difference between me and you? You are living more luxuriously than I am! And I have to work and I have to worry and I have to carry all kinds of responsibilities, and you have no work, no worry, no responsibility. I am feeling jealous of you! And I have certainly stopped coming to you, because I don't think there is any difference between me and you. I live in possessions, but you live in more possessions than I. Every day you demand, 'Bring the golden chariot! I want to go for a walk in the country. Bring this and bring that!'

And you are eating delicious food. And now you have stopped being naked, you are using the best clothes possible. Then what is the difference between me and you?"

The saint laughed and he said, "The question is such that I can answer it only if you come with me.

Let us go outside the capital."

The king followed. They crossed the river and they continued. The king asked again and again, "Now what is the point of going on any further? Why not answer now?"

The saint said, "Wait a little. I am in search of the right spot where to answer."

Then they came to the very boundary of his kingdom, and the king said, "Now it is time, this is the very boundary."

The saint said, "That's what I have been searching for. Now I am not going back. Are you coming with me or are you going back?"

The king said, "How can I come with you? I have my kingdom, my possessions, my wives, my children - how can I come with you?"

And the saint said, "Now you see the difference? But I am going and I will not look back even once. I was in the palace, I lived with all kinds of possessions, but I was not possessive. You are possessive.

That is the difference. I am going."

He undressed, became naked, gave the dress to the king, and said, "Keep your clothes and be happy again."

Now the king realized that he had been foolish: this man was rare, a rare gem. He fell at his feet and he said, "Don't go. Come back. I have not understood you yet. Today I have seen the difference.

Yes, that is true sainthood."

The saint said, "I can come back, but remember, you will become sad again. For me there is no difference whether to go this side or that side, but you will become sad again. Now, let me make you happy. I am not coming, I am going."

The more the saint insisted on going, the more the king insisted on him coming back. But the saint said, "Once is enough. I have seen you are a stupid person. I can come, but the moment I say 'I can come,' I can see in your eyes the old ideas coming back: 'Maybe he is cheating me again. Maybe this is just an empty gesture, giving me the clothes and saying that he is going, so that I become impressed again.' If I come you will be miserable again, and I don't want to make you miserable."

Remember the difference: the difference is not in possessions, the difference is in possessiveness.

A simple person is not one who possesses nothing, a simple person is one who has no possessiveness, who never looks back.

This simplicity cannot be practiced, this simplicity can come only as a consequence of innocence.

Otherwise, on the one hand you will practice, and from some other corner of your being.... And you are a vast continent; you are not like an island, you are a really vast continent! And in the deepest core of your being there is still uncharted territory, unmapped territory. You still carry a great, dark continent like Africa inside you, which you have never traveled, of which you are not even aware - of its presence you are unaware.

If you repress - and that's what cultivation is - then it will start coming in another form from somewhere else. You will become more and more complex in this way, more and more cunning and calculating in this way; more disciplined, more with a character which people respect and honor. If you want to enjoy your ego, the best way is to be a holy man. But if you really want to celebrate existence, the best way is to be absolutely ordinary, utterly ordinary, and live the ordinary life with no pretensions.

Live moment-to-moment: that is innocence, and innocence is enough. Don't try to become simple.

Millions of people have tried, and they have not become simple at all. On the contrary, they have become very very complex, entangled in their own jungle, in their own ideas.

Get out of the mind: that is innocence. Be a no-mind: that is innocence. And everything else follows.

And when everything else follows, it has a beauty of its own. Cultivated, it is plastic, synthetic, not natural. When it comes uncultivated, it is a grace, it is a benediction.

The second question:

Question 2:

SOMETIMES IT FEELS AS IF PHYSICAL DEATH WOULD BE THE ONLY SHOCK POWERFUL ENOUGH TO WAKE ME UP, AND I FIND MYSELF WISHING FOR IT - AS PERHAPS AN ESCAPE FROM OR AN END TO THIS GREY SLUMBER THAT SURROUNDS ME. WHAT CAN BREAK THIS DREAM WHEN THE DREAMER IS SO SLEEPY?

Pratima, if you really want to commit suicide, follow the wise Irishman I have heard about.

An Irishman wanted to commit suicide. He bought a bottle of aspirin, took two, and felt better!

