And Escape to Reality

The first question:

ANAND POONAM,

SANNYAS IS A REBELLION against both the past and the future. Man has either lived in the past or in the future, but never in the present. And the present is the only reality there is; nothing else exists. Existence knows only one time - that is now - and one space - that is here. But mind either lives in the past which is no more or in the future which is not yet. Mind exists in the non-existential, hence mind never comes across the reality; it cannot come by its very functioning.

Sannyas is a rebellion against mind itself. It is a way of life in which mind is not the master, no-mind is the master and mind functions only as a servant. Mind actually is a mechanism; it is good as a beautiful device of nature, but the moment the servant becomes the master there is danger, great danger. Then your life is bound to be a mess, a chaos. The servant is blind, unintelligent, unaware.

To live according to the mind is not to live at all; it is sheer stupidity. Mind is never original, never intelligent; it is always repetitive, it is always borrowed, it is always mechanical - hence stupid, hence unintelligent.

Sannyas is a tremendous jump into reality, an escape to reality from the unreal.

There have been societies whose golden age was in the past, for example Indian society: its golden age has passed. It believes that the future is going to be darker and darker every day - there is no hope. Hence the Indian society lives in a state of depression, hopelessness, with no possibility of any change for the better. It lives in misery, poverty, sickness. But because of the idea that the golden age has already passed long before, thousands of years before, and we are falling by and by, every day, it does not believe in evolution, it believes in involution, it believes in regression. It is a regressive philosophy, not progressive.

The West lives in the future; its golden age has yet to come: the classless society, the crescendo of communism, the world of equality and freedom, the stateless state. Those golden days are ahead, far away.

In a way, both are the same. If one has to choose between the two then I will suggest: choose a progressive stupidity rather than a regressive one - if that is the only choice! At least with the progressive stupidity you have some hope, you will have some thrill, you will have some excitement; you will work for a better future. It is not going to come ever, but at least you will be occupied with beautiful dreams. It has never been there before, it is not going to be ever in the future. It is now! It is already the case!

Adam and Eve have never been expelled from the garden of Eden! That is my declaration, my message. That whole story is invented by the priests. Adam and Eve are still living in the garden of Eden - just they have eaten the fruit of knowledge. And who has given them the fruit of knowledge?

It is not the serpent; it is the priest, it is the theologian, it is the philosopher. The fruit of knowledge does not grow on trees! It grows in churches, in temples, in the universities. It carries degrees - Ph.D's, D.Litt's, D.D's - and it comes in all shapes and all sizes.

There is the Hindu world of knowledge, the Mohammedan world of knowledge, the Christian world of knowledge. You can choose your own fruit, you can shop for it. It is available to everybody's requirement, according to everybody's needs.

The misery that has happened to man is not because he has lost the original paradise; he is still there, but he has fallen asleep. And in his dreams he has become a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a Jew, and what-not... a theist, an atheist, a communist, a socialist, a fascist. In his dreams only he has lost track of the paradise. And to dream simply means to live either in the memories - that is the past - or to live in the fantasies - that is the future.

My message, Anand Poonam, for the March Event in London, where thousands of sannyasins are gathering together for the first time to celebrate a new opening: the British Buddhafield... This is my message, tell them: Get rid of the past and the future, and live herenow! It is suicidal to live anywhere else than herenow, because each moment that is passing is precious, so precious that you cannot get it back. Don't waste it!

But all the religions have been suicidal. Of course they don't call it suicide, they give it beautiful names - asceticism, tapascharya - but basically it is nothing but masochism, self-torture. They call it renunciation, but it is nothing but destroying yourself gradually, slowly. All the religions of the world up to now have lived with a philosophy of life-denial.

My fundamental approach is that of life-acceptance, total life-affirmation. There is no God other than life! The very idea of God other than life is dangerous, because if God is other than life then naturally you will start choosing God against life. You will be pro-God and anti-life, because life is momentary and God gives you the greed of being eternal, forever.

I say to you, there is no other God than life, hence the question of choice does not arise at all. Live!

Live totally, live passionately, live intelligently, live lovingly. Become a flame so intense, so total, that each moment starts having the flavor of eternity.

