The Flight Towards the Sun

The first question:

Question 1:

THE URGE TO CREATE is the first stirring of the divine within you. The urge to create is the presence of God. You have the first message, the first ripple has reached to you. It is the beginning and the birth of prayer. Follow it. To be creative is to be religious. What you create is not the point - you create. In that very creativity something starts happening which is not of the world.

When you create you are lost into your creation. For example, if you are painting or singing or playing on an instrument or dancing, you start disappearing. The dance is really when the dancer is no more. If the dancer is still there then it is not a creative act, then it is at the most a skill. The technician is there but not the dancer - one who knows how to dance is there but not the dancer.

Because the dancer knows nothing; the dancer remains in a state of not knowing. He forgets all his skill, he forgets all the techniques that he has learnt, he forgets himself, he is utterly lost. He is in the hands of God. He cannot even say 'I am dancing' - he can only say 'God has taken possession of me, I am possessed. God is dancing in me. I am the field where God is dancing, I am the hollow bamboo and Gd is singing. He has made a flute of me.'

The creator knows God. Only the creator knows God. And all other prayers that you go on doing in the temples and the churches are just impotent, meaningless, unless your life learns how to create.

Then no other prayer is needed. Then the very phenomenon of creativity is enough religion for you.

More than that is unnecessary - you need not go to any church, any temple, any gurudvara, any mosque. You have to go into creativity.

The question is asked by Gyan Bhakti. She is a creator. Hence the question has arisen in her - 'What is this urge to create?' She is possessed by that desire. I have seen it in her, aflame. She wants to explode in many many ways, she wants to create. God has knocked at her door. But when the knock comes it is natural not to understand it, because we have never heard it before. It is so new, it cannot be reduced to our old mind. It is coming from the unknown - there is no way to figure it out, what it is. Hence the question.

Go with the unknown, go with the new. Always remember: If there is a choice between the old and the new, choose the new. Howsoever dangerous it is, howsoever insecure it is, choose the new. And you will be always moving closer and closer to God. Choose the old, and you will be moving away from God. Choose the old mind, and you will sooner or later become destructive. And these are the only two ways to live: either be creative or be destructive. There is no other possibility, there is no third possibility. If your energies are not moving into creation they will still be moving, but then they will become destructive. Destruction is creativity standing on its head; something has gone wrong, something has taken a wrong turn.

All destructive people could have been great creators. But if the energy is not allowed, if you become afraid and frightened with the new.... And when the creativity possesses you it is fearful. It looks terrible, it is a kind of tremendum. It takes you so far away from your known and the familiar. It takes you to the uncharted sea, without any maps. It is dangerous. One shrinks back from it.

But once you start shrinking back from it, what will you do with your energy which God goes on pouring into you? Something has to be done. The energy cannot wait, the energy needs expression.

So if you avoid creativity you will become destructive.

Whenever creativity calls you, go with it. It is God calling you.

The second question:

Question 2:

Because people are unconscious. Because people are fast asleep. Because people are robots.

Communication is impossible; you say something, something else will be understood. There is no way to communicate. The only way to communicate is in love, through silence. But nobody knows how to be in love and nobody knows how to be in silence.

Only in love and silence, communication is possible. But we are not in love and we are not silent. We are so full of knowledge, that's why communication is impossible. Language is one of the reasons why there is so much misunderstanding in the world. There is no misunderstanding in the animals and in the trees and in the birds, because language does not exist. They are fortunate - they don't know anything about language, so they communicate in love, in silence. Their dumbness is a great blessing to them. Man is the only animal who is not dumb, who can speak. And this very phenomenon is a problem.

There is an existential principle: Existence precedes essence. A simple statement that you are born first, that you are born without any intrinsic nature, that you are born tabula rasa. Nothing is written on you, writing comes later on. You are born as pure existence with no essence, with no built-in program, with no destiny. You come into the world not knowing who you are. You are nobody when you come into the world, a pure emptiness. And then by your acts, by your doings, you start defining yourself. Essence comes later on by your own effort. A simple statement and a beautiful statement.

But I have come across many many interpretations of this simple sentence of only three words:

Existence precedes essence. The first interpretation I have come across is, for some people this idea becomes translated into: Nothing is possible for man, because man is empty. And man has no intrinsic nature, so there is no destiny to be fulfilled. That man is accidental, that life has no meaning, that life is utterly hopeless.

