True Life

The first question

Question 1:

Prem Pavitro,

LIFE is basically insecure. That's its intrinsic quality; it cannot be changed. Death is secure, absolutely secure. The moment you choose security, unknowingly you have chosen death. The moment you choose life, unawares you have chosen insecurity. Ais DHAMMO SANANTANO - such IS the law of life, something which is inevitable. Try to understand.

The moment things are secure you will feel bored because there is no possibility of any exploration.

That's why marriages create so much boredom. It is the same love affair which was such an adventure; once it becomes institutionalized as marriage it loses all joy, all dance, all poetry. It becomes very mundane, it becomes very routine - but it is secure.

Love is insecure. One never knows the ways of love. When it happens it happens, when it disappears it disappears. You cannot do anything about it. Marriage is manageable. The law, the society, the public opinion, the morality, the religion, the fear of hell, the greed for heaven - these are all props which keep marriage somehow alive. But it is not TRUE life.

True life is always moving from the known into the unknown. And the crossing point from the known to the unknown is what insecurity is all about. The moment you cross the boundary you feel insecure.

With the secure, with the familiar you are bored; you start becoming dull. With the insecure, with the unknown, the uncharted, you feel ecstatic, beautiful, again a child - again those eyes of wonder, again that heart which can feel the awe of things is there.

You would like to know these beautiful spaces with security, but that is not possible in the very nature of things. Nothing can be done about it. If you want beautiful spaces you have to start loving insecurity. And then a miracle happens: if you can love insecurity, its "insecurityness" disappears. If you know insecurity contains love, beauty, ecstasy, truth, God, then where is the insecurity?

Insecurity exists in your fear of the unknown, of the true, because you have lived in lies for so long - you have lived in lies for centuries. Your collective unconscious is full of lies, and it goes on projecting those lies on the screen of the mind. Everybody has lived in fear because all the religions have exploited the natural instinct of fear in man.

Hence the invention of hell. Hell exists nowhere; it is the invention of the cunning priests, Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist. They may differ in their philosophical systems but they don't differ in the basic exploitation: the exploitation of man's fear and greed. Fear and greed are two aspects of the same coin. And once you have become afraid, once a trembling has become part of your being, you start LOOKING for it. Even if it is not there you will have to invent it, to satisfy your collective unconscious.

David, a young apprentice barber, goes to his boss and says, "Mr. Snippet, I am not going to work here anymore. All your employees are anti-Semites!"

"Anti-Semites? Where did you get a silly idea like that from?"

"I have good proof. I made a test," the young man answered. "I asked everybody the same question.

The conclusion could not be more clear, boss - all anti-Semites!"

"But what was the question?"

"I asked them how they would react if there was a mass extermination of all Jews and all barbers."

"Barbers? Why barbers?" asked the boss.

"See, even you, boss!"

You go on carrying your ideas and you go on projecting them. You will find ways to invent. You cannot remain with a vague fear; you want it to be solid, tangible.

The insecurity is there because you have not been brought up with a right approach towards life, you have not been given any insight into the truth of insecurity. You have been simply made afraid. You have not been trained, disciplined for adventure. You have been told to remain within the boundaries and never to go beyond the boundaries.

A person who lives within the boundaries defined by others... of course they are defined by others because a child cannot define his own boundaries. Parents define boundaries out of their fear - their parents have done the same to them; now they are doing the same to their children. This is how from one generation to another the diseases go on being transferred.

Each child hates the parents but pretends to love them. I can understand why he hates them, because the parents are poisoning him. He feels it in his guts, that they are destroying something tremendously significant. They are destroying his very life! - but they are destroying it for his own sake. He cannot even revolt because he is so helpless.

It was thought in the past that the proletariat is the most exploited class; that was not true. Later on we found it is not the proletariat but the world of women which is the most exploited world. But now we are discovering even that is not true. The MOST exploited class and the most helpless is the class of small children. The child is so dependent on the parents. He HAS to listen to them;; he cannot say no. Inside his being he says no;; in his bones, in his blood, in his marrow he says no.

But on the surface he has to go on saying yes just to survive. So he accepts the boundaries.

And when you have accepted certain boundaries for twenty, twenty-five years, that is one-third of your life and the most important one-third... You will never be so intelligent again, never so vital again, never so vulnerable again, never so innocent again, never so unconditioned again. These twenty-five years, the first third of life, are managed by people who are afraid, trembling, who are slaves. I am not saying they are doing harm to their children knowingly, intentionally. They are good people; their intentions are good, but their understanding is poor, almost non-existent. Otherwise every parent would help the child to go beyond the known.

