Fly Without Wings

The first question:

Question 1:

WALK WITHOUT FEET

FLY WITHOUT WINGS AND

THINK WITHOUT MIND

THAT'S MY TEACHING. It cannot be made more exact than that. Life is so mysterious that you cannot reduce it to exact formulas. That is not possible. That will be unjust and unfair to life. A mystery has to remain a mystery.

If you reduce the mystery to a formula, you are being violent to reality. No explanation can explain away life. No fact can contain its truth.

You ask me: WHAT EXACTLY, IN SIMPLE WORDS, ARE YOU TRYING TO TEACH?

Only some negative things can be said - that I am trying to destroy the mind; that I have come to destroy, not to fulfill... because unless the old mind is destroyed utterly, the new will not be born. It is out of destruction that creativity arises. It is out of death that life blooms.

My whole work here consists in destroying the mind, its hold upon you; in destroying the roots of the mind so that you can be free in each moment of your life, so that you can be without a past. To be with a past is to be in a prison. The bigger the past, the more you are burdened with it. The more you are burdened with the past, the more you become in-capable of living in the present. Then the present is only a word - you don't experience it. And truth is always in the present. Past is only memory, and future imagination. One is no more; one has yet to be. Between the two is this small precious moment.

And you can be in contact with this precious moment only if there is no mind. Mind means past and future. Either the mind thinks of that which has gone, or of that which is to come; either of yesterdays or of tomorrows.

Jesus says to his disciples: Look at the lilies in the field - how beautiful they are! Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these. And they spin not, they weave not, they work not.

They don't think of the morrow... What is the beauty of the lilies in the field? They live in the present.

Except for man, the existence knows no past, no future. Except for man, there is no misery. Except for man, there is no hell.

By destroying your mind and your past, I am bringing you back home so Adam can enter again into the Garden of Eden.

But don't ask me to be exact - that I cannot do. I cannot do it because I respect life so much. And I cannot be untrue to life. How can I be exact about a roseflower? And how can I be exact about the innocent eyes of a child? And how can I be exact about the beautiful form of a woman? How can I be exact about the clouds in the sky, and the rivers and the mountains and the stars? Life is so elusive, so mysterious, and life is such flux... everything continuously changing.

If you become too exact, you start losing contact with life. You have to be as inexact as life is. You have to be as volatile as life is. You have to be continuously on the move! Life is not a noun - -it is a verb. You have to be as much of a verb as life is... it is a process.

About dead things you can be exact, because they are no longer growing. All their potential is exhaus-ted; there is no more to them. Definition is possible. You can be exact about a corpse, but you cannot be exact about a child. He may be here this moment and the next moment he may be outside in the courtyard. You cannot be exact! But if a corpse is lying there in the room, you can be exact that it will be lying there in the morning too.

Life is dynamic. Life is a dynamism. And I teach LIFE itself, so I cannot be exact.

That's where I differ - I differ from theologians, theoreticians, philosophers. They ARE exact. Their very exactness destroys their beauty and their truth. If they are so exact, they can only be wrong, they cannot be true. How can you define something which is growing? Here you define... and the thing has moved beyond your definition. While you are defining, the thing has been moving beyond your definition. How can you demark something which is expanding? There is no way.

And if you demark, then you will start looking at your demarcation and you will start forgetting life - because life will be very disturbing to you. That's why philosophers don't look at life; they are never existential. Even the philosophers who call them-selves existentialists, even they are not existential.

They are speculative. They weave theories in their minds. And they force life to conform to their theories. Life becomes crippled and paralyzed.

That's what Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians have done to truth - they have ALL para- lyzed it. And they feel very sorry: "Why has truth died in the world?" They are the murderers! Who has killed God? Not the atheists, certainly. How can they kill? - they don't even believe. How can they kill? - they cannot find Him. To kill the God, you will need to find Him first. Who has killed the God? - these theoreticians, these people who are very exact, these clever and cunning and calculating people, these mathematicians, these systematizers. Their theory is more valuable than life itself. They become obsessed with the theory.