Death cannot wake you up, Pratima, because you have died many times before and it has not awakened you yet. You are not new here - nobody is new. You are all ancient pilgrims, very ancient.

You have seen Buddhas, Christs, Zarathustras, Lao Tzus. You have seen the whole evolution of human consciousness, you have been part of it. You have been here many times and death has happened again and again. It has not helped in any way. It can't help, because death has a natural mechanism: before you die you become unconscious. It is as if death used anesthesia; so does birth. Birth also happens in unconsciousness.

Just think. One thing is certain: that you were born. You may not be so certain about your past lives - maybe it is just a theory - but one thing is absolutely certain: that you were born one day. At least this life is there. Do you remember anything of your birth? And birth and death are not separate, they are two aspects of the same coin. On one side it is birth, on another side it is death; on one side it is death, on another side it is birth. It is the same coin. Heads or tails, it makes no difference; it is the same coin.

You see one person dying: here he is dying, somewhere else he has started being born. The moment he is dead here he will have entered another womb somewhere. It takes seconds, only seconds, to enter another womb. Millions of foolish people are always making love, twenty-four hours. You will not have to search long, you will not have to search and wait, you will not even have to stand in a queue, remember.

That's why it happens again and again that if a person dies in India he is born again in India. It happens more or less that way, because who cares to go far away? Just in the neighborhood some foolish couple is ready to receive you.

There was birth, but you were unconscious. Birth also happens in unconsciousness, because that too is a very painful process - it is a kind of death. You lived in the womb for nine motnhs, it was your life for nine months, and the nine months in the womb are not nine months for the child; for the child it is almost an eternity, because he has no sense of time. And then suddenly one day the womb is ready to expel you. To the child it looks like death, he is dying. His world is disappearing, his way of life, to which he has become accustomed, is being taken away from him. All that he knows about life is going to be destroyed. Without the womb he cannot conceive what life there can be. The womb is all that that he knows; beyond the womb all is unknown.

Death is painful, so is birth. Hence there is a natural mechanism: the child is born in an unconscious state and the old man dies in an unconscious state. Doctors, surgeons, have been using anesthetic processes only recently - chloroform, etcetera - but death and birth have been using them since eternity began. When you die, before the exact moment of death you become unconscious, because it is going to be very painful.

Just think. Your consciousness, which has become so attached to the body for seventy, eighty or ninety years.... You have become so identified with the body, you will cling, you will do everything that you can to remain in the body. Now again you are being thrown out of the body - and so many desires are unfulfilled, and so many ambitions are still hovering around you. So many desires and dreams, and everything is shattering! And your body is being taken away from you - not only the body but your brain too. And that's what you have become identified with. You need great anesthesia.

The body has its own ways to release anesthesia in you; sooner or later medical science is going to discover it. They have not yet discovered it but sooner or later they will find it: that the body has chemical processes which are released at the time of death and the person becomes unconscious.

Just as in anger certain chemicals are released in your blood and you become mad - a momentary kind of madness, your own glands do it... when you become sexually possessed it is your glands releasing certain secretions - and you are not conscious, you become almost unconscious.

Death is one of the most painful processes. So, Pratima, you can die, but you will die unconsciously.

Death will not wake you up, it will make you more unconscious.

The only way to be awakened is to be in communion with someone who is already awakened. The only way - there is no other - is to be in the company of the awakened one, is to be in the commune of the awakened one.

And, Pratima, you are fortunate: you are in the company of the awakened one and in the communion of those who are seeking awakening. You are in a buddhafield; if this cannot wake you up, nothing else can do it.

But don't be so worried about it; that worry is unnecessary. Leave it to me. Leave all your grey slumber, all your dreams, to me. I don't ask for anything from you - at least give me your dreams, give me your worries, give me your sleep. Rather than worrying about how to wake up, start watching your dreams and a little bit of alertness will start arising in you. Instead of being worried, start watching your worries, and watching the worries will help you to come out of the worries.

There are only two things to worry about: either you are sick or you are well.

If you are well, there is nothing to worry about, but if you are are sick, there are only two things to worry about: either you get better or you die.

If you get better, there is nothing to worry about, but if you die, there are only two things to worry about: either you go to heaven or you go to hell.

If you go to heaven, there is nothing to worry about, but if you go to hell, you'll be so dam busy shaking hands with your friends you won't have time to worry!