That is the true function of a parent, the true function of a Master: to help you to go beyond the known, to make you a lover of the unknown, to help you to risk for the unknown, to make you a gambler rather than a businessman, to help you to be more poetic rather than more calculative.

Then there will be no problem. The loving space and the insecurity of it - both will be rejoiced by you.

The second question

Question 2:

Mel,

THE FIRST thing that I would like to say to you is: I am not at all concerned whether Dionysius ever existed or not! It does not matter. What matters is those beautiful sutras; whosoever has written them was an enlightened person. It certainly cannot be the Dionysius of Greek mythology, because mythological gods are not known to write letters and sutras. In fact, they don't exist at all! And he is not a combination of the mythological Dionysius and the bishop. And I had told you in the first lecture that he is the first Bishop of Athens.

But it seems you love to be confused. It happens to people who are very much interested in rubbish knowledge.

You say: I AM CONFUSED...

That is absolutely true. But I am not confused, I am absolutely clear. My interest is not history, my interest is not the world of facts, my interest is the revelation of truth. Whosoever this man was, he was a Buddha. The proof is intrinsic, it is in his words. Those words cannot be spoken by anybody other than one who has arrived.

This is the Eastern approach. The West thinks too much of history. History means time consciousness: whether this man existed or not, then when, then who his father and mother were, on what date he was born and when he died, and where the proofs are for all this.

You will be surprised to know that the East has never taken any interest in history, for the simple reason that history means time. Time means mind. When the mind stops, time stops. You may have sometimes felt it. When there is no thought in your mind, is there any time left? The procession of thoughts creates time.

This is the most fundamental insight of Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity: that time is a flexible phenomenon, it depends on your moods. If you are happy time goes by fast, if you ate miserable time slows down. If you are sitting by the side of a dying man the night seems to be almost unending - it seems as if the morning is not going to happen at all. And if you are sitting by the side of a woman or a man you love, then it seems time has got wings; it is flying. Hours pass like minutes, days pass like hours, months pass like days.

As far as the clock is concerned it makes no difference whether you are joyous, sad, happy or miserable. The clock moves unconcerned with you. So there ate two things to be remembered:

clock time is one thing, totally separate from psychological time; psychological time is within you.

Einstein was not a meditator, otherwise his Theory of Relativity would have reached a higher peak.

He only says: When you are joyous time goes fast, when you are miserable time slows down. A great insight, but had he been a meditator the world would have been immensely enriched because then he would have said one thing more: If you are absolutely without mind, just pure consciousness, time stops completely, disappears, leaving no trace behind.

Bertrand Russell has written a book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, and he has said many things, significant things. He has argued well against Christianity. One of his arguments is that Christians say that for your sins you will have to suffer in hell for eternity. Now this is absurd! How many sins can you commit in a single life? And Christians believe only in a single life, a seventy-year life. How many sins can you commit? Can you commit so many sins that it can make it look justified, the eternal punishment? Forever and forever you will be in hell? There must be a limit because your sins cannot be unlimited.

Russell says, "I have counted all my sins. If I confess to one of the most hard-hearted magistrates, he cannot give me more than four and a half years' imprisonment. If he also includes my thoughts about committing sins which I have not committed, just thought about, if my dreams and thoughts are also included as if they were acts, then at the most the sentence can be doubled - nine years.

But more than that is absolutely absurd."

And I agree with him, but still I will say he has missed the point, totally missed the point. Logically he is right, but hc has missed the point of Jesus' insight. When Jesus says hell is eternal he is really saying what Albert Einstein said twenty centuries later: that hell is so painful, it is such a misery, that it appears AS IF it is eternal. It is not eternal, but it appears eternal.

And to balance it you will have to look into Hindu mythology: heaven is momentary. Then you will be able to understand the whole point; then both sides of it are available to you. Hell seems to be eternal and heaven seems to be momentary. All your pleasure seems to be momentary. All the so-called mahatmas and saints go on saying this, that your pleasures are momentary. But pleasures are bound to be momentary; there is nothing wrong in it. If it is a pleasure it is bound to be momentary. But they go on thinking that there must be a pleasure which is eternal. That is impossible: no pleasure can be eternal and no pain can be momentary. When pain is there it appears eternal, and when pleasure is there it appears momentary.