A seed has a meaning because it has a built-in program that it has to become a tree - that it has to attain to a certain kind of fruits and flowers, that it has to rise into the sky, that it has to be this and that. The seed has a built-in program - that's why there is hope and there is meaning and the seed can trust that something is going to happen. And the seed is not accidental, because there is a destiny.

This is one interpretation - that man is accidental, has no nature, is a hopeless thing. Sartre says man is a useless passion. There is no possibility of any significance in man's life. For some others it carries hope, because the idea is translated into: Everything is possible for man because there is no nature, hence no boundaries. And they find in it great hope and freedom.

Now the other interpretation goes just the contrary to the first. The other interpretation says:

Because there is no intrinsic nature, man is not a slave. The seed is a slave. The mango seed will become a mango tree, there is no freedom. Man can become anything, man can be anything, whatsoever he chooses to be. There is a possibility to choose. The mango tree cannot choose, it is a slave; there is no hope, it is just mechanical. It has to fulfill a certain destiny; everything is predetermined. So how can there be freedom and how can there be joy? And how can there be any hope in it? It is a mechanical repetition. Out of a mango seed will come a mango tree and out of a mango tree will come again mango seeds - and so on, so forth, for eternity it will go on and on. And there will never be anything else. This is a hopeless situation. This repetitiveness is utter boredom.

Now the same sentence takes a new meaning, just the contrary to the first. The meaning is that man is free. That man can be whatsoever he chooses to be. That man is a kind of god. That nobody decides for man, man has to decide for himself. That man's decision has to come from his own soul. What he is going to write on the tabula rasa is his own writing, there will be his own signature.

Man has individuality. No mango tree has any individuality. No peacock has any individuality - all peacocks are alike, and all mango trees. But man has uniqueness, individuality. There is great hope. Now see? The meaning has turned just to the opposite polarity.

I have come across a third interpretation too. For others it means: Everything is permissible to man.

And with that they abandon all restraint, they become licentious. They say, 'When there is no nature, when there is nothing as a given program for man, then there is no need for any morality, no need for any discipline, no need for anything. Man is a chaos and should remain a chaos.' Then nothing is good and nothing is bad. If there is a built-in program then you can decide what is good and what is bad.

For example, for a mango tree. You can decide what manure is good and what manure is bad, because the mango tree has a built-in program, it has to become a mango tree. You can decide what manure will help and what manure will not help, how much water is needed, how much sun is needed, how much space is needed. You can find a pattern, a discipline, for the tree. The pattern and the discipline will be decided by the intrinsic nature of the tree.

But man has no intrinsic nature, so anything goes. Man is free - that is interpreted as: Man needs no discipline, man is permitted to do whatsoever he wants to do. Adolf Hitler is as good as Gautam Buddha. To kill a man is as good as to be compassionate, to love is as good as to hate. Because how to decide what is good and what is bad? There is no criterion. Man is a tabula rasa, man is an emptiness, there is no way to decide. All is good - murder is good, suicide is good, destruction is good.

Now this is a totally different interpretation. And the sentence is the same: Existence precedes essence. And with this they abandon all restraint. They become licentious, indulgent. And this indulgence is bound to destroy humanity, but this interpretation is possible.

And for still others, there is a fourth meaning: Everything is permissible AGAINST man. Man has no nature, so you can bend man this way or that. You can make man a soldier or a saint or a sinner.

Man is empty, so you can write anything on man. Everything is permissible against man. So what Adolf Hitler did to millions of people, converting them into robots - those nazi soldiers were robots, they were trained to be machines not men - that's permissible. And Buddha turned thousands of people into sannyasins, brought them out of their mechanicalness into consciousness. Everything is good - Buddha is doing his thing and Adolf Hitler is doing his thing and there is no criterion to judge.

Language seems to be the medium of communication but it is not. You say something and immediately you will be misinterpreted. You say something and you will be surprised that people have taken such altogether far-out meanings; you had not even dreamt about them, you have not even thought about them. Once you say something you are no more the master of it. Then whosoever gets hold of it will have his own meaning, will squeeze his own meaning out of it. And you are helpless, you cannot do anything.

