The Journey is the Goal Itself

The first question:

Question 1:

Prabhu Maya, being mature does not mean adopting a mature attitude. In fact, adopting a mature attitude will be one of the greatest barriers to becoming mature.

Adoption means something imposed. Adoption means something cultivated, practiced. It is not arising out of you. It is a mask, a painted face; it is not your real being. That's what everybody has been doing. That's why on the earth people only appear to be mature - they are not, they are utterly immature - deep down, the adopted attitudes. They remain childish. Their maturity is only skin- deep, or not even that much. Scratch any man a little bit and you will find a childishness arising out of him. And not only the so-called ordinary people - scratch your saints and you will find immaturity arising. Or, scratch your politicians and your leaders, go and just watch any parliament of the world, and you will never see any other gathering of so many immature and childish people together.

Man has been deceiving himself and others. If you adopt, you will be false, pseudo. I have not been telling you to adopt anything. Be! Adoption is a barrier to being. And the only way to be is to start from the very beginning. Because your parents have not allowed you in your childhood, so you are stuck somewhere. The mental age of the so-called normal people is not more than between ten and thirteen years - not even fourteen! And you may be seventy or eighty, but your mental age remains stuck somewhere before you became sexually mature. The moment a person becomes sexually mature, at thirteen or fourteen, he is sealed forever. Then he goes on becoming false, and more false. One falsity has to be protected by other falsities, one lie has to be defended by other lies. And then there is no end to it. You become just a heap of rubbish; that's what personality is. Personality has to be dropped, only then does individuality arise. They don't mean the same thing. Personality is just a showcase thing; it is exhibition, it is not reality.

Individuality is your reality, it is not a show-thing. One can dig as deeply as one wants into you and he will find the same taste. Buddha is reported to have said, "You taste me from anywhere and you will find the same taste, just as you taste the ocean from ANYWHERE and you will find it salty."

Individuality is one whole. It is organic. Personality is schizophrenic: the center is something and the circumference is something else, and they never meet, and they are not together. Not only do they never meet, not only are they different, they are diametrically opposed to each other, they are in constant fight.

So the first thing to understand: never adopt a mature attitude. Either BE mature or BE immature.

If you are immature then be immature. By being immature you will be allowing growth. Then let the immaturity be there; don't be false, don't be insincere about it. If you are childish, so you are childish. So what? Be childish. Accept it, go with it. Don't create a division in your being, otherwise you are creating the fundamental madness. You just be yourself.

Nothing is wrong with being childish. Because you have been taught that something is wrong in being childish you have started adopting attitudes. From your very childhood you have been trying to be mature, and how can a child be mature? A child is a child; he has to be childish.

But it is not allowed, so small children become diplomats - they start pretending, they start behaving in false ways, they become lies from their very beginnings. And the lie also goes on growing. And then one day you start searching for truth; then you have to go into the scriptures, and scriptures contain no truth at all. The truth is contained in your being, that is the real scripture. The Veda, the Koran, the Bible - they are in your consciousness! You are carrying all that is needed by you, it is a gift from God. Everybody is born with truth in his being; life IS truth. But you started learning lies.

Being with me, drop all lies. Be courageous. And of course you will feel a great fear arising in you, because whenever you drop the personality, your childishness, which has never been allowed, will surface. And you will feel afraid: "What! Am I going to be childish, at this point? When everybody knows that I am a great professor - or a doctor or an engineer - and I have a Ph.D. degree, and I am going to be childish?" The fear arises - the fear of public opinion, of what people will think.

That same fear has destroyed you from the very beginning. The same fear has been the poison:

"What will my mother think? What will my father think? What will people think, the teachers and the society?" And the small child starts becoming cunning - he will not show his heart, he knows that will not be accepted by others. So he will create a face, a camouflage. He will show that which people WANT to see. This is diplomacy, this is being political. This is poison!

Everybody is political. You smile because it pays to smile, you cry because it is expected of you to cry. You say a certain thing because that makes things easy. You say to your wife "I love you"

because that keeps her quiet. You say to your husband, "I will die without you, you are the only person in my world, you are my life" - because he expects you to say it, not because you are feeling it. If you are feeling it, then it has beauty, then it is a real rose. If you are simply pretending, massaging his male ego, buttressing him because you have some ends to fulfill through him, then it is an artificial flower, a plastic flower.

And you are burdened with so much plastic: that is the problem. The world is not the problem.

The so-called religious people go on saying, "Renounce the world." I say to you that the world is not the problem at all. Renounce the falsity - that is the problem; renounce the artificial - that is the problem. There is no need to renounce your family, but renounce all that pseudo-family that you have created there. Be true, authentic. Sometimes it will be very painful to be true and to be authentic. It is not cheap. To be untrue and inauthentic is cheap, convenient, comfortable. It is a trick, a strategy to protect yourself; it is an armor. But then you will miss the truth that you have been carrying in your soul. Then you will never know what God is, because God can only be known within you: first within, then without; first in, then out - because that is the closest thing to you, your own being. If you miss God there how can you see God in Krishna, Christ, Buddha? All nonsense.