I have no theories. I am like a mirror. If it is morning, I say it is morning. If it is no more morn-ing, I don't say it is morning - then it is no more morning! Each moment I reflect whatsoever is the case.

I live in suchness.

And you ask me: WHAT EXACTLY, IN SIMPLE WORDS, ARE YOU TRYING TO TEACH?

Why do you ask this question? You would like to cling to some theory. You cannot get hold of me - that is your trouble. You want to catch hold of me.

One day, a professor came to see me and he said, "Why don't you write a small book in which all that you want to say is contained? - like the Christian catechism."

That is ugly. To me, that is ridiculous. He wants me to say how many gods there are - one, two or three? When God created the world - four thou-sand years before Jesus? On what day, in how many days He created the world. Whether He rested on Sunday or not. How many souls there are in the world. Whether there is rebirth or not. What the virtues are and what the sins are. He wants me to be very definite and clear.

It is not possible - because the thing that is virtue in the morning may become sin in the evening.

And the thing that was sin in the morning may become virtue in the afternoon - one never knows.

Something is true in one context and becomes untrue in another context. Something is beautiful one moment, and the next moment it turns ugly, sour, bitter.

LIFE IS NOT A THING! Things can be defined. Matter can be defined. That's why science is exact and religion can never be exact. The day religion is exact, it is dead. Don't ask me to be exact. How can one be exact? You can be exact about water, that it evaporates at a hundred degrees heat - you cannot be exact about man.

Man is unpredictable. The higher you go, the more unpredictable you become. A Buddha is absolutely unpredictable. You cannot catch hold of him; you cannot have him in your fist. He is like the vast sky. And there are so many nuances and so many colours and so many songs! And there is such variety! How can one be exact? And there is so much contradiction and there is so much paradox - how can one be exact?

No, I cannot be disrespectful to life - just to provide you with an exact answer? so that you can cling to it, so that you can become knowledgeable? so that you can go back home and say to your people that this is the teaching, this I have learnt?

The question is asked by Dr. B. P. Arya, from Nairobi. He must be in a hurry to catch hold of what my teaching is and go to Nairobi and tell people that "This is his teaching!" No, I will not allow you that knowledgeability. I DESTROY KNOWLEDGE! I don't help you to become knowledgeable - I help you to be-come more ignorant, more innocent, because life happens when you are innocent.

When you don't know, you are available: when you know, you are closed.

So this is my teaching:

WALK WITHOUT FEET

FLY WITHOUT WINGS and

THINK WITHOUT MIND.

Mind means knowledgeability. Who is asking this question about exact teaching? - the mind. The mind cannot tackle the elusive, the mysterious. The mind can only tackle the arithmetic, the logical.

The mind is incapable of understanding a song. The mind can only understand a syllogism. It is the mind that is asking... and I am the enemy of the mind.

And you ask: IN SIMPLE WORDS...

NO WORD CAN CONTAIN IT. There exists NO word that can contain life. There exists NO word that can contain love! There exists no word that can contain God!

Sufis have ninety-nine names for God. One wonders: Why not a hundred? Ninety-nine? One more they could have created. But there is a great message in it. They say: The real name is left blank, the hundredth, because God cannot be contained in any word. Ninety-nine are just toys to play with - because you ask, because you CANNOT be at ease with a nameless God, because you feel uncomfortable. You want some name for God so that you can address Him. If God is nameless, you feel impotent - what to do then? How to address...? where to look for...? what name to repeat?

So ninety-nine names are given, but even those ninety-nine names do not indicate anything. They indicate the hundredth, and the hundredth is just no word, emptiness. These ninety-nine names are nothing but ninety-nine names of nothingness, and the hundredth is nothingness itself. Those are toys for children to play with. But they are dangerous toys, because children have forgotten the hundredth completely and they have become engrossed in the ninety-nine.

Once a Sufi was staying with me and he used to repeat God's names, chanting morning, evening, in the night.... And I would ask him again and again "When will you remember God?" And he was a little worried why I asked - he was remembering continuously, morning, evening, night. Two, three days and I was asking again and again, "When will you remember God?"