Language is not the right medium to communicate. But people don't know silence, so there is no other way. Even a Buddha has to talk, or a Lao Tzu - he has to use words which are inadequate, dangerous. The day Buddha died, his disciples divided into thirty-six schools. Just the day he died - as if they were just waiting. Thirty-six meanings to each of Buddha's assertations. On Krishna's Bhagavad Gita there are one thousand commentaries - one thousand meanings to each of Krishna's statements. If Krishna comes back and reads these commentaries he will go mad. He will not be able to conceive what has happened. He was talking to his disciple and to his friend, Arjuna. It was a love dialogue. And one thousand meanings? And ten thousand more are possible.

I was reading Michael Adam's memoirs. He writes: 'As a child I was given twenty-six wooden bricks, each one brightly painted with a letter of the alphabet. A patient teacher taught me to make words, tried moreover to make me see, as adults do, that the four letters B-I-R-D made a bird, that the word was the thing, the real robin, the red-breasted one, brave singer in the snow. It was only pretending.

I knew even then that it was only pretending. The bricks could be scattered. Their colors were false.

There was no flight and no song...'

But words become things sooner or later. The word 'God' has become God and you have forgotten the real God. The word 'love' has become love and you have forgotten the real love. The word becomes more and more important, people become hypnotized by words. Yes, it is difficult to deceive a child, because he can see the pretension. But how long will he be able to see the pretension? A child is fresh - he looks at those bricks, colored bricks, and you have made a word out of them. And the teacher is saying, 'Now look: b-i-r-d, bird. This is the bird, the real robin.' Mm?

To explain to the child, he must be saying these things. 'The redbreaasted one, brave singer in the snow.' And the child is smiling - he knows that this is just tricky. There is no robin there and these colors are false. and this robin cannot sing and cannot fly and these bricks can be scattered. There is nobody behind it, it is just an empty game. But sooner or later he will also become hypnotized by words.

Language is the basic problem. That's why there is so much misunderstanding.

If you want to have understanding, you will have to drop language. You will have to learn how to dehypnotize yourself from words. You will have to put aside the word 'rose' and you will have to see the red rose - there on the bush, in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. And while seeing the rose, don't go on repeating 'This is a rose' - otherwise you will carry a curtain on your ears, on your eyes, on your being. You will not be able to hear and see and feel. And don't go on saying that this is a beautiful rose - that 'beautiful' is again a word. Drop that. See what beauty is. Don't go on using the word 'beautiful'; just see, penetrate, encounter, beauty itself. The rose is there - what is the point of using the word? Put the words aside. Clean the passage between you and the rose that is there.

And don't compare it with other roses that you have seen before. Otherwise you say 'Yes, this is a beautiful rose. I have seen such roses before. ' Or 'This is more beautiful than the roses of last year. ' Or 'This is more beautiful, or less beautiful, than the roses of the neighbor.' But again you are getting lost in words.

THIS rose. THIS robin, this redbreasted bird. You just look, and forget all language. And in that forgetting of language, understanding arises. One has to be non-verbal for understanding to arise.

And then start communicating through silence sometimes. Holding the hand of your friend, sit silently. Just looking at the moon, feel the moon, and both feel it silently. And see, there happens a communion - not only communication but a communion. That your hearts start beating in the same rhythm. That you start feeling the same space, that you start feeling the same joy, that you start overlapping each other's being. That there is communion. That you have said without saying anything, and there will be no misunderstanding.

I have to use words. I am helpless. The day you will be able to understand silence there will be no need for me to talk to you every day. We can sit in silence. And that will be a beautiful day - I am preparing you for that. Even though I use words I use them against words - I use them in such a way so that they can commit suicide in you. That's why I have to be contradictory. That's why I say one thing this moment and contradict it immediately - so that no word takes root in you. So slowly slowly you start understanding that words are meaningless, their meaning is a pretension. Then there will be no misunderstanding.

After many years of trying, a man won a big First Dividend on the football pools. His prize money amounted to millions of pounds and naturally he went a little mad in the first week or two, buying an apartment and a country house, two cars and a yacht. Then one day he rushed into the most expensive furriers in Bond Street and ordered several thousand pounds' worth of fur coats and stoles.

'This is quite a large order, sir,' said the clerk.