Remember, eternity is not horizontal. It is not like a line going from A to B, from B to c, from c to D - it is not horizontal. Eternity is intensity, it is vertical. It is diving from A to a deeper A, not going to B: from A to Al, from A1 to A2, from A2 to A3... In fact as far as intensity is concerned, A is the only alphabet. In fact, the word "alphabet" comes from A; it comes from Arabic ALEPH. A is enough! And when you can get A, why bother about B?

A man with a parrot on his shoulder comes to a stop at the border crossing.

"You have to pay duty on the parrot, sir," says the customs official.

"How much?" asks the man.

"Let's see," says the official, paging through his book. "Parrots: live, fifty pounds; stuffed, ten pounds."

"Bill, don't get any crazy ideas!" screams the parrot.

Even parrots are far more intelligent than your priests! But man has lived under a dark shadow of a suicidal approach: "Renounce life. Escape from life to the monasteries, to the deserts, to the mountain caves. Go as far away from life as possible." Because it has been taught, and taught for so long, that the mind has become conditioned to the idea that farther you are from life, closer you will be to God. This is just bullshit! Closer to life you are, closer you are to God; God is the very core of life.

Two castaways from a sunken ship landed on a desert island. They survived there for a few days without food or water. There was no chance of escape as the sea was full of sharks.

Finally, one of the men fell on his knees, raised his hands to the sky and implored: "God, save us! If you do, I promise that I will always go to the church and sing your praises, I will never drink again, never play cards or smoke, never make love to women and never read any novels or see any movies!"

The second castaway looked at him and croaked, "Then why do you want to survive?"

The so-called religious people have lived, but one wonders for what. If going away from life is the only way to reach to God, then why commit a gradual suicide? Why not do it quickly and be finished with it?

In fact, there are aboriginal tribes in the world still alive where nobody has ever committed suicide; the very idea does not exist. It must be because of these foolish religions that the idea has entered into man's mind. No animal in its wild state ever commits suicide, but some animals commit suicide when they are forced to live in a zoo, when they lose their freedom, when they are cramped, crowded.

They need a certain space around themselves. When their territorial imperative is destroyed, when they are being disciplined by human beings according to their ideas they start losing interest in life.

There have been cases where zoo animals have committed suicide or gone mad or have become sexually perverted, but it never happens in the wild. No sexual perversion, no homosexuality exists in the wild, but in zoos it exists. It is very indicative. It shows that if you put people in an unnatural environment they start losing their instinctive intelligence, they start losing their natural understanding, they start becoming crazy. Either they go mad or they become pervert or they commit suicide.

Humanity has been doing all these things. It has to be recognized, it is time to recognize it - that the religions have turned the earth in a zoo. It is because of these so-called saints and mahatmas who have made human beings perverted. And the most surprising thing is that they are the people who condemn all perversions - and they are the original creators of perversions! Homosexuality is a religious phenomenon! All sexual perversions started in monasteries.

Monasteries are zoos where people are forced to live according to certain ideas determined by others, maybe thousands of years before. Those clothes were not tailored for them - now they are being tailored for the clothes! They are being cut according to the clothes. The clothes may have been made by Moses or Mohammed or Jesus or Buddha and they may have been perfectly fitting the people they were prepared, but now, after three thousand years, two thousand years, or even five thousand years...

The Hindu code was written five thousand years before - Manu wrote it - still it is being followed. In five thousand years everything has changed. If Manu comes to the earth I don't think he will be able to recognize anything! He will not be able to recognize anything at all; everything has changed. But Hindus are trying to live according to Manu; this creates perversion.

The clothes are made by ancient people, according to their ideas, according to their understandings, according to their needs, according to their situations, and they are being forced upon people who have totally different world to live in. Now the only way is: either you cut the clothes or you cut individuals. And religions have decided to cut the individuals.

If the clothes are bigger than you then you have to be massaged and stretched and rolfed, tortured in every possible way! Or if the clothes are shorter than you then you have to be cut; some plastic surgery has to be done on you. Your head has to be chopped or your legs have to be chopped...

Man has to live for certain ideas - as if ideas are more important than man! - as if man is made to live for ideas!