Hence in the East we have a third term which is neither "pain" nor "pleasure": it is "bliss." Bliss is timeless; it is neither momentary nor eternal. It simply has no relevance to time. Time means history.

Now, Mel, what are you going to gain even if you come to know who this man Dionysius is? Will it in any way help your understanding of his statements? Will it help you to become awakened, to become a meditator? No, you will be lost in a jungle of words; you will not be able to come out of the jungle. Scholarship is such a jungle - in fact the only jungle that has remained in the world; all other jungles have disappeared. But once you enter into it there is no end to it.

Now, you are not only concerned with Dionysius, you are also concerned with St. Timothy. And who told you that he was a saint? I had just told you that Timothy was a disciple of Dionysius and Dionysius was writing letters to him. These are his letters. Now you have imagined, you have invented that he is a saint. If he was a saint there would have been no need to write letters to him; it would have been absolutely futile. What is the point of saying the same things that he already knows?

I have heard:

One American and one Englishman were walking in a forest. One hour passed. The American was feeling very uneasy because the Englishman was completely silent.

Finally the Englishman said, "Spring in the air!"

And the American said, "Why should I?"

Now there is a possibility of some talk, some dialogue. But between two saints there is no possibility of any communication. Of course, there is a possibility of communion, but communion happens in silence, not through words.

I have not said that Timothy was a saint. He may have become one finally, but he was not. He was just a disciple and I don't know anything more about him.

In fact, these are irrelevant things that you have asked; it is not inquiry. You are full of borrowed knowledge. Behind you are so many people like Robert Graves and others. Now they have filled your mind with esoteric bullshit: that written backwards it becomes JEHOVAH... If you want bullshit I can create it! For example, Dionysius is known by his short name, Dennis, and Timothy must be known by his short name, Tim. And Timbuktu is made from Timothy's name - St. Timothy. Timothy becomes Tim, Tim becomes Timbuktu. And then you go on... Then you can find your own ways - what to do and what not to do. Esoteric nonsense is so easy.

And remember perfectly well that Buddha does not believe in any PARAMATMAN; it must be the invention of Robert Graves. Buddha believes in no God. Buddha is the most godly person and yet the most godless. He is one of the most beautiful phenomena that has happened on the earth:

godless and godly together.

But you are living out of borrowed things, and this happens. When you live out of borrowed things you are bound to be confused.

An old man lived with his old woman in a very cold little town in the interior of Brazil. It was a freezing cold morning and the old man came out of his house dressed only in the top of his pajamas.

When his neighbor saw him he could not help asking, "Eh, Jose, what are you doing naked outside?"

"Well, yesterday I came out without my scarf and when I returned home my neck was stiff from the cold."

"And what has that got to do with now?" inquired the neighbor.

"I don't know, Pablo. It was my wife's idea!"

Avoid others' ideas, otherwise you will look silly and you will behave silly! And don't be concerned with non-essentials.

A young boy and his Jewish grandmother were walking along the shore when a huge wave appeared out of nowhere, sweeping the child out to sea. The horrified woman fell to her knees, raised her eyes to the heavens and begged the Lord to return her beloved grandson. And lo! another wave reared up and deposited the stunned child on the sand before her.

The grandmother looked the boy over carefully; he was fine. But then she glared angrily up towards the heavens. "When we came," she snapped indignantly, "he had a hat!"

Avoid non-essentials. If you have Rot the child, why be worried about the cap? If the cap is lost, nothing is lost.

All your questions are simply stupid. Don't misunderstand me - when I say stupid I MEAN stupid!

The third question

Question 3:

V.D. Sangvai,

THREE words will have to be understood. One is "religion," or "spirituality," the second is "morality"

and the third is "legality." Religiousness or spirituality has no moral ideas; it is beyond moral and immoral, it is beyond right and wrong. It has no conscience; it lives out of pure consciousness.

There is a tremendous awareness, and one acts out of that awareness. Whenever some action arises out of awareness it is inevitably good.

But man lives in unawareness. Man's whole life is full of unawareness; he is almost like a robot. He sees and yet he sees not, he hears and yet he hears not. He is, but only in a literal sense, not really, not like a Buddha or a Christ or a Zarathustra or like Dionysius, Pythagoras, Heraclitus. No, he does not exist with that intensity, with that awareness.