'Yes,' he replied. 'I've won a First Dividend on the pools and I'm going to smother my wife in furs!'

'Wouldn't it be cheaper to use a pillow?' said the clerk.

Three girls, one American, one English and one French, were applying for the job of air-hostess, and were given initiative tests. One of these involved the capacity for making quick decision, and the three girls were asked the following by their examiner: 'Suppose,' he said, 'that you are flying over the Polynesian islands and your plane has to ditch in the sea. You find yourself alone in a rubber life-raft rowing towards an island. As you get closer you see a crowd of American marines on the shore watching you coming in. What would you do?'

The American girl said, 'I should turn around and row to another island.'

The English girl said, 'I should carry on rowing, and when I reached land I should ask to see the commanding officer and report to him.'

And the French girl said nothing, but looked puzzled. 'Do you understand the question?' asked the examiner.

'Oh yes,' she replied. 'But what is the problem?'

It depends on you.

A benevolent but forgetful old gentleman was entertaining a party of people, some of whom he had not met for a long time. As they were all standing around drinking cocktails before going in to dinner, the host moved from one to the other, making polite conversation. In the course of so doing, he came upon a young man of whom he had not heard for some time.

'I am delighted to see you,' he beamed. 'And how is my dear old friend, your father?'

'I am sorry to have to tell you, sir,' said the young man, 'that my father died some six months ago.'

The host expressed his deep regret and at that moment the butler announced that dinner was served.

After dinner, the host again espied the young man and, having completely forgotten the previous conversation, enquired once more after his dear old friend, the young man's father.

'I am sorry, sir,' was the reply, 'but my father is STILL dead.'

Language creates almost ninety-nine percent of prob-lems. Philosophy, theology, doctrines, scriptures, political ideologies - they have all created thousands of problems. And man is in a confusion, in a great confusion. All those fighting ideologies are inside you. All the past, the whole past, the maddening past, is trying to possess you. It is not homogeneous. Christianity is in you, Buddhism is in you, communism is in you, fascism is in you - and they are all pulling you apart. It is a miracle how man goes on keeping himself together.

And in this state of confusion, when you hear something, first you don't hear rightly what is being said. Second, you interpret it according to your own past. And everything goes wrong. If you want to avoid misunderstanding, you will have to learn silence. If you learn silence, the first thing will be that you will never misunderstand anybody else. And that's a great joy, not to misunderstand anybody.

You will become a good listener, you will know the right kind of listening. And everything will be crystal clear to you. That clarity will not come from logic, from intellect, from analysis; that clarity will come through silence. If in your silence somebody's word falls you cannot misinterpret it, because there is nobody to interfere. Either you understand or you don't understand, but there is no way to misunderstand. Either you say 'Yes, I understand' or you say 'I don't understand.' But there is no way to misunderstand.

What is misunderstanding? Misunderstanding is neither understanding nor non-understanding. It is a mixture, it is a hotch-potch. And it creates more confusion in you - the more knowledgeable a man is, the more confused. The more a man is knowledgeable, the less is the possibility to understand anything.

Learn silence. And at least with your friends, with your lovers, with your family.... And this is your family, the orange family. Here, sit in silence sometimes. Don't go on gossiping, don't go on talking.

Stop talking, and not only on the outside - stop the inner talk. Be in an interval. Just sit there, doing nothing, just being presences to each other. And soon you will start finding a new way to communicate. And that is the right way.

It is said about Mahavira - a strange story but beautiful and meaningful - that when he became enlightened he remained silent. It created many problems, because he had attained and it was his duty to share it. When you have attained you have to share it. It is intrinsic to attainment to share.

That's why Buddha has spoken, and Christ and Lao Tzu. Mahavira kept silent, he found another way. Maybe that is why his religion never became a world religion. His followers remain very few - even now there are only thirty lakhs Jainas. That is nothing - after two thousand five hundred years, only thirty thousand. That means if Mahavira had converted only thirty couples, that would have done - that many people would have been Jainas. He could not convert many people. And the reason? He wanted to commune through silence, he remained quiet. And the way that he found was strange but beautiful. It could not prove very effective, because it is very difficult to speak through silence in this mad world. He failed, but the experiment was worth trying.