I am against all this nonsense. My sannyasins have to live as individuals. I am not giving you any discipline, because every discipline creates perversion, every discipline only fits to the person who evolves it. Just look at all the disciplines that have been propounded down the ages...

Buddha loved to eat once a day; now that is being followed by every Buddhist. That is not right - that is dangerous. It creates guilt, because if you feel hungry twice a day then you will feel guilty.

And if you are an American you will feel hungry five times a day! Then how much guilt...

And in fact it is very strange that Buddha should have loved to eat only once a day. The reason is only one: he was born in a meat-eating family; he was born in the warrior race, a son of a king.

Now, meat-eating animals eat only once a day - the lion eats only once a day, in twenty-four hours - because meat is enough, once a day is enough; it has no roughage in it. If you eat vegetables once a day you will starve, because ninety percent is roughage. The meat can be absorbed totally; it is already digested by another animal. It is digested food, it is pure food. But when you are eating vegetables you have to eat many times. You can watch it: monkeys are vegetarians - they eat the whole day. Lions eat only once a day.

Buddha was born in a meat-eating family, purely non-vegetarian; this became his habit. Of course, when he became enlightened he dropped meat-eating, but the old habit of thirty years continued.

Habits don't change so easily! But now fools are following him and they are eating once a day, and they are non-vegetarian or vegetarians - nobody takes any note about it. If they are vegetarians they should not do it: it is dangerous to health, it is dangerous to their energy. And the same is true about every discipline - the ten commandments, or other religious principles.

Just the other day one sannyasin wrote to me that he cannot sleep early in the night, he can only fall asleep at three o'clock in the morning. Of course he feels very guilty! A religious person should go early to bed and should get up in brahmamuhurt - before the sun rises. He is feeling very guilty.

Now, there is no need to feel any guilt. This is perfectly okay; he is sleeping perfectly well. He sleeps seven hours, from three in the morning to ten; he is having enough sleep. Now this is his body clock; it is his body chemistry that has to be considered, not somebody else's principle about it.

All the religious scriptures were written by old people, and old people find if difficult to sleep in the morning. A child in the mother's womb sleeps twenty-four hours; then out of the womb slowly slowly the sleep is reduced - twenty-two hours, twenty hours, eighteen hours, sixteen hours... By the time he is young, somewhere between eight hours to six hours it is fixed. As one becomes older, sleep becomes lesser. When one is seventy, eighty, then two or three hours' sleep is enough. And the scriptures were written by old people, because this was the idea: that older you are, the wiser you are.

No young man has written any religious scripture; nobody would have taken any note of a young man writing a religious scripture. You have to be very ancient and old, then you can write a scripture! Age was of tremendous importance in the past. Of course these people have written that three hours' sleep is enough; more than that is lethargy, tamas - it is not good, it is evil. This idea is good for old people.

Now this young sannyasin is unnecessarily worried. He has tried every way; his whole life he has been struggling. It is useless - the whole struggle is useless! In fact, now it is a well-known scientific fact that everybody has his own body clock and everybody has to follow his own body needs.

In a better society, which is more scientific, more rational, more intelligent, we will have a totally different kind of working hours. This is ugly - that everybody has to go to work at eleven o'clock, that everybody has to go to the school at the same time, to the university at the same time. This is not right! This is inhuman! Universities, offices, factories, should be open round the clock, and whenever people feel good they should work and when they feel good they should sleep. This should be their birthright! And in fact it will help immensely, because every college building will function as three colleges, every office building can be used as three buildings. And you will not have this traffic jam on the roads, because it will be distributed all over twenty-four hours. And everybody will have a little more freedom to live according to his innermost like, dislike - his instinctiveness.

My approach is of freedom. My sannyasins should live a life-affirmative philosophy, accepting, respecting whatsoever one is, not creating shoulds and should-nots. They are ugly, they are monstrous!

The Mother Superior called all the nuns of the convent together. "While walking round the convent this morning, I saw a man's footprints outside the main gate," she announced.

Ninety-nine nuns shrieked in terror, "Ah God!"

One nun secretly giggled, "Hee-hee!"

"I followed the footprints. They led directly into our dormitory."

Ninety-nine nuns screamed in horror, "Ah God!"

One nun secretly giggled, "Hee-Hee!"