Hence morality becomes almost a necessity; it is a substitute. When you can't get the real thing then it is better to have something unreal than not having anything at all, because man needs a certain code of behavior. If it flows out of awareness then there is no problem.

In England the rain was falling non-stop for days and the Thames was overflowing its banks.

The butler of an English lord comes into the library where Milord is enjoying his drink and reading his newspaper in front of the fireplace.

"Milord," he announces, "the Thames is flooding the street! "

Milord very calmly answers, "Thank you, Jeeves!"

After a few minutes the butler comes in again and announces, "Sir, the Thames has reached to the front door! "

"Very well, thank you, Jeeves," replies Milord without raising his eyes from the newspaper.

After half an hour Jeeves knocks at the door, opens it and standing aside announces: "Milord, the Thames!"

This is the way people are - just living in a thick cloud of unconsciousness. Their life is not that of light but of darkness, and out of this darkness, confusion, smoke, what can you expect? They are bound to do something foolish, something wrong.

Unless everyone becomes a Buddha there will remain a need for some kind of morality. Morality is not something great; it is a poor substitute for religion. If you can be religious then there is no need for morality.

My emphasis here is on religion, not on morality, because I have seen the utter failure of morality.

It HAS been in a way utilitarian - it has helped people to live somehow with each other, not cutting each other's throats very violently. They cut, but they cut in indirect ways and they cut by degrees, not suddenly, and they cut in sophisticated ways. First they give you tranquilizers or drugs to make you unconscious so you don't feel much pain.

All political ideologies and religious ideologies are nothing but non-medicinal tranquilizers. The whole purpose is to make you live in sleep so you can be exploited, oppressed, enslaved, and still you will not be aware of what is happening to you.

Karl Marx is right in that sense, that "religion is the opium of the people." But by religion he means Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism. He was not aware of the religion I am talking about, the religion of the Buddhas. He was talking about the organized, institutionalized religion. He was not talking about the alive experience of the enlightened ones. Because that is not an opium, that is just the opposite of it - it is full awareness.

Sangvai, you ask me: WHY SHOULD THERE BE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MORAL AND LEGAL STANDARDS...

There is a difference between religious and moral standards. Religion means you live out of your consciousness. Morality means you live according to the highest standards the society has Imposed upon you; it is not according to your own light. It is the maximum potential, the hope of the society that has been imposed on you. And the legal standard is the minimum.

The moral standard is the maximum, the highest expectation of the society, and the legal standard is the minimum expectation. "At least you should fulfill the legal. If you cannot rise up to the moral, then please fulfill the legal." The legal is the lowest limit and the moral is the highest limit, hence the difference. The difference is there.

There are many immoral things which have nothing to do with law. You may be doing many immoral things, but you cannot be caught legally because legality consists of the minimum, the lowest limit.

It is said that the good teacher is one who is able to explain what he is saying to the most stupid student in his class. If the most stupid one can understand him, then of course all the others will understand. Law thinks of the most stupid person, the most inhuman person, the one who is very close to the animal. Morality thinks of the most intelligent, the most human. Hence the difference between the two, and the difference will remain.

And I have reminded you of a third thing also: the spiritual standard. That is the highest, the transcendental, beyond which nothing exists. The Buddhas live according to the ultimate, the saints live according to the moral and the so-called citizens live according to the legal. These are the three categories of human beings.

It will be the most evolved society when there is only one standard, but that is only a hope. When there is only one standard, the spiritual, then there will be no need for any law, no need for any morality, no need for the state, for the magistrate, for the police, for the military. Almost ninety percent of our energy is wasted in this whole arrangement. If man can live according to his own light - and that is possible only if he reaches to his innermost core through meditation - then all this criminal wastage nf energy can be stopped. The earth can become paradise itself, because if one hundred percent energy can become available to creativity, to alt, to science, to music, to painting, to poetry, we can create for the first time a real society of human beings.

Right now the human being only LOOKS like a human being; deep down he is nothing but an animal masquerading as a human being. His humanity is not even skin-deep: just scratch him a little and immediately the animal comes out. The human being that we are living with, that we have lived hitherto, is concerned with such trivia that it can only prove his mediocrity; it cannot give us any hint of his intelligence.

Man goes on arguing about great things, but goes on living in a totally different way. His thoughts are very great; his life is very.immature. In fact, he creates all those great thoughts to cover up his immaturity.

Four colleagues from the philosophy department of a university went to play golf. On the first tee they found a foursome of psychologists just about to tee off.