So why worry?

Rather start enjoying. Enjoy your sleep; that will help you to wake up faster. Enjoy your dreams, because if you can enjoy your dreams, enjoy your sleep, you have already become a little distant.

When you are worried, you become more involved; when you are enjoying, you can be a watcher.

And don't be in a hurry, either. Nothing happens before its right time. There is a season for everything to happen, so just wait for the spring. Meanwhile, enjoy whatsoever is there. Clouds are there, dark clouds, enjoy them - they have their own beauty. Once in a while the sun breaks through, enjoy it. Sometimes it is raining, enjoy it. Enjoy all the moods of life; that's how one becomes mature, ripe. This life is an opportunity to become seasoned. Don't avoid anything. Grey slumber also has something to contribute to your growth, and your dreams also have to become steps, stepping stones, towards awakening.

But everybody seems to be in such a hurry that nobody wants to wait for the spring. But spring comes when it comes. Your hurrying will simply create chaos in you, your impatience will create a mess of you. Be patient, and whatsoever the situation, accept it and enjoy it.

Yes, there is a silver lining to every dark cloud, but people are so impatient, so pessimistic, that I have heard they have changed the old proverb. The old proverb is: Every dark cloud has a silver lining. They have changed it; now they say: Every silver lining has a dark cloud. It all depends on how you look at things.

Be a little more optimistic. Be a little more rejoicing. Yes, even if you sing in your dream, even if you dance in your dream, it is helpful, because your singing and your dancing may wake you up. But if you worry and you think of suicide and you think of getting rid of this life because you are not waking up as soon as you would like, it is a very pessimistic attitude. It is not life-enhancing, it is destructive.

Beware of such destructive tendencies! Death is not going to help.

I am here, Pratima, to hammer, to shatter you. Just give me a little chance. Things are moving beautifully. Many are coming closer and closer to maturity, but unless you come to the hundred- degree point you can't evaporate. Even at ninety-nine degrees you are still water, hot water - and the heat becomes more and more painful before it reaches to a hundred degrees and you simply evaporate. And then the last change, then you enter into a different field: water flows downwards and vapor floats upwards. Water is visible, vapor is invisible. Water seeks the lowest place on the earth and vapor seeks the highest - the vapor goes towards the peaks.

But I cannot give you more heat than you can absorb at the moment. I have to be very very careful, because too much heat may prove destructive. Too much heat may destroy something fragile in you. Too much heat and you may escape. Too much heat will make you so hot that you may start thinking life is unbearable. I have to give you heat in homeopathic doses so that slowly slowly you become accustomed to it - because I have to take you up to a hundred degrees.

But many are moving towards it, and whenever it starts happening many are going to become awakened almost simultaneously.

That's how it happened in Buddha's time. Just one person, Manjushri, became enlightened - his first disciple to become enlightened - and immediately a chain - Sariputta, Moggalayan, Purnakashyap and others - immediately followed, as if Manjushri had triggered off the process. Maybe he was the first flower of spring, and then the whole of spring burst forth.

That's how it is going to be here. Slowly slowly you are getting ready; the spring is coming closer.

Wait. Wait and watch.

The third question:

Question 3:

WHEN A MASTER DIES, SUDDENLY A MYTH SPRINGS UP AROUND HIM, MAN MAKES STONE OR WOODEN IDOLS OF HIM, THE MASTER BECOMES A DISTANT GOD TO BE WORSHIPPED AND BECOMES UNATTAINABLE TO ORDINARY MAN. THE THOUGHT OF THE MASTER BEING AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT WE SHOULD AND CAN BE DISAPPEARS. WHY DOES THIS PHENOMENON HAPPEN TIME AND TIME AGAIN?

Arthur Sambrooks, it is something very natural to the unconscious state of humanity. The living master is a danger, but the dead master is no more a danger. The living master can wake you up; you cannot dodge him, he simply goes like an arrow into the heart. But a dead master is a dead master. He is just a memory, he is no longer there.

And now the disciples start worshipping him. Why? It is out of a feeling of guilt that they never heard him while he was alive. They feel guilty, they repent. Now they have to do something to get rid of the guilt. Worshipping is out of guilt, you will be surprised to know. You may not have thought that worship is guilt standing upside down.