"The footprints led to one bed, and under the bed I found a condom!"

Ninety-nine nuns gasped in fright, "Ah God!"

One nun secretly giggled. "Hee-hee!"

"The condom was used!" continued the Mother Superior.

Ninety-nine nuns squealed in disgust, "Ah God!"

One nun secretly giggled, "Hee-hee!"

"But it had a hole in it!"

Ninety-nine nuns secretly giggled, "Hee-hee!"

One nun screamed in shock, "Ah God!"

These stupid people have been dominating humanity. Beware of these!

A student social worker was doing research on the use of contraceptives and visited several women.

He asked the first, "What kind of contraceptives do you use?"

She answered, "Rubbers."

The second question was, "How do you like them?"

"Well, sometimes they slip off, but in general we can manage it."

After he noted this data he asked the neighbor of the woman the same question. She used the pill and since her lover helped her to remember to take it, they preferred this method.

When the third woman, the wife of a Christian theologian, was asked what kind of contraceptive they used, she said, "We always use a bucket, a plastic bucket. Previously we used a zinc one but that made too much noise for the neighbors; since we use the plastic one it is okay."

The investigator noted this data and said good-bye to the lady. However, he became very puzzled.

"A plastic bucket?! My professor will not believe this. I will have to go back and ask the woman how it works." So he rang and asked the woman how it was possible with a bucket.

"Well," said the lady, "I will explain. I am rather tall and my husband is very small and we do it standing up. My husband stands on the bucket and by the time he starts rolling his eyes, I kick the bucket away!"

Anand Poonam, tell my British Buddhafield sannyasins there is no need to use buckets - zinc or plastic, it doesn't matter. Be natural, be simple, be ordinary! There is a danger... because once you become a sannyasin you can start having old, holier-than-thou outlook. My sannyasins are not to be holier-than-thou. Remember, I don't make any distinction between the sacred and the profane.

To me the ordinary life is the only life. Yes, there is a way to live it with beauty or ugliness, with insight or blindness, with awareness or unawareness. One can live this same ordinary life in such an exquisite, extraordinary way that it becomes sacred, but there is no other life than this. You have to learn the art of transforming this very ordinary life into something beautiful.

So don't become theologians, don't become missionaries. I hate missionaries! My sannyasins are not to be missionaries. Be contagious, but not missionaries! Infect people, but don't be missionaries!

A Christian theologian was driving along a deserted road one night when his car broke down. He started looking for a place to spend the night. Finding a small cottage, he knocked on the door. It was opened by a lovely young woman. The man explained his problem. The young woman was reluctant, but the man reassured her, "Don't be worried, madam, you can trust me. I am a Christian theologian."

So she agreed. They shared a delicious dinner and had a pleasant evening. Before saying goodnight, the young woman put on a transparent nightdress and said the visitor, "You can sleep here in the living room, but if you need something, just call. I will leave the door of my room open."

She went to bed and spent an anxious night listening to the man snoring. Next morning, exhausted, she went out to feed her chickens.

The man came out, looking refreshed, and remarked, "You have a lot of beautiful chickens."

"Yes, but only fifteen."

"Only fifteen?" said the man. "Then why do you have two cocks for such a small number?"

"That's not a problem," replied the young woman. "One of the cocks is a Christian theologian!"

Be simple, be natural, be spontaneous. I teach ecstasy - and ecstasy in the ordinary life. The life has not to be in any way renounced but transformed. Renunciation is escapism, it is cowardliness.

And you have worshipped cowards as saints up to now. You have worshipped people who were not courageous enough to accept all the challenges of life. And there are millions of challenges - every moment there is a challenge. The coward escapes. The coward has to be condemned, not respected.

My sannyasins have to live in the world, totally in the world, responding to every challenge, because the more you respond to the challenges of life the more intelligent you become. Intelligence is like a sword: the more you use it the more it remains sharp. If you don't use it, it starts getting rusty, it loses its sharpness - it becomes absolutely useless.

Hence your saints look dull, dead. But we have been conditioned to respect these dead corpses. We have been told for thousands of years that these are the real people. They are not real at all! They are very plastic, very phony. A coward can never be a real person. Reality needs all the challenges of life, all the dangers of life, all the insecurities of life. Only then integrity arises, authenticity arises, responsibility arises.