He said, "What do you mean? I go on re-membering Him. Can't you see my lips moving continuously? Can't you see my rosary? I am moving the beads!"

I said, "These are ninety-nine names, but when will you remember God? When will you throw these beads? When will you stop your movement of the lips? When will you stop your inner chattering, inner talk, this constant repetition of those ninety-nine names? They have to go - only then does silence descend. And silence is mysterious. And silence cannot be contained in any sound. Truth cannot be forced into a word; the word is so small."

And you ask me IN SIMPLE WORDS - simple or difficult, it makes no difference. ALL WORDS ARE EQUALLY INADEQUATE. There are not a few words which are less inadequate and a few which are more adequate - all are absolutely inadequate. If you want to know what truth is, you will have to listen to my silence, you will have to listen to my being.

And you ask: WHAT EXACTLY, IN SIMPLE WORDS, ARE YOU TRYING TO TEACH?

I am not trying - I am simply teaching! Why should I try? But I know from where the question comes:

you are always trying. People are trying to love, trying to pray, trying to meditate, and BECAUSE they are trying, they never love. How can you love when you are trying to love? If you are trying to pray, YOU CANNOT pray, because your energy will be moving in your trying. When you are trying to meditate, who will meditate? You are involved in the trying.

A Zen Master dropped his handkerchief on the floor, and a disciple was there and the Master said, "Try to pick it up and give it back to me. Try!"

And the disciple immediately took the handkerchief from the ground and gave it to the Master, but the Master dropped it again and he said, "I am saying try to get it!"

Six times the Master goes on dropping, and the disciple is puzzled as to what he means. Then suddenly the idea struck him: "The Master is saying try to get it." He said, "But how can I try? Either I pick it up or I don't. How can I try?"

And the Master said, "That's what you have been doing for three years - trying to meditate. Either you meditate or you don't! How can you try?"

Trying is a device. Trying is a trick. When you don't want to do a thing, you try. When you want to do a thing, you simply DO it!

Your house is on fire - do you try to get out? You simply get out! You don't try - you don't consult maps, you don't look into the scriptures. You don't think, "From where and how should I get out?

Whom to ask? Where to find a Master who knows how to get out?" You don't think whether it is right to jump from the window, whether the book of etiquette allows it or not. Should one go from the front door or from the back door? You may even escape from the toilet! rt doesn't matter - when the house is on fire, these things are immaterial, irrelevant. And you don't try... you simply get out!

In fact, you don't even think; you will think when you are out. Then you will stand under a tree and you will take a good breath and you will say, "Thank God that I managed to get out!" But in fact you were not even thinking when you were getting out of the house. It was SO immediate.

When you come across a snake on the path, what do you do? Do you try to think how to jump, from where, how to escape? You simply jump! That action is total and that action is not of the mind.

That s what I mean:

THINK WITHOUT MIND

WALK WITHOUT FEET

FLY WITHOUT WINGS

Move into the immediacy of life.

I am not trying to teach: I am my teaching. The way I am, the way I look at you, the way I talk to you, the way I say something or I don't say something - all that is part. It is not that I am separate from my teaching and trying to teach you. I am my teaching. And if you want to learn, you will have to be in tune with me.

Don't ask such foolish questions.

And you ask: WHAT IS YOUR EXACT MESSAGE TO HUMANITY AT LARGE?

WHERE IS HUMANITY? Have you ever come across humanity? You always come across human beings, never humanity. Humanity is an abstraction, just an empty word. The concrete and the real is the human being, not humanity. Don't be befooled by such great words.

People ARE befooled. I know a man: he was a colleague; while I was teaching in a university he was also a professor there. He is incapable of love, but he loves humanity. He is INCAPABLE of love, but he can-not accept that incapacity. It hurts. He cannot love any human being because his expectations are too great. He asks perfection. Now, you cannot find a perfect human being. This is a trick to pro-tect yourself from love. This is a way to avoid: ask the impossible - it will never be fulfilled and you will never come to know your impotence.