The people crucified Jesus, and the same people started worshipping him. It is repentance. They started feeling a great pain, a great heaviness, a great anxiety. They had done something wrong; they had to compensate, they had to worship this man. They condemned him as a criminal and they worshipped him as God.

The same has been happening again and again. Worship comes out of guilt - one thing. Second:

worship is a way to avoid the master. By worshipping him you start feeling that you are doing whatsoever you can do. What more is there? You need not change, worship is enough. If the master is alive and you only worship him and you don't change, he is going to hit you on the head.

The living master, even if he allows you to worship him, allows you to worship him only so that you can come closer to him, that's all. He allows you to worship him so that you can come close and he can really destroy your ego. He wants you to become intimate with him. If this is the only way you know... and this is the only way you know, because you have always been worshipping Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed. You have been worshipping, so when you come to a living master, the first thing that you can do is worship him. He allows you to worship him so that you can come closer, so that you can be caught into his net.

But a dead master is no longer there to do anything to you. Now you can start doing things to the master - you can take revenge! You can make a stone or wooden statue of the master and you can bow down to the statue that you have made. You are bowing down to yourself, to your own creation!

It is like - and it will be far better.... When you make a temple in your house it is better to fix up a big mirror and sit before the mirror and bow down to your own image - because the master that you create is the master that you create in your own image.

The Bible says: God created man in his own image. Maybe in the beginning he did, but man has paid him out well, and in the same coin. Man has made God in his own image.

When you worship a master you start creating a master to your own idea - hence the myth springs up. The myth comes from your unconscious. The master is physically dead, now you want him to be spiritually dead too. The myth will do it: he will become spiritually dead too. Your myth is a lie!

And the more the master becomes surrounded by myth and fictions, the more and more unreal he becomes.

That's why it is very difficult to believe that Jesus is a historical person - very difficult to believe. It is because of the mythology that has been created around him: he walks on water, he turns water into wine, out of a few loaves he makes enough bread for thousands of people to eat.

The people who created these myths are really getting rid of the reality of the master. Although he is dead, a certain impact of the master still continues that has to be effaced. The myth will do the work.

Death has destroyed his body, myth will destroy his spirituality. He will become just a mythological figure, utterly impotent, useless.

The myth is a process in which you change the master's historical reality into a fiction. Jesus as a historical person may be embarrassing. Jesus as a myth is beautiful - because a myth is created by you, according to your expectations.

No living master ever fulfills anybody's expectations; he lives his own life. Whether you accept him or you reject him makes no difference. You can kill him, you can worship him, it makes no difference.

He goes on living in his own way, he goes on doing his own thing. He cannot be forced to fulfill your requirements of him.

People try in every possible way. They come to me... letters reach me, saying: "Osho, if you do only one thing, millions of people will be benefited because then they will start coming to you. Please stop talking about sex. India will worship you. People are ready to accept you, but you disturb them."

Now, these people who are fast asleep are advising me what I should say, what I should not say....

In these last twenty years, thousands of people have come to me. Very few have remained, because they all came with expectations - and I have not been fulfilling anybody's expectations. In fact if I see somebody expecting something, I immediately destroy it.

I want only people here without expectations of me. Otherwise followers try to become masters of the masters. They start dictating to them: "Do this. Eat this. Live like this, because then more and more people will come." It is not a question of more and more being needed; only those are needed who have no expectations, because only those are capable of being awakened.

But once the master is gone he cannot prevent you from creating your myth, so whatsoever was hurting you, you will change, whatsoever was offensive to you, you will drop, and you will replace it with something beautiful. That's what the root cause has been of myths springing up.

Jesus lived a very human life, utterly human - with great godliness, but he lived a human life. He is a rare master in that way. He moved with gamblers, drunkards; there is every possibility that once in a while he may have played poker. And I don't see that there is anything wrong in it. He used to drink wine, he enjoyed it. And I don't think that there is anything wrong in it once in a while; it is sheer playfulness. Don't become addicted to it. He was not addicted to it, but he participated in the ordinary life.

There is every possibility that Mary Magdalene fell in a very human kind of love with him, and it cannot be just one-sided - he may have responded. But Christians will feel offended - a prostitute falling in love with Jesus! And Jesus may have responded in a human way. In fact, he was such a courageous man, such a rebel, that he must have responded in a human way.