Be in the world but don't be of it. Live in the world, but don't allow the world to live in you. That's my message.

There is a Zen saying:

The wild geese do not intend

to cast their reflections.

The water has no mind

to receive their image.

The wild geese has no desire to cast its reflections in the water, and the water has no desire or no mind to receive its image - although it happens! When the wild geese flies, the water reflects it. The reflection is there, the image is there, but the water has no mind to reflect and the wild geese do not hanker to be reflected either.

This should be the way of my sannyasins. Be in the world, live in the world, live totally, without ambitions, without desires - because all desires distract you from living, all ambitions sacrifice your present. Don't be greedy, because greed takes you into the future; don't be possessive, because possessiveness keeps you clinging to the past. A man who wants to live in the present has to be free of greed, of possessiveness, of ambitions, of desires.

And that's what I call the whole art of meditation. Be aware, be alert, so all these thieves have no possibility to enter and contaminate you. Be meditative, but be in the world. And this is my experience: that the world helps immensely - it helps immensely to make you meditative. It gives you all the opportunities to be distracted, but if you don't get distracted then each success becomes a tremendous joy. You remain centered, you become the center of the cyclone. The cyclone goes on roaring around you, but your center remains unaffected.

Be a lotus flower. In the East the lotus flower symbolizes the essence of sannyas. The lotus flower grows in the mud, dirty mud. It does not escape, it remains there. It floats in the lake in water, but there is a beauty, a tremendous phenomenon: it is in the water, but the water never touches it. It is so velvety that in the morning if you go... and you will find dewdrops gathered on the petals of the lotus, on the leaves of the lotus, and they shine like pearls in the early morning sun. But they are not touching. The lotus leaf or the lotus petal remains dry, it does not become wet. The dewdrops rest there, but they remain separate.

That's the way of a true sannyasin: being in the world but remaining untouched, unaffected by it.

Anand Poonam, when meditation - and this is what I call meditation: being in the world and remaining untouched - happens, love comes as a by-product.

These are the pillars of my sannyasins: first, life-affirmation, unconditional life-affirmation - these are the four pillars of my temple - second, meditation; third, love; and fourth... cannot be expressed in words. It can only be called the fourth, turiya. If you live life totally, meditatively, lovingly, you come to experience something which is inexpressible. Lao Tzu calls it Tao, Buddha calls it Dhamma, Jesus calls it Logos: different names indicating towards the nameless experience. If you prefer you can call it Cod. My own liking is to call it "godliness", not "God", because God gives you the idea of a person and godliness simply gives you the idea of a presence.

These are the four pillars of my temple, and each sannyasin has to grow these four pillars because each sannyasin has to become a temple of godliness.

The second question:

PREMRAJ,

The first thing to be remembered is that you can function in the spirit of Jesus Christ only if you are a Jesus Christ, otherwise not. And remember also that existence never repeats itself. Two thousand years have passed; there has not been another Jesus Christ and there is not going to be any either in the future. It is so clear! Twenty-five centuries have passed since Gautam the Buddha and no other Buddha has happened; five thousand years have passed since Krishna and no other Krishna has happened either. Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Moses, all the awakened ones have remained unrepeated. What to say about the awakened ones? - even the unawakened ones are unique.

There is not anybody like you anywhere in the world - there has never been before and there will never be again. You are the only one! But religions have not accepted this simple fact. Existence is not repetitive, and it is good that it is not repetitive.

Just thinking of a world where millions of Gautam Buddhas are sitting under the bodhi trees - it will be so boring! - or millions of Jesus Christs carrying their crosses and roaming all around the world.

They will not even find somebody to crucify them, because others will carry the crosses themselves!

Who has time to crucify anybody? It will be ugly; it will be boring.

One Jesus has a beauty; many Jesuses will look like produced in a factory on an assembly line, like Ford motor cars: every minute a car comes out, every minute a Jesus comes out, well equipped with the cross, et cetera, with those twelve apostles following him, and they go on coming from the factory, round the clock...! What you are going to do with so many Jesus Christs? What you are going to do with so many Mahaviras, so many Buddhas? No, it is not needed.