You cannot see God in Krishna if you cannot see God in yourself. And how can you see a God in yourself if you are continuously creating lies around you? The lies are so much that you have almost forgotten the way to your being. You are lost in the jungle of lies.

So the first thing to remember....

You ask, "ONE DAY YOU EMPHASIZE BEING MATURE, ANOTHER DAY YOU SAY 'BE LIKE A CHILD'."

There is no contradiction in it. Just by being like a child you will become mature; that is the beginning of maturity. You were not allowed by your parents and by your society.

Sannyas is just an effort to undo the wrong that has been done to you by the society, to erase, to annihilate all that has been created around you by your society. Sannyas is a revolution. It is rebellion, rebellion against the so-called pseudo-life. It is risky, it is dangerous, because you will start falling apart from the pseudo-people around you. You will become a misfit. You will have troubles. Lies are very convenient.

Frederick Nietzsche has said that man cannot live without lies; and for about ninety-nine percent of people he is right. Why cannot man live without lies? - because lies function as buffers, shock absorbers. Lies function like a lubrication; you don't go on colliding with people. You smile and the other smiles - this is lubrication. You may be feeling angry inside, you may be full of rage, but you go on saying to your wife "I love you". To express the rage is to get into trouble.

But remember, unless you can express your rage you will never know how to express your love. A man who cannot be angry cannot be loving either, because he has to repress his anger SO much that he becomes incapable of expressing anything else - because all things are joined together inside your being, they are not separate. There are no watertight compartments between anger and love; they are all together, mixed with each other. It is the same energy. If you repress anger you will have to repress love too. If you express love, you will be surprised - anger is arising with it.

Either suppress all or all will have to be expressed. You have to understand this arithmetic of your inner organic unity. Either be expressive or be repressive. The choice is not that you can repress anger and express love; then your love will be false because it won't have any heat, it won't have the quality of warmth. It will just be a mannerism, a MILD phenomenon, and you will always be afraid in moving deeper into it.

People only pretend to love because they are expected to love. They love their children, they love their wife or husband, their spouses, their friends, because they are expected to do certain things.

They fulfill these things as if they are duties. There is no celebration in them. You come home and you pat your child's head just because that is expected, just because that is the thing to do, but there is no joy in it - it is cold, it is dead. And the child will never be able to forgive you, because a cold pat on the head is ugly. And the child feels embarrassed, you feel embarrassed.

You make love to your woman but you never go far into it. It can take you really far out, it can take you to the ultimate bliss, you can dissolve into it. But if you have never allowed your anger and you have never been dissolved in your anger, how can you allow love to dissolve you? And it has happened many times - you will be surprised - that a lover has killed the woman because he allowed his love and then suddenly the anger came. It is a well known fact that many times a lover has simply killed the woman, suffocated her. And he was not a murderer; the society is responsible. He simply dared too much and went too deeply into love. When you go too deep you become wild, because your civilization is on the surface. Then anger arises, then all that is hidden inside you arises, and then you are almost mad.

To avoid that madness you make love in a very superficial way. It is never a tremendous phenomenon. Yes, people are right when they say that it is just like a sneeze: it relaxes tensions, it relieves you of a certain energy that was getting heavy on you. But this is not the real picture of love. Love has to be ecstasy - not like a sneeze, not just a release but a realization, a liberation.

Unless you know love as a liberation, as ecstasy, as SAMADHI, YOU have not known love. But that is possible only if you are not pseudo, if you have been authentic in everything - if you have allowed anger, if you have allowed laughter, if you have allowed tears, if you have allowed all; you have never been a preventive force, you have never been holding anything, you have never been controlling; if you have lived a life of uncontrol. And remember, by uncontrol I do not mean a life of licentiousness.

The life of uncontrol can be of great discipline, but the discipline is not imposed from the outside. It is not an adopted attitude. The discipline comes from your own inner experiences. It comes from the encounter with all the possibilities of your being. It comes by experiencing all the aspects, it comes by exploring all the dimensions. It comes out of understanding. You have been in anger and you have understood something in it: that understanding brings discipline. It is not control. Control is ugly, discipline is beautiful.

The word 'discipline' basically means capacity to learn, hence the word 'disciple'. It does not mean control; it means to be capable of learning, to be open to learn. A disciplined man is one who goes on learning through life experiences, who goes into everything, unafraid, who risks, who explores and adventures, who is always ready to go into the dark night of the unknown, who does not cling to the known and who is always ready to commit mistakes, who is always ready to fall in a ditch and who is always ready to be laughed at by others. Only people who are courageous enough to be called fools are able to live and love and know and be.

Maturity comes through more and more, deeper and deeper experiences of life, not by avoiding life.

By avoiding life you remain childish.

One thing more: when I say be like a child I don't mean be childish. A child has to be childish, otherwise he will miss that great experience of childhood. But whether you are young or old, childishness simply shows that you have not been growing. But to be like a child is a totally different phenomenon.What does it mean?