One of the philosophers quipped, "You fellows must really have a terrible time trying to play golf while you psych each other out!"

"At least we don't argue," one of the psychologists replied, "about whether or not the ball is really there!"

Our philosophers, our psychologists, our theologians, have remained abstract, talking about great things just to escape from the ugly reality.

My effort here is to help you to become aware of the ugly reality because to be aware of it will change its ugliness into beauty. Awareness is a miracle. Otherwise people go on in a long process of hair-splitting and they call it philosophy and they call it religion, metaphysics, spirituality. And they remain concerned with such stupid things.

In the Middle Ages in European countries the great the great theologians were concerned about a problem you will laugh at. And they worked on it for hundreds of years and thousands of books were written on it. "How many angels can dance on the point of a single needle?" It was a GREAT philosophical problem. You will laugh, but they were very serious about it.

You are serious about many things others will laugh at, your children will laugh at. Drop all philosophical, all abstract wastage of your intelligence. Become concerned with the truth.

The truth is: man is not even legal, what to say about moral? And if he is not even legal or moral he cannot understand religion. Religion remains still for the chosen few, for the courageous, for the intelligent.

And the so-called moralists, the puritans, are not really moral people, remember. H.G. Wells has said, "Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." And he is right. The so-called moral people are not really moral; they are living a double life: on the surface moral, but in reality as immoral as anybody else or even more. Maybe their morality is there to hide their illegal activities. And everyone seems to be in the same boat. From the lowest laborer to the man who holds the highest post, the prime minister or the president of a country, it seems all are in the same boat.

Richard Nixon was a great man till he was caught. Now Jimmy Carter is getting into the same trap. His brother has been caught - he has taken millions of dollars illegally from a country; he was lobbying for that country. And just the other day his son was caught doing the same thing, and also his sister. So now you can wait for the news - any day his wife! And finally you will find that he was at the center of it all. And he must be at the center of it all; without him all this could not happen.

So just as Nixon fell down from the world of being a great man through Watergate, Jimmy Carter is falling every day through "Billygate"! His whole smile has gone. In the beginning you could have counted his teeth; now that whole smile has disappeared.

It seems a man is moral only till he is caught. So the difference between the moral and the immoral is only that of being caught or not.

I had a very beautiful teacher in my high school days. He was a Mohammedan, a very loving person, and he was the seniormost teacher in the school, so he used to be the superintendent of all the examinations. And I loved the man for many things. The one thing that I loved him very much for was that before every examination he would come to us and would declare, "I am not against copying, stealing from others, bringing books in - I am not against it at all. But if you are caught, then you will be punished! So, mind you, you should not be caught. Once you are caught, then I cannot forgive you, but if you can manage then with all my blessings you can do it!"

And then he would say, "I will give you five minutes to think. If you have brought any notes, any books, anything, and you want to surrender them you can surrender them within five minutes. Or, if you decide otherwise, go ahead. But remember, if you are caught then you will not find a greater enemy than me. But I am not telling you not to do these things. I am simply telling you that I am here to punish you if you are caught."

I loved him. And many people would start taking out their notes and their books and they would surrender them. "This man is dangerous - he is telling a truth! " But from him I learned my first lesson about what is moral and what is immoral. The difference is not much.

Sangvai is an additional judge in Poona, so naturally the question has arisen in him:

In fact, to hold anybody guilty is wrong in itself. The guilty person is not guilty; he has been brought up in a guilt-ridden society. He is not totally responsible for it. To punish him is criminal.

Once Lao Tzu was made a magistrate. The Emperor of China, thinking him the wisest man of the country, persuaded him to become a magistrate, the highest magistrate of the country. But only one case was enough and he had to be dismissed, because in the first case it became clear to the Emperor and to everybody else that Lao Tzu was dangerous, because he gave six months' jail to a man who had been caught stealing red handed - and he also gave six months' jail to the person in whose house he had been stealing! Nobody could understand what was the matter.

The Emperor called him: "Are you mad or something? Why have you punished the man who has been robbed of his money?"

Lao Tzu said, "That man has accumulated so much that it is natural that he will be robbed. He should be thankful that he is not murdered! In fact, I am not fair in giving them both a similar kind of punishment. The rich man needs a harder punishment than the poor man who is a thief, because the first crime has been committed by the rich man, not by the poor man. The poor man has done a secondary thing; his crime is secondary, it is not that important. "

If in a society people accumulate wealth, then a few people are bound to steal, are bound to become thieves out of necessity. Nobody is really guilty. The whole structure of the society is guilty, and the structure needs to be changed. But we punish individuals and we go on perpetuating the same structure which creates these crimes.