Rock Hudson dies and goes to heaven, knocks at the gate and requests permission to enter.

Saint Peter says, "Sure. All you need is two passport photographs and to fill in this form B-31. Now, what's your name?"

"Rock Hudson."

"Occupation?"

"Film actor."

"Sorry," says Saint Peter. "No film actors allowed."

"Why?" asks Rock, amazed.

Saint Peter says, "Because you people are known to be great sinners - all this nudity in films, scandals, all kinds of vices. Sorry, you can't come in."

"But I'm a personal friend of Jesus," says Rock. "Go and ask him."

Saint Peter goes to Jesus and says, "There is a big guy at the gate. He says he is a friend of yours.

His name is Rock Hudson."

"Rock Hudson!" says Jesus. "Oh, my God! And I haven't got a thing to wear!"

Jesus must have been a very human master. It is because of his great humanity that he had to suffer, that he had to be crucified - it is because of his great humanity. If he had lived just like a god, just like a holy saint, chanting mantras, fasting, living in a cave, the same rabbis would have worshipped him. Before Jesus they had not killed anybody else. Why Jesus? This is strange. The Jewish history has no precedent for it. What was his sin? What was his crime? His crime was that he was trying to live a very ordinary life. He wanted to show you that you can live an ordinary life and yet you can be enlightened. You can move with prostitutes and gamblers and drunkards and yet you can be absolutely holy. He wanted to show you this paradox, he wanted to become an example of it; that's why he was crucified.

In India, Buddha was not crucified, Mahavira was not crucified. Why? They never lived in any human way. They lived aloof, very aloof, cool, faraway, distant. There was no need to crucify them. Hence my love for Jesus is immense. Buddha you can respect, but you cannot love. Jesus you can love, too - and if you respect him you respect him out of love.

And the same has to be the situation here. I don't want your respect. If your respect comes as part of your love it is welcome; otherwise I don't want your respect. I don't want to be respectable. It is better to be crucified by people than to be respectable. To be respectable means you have bowed down to the sleepers, that you have surrendered your freedom. This is possible only if you fulfill their expectations; then they will respect you, they will call you holy.

But if you live an ordinary life just as people live it and you enjoy the ordinary things of life - with a difference, of course, with a great difference, a difference that really makes a difference - if you bring God closer to the earth, if you bring heaven closer to the earth, then they are going to kill you while you are alive. And when you are gone, the same people will start changing your life, painting your life again and again. They will go on painting you as the demands change according to the changes in time and fashion.

There are many christs really. If you go through these two thousand years you will find many christs not one, because each age demands a different kind of holy man, so each age has to paint Jesus according to its expectations. That's how myths are created. Then another age has to impose its myths, and this goes on and on, and the whole life becomes fictitious. Now the whole thing is so fictitious....

The virgin birth is an impossibility, but they have to impose that myth of the virgin birth because ordinary people are born out of sexual intercourse. How can Jesus be born out of sexual intercourse? He is born without any sexuality. This is unbiological, unscientific. But the followers will do such things just to make him look separate, different, supernatural.

The Buddhists say that when Buddha was born his mother was standing. Buddhists say that when buddhas are born the mothers are always standing. Strange! Why can't a buddha be born while the mother is lying on her back? - that is how everybody is born; buddhas have to be born in a special way. And then what does Buddha do? He comes out of the womb standing, he falls to the ground standing, and then he takes seven steps and he declares, "I am the greatest of the greatest!" That is the first thing he does - after seven steps. Now, such foolish things!

Jainas say that their tirthankaras are always born into the warrior caste, the kshatriyas. Mahavira entered the womb of a brahmin woman, but that is not according to the law. You see the expectations of people - not only in life will they expect of you, but even before life they will force their expectations!

So they have created a story that the gods were very much disturbed - this had never happened before. A tirthankara - a Jaina master, an enlightened master - has to be born of a kshatriya woman, a warrior caste woman. It was an antagonism against the brahmins. And Mahavira entered into the womb of a brahmin woman, so the gods could not tolerate it.