What did he do? He prepared a few people for silence, to understand him in silence. He would sit silently, and only those few people who had learnt how to listen to his silence would understand what he meant. And they would tell it to people. But then again the problem arose. He would not speak - he was a strange man, he thought it a kind of betrayal to speak. Because whatsoever you say is going to be misunderstood - then you become the cause of misunderstanding. Whatsoever you say will be only half true, because the whole truth cannot be reduced to words. So you will be destroying truth. And he was not the man to do that, he kept quiet. Just a few disciples who had learnt how to commune with him in silence would sit silently there, listen to his silence - would feel what he wants, what he feels, what he knows, and would go to people and tell them.

But that doesn't help. Now these people who told others were misunderstood. So what is the point?

He could have told it himself - there would have been less misunderstanding, because the power of Mahavira would have been there. Now, Mahavira gives to other people and those people are not so enlightened, not so conscious. They go to people and they relay and broadcast Mahavira's message. Much more misunderstanding will be there. And of course they could not convert many people, they had their limitations. But he tried - a great experiment.

I would also like to try it - but not only for a few people. I would like to create a great mass of people for silence. And it's that for which I am working slowly slowly. Once you are ready, thousands of people ready for silence, then I can really say that which cannot be said through words.

Buddha gave Mahakashyapa his flower and said, 'I am giving to you that which I could not give to others. I am giving you that which can only be given in silence.' I would like thousands of Mahakashyapas to receive that flower. One is not enough.

So be more and more silent and you will understand why there is so much misunderstanding in the world. And you will understand that now you don't misunderstand; either you understand or you don't understand. Both are good, things are clear. If you don't understand, you can ask again. If you understand then the work is finished, there is no need to ask again. But if you misunderstand you go on thinking you have understood, so you don't ask again. And you have not understood. And that misunderstanding will make your life a corrupted phenomenon. It will be crippling, it will paralyze you.

The third question:

Question 3:

The question is from Wolfgang. He was there in darshan last night. He longs to take sannyas but has conditions in his mind, is knowledgeable. He already knows how things should be. And if they are not like that, how can he take sannyas? He can take sannyas only if it fits with him, if it fulfills his a-priori knowledge. That is not possible. You will have to fit with sannyas, sannyas is not going to fit with you. He is afraid of the church that is growing around me. I should be afraid of it, you should not be. I am enjoying it, it is beautiful. While I am here it will not do any harm. And when I am gone, I am gone. Then who cares? I am not going to bother with it for eternity - while I am here it's perfectly good, I will take care that it will not be a harmful thing to anybody. But when I am gone I am gone. There is no way to plan for the future. Then whatsoever happens, happens.

And just because of the church around me, which is a necessity...If the church had grown up around Jesus he would not have been crucified. He would have served humanity for many more years; he would not have been so easily destroyed. When he was crucified THEN the church came - it was not the right time for the church to come. When a Christ dies it is time for the church also to die with him. But when the Christ is there, if the church is possible, if the church is created, much more work can be done.

The church that is growing around me is growing with my support, with my blessings. It is not growing against me, it is not growing without me. It is part of my device so that I can work easily, more efficiently, with you. So don't be afraid of it.

Now these questions are also knowledgeable questions. First he asks, My first question: CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT THE LAW OF KARMA?

It exists only for the unconscious man. The law of karma exists only for the unconscious man; for the conscious man there exists no law of karma. It is really unconsciousness that makes you suffer.

If you do something unconsciously then you will suffer, then karma will be created. 'Karma' means unconscious action. If you do something consciously, fully alert, no karma is created. If your act is total, spontaneous, it is finished in that moment. It is atomic, it is not a continuity. It leaves no traces behind.

That's why an enlightened man is unpredictable. Only an unenlightened man is predictable because he moves unconsciously, in a routine way, mechanically. There are no surprises in his life.

Somebody loves you, and you love him. Somebody hates you, and you hate him. Somebody comes and praises you and you feel very expanded like a balloon. That's why people use buttering so much - praising others helps.

A French philosopher, Cioran, says that the deepest desire in man is the desire to be praised - one may say, one may not say. Somebody praises you and you fall all for him. And somebody insults you and you become the enemy for ever. These are not actions, these are reactions. The other is using you like a machine, he is pushing your buttons. You are not acting, you are reacting. The other is manipulating you, he knows what to do.