Each individual is unique; uniqueness is a gift from existence. But why these religions have been teaching: Live in the spirit of Jesus Christ, or in the spirit of Gautam Buddha - why? Don't you have your own spirit? Then drink alcohol - get some spirit! Make some spirit of your own! Why Jesus Christ? What wrong this poor fellow has done to you? Can't you stop crucifying him? Will not you ever be able to forgive him?

The whole idea is of imitation. Imitate! You have no right to be yourself, you have to imitate. You can be accepted only if you are somebody else - Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Mahavira, Jesus, Kabir, Nanak, but not yourself. And can't you see a simple fact? - that Jesus was not Moses. He should have repeated, then he would have saved his life, he would not have been crucified by the Jews if he had lived the spirit of Moses. But he tried to create his own spirit, he tried to be an individual, and that was his crime. If he had simply repeated he would have been respected, glorified as a great rabbi. But he became a rebel.

Everybody has to become a rebel, not an imitator!

That's why, Premraj, you see people are living there deadly serious; they don't love their work, they don't enjoy their work. How can they enjoy? They are not doing their work. You can never enjoy somebody else's life, howsoever beautiful it is - it is not your life. You can only enjoy to be yourself.

A rose flower can be blissful only as a rose. If you force the rose flower to become a marigold it will be deadly serious; it will lose all joy, all fragrance.

That's what is happening. It is not only happening there in the so-called Free University of Amsterdam, it is happening everywhere. Hindus are trying to be like Krishnas or Ramas, Jainas are trying to be like Mahaviras, Mohammedans are trying to be like Mohammeds, Christians are trying to be like Christs... everybody is imitative. The whole world has become full of imitation and whole world is looking sad. It is inevitable, this sadness, and it is not only .sadness. Hidden behind this sadness is a state of schizophrenia, because basically nobody can be anybody else than himself. So deep down he is himself, but on top of it he is pretending to be somebody else, hence everybody is a hypocrite.

All the religions have done this to humanity: they have created a hypocrite world, a schizophrenic humanity, a split personality. This is their gift! It is a curse, but this is what they call a gift to humanity.

Everybody is living a split life, a double life: from the front door one life, from the back door totally another. And of course, between the two he is caught in a tension, in anxiety; he cannot be totally either this or that. He is torn apart! Hence the misery in people's eyes, the sadness, the deadness.

Nobody needs to be anybody else. Just be yourself! Show some respect to your life. Respect yourself, love yourself, because unless you respect yourself you will not respect anybody else in the world. If you cannot even respect your life, how can you respect anybody else? You can pretend, but pretension is not truth and it is pretension creates a bondage around you. It becomes an imprisonment - and one hates imprisonment.

It is not accidental that Friedrich Nietzsche had to declare - I say had to declare - that God is dead and man is now free. It is not only his individual opinion, it is really the voice of the millions who have no courage to speak. If God is destroying your freedom then it is better to kill God and save freedom, rather than killing freedom and saving God.

Why one should be like Jesus Christ? Why one should live in the spirit of Jesus Christ? There is no need! He never imitated anybody. If you really understand Jesus you should not repeat him.

Buddha never repeated anybody. He could have become easily a Krishna - he had that much intelligence. He could have pretended to be a Krishna, but he never did anything like that. Hindus have not been able to forgive him because he was not following the trodden path, he was not following the crowd, he was not part of the mob psychology. He went on his own; he created his own small footpath towards truth.

Everybody has to create his own footpath. There are no superhighways towards truth, only footpaths, and they too are not ready-made, available; you have to walk and create them. You have to search for truth and in your very search you create the path. The path is not already there that you can simply go to the truth. The search for truth is an immense adventure. Each moment one is in for a great surprise.

So the whole idea, Premraj, is wrong, and that idea is creating the trouble. And still these people call it "The Free University"! And what kind of free university is this - which has a religious position, which has a constitution and the purpose to propagate Christianity?

ALL MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY ARE EXPECTED TO ACT AS MUCH AS THEY CAN IN THE SPIRIT OF THIS PURPOSE, IN OBEDIENCE TO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST.

Then what kind of free university is this? There is only one free university in the world and it is herenow! There has never been a free university before and there is none anywhere else yet, except this one.