Jesus says again and again, "Unless you are like a child you will not enter into my kingdom of God."

And so I say to you: You will not enter into my kingdom of God if you are not like a child. What does he mean by 'like a child'? He means many things. One, the child is always total. Whatsoever the child is doing, he becomes absorbed in it, he is never partial. If he is collecting sea-shells on the beach, then ALL else simply disappears from his consciousness, then all that concerns him are the seashells and the beach. He is absorbed in it, utterly lost in it. That quality of being total is one of the fundamentals of being like a child. That is concentration, that is intensity, that is wholeness.

And the second thing: a child is innocent. He functions from a state of not-knowing. He never functions out of knowledge because he has none.

You always function out of knowledge. Knowledge means the past, knowledge means the old and the told, knowledge means that which you have gathered; and every new situation is NEW, no knowledge is applicable to it. I'm not talking about engineering or technology: there the past is applicable because a machine is a machine. But when you are behaving in a human atmosphere, when you are communicating with alive beings, no situation is a repetition of any other. Each situation is unique. If you want to function rightly in it you will have to function through a state of ignorance, like a child. Don't bring your knowledge into it, forget all knowledge. Respond to the new as new, don't respond to the new from the old. If you respond from the old you will miss: there will be no bridge between you and what is happening around you. You will always be late, you will always go on missing the train.

Anand Maitreya goes on dreaming again and again of a train, and he always misses it. He's rushing and running and reaches the station, and by the time he reaches, the train has left. And this is not only Maitreya's dream, this is the dream of millions of people. This is one of the commonest dreams.

Why does this dream come again and again to millions of people on the earth? They ARE missing life. They are always late. There is always a gap. They try, but the bridge is never made. They cannot commune, they cannot get into anything, something hinders. What is it? It is knowledge that hinders.

I teach you ignorance.

And when I say be like a child I mean always remain learning, never become knowledgeable. Go on learning; learning is totally different. Knowledge is a dead phenomenon, learning is an alive process.

And the learner has to remember this: he cannot function from the standpoint of knowledge.

Have you not watched and observed it? - little children learn so fast. If a child lives in a multi-lingual atmosphere he learns all the languages. He learns the language that the mother speaks, the father speaks, the neighbors speak - he may Learn three, four, five languages very easily, with no problem.

Once you have learned a language then it becomes very difficult to learn another language because now you be childish. A child has to be childish, otherwise he will miss that great experience of childhood. But whether you are young or old, childishness simply shows that you have not been growing. But to be like a child is a totally different phenomenon.What does it mean?

Jesus says again and again, "Unless you are like a child you will not enter into my kingdom of God."

And so I say to you: You will not enter into my kingdom of God if you are not like a child. What does he mean by 'like a child'? He means many things. One, the child is always total. Whatsoever the child is doing, he becomes absorbed in it, he is never partial. If he is collecting seashells on the beach, then ALL else simply disappears from his consciousness, then all that concerns him are the seashells and the beach. He is absorbed in it, utterly lost in it. That quality of being total is one of the fundamentals of being like a child. That is concentration, that is intensity, that is wholeness.

And the second thing: a child is innocent. He functions from a state of not-knowing. He never functions out of knowledge because he has none.

You always function out of knowledge. Knowledge means the past, knowledge means the old and the told, knowledge means that which you have gathered; and every new situation is NEW, no knowledge is applicable to it. I'm not talking about engineering or technology: there the past is applicable because a machine is a machine. But when you are behaving in a human atmosphere, when you are communicating with alive beings, no situation is a repetition of any other. Each situation is unique. If you want to function rightly in it you will have to function through a state of ignorance, like a child. Don't bring your knowledge into it, forget all knowledge. Respond to the new as new, don't respond to the new from the old. If you respond from the old you will miss: there will be no bridge between you and what is happening around you. You will always be late, you will always go on missing the train.

Anand Maitreya goes on dreaming again and again of a train, and he always misses it. He's rushing and running and reaches the station, and by the time he reaches, the train has left. And this is not only Maitreya's dream, this is the dream of millions of people. This is one of the commonest dreams.

Why does this dream come again and again to millions of people on the earth? They ARE missing life. They are always late. There is always a gap. They try, but the bridge is never made. They cannot commune, they cannot get into anything, something hinders. What is it? It is knowledge that hinders.

I teach you ignorance.

And when I say be like a child I mean always remain learning, never become knowledgeable. Go on learning; learning is totally different. Knowledge is a dead phenomenon, learning is an alive process.

And the learner has to remember this: he cannot function from the standpoint of knowledge.

Have you not watched and observed it? - little children learn so fast. If a child lives in a multi-lingual atmosphere he learns all the languages. He learns the language that the mother speaks, the father speaks, the neighbors speak - he may Learn three, four, five languages very easily, with no problem.

Once you have learned a language then it becomes very difficult to learn another language because now you start functioning from the standpoint of knowledgeability. It is said you cannot teach the old dog new tricks. It is true. But what makes a dog old? - not physical age, because a Socrates goes on learning to the very end, even while he is dying. A buddha goes on learning to the very end.