A conscious man cannot be manipulated by anybody. His action is not reaction, his action is action.

Buddha was insulted, people were abusing him in a village. He stood there, and when they had finished he said, 'If you are finished can I go now? I have to reach the other village, people will be waiting for me there. If you have not finished yet, soon after a few weeks I will be coming back - then you can do the remaining thing.' Those people were a little embarrassed. Buddha looked utterly aloof, as if what they were doing had not reached to him. He remained unscratched. They said, 'But we have been abusing you, sir, we have been insulting you. Are you not going to answer?'

Buddha laughed. He said, 'If you wanted the answer you should have come at least ten years before.

Then I was unconscious, then you could have pushed my buttons and I would have reacted. But now I have become conscious, I have become a Buddha. Now I can see what you want to do to me, and I am not going to be manipulated by anybody. Now I live on my own, now I do what I feel to do.

And I don't feel any anger, I simply feel compassion for you. I feel sorry for you - more so because in the other village before reaching to your village, many people had gathered there and they had brought fruits and sweets to present to me. And I said, "Sorry, I cannot accept them because I have eaten my breakfast and it will be unnecessarily a burden for me to carry these things. Please, you take them back home." I ask you, what should they have done with those sweets and fruits?'

Somebody from the crowd said, 'They must have distributed them in the village, they themselves must have eaten them.' Buddha said, 'That's why I feel more sorry for you. Now you have brought these insults and these abuses and I am not going to accept them, what will you do? Now I really feel sorry for you. You can insult, that is your freedom - but to accept it or not is my freedom.'

When consciousness has dawned you act for the first time, you don't react. Ant action is beyond the law of karma. The law of karma applies only to the unconscious being. The man of awareness has absolute freedom. No law binds him, no law defines him. He's as vast as the sky, he's as infinite as the sky. His freedom is absolute.

You ask, MY FIRST QUESTION IS: CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT THE LAW OF KARMA? - WHAT IT MEANS IN RELATION TO TAKING SANNYAS.

Sannyas is the beginning of getting out of the law of karma. Because sannyas is the beginning of awakening. Sannyas is your effort to gt out of the rut in which you have lived for many lives.

Sannyas is the insight that 'Enough is enough, and I should get out of the routine life, I should get out of the mechanicalness of it. I should get out into a clearness, into clarity. Enough I have roamed in the jungle of unconsciousness, in the dark night of the soul. I should search for the dawn, for the morning.'

It is the search for the sun, it is the flight towards the sun. That's why in the East we have chosen ochre as the color for sannyas - it is the color of the sun, the sunrays, the mornings. A search for light, a search for awareness, a search for enlightenment. Once you start becoming more and more aware, less and less will you be part of the law of karma. And once you have enjoyed and tasted a little bit of freedom then nobody can force you back into the prison. You will open your wings and you will fly towards the sun.

The other question is: WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE ZEN SENTENCE, 'WHEN YOU MEET BUDDHA ON THE ROAD, KILL HIM'?

That's just the right thing to do. When you meet the Buddha, kill him. But to meet the Buddha, first you have to become a sannyasin - otherwise you will never meet. This is said only to those disciples who are capable now of meeting Buddha in their inner meditations. This is not said to everybody, this is said to the very closest disciples. 'When you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.' This is said to people who are reaching to the ultimate in their meditation.

What is the ultimate in meditation? All else disappears except your master. The world disappears, the market disappears, the beloved disappears, the money, the power, the prestige, all disappear.

Thoughts, feelings, all disappear. Just one thing remains at the end: the master. When this happens, meditation has come to its ultimate. Only the master is there. Then Buddha says: When you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Now you have to drop the master too.

At the last moment the master has also to be dropped, because that will be your last clinging. And when the master has also disappeared, you have become a Buddha yourself.

It is like you want to cross a river. You make a raft - you gather wood, ropes, you make a raft, and then you go to the other shore on the raft. Buddha says: What will you do on the other shore? When you have reached the other shore what will you do with the raft? Will you carry it on your heads for ever, because it helped you to go to the other shore? Then it will be idiotic. It will be an unnecessary burden and you will look ridiculous. When you have reached to the other shore what will you do, Buddha asks his disciples, with that raft?