A radical change is needed. And even if you want to change the individual, punishment is not the way. He should not be made to feel guilty. In fact, he should be sent for psychological treatment; he needs treatment. He needs a little more awareness, a little more lovingness; he needs a little more meditativeness. Sending him for a few months to jail or for a few years to jail is not going to help; it will simply confirm him as a criminal.

In five years of living in jail, what is he going to learn? He will find there master thieves, murderers and all kinds of criminals, and they will teach him the art - in which he must have been lacking, otherwise why should he have been caught? He will come out of the jail more skillful in doing the same crime or maybe even bigger crimes.

I am against ALL punishment, I am against ALL imprisonment. Prisons should be transformed into hospitals, and people should be sent to centers of meditation where they can gain a little more awareness, a little more lovingness, a little more meditativeness. They should not be changed or punished or beaten - these are ugly ways of taking revenge. This is not justice, this is social revenge!

The society is vengeful towards the person because the person has not followed the society.

This whole society is rotten and all its systems are rotten. This whole society needs to be changed from the very roots. Its legal system, its political system, its so-called religious system - they are all rotten, they are all wounds full of pus. The society needs a surgical operation.

And that's what we are trying to do here. Naturally, people are going to be against me, because what they have been thinking are very important things, what they have thought are great things, I am telling you are just junk, just stupidities.

An English lord visits his doctor. He neatly hangs up his umbrella and his bowler. Then he takes off his jacket, his shirt and his trousers, folding them very neatly and putting them on a chair. He then takes off his shoes and puts them straight under the chair. Then he takes off his underpants, folds them and puts them on the chair.

Standing at attention in front of the doctor he calmly tells him, "Well, as you can see, doctor, my left testicle hangs lower than my right one."

Smiling, the doctor replies, "Oh, but that is perfectly normal. You have nothing to worry about!"

"Oh, I'm not worrying, doctor," replies the man, "but don't you think it is a bit untidy?"

These are the people... completely asleep, snoring. They have to be awakened. They have to be shaken out of their habits. They have to be given a new birth.

Hence I say we don't need a better man, we need a new man. Betterment has gone on for centuries and nothing has happened. Now we don't need any better man - enough is enough! Now we want a totally new man, discontinuous with the past. We want to begin again as if we are Adam and Eve, just now expelled from the Garden of Eden.

I want to start afresh, and it is always easier to make a new house rather than to renovate an old one. And this old house has been renovated so many times, and you go on renovating it, supporting it from this side and that, and it goes on collapsing. It goes on and on, again and again. Still you are not fed up with it. You want to go on living in it - even if your life is in danger. And that's how it is.

Humanity has come to a stage where if we continue in the old ways, man is finished. There is only one hope: if we can start a new man from ABC, then only can humanity survive on the earth, otherwise not.

The fourth question

Question 4:

Deva Mitta,

WE HAVE been brought up with the idea that we are not right, that something is essentially wrong with us, that we are not to be ourselves, that we have to become Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira. One thing certainly has to be avoided: that is becoming ourselves. Nobody has ever told you to be just yourself, hence there is guilt. Everybody is feeling guilty. And whatsoever you do you will feel guilty.

because basically you have been conditioned with the idea, poisoned with the idea, that you are wrong and out of you only wrong things can happen.

My approach is totally different. I declare to you that you are perfectly right, that nothing is wrong with you, that you are not to follow somebody else, that you are not to imitate anybody else, that you have to love yourself, trust yourself, that you have to live a life of freedom, a life of rebellion, a life of exploration.

And then miracles start happening. When they start happening, of course you cannot believe it because you had always believed that you are a very inferior kind of person, ugly. You have been told thousands of times that whatsoever you do is wrong. Each child is told every day - and how many times! - "What you are doing is wrong. Don't do it! "

A small child was asked at school, his first day at school, "What is your name?"

He said, "My name? Johnny Don't! "

The poor child - because it is always, "Johnny, don't! " so he thinks that is his name. Whatsoever he is going to do - he wants to go out, he wants to play, he wants to sing - it is always "No! " Slowly slowly he starts thinking of himself as basically wrong.