What makes a dog old? - knowledge makes a dog old.

Buddha remains young, Krishna remains young. We have not a single statue of Buddha which depicts him as old, or of Krishna which depicts him as old. Not that they never became old!

Krishna lived up to the age of eighty, became very old, but something in him remained always young, childlike. He continued to function from the state of not-knowing.

So first, when I say be like a child I mean be total.

And the second thing is remain a learner, function from the state of not-knowing. That's what innocence is: to function from not-knowing is innocence.

And the third thing, and the last: a child has a natural quality of trust, otherwise he cannot survive.

When the child is born he trusts the mother, trusts the milk, trusts that the milk will be nourishing him, trusts that everything is okay. His trust is absolute, there is no doubt about anything. He's not afraid of anything. His trust is so much that the mother is afraid because the child can go and start playing with a snake. His trust is so much that a child can go and poke his hand into the fire. His trust is so much; he knows no fear, he knows no doubting: that is the third quality.

If you can know what trust is, if you can learn again the ways of trust, then only will you know what God is, then only will you come to realize what truth is. This has to be understood.

Science depends on doubt. That's why the whole of education has become the education of doubt.

Science DEPENDS on doubt, it cannot grow without doubt. Religion depends on trust, it cannot happen without trust. These are diametrically opposite directions.

Remember, if you bring trust into a scientific work you will miss the whole point. You will not be able to get ANYTHING, YOU will not be able to discover anything. Doubt is the methodology there. You have to doubt and doubt and doubt; you have to go on doubting until you stumble upon something which cannot be doubted, which is indubitable. Then only, in helplessness, you have to accept it, but still with a grain of doubt that tomorrow new facts may be arising and the whole thing will have to be dropped. So only for the time being.... Science never comes to any ultimate truth but only tentative truth, approximate truth. Only for the time being is it accepted as truth because who knows? - tomorrow researchers will find new facts, new data. So science comes only to hypotheses, tentative, arbitrary. What Newton had discovered has been thrown down the drain by Albert Einstein, and what he has discovered will be thrown by somebody else. In science, doubt is the methodology.

Trust is not needed. You have to trust only when there is NO possibility to doubt, and that too, only tentatively, for the time being, in a kind of helplessness. What can you do? - because no doubt is possible. You have looked from all sides and all doubts are dissolved and a kind of certainty has arisen.

Religion is a diametrically opposite dimension. Just as in science doubt is the method, in religion trust is the method.

What does trust mean? It means that we are not separate from existence, that we are part of it, that this is our home, that we belong to it, that it belongs to us, that we are not homeless, that the universe is a mothering universe! We can be children with the universe just as the child trusts that whenever the need arises the mother will come and take care - when he is hungry she will come and feed him, when he feels cold the mother will come and hug him and give warmth, love, care.

The child trusts. All that he needs to do is whenever he is in some need he has to scream, cry so that the mother's attention is attracted towards him, that's all.

Religion says this universe is our mother or our father, hence these expressions. Jesus called God 'abba', which is far better than father. 'Father' is a formal word, 'abba' is informal. If you have to translate 'abba' rightly, it will be closer to daddy than to father. But to call God daddy looks a little absurd; the church won't allow. The church will say this is not right. But Jesus used to call him 'abba', which is daddy.

In fact, a prayer has to be informal Father looks so far away. It is no wonder that by calling God 'the Father' we have put Him far away, distant somewhere, in heaven. Daddy feels closer - you can touch Him, He is almost tangible, you can talk to Him.With a God-Father sitting somewhere high in the heavens, you can go on shouting and still you cannot trust whether you will be able to reach Him.

Religion is a childlike approach towards existence: the world becomes a mother or a father. You are not against nature, you are not fighting with nature. There is no fight, there is great cooperation. The fight seems to be stupid and absurd.

Doubt does not work in religious experience, just as trust does not work in scientific exploration.

Science means exploring the without and religion means exploring the within. Science is the religion' of things, religion is the science of being. Just as you cannot see a flower through the ear; howsoever sensitive an ear you have, howsoever musical an ear you have, you cannot see a flower through the ear. The ear can only catch sounds; it has its limitations. If you want to see the color, the light, the form, you will have to look through the eyes. The eyes are so beautiful but they have their limitations - you cannot hear music through the eyes. Even the greatest music - Beethoven or Mozart - even the greatest music will not be able to penetrate the eyes. The eyes are deaf, you will have to hear through the ears.

Doubt is the door to things. Trust is the door to being. Only through trust is God known.

And remember, you can commit the fallacy in two ways. The so-called religious people have been fighting science, the church has been fighting science. That was a foolish fight because the church wanted that science should depend on trust. And now science is taking revenge: now science wants that religion should also depend on doubt, on skepticism, on logic.

Man is so foolish that he goes on repeating the same mistakes again and again. The church in the Middle Ages was stupid, now people who think they are scientists are doing the same stupidity again.