And one disciple says, 'We will say goodby to the raft. We will be thankful to the raft, we will feel grateful to the raft because it is through the raft that we have come to the other shore, without the raft it was not possible. And then we will move, leave the raft on the shore - with great thankfulness, but we will leave it, we will not carry it.'

A master is a raft. You go to the other shore. When you have reached the other shore say goodbye to the master. It is going to be difficult - that's why Buddha uses such a hard word. He says: When you meet the Buddha on the road, KILL HIM. It is going to be hard, because to be in relationship with a master is to know love in its most profound sense. It is very difficult to leave the Buddha.

And you have been travelling with Buddha and you have ben knowing new strange spaces, beautiful spaces, through him. And you have known so much, and you are so enriched, and it is because of him and through him. And he has been taking you out of your dark night, and the morning is coming and now he says: Kill me. Let me disappear from your being, utterly, as if I had never existed, so that you can take the final jump from meditation to samadhi. Just on the boundary line, the Buddha, the master, has to be left.

Buddhas can take you to the boundary line of meditation and samadhi. That is the only difference between meditation and samadhi. If your mind has become utterly quiet and silent, but only the master is there, then it is meditation. If your mind has become so quiet that even the master has disappeared, it is samadhi. The last barrier is going to be the master. He will take you out of the world, but one day you will have to leave him too. And the real master will always keep you alert that you have to leave him one day, at the final stage.

But you can leave only if you have accepted. You can leave the raft on the other shore only if you have made the raft on THIS shore. so the question from Wolfgang is not yet valid. become a sannyasin, Wolfgang, make the raft. And then when you meet Rajneesh on the road, kill him - but only then. Right now, please...

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Poor old man. He was a nice man. But I was afraid that it was going to happen that he would escape. He has been reading my books - to read the books is one thing. And he has been writing beautiful letters to me, and he wanted so much to come here. At this old age it was difficult for him to come. To gather so much money was also difficult but somehow he managed. But to read my books is one thing and to come face to face with me is another thing. With books you can have your own interpretation, whatsoever you want. With books you can fantasize; you can impose your ideas, your fantasies.

But when you come to me, then my reality has to be absorbed. and it was difficult for him to digest me. For thirty years he has been reading Gurdjieff. He wrote to me that he had gone to see Gurdjieff also, but missed. Because when he reached, Gurdjieff was dead - he reached just a few days afterwards. So he was very sorry that he missed Gurdjieff. And that's why he was writing to me that 'I want to come and I don't want to miss you. I have missed Gurdjieff, I have felt the pain my whole life - that if I had gone just a few days before, I would have seen the master. But I was unfortunate. This time I don't want to miss. I am coming, any way I am coming, I will manage for the money and I will come.'

And he came. And he missed again. And now I can say: if he had seen Gurdjieff he would have escaped far sooner than he escaped from here. Here, he stayed at least for two weeks. With Gurdjieff he would not have been able to stay more than two hours. Because Gurdjieff used to hit very hard. I also hit, but it is never very hard. And that's why I gave him a little shock - just a tongue-tip taste of Gurdjieff - but he could not digest it. He immediately escaped. I can say that he has not understood Gurdjieff at all. Otherwise he would have been able to see what I am doing - that I am shocking him, that I am trying to destroy his shock absorbers. He would have felt grateful, he would have stayed.

But he has been reading Gurdjieff's books - it is one thing.

It happened once, a young man used to come to me and he was fanatically in love with Zen and Zen masters. And he would come and always talk about Zen masters who hit the disciples and threw the disciples. And I was getting tired of his stories, so one day I hit him. And since then I have not seen him. That's what happened with old Mr Lewis. And I had not hit him hard, because he is so old. Mm? I was very polite. But I was afraid that he would escape.

To read Gurdjieff through books is one thing; to read Zen masters through books is one thing. But when you come across a Zen master or across a Gurdjieff it is a totally different experience. Reality is not your fantasy, and the reality has no obligation to fit with your fantasy. For two weeks he was here smiling and happy - I was giving him time. And a small shock, and he reacted. That's what the unconscious mind goes on doing. He reacted immediately, he could not even give time to meditate over it. He never came back to the ashram, he simply escaped.