Religions help the idea that man is born in sin. Adam and Eve committed some wrong - and I can't think what wrong they committed. Eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge cannot be anything wrong. And if there is anything wrong in it, why did God create that tree in the first place? And we say God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. He should have known it before, that if he created this tree then Adam and Eve were bound to eat from the tree. The Garden of Eden had millions of trees, and God told Adam and Eve not to eat from THIS tree.

In fact, he had forbidden them two trees. One was the Tree of Knowledge and the other was the Tree of Life. It is strange! God should have known a little more psychology - and it is not much psychology either - that if you prevent somebody, if you make it an order, "Don't do it!" you challenge the person. It is good that Adam and Eve accepted the challenge. I am all for them. If I have to choose between God and Adam and Eve, I will choose Adam and Eve because they did the right thing. They rebelled, they disobeyed. They said, "Who are you to tell us what we should eat and what we should not eat?" They inquired, they adventured, they risked, they gambled - courageous people. They gambled Paradise. They said, "We are ready to lose Paradise, but we cannot lost our freedom." They respected freedom more than Paradise itself with all its pleasures. They were not hedonists, they were truth seekers.

And the moment God came to know that they had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge he expelled them immediately, because now he was afraid they would eat from the Tree of Life.

And it seems the Devil who had come to them in the form of a snake was right. He had told Eve, "God is jealous, very jealous. He is afraid that if you eat from the Trees of Knowledge and Life you will be a god yourself. And he is very jealous, he is afraid of that. " And it seems the Devil was right.

Otherwise what was wrong with eating from the Tree of Life?

But what God did, the original father, all the parents have been doing to their children since then.

"Don't do this, don't eat that..." They go on destroying your integrity, they go on destroying your morale, they go on destroying your respect for yourself. They create a self-condemnation in you.

That's why, Mitta, you cannot believe.

You say: SOMETHING IN ME REFUSES TO ACCEPT THAT IT CAN HAPPEN TO ME.

You cannot accept it because it goes against your whole training, your whole upbringing. And I say to you, you are ENTITLED to miracles, it is your birthright.

And exactly this is the law.

You say: I GIVE AN INCH, I GET A MILE.

Yes, exactly that is the law: you move one step towards truth and truth moves one thousand steps towards you. You take just a little risk and thousands of blessings shower on you. The existence is ready to make you enlightened any moment, only you are unwilling. And why are you unwilling?

- because you have been told that Jesus can be enlightened because he is the only begotten Son of God, Buddha can be enlightened because he is born in a special way; he is no ordinary human being. He comes from the beyond - he is an AVATARA, an incarnation of God. How can you be enlightened? Krishna can be enlightened because he is born enlightened. You are born unenlightened and you are going to remain unenlightened. At the most you can hope to follow some enlightened one. But following is not much of a dignity, it is not a glory.

I say to you there is no question of following anybody. My sannyasins are not my followers. I am nobody's leader, nobody's guide, I am just a friend. I am sharing my insight with you, and I am grateful that you are allowing me to share it with you. You need not be grateful towards me at all. I am too overfull with my bliss, with my peace, with my insight - I want to share it. It is like a cloud full of rainwater which wants to shower. It is like a flower full of perfume which wants to share its perfume with the winds, and is grateful that the wind accepts it, that it is not rejected.

It is a question of wrong upbringing. Each child hates his parents, is bound to. Slowly slowly he forgets it because repressed, very deeply repressed. And each society teaches you to respect your parents. Why? Why does each and every society teach the children to respect the parents? - for the simple reason that they know that if the child is not taught to respect he will hate. Hate will come naturally, hence it has to be repressed by respect.

"Dad," says the little boy, "would you buy me a real gun?"

"Are you crazy, son? Where did you get such a silly idea?"

"Oh, come on, dad, I really want a gun!"

"Don't bother me now, son."

"But I want a real gun, a gun that fires real bullets. Please, dad, give me one."

"Look, Johnny, if you don't stop this I will have to punish you."

"Oh, but please, I gotta get one!"

The father is fed up. He stands up and screams at Johnny, "No! I am the boss here!"

The small boy interrupts, "Yeah! Now you are, but if you buy me a real gun..."

You say, Mitta: SOMETHING IN ME REFUSES TO ACCEPT THAT IT CAN HAPPEN TO ME.

It is such a great miracle that it is very natural that something in you rejects it. We have been fed with many stories of miracles, but nobody believes in them - not even those who tell them, who teach and preach; even they don't believe in those miracles.