The man of understanding will say that doubt has its own world. You can use doubt as a method, but it has its limitations. And so has trust its own world, but it also has its limitations. There is no need to use trust to know about things, there is no need to doubt about the inner; then you are creating a mess. If trust were used for scientific exploration, science would not have been born at all. That's why in the East science has remained very primitive.

I have come across Indian scientists: even a scientist in India who may have all the education that is possible in the West, who may have won awards, or maybe even if he is a Nobel laureate, remains somewhere, deep down, unscientific, superstitious. He goes on trying in some ways - known or unknown to him, aware or unawares - to impose trust on the outside world. And the very very religious person from the West remains somewhere, deep down, doubtful. The West has explored the possibilities of doubt, and the East has explored the possibilities of trust. Both are different dimensions, they don't meet anywhere; the inner and the outer don't meet anywhere. You have to use both.

And I call that man a man of understanding who can use both: when working in a scientific lab he uses doubt, skepticism, logic; when praying in his temple, meditating, he uses trust. And he is free - he is neither bound by trust nor bound by doubt.

This is my approach for my sannyasins. Don't be bound by your ears or by your eyes, otherwise you will remain poor. You have got both! - so when you want to see use eyes, and when you want to listen close your eyes. It is not accidental that when listening to music people close their eyes. If you know how to listen to music you WILL close your eyes, because eyes are no longer needed.

So is it with doubt and trust. Trust is the quality of the child, these three qualities; the quality of being total, the quality of remaining ignorant in spite of knowledge, and the quality of trust. This is the meaning.

Childishness is a kind of sentimental emotional state. That is not needed for you. Every child has to be allowed to be childish, as every adult has to be allowed to be adultish, but an adult can also have the qualities of being a child. Childishness is not needed, that tantrum quality is not needed, that sentimentality is not needed. But maturity can cope perfectly well with the qualities of being like a child. There is no contradiction between them. In fact, you can become mature only if you ARE like a child.

"ONE DAY YOU EMPHASIZE BEING MATURE, ANOTHER DAY YOU SAY 'BE LIKE A CHILD.'

IF I ADOPT A MATURE ATTITUDE, I FEEL MY CHILD IS REPRESSED AND STARVED FOR EXPRESSION. IF I LET MY CHILD DANCE, SING, THEN ALSO CHILDISH ATTITUDES COME UP, LIKE CLINGING TO A LOVE-OBJECT. WHAT TO DO?"

You allow it. Your childishness has remained unfulfilled. Let it come and let it be fulfilled - the sooner the better - otherwise it will go on clinging to you to your very end. Allow it expression and it will be gone. You simply pour it; and this is the place where you can do it easily and nobody will interfere with you.

Just a few days ago there was an old woman sannyasin, Shefali - she must be seventy - and she started feeling like a child, and she was very worried. And when I told her "You need not be worried, you be childish", she started playing with small children. Even the children were a little embarrassed:

"What is the matter?" But soon they accepted. Children are very accepting: soon they forgot her age, and she enjoyed the trip tremendously. She got so much out of it that she came to me and told me, "My whole life has been a wastage!" She became REALLY a child again, full of wonder and awe, singing and dancing and playing, running after butterflies and collecting flowers and colored stones. It was a beautiful experience to see that old woman. Her face was transformed: it suddenly became luminous, a great grace descended on her.

You allow it. Once it is allowed it will have its time and will go, and it will leave you very much fulfilled.

It is better to go into it right now than postpone it - because the more you postpone the more difficult it becomes - and then out of it you will find a childlike quality arising. Childishness will disappear. It will be temporarily there, then it will be gone and your child will be fresh and young. And after that child is attained you will start growing. Then you can become mature. You cannot mature with all the lies that you are carrying around yourself. You can mature only when you become truthful, when you become true.

The second question:

Question 2:

The question is from Alan Rudick.

What do you think? Can you become religious in India, in a country like India?

My own feeling is that if you want to become religious the USA is the best place, because it has succeeded in knowing, in having all that man has desired for centuries, and in that very success it has failed. That very success has become its failure.

It is very apparent that you can have all the money in the world and remain poor inside, that you can have all the gadgets, the latest, and yet remain unfulfilled. That fulfillment has to be sought in some other direction, in some other dimension. It is apparent in America, it is not so apparent in India. It cannot be so apparent in India - not at least in modern India. It was apparent once.

When Buddha lived, India was almost in the same situation as America is today. India was known in the world as a golden bird - it was! It was the richest country in those days. Religion blooms only when a country is affluent, never otherwise. Buddha was the by-product of that affluence, because only in affluence do your hopes disappear. You become hopeless. There is no way outside anymore. You have seen the whole way, to the very end; there is nothing. Eyes start turning inwards automatically. It is not an accident that a poor country starts thinking of communism, not of religion.

In India if you want to be politically powerful you have to go on shouting slogans about socialism, communism, and things like that. You never hear any slogan about religion. Why? In a religious country why don't politicians exploit religion? - they know that nobody wants religion, people are fed-up with religion. People are not religious. Traditionally they appear religious but they are not religious. They are hungry, they are starved, they don't have shelter, they don't have food, they don't have clothes. Their basic needs are not fulfilled; what to say about God?