He cannot love a woman, he cannot love a man - he cannot love. He is simply cold. And natu-rally so: he is a professor of logic - very cold. His heart has stopped beating; only his head is becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. He is becoming top-heavy. Any day he will topple. And he will say always that he loves humanity.

I asked him, "How do you manage to love humanity? Just give me a few instances. I would like you to be in love with humanity, but where do you find humanity? I would like to see you holding hands with humanity, embracing humanity, kissing humanity - I would like to see it."

He said, "What are you talking about? - humanity is not a person."

Then what is humanity? Has anybody ever seen humanity? 'Humanity at large' means nothing; it is just an abstraction. It is the idea of Plato. It is like you have seen one horse, another horse, another horse, and then you start thinking of the idea of 'horseness'. Have you ever come across a person who loves horseness? That will look foolish. Either you love horses or you don't - but horseness?

What is that thing?

It is the same with 'humanity'. You come across this woman, this man, this saint, this sinner, but you never come across humanity. Humanity is just an idea created by the philosophers. But you can become obsessed with the idea and that can function like a protection. It protects that man from falling in love with an ordinary human being. And still he can go on thinking that he is a great lover - he loves humanity at large.

I am not concerned with humanity at all. I am not concerned with abstractions. I love human beings.

And I have no expectations from them. I simply love them as they are. I don't ask for per-fection. I don't ask that they should fulfill any conditions. As they are they are beautiful.

The moment you ask anybody to fulfill a condi-tion, you are destroying, you are violent. You are not respecting the person. You are degrading him, you are insulting, humiliating him. If you say, "Be such and then I will love you," then you don't know what love is. Love is unconditional.

My love is for human beings, and my message too is for human beings. I have nothing to do with abstractions like humanity. I deal with the concrete, with the real.

You ask: WHAT IS YOUR EXACT MESSAGE TO HUMANITY AT LARGE?

No message for humanity, but for human beings:

WALK WITHOUT FEET

FLY WITHOUT WINGS and

THINK WITHOUT MIND

For human beings, for you, for him, for her - but not for humanity. Not for Hinduism, not for Mohammedanism, not for Christianity, but for concrete human beings.

My message is: Drop the mind and you will become available to God. Become innocent and you will be bridged with God. Drop this ego, drop this idea that you are somebody special, and suddenly you will become somebody special. Be ordinary and you will become extraordinary. Be true to your inner being and an religions are fulfilled.

And when you don't have a mind, then you have a heart. When you don't have a mind, only then does your heart start pulsating, then you have love. No mind means love. Love is my message.

The second question:

Question 2:

WHEN THERE ARE NO MORE ANY CLOUDS, when your perception is clear, you see the sky - but the sky is indefinable, indescribable, AWACHYA, unspeakable. Nothing can be said about it, and whatsoever you say will be wrong. But the enlightened ones HAVE to say something about it, because you go on asking and you are not capable of listening to silence - so they have to say something!

Buddha says one thing, Christ says another thing; they are invented things. They cannot agree about those things. That is Buddha's choice: when he faces you he has to say something to you, to convey something to you, knowing perfectly well that whatsoever he is saying is going to be misunderstood. But there is no other way to have communication with you! Even if he wants you to come closer to him, to understand his silence, even if he wants to share his joy with you, he will have to use words to call you closer and closer.

Now, it is HIS choice to use certain words. Christ chooses different words; that is his choice.

Patanjali chooses still others, Lao Tzu still others. They don't agree about those words, they can't agree. There is no need - they are all arbitrary. They agree about only one thing: drop the ego, drop the mind. About that they all agree.

Then what happens? - they have different stories to tell. Those stories are all invented stories; they have nothing to do with reality. They are just com-promises with you, just to hold your hand a little longer so you can become infected with the Buddha. Just to hold your hand a little longer, a Buddha has to talk to you.