Those miracles that Christians go on thinking Christ did, and Jainas go on thinking happened in Mahavira's life, and Buddhists go on writing about as far as Buddha is concerned, are all inventions.

And they have been invented to prevent the real miracle from happening to you. Let me repeat it: all these stupid miracles have been invented and propagated around the world simply to distract you from the real miracle that can happen to you.

Now what is the point of a Satya Sai Baba materializing a Swiss watch? Millions of Swiss watches are available everywhere! How is this going to enrich the world? And in fact, he should be caught by the police because he must have stolen it from somewhere. otherwise how can it be Swiss - made?

It would have been Sai Baba - made! It is Swiss - made. Either he has stolen it or he is deceiving you.

Once I was staying in Bombay. A Parsi woman came to me, an old woman, and she said to me, "Satya Sai Baba used to stay at my house, but now I have discovered two things about him. And when I tell people, people think I have gone made."

Now he was spreading a rumour that this woman was possessed by evil spirits, and that woman looked perfectly sane.

I said, "What are those two things?"

She said, "One is, the last time he came here, just out of curiosity when he was taking his bath I looked into his suitcases - they were full of watches! Secondly, he always makes friends with small boys, so I became a little curious. I looked through the keyhole - and he is a homosexual! Now I am telling people these two things and people think that I am mad. And both things are absolutely true!

And he is spreading the news about me that 'She is possessed by evil spirits.'"

In fact, homosexuality is an ancient religious tradition. To put nuns separate and monks separate is to create homosexuality. It is natural; it is bound to happen.

And these watches... and people think miracles are happening. And Jesus walking on water... I don't think that he was so foolish as to walk on water. But these miracles have been told to you so that you can be distracted from the real miracle, so when the real miracle starts happening you cannot believe it. You can only believe in miracles if they are in stories, and Jesus is nothing but a story to you and Moses is a story.

Moses parted the ocean... I have been trying to part the water in my bathtub and I have not been able to yet! It is all nonsense. Every day for twenty-five years... and I close my eyes and I open my eyes, and it is the same!

It is sill; to believe in such things, but we have been brought up on these silly things.

A Brazilian is sitting by the side of the road with his cow. He sees a Porsche in the distance coming towards him. The driver is a big shot from the city. He stands up as the car draws closer and signals the driver to give him a lift. The Porsche stops.

"Give me a lift, senor," he asks.

"But what about the cow?" says the driver.

"Not to worry, I will tie her to the back bumper."

"What!" exclaims the city slicker. "She won't keep up with this car."

"Oh, don't you worry about her, she'll be all right," drawls the Brazilian.

So off they go, the cow tied to the rear of the car. The city guy, wanting to have fun, accelerates the car to fifty miles an hour. He looks in the rearview mirror and there is the cow running along at the same speed as the car. He cannot believe his eyes... sixty, seventy-five, ninety, one hundred miles an hour and there is the cow right behind.

The driver, both amazed and puzzled, speeds up even more to one hundred and twenty miles an hour, and the cow is still there keeping up with him. When he gets to one hundred and fifty miles an hour he looks through the rearview mirror and notices that the cow is still running but her tongue is hanging out.

"Looks like your cow can't take it for much longer, " he says with relief to the Brazilian. "Her tongue is already hanging out."

"On which side of the mouth is hanging?" the Brazilian asks casually.

"The left side," says the slicker.

"So keep to the right, that means she is signaling to pass you!"

Such things happen in stories, in jokes, but not in reality.

Mitta, what is happening to you is something real. You can beheve m fictions and you have forgotten how lo trust reality. Watch what is happening, respect it, trust it, and it will deepen - it will become vaster, it will become richer, it will gain many more dimensions to it. You are on the right track, but don't refuse to accept it because if you refuse to accept it then you stop, then you become closed.

Remain open and vulnerable to all the winds and the rain and the sun. Remain available to existence as such. To me, existence is God and there is no other God. And existence is each moment a miracle - we have just become blind.

There are many kinds of blindness: Christian blindness, Hindu blindness, communist blindness, Buddhist blindness, and so on and so forth. Drop all these blindnesses. Become simple and ordinary. That's what my sannyas is all about. Listen and watch and see what is happening. And many more miracles are bound to happen, they will be following. If you allow, then you are on an unending journey, a pilgrimage that begins but never ends.