A free university simply means that there is no expectation from you. You are helped to be free, you are nourished to be free, you are supported to be free. You are given individuality. If there are expectations, freedom is destroyed. Expectations are a subtle way, cunning way to dominate. And if the expectation is to live in obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ then the whole thing is just a facade - in the name of freedom they are propagating an old slavery. Jesus is a free man, but Christians are not free.

Friedrich Nietzsche is again right when he says that the first and the last Christian died on the cross two thousand years before - the first and the last. In fact, there cannot be anybody else who is a Christ. These are rare flowers!

And you are also a rare flower. Maybe you have not blossomed yet, hence you are unaware of your rareness; and you will not blossom if you go on fulfilling these expectations. Don't fulfill any expectations of anybody. You have only one responsibility and that is towards your own being. If you try to fulfill others' expectations you will be in trouble because they will impose, they will dominate, they will cripple and paralyze you. They are your enemies! Anybody who expects anything from you is your enemy - beware!

A real friend simply gives you freedom. Love gives freedom; there is no expectation, there is no desire to manipulate you, not even indirectly. Freedom is the highest value in life - and if the freedom was there you would have seen a totally different phenomenon.

You can see it here. People are working here - in fact I don't think anywhere else people are working so hard, so totally, so devotedly - but there is great joy. They are rejoicing in it! People who come from the outside cannot understand it. Because they cannot understand it they go on spreading rumors.

Just now hundreds of newspaper clippings are coming from Germany - so many rumors, so many false statements about Vimalkirti's death. Nobody seems to try to understand. They are all saying that he was forced, regimented, almost as if he was in the army. He was forced to do the lowest menial jobs. That is their idea, that any job is lower, but they go on imposing their categories.

Yes, Vimalkirti was doing all kinds of jobs. He was cleaning the toilets, and to them this is inconceivable... the great-grandson of the last German Emperor, nephew of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip of England, connected with almost all the royal families of the Europe. One of his aunts has just died two days before - Queen Frederica; she was the Queen of Greece. Another aunt is the Queen of Spain Princess Sophia. His own mother has three titles. Princess of Greece, because she was born in the Greek royal family; Princess of Denmark, because she was married to the Danish king, and then the Danish king died and she got married to the Prince of Hanover. Prince Charles is his cousin... And this Vimalkirti, Prince Welf of Hanover, was cleaning toilets - naturally he must have been forced, violently forced, to do such a thing.

And they are all saying that slowly slowly, in four years, he got promoted, he had come to a certain position: he became the guard. This is sheer stupidity, inability to understand anything. Nobody had told him to clean the toilets - he had chosen it. He was tired of being a prince, was fed up with being a prince, and wanted to know life from all dimensions. So he was a cleaner, he was a gardener, he was a group leader, he was a guard. He was doing all kinds of things and he loved all his jobs. He was immensely happy-but they will not see his happiness.

They think that there is some hierarchy in the ashram, that the cleaners are the lowest. The fact is that they are at the top! They are not only cleaners, they are the cleanest people too. When I choose my mediums most of them come from the cleaners because they are really clean!

Now Vinod Khanna is here; he is a famous Indian actor. He has lived luxuriously, and he is immensely happy to get a small room. It must be exactly of the same size as he is - six by four! But he is immensely happy. It is the same room where Vimalkirti had lived, and one should be aware:

Francis House has given two enlightened persons - watch out for Vinod! And from today he is going to start work in Lao Tzu garden - a man who has been earning lakhs of rupees per month, living the most luxurious life possible in India. Now he will be under Mukta's charge - and Mukta is a hard master! Vimalkirti was also under her charge once.

You say that there people are not working with love and are not enjoying their work. How they can?

They are trying to fulfill certain expectations, they are trying to live up to certain standards. That creates seriousness, that creates sadness.

If everybody is allowed to be just as he is, accepted, respected, loved unconditionally, then whatsoever he wants to do... And all kinds of works are needed: the gardeners are needed, the cleaners are needed, the managers are needed, the trustees are needed, the guards are needed - all kinds of people are needed.