If he is allowed his own way, he will never talk. Exactly that happened: when Buddha became enlightened, for seven days he remained silent. There was no point in talking! That which had exploded in his being was so vast, there was no way to relate it to others. There was not a single word to indicate towards it. His silence was absolute. The story is beautiful:

Gods in heaven became very much disturbed, because it rarely happens that a man becomes a Buddha, and if Buddha kept quiet then the message would be lost. And a few beings were there who could be helped by the Buddha. And the gods came to Buddha and prayed to him: "You speak, sir!"

Buddha said, "But what is the point? First, whatsoever I say will not be true."

The gods said, "We know it will not be true, but it will attract a few people, and then slowly, slowly, you can lead them towards truth. Let them come! If you don't speak, nobody will ever come - then how will you lead them to silence? Let words be just traps, just traps, to catch hold of people. Let words be just seductions, because people only understand words. Once they are caught in the net of words, then you can take them anywhere you want - but first let them be caught!"

Buddha again said, "But they will not under-stand - they will MISUNDERSTAND. They have ALWAYS done that - misunderstanding - they will do that again. What is the point?"

The gods said, "But there are a few people, very few, certainly, who can be counted on the fingers - they will understand."

Buddha insisted again; he said, "Those few who will be able to understand me will be able to reach on their own. I don't think that they really need me. Maybe on their own they will take a little longer, but those who can understand me are aware enough - they.will reach the truth on their own. I need not bother about them. And those who will NOT understand me, why should I bother about them?"

The gods were in much difficulty as to how to convince Buddha. Then they conferred amongst themselves: "What to do? This man seems to be stub-born!" They discussed, argued among themselves, and they brought a legal point. They said to Buddha, "You are right: there are many who will not under-stand you, who will CERTAINLY misunderstand you; for them, your speaking is not needed. And there are a few who WILL understand you, but they are very few, and you are right:

they will reach the truth even with-out you. But between these two, do you think there is nobody?

Between these two there are a few who will not go to truth if they don't get caught by you. And they will not misunderstand you. They may not be able to understand you immediately, but they will not misunderstand you! There is a category between these two categories: think of those."

And Buddha could not find anything against it. It looked so logical - and Buddha was a man of logic.

He spoke for those few. But whatsoever he says, there are two thing in it: one, the negative part of it. The negative part is: drop the ego, drop the concept of self. About that ALL enlightened people are in agreement. Once the ego is dropped, then what happens? Then they are not in agreement - not that truth is separate, but truth is vast.

Just think: three blind men are told by a physician, "This medicine will help you, this will cure your eyes. One thing is certain," says the physician, "that your eyes have to be cured, that your blindness has to be dropped." Now, all these three blind men are cured and they are standing here in the garden, and they go home and they all three relate what they have seen - do you think they will agree about it? they will say the same things? About one thing they will agree, that their blindness has disappeared. But what happened after the blindness disappeared will be totally different. Somebody may have seen the colours of the trees, the rainbow, the sun. Somebody else may not have been interested in the trees and the rainbow and the sun; may have looked at people, the faces, eyes, children laughing, joking; and somebody else may have seen something else.

Those three blind people will agree on one thing, that blindness has to be dropped. But what happens after blindness is dropped will be different - although the world they open their eyes on is the same; but it is a vast world, multi-dimensional. They will choose according to themselves. And their choice will depend on their likings, dislikings, aptitudes, types.

For example, Buddha says: When the ego is dropped THERE IS NO MISERY. Just look at his words: no misery. He never uses the word 'bliss'; whenever he says it, he says 'no misery'. Now this seems to be a little roundabout. Why should he say 'no misery'?

Mahavir says 'bliss'; when the ego is dropped, you are utterly blissful. And Buddha says: Misery disappears; you are in a state of no misery. There is a great difference, their choice is different, their framework is different. Mahavir always likes positive words. Buddha always likes negative words.

And Buddha says: With positive words there is a difficulty, and the difficulty is that they create greed - so he will never use them. For example, if you talk about blissfulness then people become greedy, desire arises. Everybody starts thinking, "I should become blissful! I should have this bliss this Buddha is talking about - I MUST have it." And the problem is: if you become desirous of bliss, you will not have bliss. The very desire will be the obstruction.