This is something for you to ponder, to meditate over. I am not here to adjust with you. If I adjust with you I don't have any compassion for you then. If I adjust with you, then how am I going to help you? I can help you only if I destroy you - if I destroy your past, your knowledge, your ideas, your conditionings, your personality. Only by destroying you I can give you a new birth, I can give you a new beginning, a fresh life.

I feel sorry for the old man. I wanted to help him in every way. But I cannot help you if you are so afraid, if you are so immature and childish, if you are so impatient in your reactions. So all that I can say is this: Goodbye Mr Lewis. See you some other life.

The sixth question:

Question 5:

The question is from Deva Swarup Yogiraj.

Even an unenlightened person remains enlightened. The only difference is that he does not know it. The enlightened person knows it, and there is no way to drop that which you have known.

Enlightenment is your nature, it is not something that you can put on and put off. It is not something like a dress, that you can change. It is your very core, it is your being. Enlightenment is your being.

If you don't know it you can go on behaving in an unenlightened way. The day you know it, then there is no way to behave in an unenlightened way. Once you have known, you have known.

But an enlightened person can pretend. He can pretend that he is not enlightened - that freedom is available. Gurdjieff used to do that very much - to pretend that he is not enlightened. In outrageous ways. One of the disciples has reported that he had to travel with him in a train, and the whole night he disturbed all the passengers. And the conductors and the station-masters and the porters. And he went on drinking and shouting and moving from here to there, and the disciple was just worried what to do and was apologizing to this one and that. And the whole night he did that - purposely.

And by the morning he was very happy with the disciple, because not for a single moment did the disciple lose the feel for the master. Not for a single moment could Gurdjieff make the disciple forget that he is with an enlightened man. He was immensely happy. He said, 'You have won. You passed through a great examination.' There was every possibility to forget for a moment: What type of man is this? Is he enlightened? And what is he doing? Even an unenlightened person wouldn't do this much. If you want to drink you drink and just go to sleep. But he went on drinking. And he was shouting and moving from one corner of the train to another corner, shouting and waking people and abusing people. And the disciple was afraid somebody might start beating him. And the police came at one station, and the station-master came: 'We want to take this man off. And he has to apologize.' He said, 'We have to reach to the other place, and I have to take care of him. And he is a great man - you just don't know his ways.'

He would drink too much and then he would drive; then he would INSIST to drive. And disciples would be sitting. And he would go faster and faster and everybody was just on the brink of 'any moment death is going to happen'. But still they had to remember that he is enlightened. And he would abuse people in a very vulgar way, and the disciple had to remember continuously. That was the kind of situation he would create for their remembrance.

Because when I am polite with you and very gentle with you and you feel 'Our master is great', that is nothing. But when I am not polite with you, not gentle - rough - then to remember that your master is beautiful is difficult, very difficult. One loses the track. And he would do such contradictory things, illogical things. He would tell you to dig a hole in the ground, and for twelve hours with no break you would be digging the hole - tired, perspiring, hungry, thirsty. And he would not allow you to go anywhere, you had to dig the hole. And after twelve hours he comes and says, 'Now fill it back in.'

Now it is very natural to get angry that this is foolish: Then why? But that is the whole point. A master should not be asked why. If you ask the master why, you have not accepted him as the master. Then your relationship remains of reason. And reason cannot relate with a master. It is a deep trust, the relationship is of love and trust. If he says it, then it must be so, then there must be something in it. And there was something in it. He was pushing your button in every way - and if you become angry you miss the point.

And that's what happened with Mr Lewis, he missed the point. He does not know that he cannot love Gurdjieff more than I love Gurdjieff. But I had to hit - and the only way to hit him was to talk about Gurdjieff as if I am against him. That was the only way to hit him. It is very easy if I say something against you, you can tolerate it. But if I say something against your master, it becomes difficult. It becomes impossible to tolerate. Your master is your more subtle ego. If I had said 'Mr Lewis, you are wrong' he would have accepted it. But if I say 'Mr Lewis, Gurdjieff is wrong' that is impossible.

Gurdjieff wrong? And thirty years wasted? He immediately escaped.

An enlightened person can pretend. But an enlightened person cannot become unenlightened again.

The last question:

Question 6:

I think that it is here to stay.