In a commune there is no hierarchy. Everybody is fulfilling his work with joy; it is because of joy that he has chosen to be in that particular work. Nobody is forcing, nobody is expecting. If he does not feel good he can change his work; there is no problem about it, he will not be condemned for it. But this is possible only when individuality is given the highest value.

In this so-called Free University of Amsterdam in Holland it cannot be possible; the very foundation is wrong - a religious position. In fact, any position to start with is going to be wrong.

Here we are not starting with any position - there is no religious position here. It is just a caravan of drunkards, gamblers - far more closer to a pub than to a temple! Just when I was answering Poonam's question I had remembered that "This is not right, what I am saying. Four pillars of my temple? This is not right! Four pillars of my pub!" But that would have been too much for the Buddhafield in Britain, so I thought, "Let it be four pillars of the temple!" Because British Buddhas are going to be British Buddhas! I don't have any expectations from them - they are going to be British Buddhas. It is going to be a totally different kind of Buddhahood!

Only one British Buddha we have got here:

Proper Sagar. The day he becomes enlightened, whole Britain is enlightened! But he is coming closer, he is rising higher and higher. Now he is working in the same position as Vimalkirti - he is my guard. His duty is now to open the door of my Rolls Royce. Now he is constantly thinking of one thing, but has not been able to decide whether it is proper or not - that's why he is called Proper Sagar. There are many Sagars here, but he is the only Proper Sagar!

I had given him one hat long before, a beautiful hat. You must have seen it on the head of the Emperor Haile Selassie - Haile Selassie hat. So now he is wondering and enquiring: can he wear it while he opens the door of my car? I have told Vivek that "Keep the camera ready. Whenever he wears that hat, that photograph has to be taken, because sooner or later he will become enlightened - then we will need these photographs!"

Premraj, when you go the Free University of Amsterdam, tell them the first thing: it is not a free university. It cannot be free if it goes on insisting, expecting that people should live in the spirit of Christ. Is it so easy to live in the spirit of Christ?

Christ is not a name of a person, it is a name of the ultimate state of consciousness. It is exactly what we call in the East Buddhahood, awakenedness. Jesus is one thing, Christ-consciousness is a totally different phenomenon. It happened to Jesus. You can never be a Jesus, but you can be a Christ. But if you are a Christian then it is impossible to be a Christ. To Christians it is impossible, because once you accept that you are a Christian you start living with the idea that you cannot be the Christ - he is the only begotten son of God. Only begotten son of God...! What happened to God after that? Sterilization? - and what he was doing before that? Just sitting and sitting and thinking whether to produce a child or not - for infinity? Mighty slow thinker! And then finally he gave birth to this Jesus Christ, and the name of the woman is not known, because the Christian trinity has no woman in it. Perhaps holy ghost functions both the ways - maybe holy ghost is bisexual! Ghosts are known to do strange things! Otherwise, "Father, Son and the Holy Ghost..." and where is the mother? The whole story seems to be very concocted. The trinity has no woman, and then Jesus is born to a woman and the woman has no father. Strange type of game!

Once you accept yourself as a Christian you have debarred yourself from being a Christ. You have become a follower, and the follower is only an imitator. He is bound to remain plastic. Yes, you can be a Christ, but for that the first thing to drop is being a Christian - or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. You have to be a seeker of truth, and you cannot seek truth if you have already got certain prejudices; if you have already accumulated belief you cannot seek and search truth.

Truth is available only to the agnostic, one who says, "I don't know anything, but I am ready to know.

I am ready to go through all the processes of knowing, but I will not believe unless I see." Seeing should be the only cause of believing; no other way belief should enter in you. Then you can be a Christ, but then you are also a Buddha and you are also a Lao Tzu and you are also a jina - because these are different names, different languages, indicating towards the same ultimate consciousness.

Premraj, tell those people that it is not a free university. You have to get rid of Christianity if you want it to be really free; you have to drop all positions. A true seeker cannot start from any position; he has to start from the scratch, not from a position. He has to start utterly empty, just like a zero, a tabula rasa.

And that's what I call meditation. Meditation makes you utterly empty of all thoughts, prejudices, concepts, beliefs, and then there is a possibility to know the truth. Knowing the truth makes you a Christ, a Buddha, and then naturally whatsoever you do will be done in that spirit, never before it.