There is a hierarchy of needs. The physical needs are basic: unless they are fulfilled you will not be able to know of psychological needs. A hungry man will not be interested in Beethoven, or in Shakespeare, or in Leonardo da Vinci. A hungry man is interested in food - and it is natural, nothing is wrong in it. A hungry man is interested in how to feed the body and how to survive.

When the question is of survival who bothers about classical music? But when your hunger is satisfied, your body is warm, you have a house to live in, suddenly you start becoming interested in new things, things in which you had never been interested - in music, in poetry, in art, in philosophy.

These are psychological needs. You start thinking great things. The body is satisfied, the mind says "Now I can also have my needs fulfilled."

When the mind-needs are fulfilled - when you have listened to all kinds of music and you have danced all kinds of dances, and you have gone deep into philosophy, art, poetry, sculpture, architecture, when you have seen all these things and you are satisfied, saturated - the third kind of need arises: that is religion. That is the God-need, the spiritual need. That is the highest need.

If a hungry man is interested in God, his God cannot be the true God. His God will only be a provider of food.

He will say to God, "Give me my daily bread." That is a poor man's God. It is not strange that the Christian prayer has it: Give us our daily bread. Buddha could not have conceived, Krishna could not have conceived such a prayer: Give us our daily bread? Asking for bread? It looks profane. But Jesus himself was poor, belonged to the poor. He was teaching poor people, he had to create a God who is a provider.

It is not accidental that Jesus' followers go on talking about Jesus' miracles.What are those miracles?

First, they are physiological: a blind man is given eyes, an ill person is healed; or miracles like Jesus' turning stones into bread. Just think! These miracles say something. Jesus does not turn stones into sermons, but into bread; Jesus does not turn stones into music, but into bread; and he turns water into wine. Now we don't have any miracles like that around Buddha. There are miracles, but they are totally different - the hierarchy. Buddha's miracles are so different that you will be surprised.

A woman goes to Buddha: her child is dead and she is crying and she is weeping, and she is a widow and she will never have another child, and the only child is dead, and that was all her love and all her attention. She goes crying and weeping to Buddha. If she had gone to Christ then the miracle would have been that Christ would touch and bring the dead back, as he brought Lazarus back. What did Buddha do? Buddha smiled and said to her, "You go into the town and just find a few mustard seeds from a house where nobody has ever died." And the woman rushed into the town, and she went to each house. And wherever she went they said, "We can give you as many mustard seeds as you want, but the condition will not be fulfilled because so many people have died in our house. And woman, don't be mad! Buddha has played a trick on you. You will not find a single house on the whole earth."

But she hoped, "Maybe... who knows? There may be some house that has not known death." And she went around and around the whole day. By the evening a great understanding had dawned on her: "Death is part of life; it happens. It is not something personal, it is not something like a personal calamity that has happened to me."With that understanding she went to Buddha.

He asked, "Where are the mustard seeds?" And she smiled... and she said, "You did it!" She fell at his feet and said, "Initiate me. I would like to know that which never dies. I don't ask for my child back, because even if he is given he will die again. So what is the point? Teach me something so that I can know inside myself that which never dies."

Now this is a totally different story. Jesus' miracle looks more miraculous because the earth was still poor. Can't you see the point? The East is turning Christian and the West is turning Buddhist. The more the West becomes rich the more Buddhist it will be. The new Christians are born in the East - poor tribes, primitive tribes, untouchables, the downtrodden. To them, Jesus has appeal. They would like somebody to turn stones into bread, they are hungry. What have they to do with Buddha?

Buddha seems too aristocratic, talks about great things which make no sense to the poor and the hungry.

In the Second World War a miracle happened: Japan from the East, fought with America. That was the first great encounter between East and West in war. And what happened? Now Los Angeles has moved to Japan and all Buddhist Zen centers have moved to America. This is a miracle! If you want to find Zen you will have to go to America. Don't go to Japan; people will think you are stupid: "Zen?

Have you gone mad?" "You don't belong to this century," they will think. "You are not contemporary."

If you want to find Zen centers, they are flourishing in America. But if you want better car technology, better radios, better watches, go to Japan.

This has been happening all the time, down the ages, through the ages. There is a hierarchy: Japan is interested in better cars, better radios, better television; America is fed-up with the telly!

Just a few days ago, in one university, they purchased a brand new Cadillac and burned it! Very symbolic.... People are fed-up with the cars, people are fed-up with gadgets. People want something higher. Jesus will not be relevant anymore, only Buddha can be relevant. Jesus' miracles will seem very small because science can do those miracles. Buddha's miracle will seem very very great because science cannot do it.

And you ask me, "CAN A MAN BE RELIGIOUS IN THE USA?"