So Buddha says: By talking positively you have destroyed the possibility. The man has become more greedy! First he was greedy about the house and the money and the power and the prestige, now he is greedy about God and bliss and SATCHITANAND and truth - but he is still greedy. Now his desire is even bigger. He is entangled more in desire. You have not helped him - you have even harmed him. So Buddha says: I am not going to use any positive words. All positive words create desire in people's minds. I will say only that there is no misery.

It has some point, some valuable point in it. You don't become greedy about no misery. Just think of the words 'no misery', 'there will be no misery' - you don't feel any greed, you don't feel very enthusiastic about that state of no misery. It does not create desire. And Buddha says: Only WITHOUT desire can that state be attained.

But Mahavir also has a point. He says: If you talk about no-misery, no-self, people will not feel enthusiasm. Now what Buddha thinks will not create desire, Mahavir thinks people will feel no enthusiasm for. Who feels enthusiasm for no-misery? Why should one meditate for years and years just to attain a state of no-misery? That does not look very appealing. Why should one go into SADHANA - into work upon oneself - just to attain a state of no-selfhood? You will not be there.

Just to attain no-selfhood, who will bother? People will become unenthusiastic; they will lose nerve, they will not be attracted towards religion. So Mahavir says: I have to use positive words - 'bliss', 'freedom', 'absolute selfhood'.

Both are right and both are wrong. With words, that is the problem. No word is absolutely right and no word is absolutely wrong - it depends on how you look at those words.

That's why they don't agree in anything else. Just about one thing they agree: that the ego has to be dropped.

The third question:

Question 3:

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD that St. John of the Cross used to vomit during his ecstasies? Vomit can be of infinite significance. It can be a kind of unburdening. It can be not only indicative that the body wants to unburden - it can be indicative of the deeper psyche too, because the body and the soul are not separate, they are one.

Whatsoever happens in the body happens in the soul too; whatsoever happens in the soul happens in the body too - they vibrate together.

It happens many times that when your inner being wants to release some garbage, your body will also release some garbage. And when your body releases some garbage, you will feel as if your mind has also become clean. Have you not felt that kind of cleanliness after a good vomit? Have you not felt a quality of calmness after a good vomit? It not only relieves your stomach, it not only relieves your physical system of some poison - corresponding to it, something in your psyche is also released.

You say, Shaila: AS YOU TALKED ABOUT THE NEW COMMUNE...

The day I was talking about the new commune, many of you felt many things.... When I was talking about the new commune, it is natural that you started thinking about yourself - whether you will be acceptable in the new commune? whether you are worthy enough for the new commune? That is natural; for that idea to arise is natural - because the new commune will be the birth of a new man.

We will be creating an alternative world, a small alternative world. We will be moving in different dimensions than the people outside. We will be dropping all taboos, inhibitions, repressions. We will be vomiting all that the society has forced on you, that the society has stuffed you with. That's why the hammering was felt in the stomach.

All the languages of the world have such expressions: when you cannot accept something you say, "I cannot stomach it." When you have to accept something against yourself, you say, "I had to swallow it somehow." The stomach is not just physical - it is as much psychological as it is physical; it is psychosomatic. That's why whenever your emotions are disturbed, your stomach is immediately disturbed.

A man who is constantly angry cannot have a good stomach. A man who is aggressive cannot have a good stomach. A man who is worried will have ulcers, cannot have a good stomach. The stomach is the place where you are joined together: the soma and the psyche, both are joined there in the stomach, in the navel. The navel is the meeting point of matter and soul.

That's why in Japan to commit suicide people hit just under the navel. The navel is called HARA - that's why in Japanese suicide is called HARAKIRI.

Have you not watched it, observed it, that fear is felt just exactly two inches below the navel? If you are driving and suddenly you see some accident is going to happen and it is beyond control, where are you hit? Where do you feel hit? Deep in the stomach below the navel.

Listening to me, Shaila, on that day, you must have felt this hammering in the stomach, because to become real sannyasins you will have to vomit much. You will have to vomit all your education and all your religion and all your culture and all your civilization. To become a real sannyasin you will have to become primally innocent - you will have to become children again.