When he was three months old in the woman's womb, they removed him, they took him out. That seems to be the first surgery! They removed Mahavira from the brahmin woman's womb, and they removed another child from the queen's womb. The queen's child, a girl, was put into the brahmin woman's womb and Mahavira was substituted. Two things were wrong. First: the tirthankara has to be a man; second: he has to be born of a kshatriya woman. What expectations! What foolish kinds of expectations! But these myths go on growing later on.

These myths are for a certain reason. The disciples and the followers want their master to be special - special compared to ordinary people and special compared to other masters, too.

You ask me, Sambrooks: "When a master dies, suddenly a myth springs up around him, man makes stone or wooden idols of him, the master becomes a distant god to be worshipped and becomes unattainable to ordinary man."

That is precisely the purpose of worship: to make the man so distant and so far away that you can only worship. You need not practice whatsoever has been his teaching, you need not wake up from your sleep. Worshipping can continue in your sleep beautifully; it does not disturb your sleep, in fact, it functions as a sedative, a tranquilizer.

You ask me: "The thought of the master being an example of what we should and can be disappears."

That is precisely the purpose: that it should disappear so that there is no need for us to try, to endeavor to reach the peaks. Then we can live in our sleep peacefully; there is nobody to disturb us. If Buddha is a human being, if Jesus is a human being, and they can become so enlightened, so full of light, so full of love, so full of bliss, then the idea of them will haunt you, it will not leave you alone. Continuously it will be there inside you that you have to attain this state too, otherwise you are not fulfilling yourself, otherwise you are not doing what is needed to be done. You are missing an opportunity.

You ask me: "Why does hisphenomenonhappentimeandtimeagain?"

t Because man's stupidity is the same.

The last question:

Question 4:

I AM A SCIENTIST. SCIENCE TEACHES TO OBSERVE DETACHEDLY. IS IT NOT THE SAME WITH RELIGION?

Science teaches detached observation, art teaches nondetached observation, religion simply teaches observation, neither detached nor nondetached. The scientist has to be there just as a spectator, indifferent, cold; that's how he can come to know the secrets of matter. The artist has to participate in nature; without participation he will not know the beauty of the flower, of the moon, of the sunset, of the clouds. He will have to become a participant, he will have to dissolve himself into their reality. The observer has to become the observed in the world of art; only then is he able to paint, to sculpt, to create music or poetry.

A man came to a great painter and asked him, "I want to paint bamboos. What should I do?"

The master said, "First you go into the jungle and live with the bamboos for three years. When you start feeling that you have become a bamboo, come back."

The man never returned. Three years passed. The master waited and waited and then he had to go in search of the man to see what had happened - because when you have become a bamboo, how can you come back to the master?

When the master arrived he saw the man standing in a bamboo grove. The wind was blowing, the bamboos were swaying and dancing, and the man was swaying and dancing.

The master shook him. He said, "What are you doing? When are you going to paint?"

He said, "Forget all about it. Get lost! Don't disturb me."

The master had to drag him back home. He said, "Now you are ready to paint the bamboo, because now you know from the inside what a bamboo is."

Science observes from the outside; art enters into the inside of things. But religion is a transcendence; it is beyond science and beyond art. Science is objective, art is subjective. Religion is neither. It is pure awareness, neither cold nor hot. That's why I call it cool. Science is cold, art is hot, religion is cool.

But observation is needed all the same on all three planes; it only changes its quality. The lowest observation is detached observation; a little higher is art, participant-observation; and the highest is just observation. But observation is the essential phenomenon; that is the thread that joins science, art and religion.

This happened in the auditorium of a faculty of medicine.

The well-known professor begins his first course with this declaration: "To be a good practitioner, two qualities are required. The first is: you should not be disgusted with anything. The second is:

you should be able to observe accurately. As an illustration of this, watch. You see this age-old corpse lying on the table? I dip one finger in the anus of the corpse, and then you see, I take it out, put it in my mouth and suck it."

The whole class is horrified.

The professor goes on, "Now, which of you will be able to do this?"

A very zealous student comes up and, without hesitation, dips his finger into the corpse's anus and sucks it.

A great silence follows this performance. The professor congratulates the student, "Very good, young man, you certainly have the first quality required to be a good doctor, that is: not to be disgusted with anything. However, the second quality is missing. You have no sense of observation at all. You see, it was this finger, the index, that I dipped. And it was this finger, the medius, that I put into my mouth!"

Enough for today.