Where else? America is the land where religion has a future. In India, in China, religion has no future. Yes, religion has a past in India, but no future. America? - there is no past for religion, but there is a future. In the East the sun is setting, in the West the sun is rising. Don't be worried about that - about how you can be religious in America. You cannot be religious in India! India only pretends to be religious, and its religion remains a very very low kind of religion. I'm not talking about the past, remember; I'm not talking about the Upanishads and the Gita and the Buddha. In those days, India was America. Now, all that is gone.

And there is a very subtle point to be understood; this is how the wheel of history moves: whenever a country becomes very rich it becomes religious because then the highest need starts asserting, and whenever religion starts flowering the country will become poor, sooner or later. Just think: if hippies go on growing in America, and Zen centers go on growing in America, and my sannyasins go on growing in America, how long can America remain rich? Who will take care of the technology that makes America rich? People will meditate. They will not go to the universities, they will be dropouts. Who will bother about ordinary, mundane things, the worldly things? People will become navel-gazers. They will close their eyes and be quiet and satisfied and happy. They will not be scientists anymore.

This is how the wheel moves. First, a country is poor: it starts rushing towards technology, better science, better ways of living, higher standards of living; then one day, when it attains and comes to a peak, suddenly it falls flat. Suddenly it comes to know that all effort has been in vain: "We have not arrived anywhere, we have been chasing an illusion, we have been after a mirage"; suddenly people start dropping out. That's what sannyas is.

Thousands of people dropped out of their world in Buddha's time and followed Buddha. They had seen the illusoriness of worldly desire. They had arrived and found it lacking. But then the country started becoming poor. Sooner or later the country becomes poor; when people meditate too much the country becomes poor. People think of the other world, this world becomes poor. When the world becomes poor they start turning anti-religious. They become communists, they become ANYTHING else, but not religious. Again the wheel starts moving.

Now Japan has dropped Zen, has dropped religion, has dropped meditation; it is one of the MOST materialistic cultures. Now soon it will become rich; it is becoming rich. Once it has become rich....

And there will be rebellion against richness, and people will start thinking of the beauties of poverty, the beauties of non-possession, the beauties of being free of all attachment. People will start thinking how to become wanderers: 'Why bother to live in a house, caged? Why not have a tent and move, one day on this beach and another day on that beach?Why not enjoy the whole earth?"

This is the circle: poverty, technology, religion, poverty, technology, religion. This is how things move.

In India, if you remain too long, you will become communist.

You ask, "IS IT POSSIBLE TO LIVE RELIGIOUSLY AND CONTINUE ON THE ROAD TO ENLIGHTENMENT" - the best place is America, and to be more particular, California-land - "WHILE LIVING IN A COUNTRY LIKE THE USA AND INVOLVING ONESELF IN A COMPETITIVE BUSINESS?"

To be religious does not mean to renounce. It simply means to see what is the case. If you can see that competition is a game, there is no problem. Don't be serious about it. Seriousness is the problem, competition is not the problem at all! Then it is a game. Enjoy it, but know it is a game.

And whether you succeed or fail does not make much difference; it doesn't matter, it is irrelevant.

All that matters is that you enjoyed the game, that it was fun. The loser and the gainer both enjoyed the game. A kind of sportsmanship is needed, that's all.

When you play cards the real thing is not to win, the real thing is to pass time. The real thing is to enjoy the game, the nuances of the game, the strategies of the game - that is the real thing. One is bound to be defeated, one is bound to succeed: that is not the point at all, that is not the target.

If you can live in the world and play it like a game, if you can live in all kinds of relationships and remember that the world is a GREAT drama - the stage is big and you cannot see where it begins and where it ends, but it is a drama, it is a very dramatic world - if you can remember that it is a drama, then there is no problem. Then you are simply playing a role but it will not create any worry in you, it will not create any strain or tension in you. You will play the game, and by the evening, when you come home, you will forget all about it.

If you are serious then there is trouble. But if you are serious, you can renounce the world, you can renounce competitive games and you can move to the Himalayas - sitting in the cave you will remain serious. Then your meditation will take the flavor of seriousness and it will create strain.

What will be the difference? You are on Wall Street, fighting tooth-and-nail, a cut-throat competition, murderous, and you are seriously in it, and worried day and night about whether you are going to succeed, whether you are going to make it or not! Then you will be sitting in a Himalayan cave, meditating SERIOUSLY, tooth-and-nail. Now you will not have any other throat to cut but your own, but it will remain cut-throat. Now you will be in competition with yourself, with your body, with your mind, and fighting and fighting. You will divide yourself and the fight will start. And now you will be worried about whether you are going to make it or not - "When is this enlightenment going to happen?" - whether it is going to happen or not. And I would like to tell you: this will be more of a worry than being there on Wall Street, because very many people are known to have made it there, and in the Himalayan caves... very rarely, once in a while. You will be in more trouble.

My suggestion is: drop seriousness. Take life as a fun, take life as a play. Enjoy it, it is worth enjoying. It is a beautiful game, it is a great opportunity - to learn, to see, to understand. But don't be serious.

Life is non-purposive. It is not going anywhere, it has no goal. The journey is the goal itself! That's what I want my sannyasins to learn: the journey is the goal itself. Move non-seriously, playfully, and then whatsoever you are doing is meditation. Any act done playfully becomes meditative. Meditation is the quality that arises naturally when you are enjoying, non-seriously. Yes, playing cards can be meditative, gambling can be meditative, business can be meditative. Anything can be turned into meditation. The only thing that needs to be added is a non-serious playfulness. Then it doesn't create any tension in you, no stress is produced. You remain relaxed. Learn how to remain relaxed and Wall Street is as good as any Himalayan cave.

And never be deceived by the so-called Indian spiritual saints who go on trotting around America and saying that "India is the only religious land". Don't be deceived by them; India is not. India is one of the most materialistic lands on the earth right now. Its materialism is repressed, deep down repressed. It has a face of religiousness, but behind that face you will find nothing but materialism.

Don't be deceived by the face.

I'm not saying that there are not a few people who are religious; there are, but there are everywhere.

Religion has nothing to do with the East and the West in fact. Religious people are everywhere.

Just as poetry has nothing to do with East and West - poets are everywhere; painting has nothing to do with East and West - painters are every-where; singing has nothing to do with East and West - singers are everywhere; loving has nothing to do with East and West; so with religiousness - religious people are everywhere. They are very few, that is true; it is very difficult to find them, that too is true, but no country has any monopoly. In India, if you watch deeply, if you observe deeply, you will be surprised.

Meditate on this small anecdote.

A young unsophisticated priest was walking through Times Square when a young lady approached him and asked, "Would you like a blowjob? Ten dollars." The priest did not answer but proceeded on his way.

A few blocks later another damsel sauntered up to the priest and sweetly inquired, "How about a blowjob, Father? Ten bucks." Again the priest said nothing.

When he reached his church the priest encountered a nun and asked her, "Say, sister, what is a blowjob?"

She looked him straight in the eye and said, "Ten dollars!"

You just try to look straight in the Indian eye, and you will find ten dollars! They go on talking against money, but all their talk against money is money-oriented. They go on talking against sex, but that talk is just a symbol of their repressed sexuality. Beware of this phoniness. India is one of the most phony lands in the world today.

And the last question:

Question 3:

Truth is one, but interpretations are many and can be millions. Truth is one, but the people who see truth are different. Their eyes give different angles.

Christ has his own unique personality, as Krishna has. When Christ looks at the truth the truth reflects in his eyes; that becomes Christianity. When Krishna looks at the truth, truth reflects in his eyes, and that becomes Hinduism. Hinduism is not direct truth. Christianity is not direct truth. They have come via unique persons, and the unique person's uniqueness is always reflected in it. When Buddha comes to truth, truth becomes Buddhist, has to become; it takes the color of Buddha. When you will come to see the truth, there will be a meeting of you and the truth. The truth will transform you and you will transform the truth, and the ultimate result will be a cross-breeding between you and truth. Then the Bible will be different from the Upanishads, and Tao Te Ching will be different from Dhammapada. It is the meeting of the individual with the whole, but the individual brings his uniqueness.

When a painter comes into the garden and looks, he sees thousands of colors that you are never aware of. He sees many greens, not one green; different shades of green. He has a trained eye to see color. When you see, you just see trees are green; your eyes are not trained for it. When a poet comes he will sing a song about the trees, the painter will paint a painting of the trees, and the song and the painting will be different. Although they both happen in the same garden, they both happened through the same garden, interpretations are bound to be different.

Truth is one and religiousness is one, but the moment it descends on the earth it takes a form. That form is going to be different. If we understand this then there will be no fight between forms; all those forms will be accepted. In fact the world is richer because there is Christianity and Buddhism and Taoism and Hinduism and Jainism - the world is far richer. Just think of a world which is only Christian! Just think of a world which is only Buddhist! It would be a poor world, it would not have variety. Truth would suffer.

Listen to this anecdote:

At a bar in Paris an American was drinking with three Frenchmen. "Tell me," he asked, "what is SANG-FROID? Oh, I know that if you translate it, it means COLD BLOOD, but I would like to know the connotation of that particular term."

"Well," answered one Frenchman, "let me try to explain. Suppose you have left your home - presumably on a business trip - and you come home unexpectedly. You find your wife in bed with your best friend. You do not get emotional, you do not get unduly upset. You smile at both of them, and you say, 'Pardon the intrusion.' Well, that is what I would call SANG-FROID."

Another of the Frenchmen standing by broke in and said, "Well, I wouldn't exactly call that SANG- FROID. I think SANG FROID is just unusual tact. Suppose in the same situation you wave hello to your friend and your wife who are in bed, and with complete imperturbability you say, 'Pardon the intrusion, sir. Don't mind me. Please continue. 'Well now, that's what I would call SANG-FROID."

"Ah!" broke in the third, "well, maybe. But as for me, I'd go a step further in my definition. If under the same circumstances you said, 'Pardon the intrusion. Please continue!' - and your best friend in bed COULD continue, well that's what I would call SANG-FROID."

Truth is one but interpretations are many. And it is good, and it is a more beautiful and a richer world because of that.