And that is going to be the work in the Commune: to efface all that the society has burdened you with, to make you a clean slate; to make you again wild, to make you again as innocent as children are, as innocent as animals; to make you again as innocent as the trees and the rocks. Certainly, much will have to be vomited; your stomach will have to be cleaned physically and spiritually.

Yes, it was I who was hitting - excuse me...!

The fourth question:

Question 4:

An ancient saying:

When the sun rises

we know this,

not by staring at it,

but because we can see everything ELSE clearly.

HOW DO YOU RECOGNIZE THE SUN? You don't stare at the sun - you look at the trees, you look at the people... you look all around: everything is so clear. Because everything is so clear, you know the sun has risen.

The only way to see me is if I can help you to see clearly around yourself. That's what I am doing here: making things clear, giving you a clarity, sorting things out, putting things in their right places, giving you vision and insight.

The day you can see things clearly - your desires, your greed, your anger, your rages, your violence, your misery - the day you can see that it is you who are creating all this hell, the day you can see that you have NEVER been out of paradise, that you were just under a nightmare, the deeper you recognize it, the deeper you see it, the deeper your clarity, the more you will see me, the more you will recognize me. There is no other way!

I cannot give you any proof. What proof can the sun give to you that "I have come"? Should it bring some certificates from some court? Should it quote scriptures: "Look! In every scripture it is written that I will be coming"? No, that is not the point.

That's what people were asking Jesus. "How should we recognize you? How can we believe that you are the Messiah? Prove it!" And the Christians have been doing that for two thousand years, trying to prove from the Old Testament and other scriptures that "Yes, the old Prophets declared, and this is the man about whom they declared that he would be coming."

This is foolish. This is absurd. Jesus cannot be proved by any declaration by anybody else. Who are these prophets to declare? And who are these old scriptures? and why should they control' Jesus stands in his own right - -and those who want to see him should see him by the clarity that he brings. There is no other way.

If I bring some clarity to you, then you have seen me and you have recognized me. Don't look for any other proofs. There are none, and I am not interested in them at all.

But that seems easier, to have a proof: so that you need not think, so that you need not bother, so that you can accept something because of the old, ancient authorities. No, I stand here on my own feet. I am not standing on anybody's shoulders. I will not take the help of Buddha. Buddha has declared, "I will be coming after twenty-five centuries," and the time has come. People write letters to me: "Are you the Buddha?" No. I stand on my own feet. I would not like to burden Buddha and stand on his shoulders - mm? - that will be so unmannerly. I can stand on my own feet.

Then the sun rises we know this not by staring at it but because we can see everything else clearly.

Another ancient saying says:

There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see.

Remember it: if you DON'T wish to see, then there is no way. If you wish to see, then you cannot avoid me. Just search for the wish, just search in your inner desire. If you have the passion to see me, the nothing can hinder you - you will be able to see me.

But if you don't want to see me, if you have some investment in NOT seeing me, not recognizing me, then there is a problem.

Somebody has written that "I am a Christian and I cannot believe that you are the Messiah." Now this is an investment. That's what the investment was with the Jews: they could not recognize Jesus because they were Jews. Now, you are a Christian and you cannot recognize me.... Hindus could not recognize Buddha because he had gone out of the tradition. Buddhists cannot recognize Kabir because he is not a Buddhist.

Just a few days ago, a man came to me from far away. And he said, "I have come to you to be-come a sannyasin because I am a follower of Kabir, and you have spoken such beautiful words about Kabir - that's why I have come."

He was not interested in me at all. I could see that he was not seeing me at all. Just to be respectful to him, I gave him sannyas. And I asked him, "Will you be staying here?" He said, "No, there is no need." "Would you like to do some meditations?" He said, "I am doing - I am following Kabir."

Now, this man, even though he thinks he has taken sannyas from me, has not even come to me. He is befooling himself. He has only come to me because I have spoken so beautifully on Kabir.

There are many who have come to me because I have spoken so beautifully on Christ, or so beauti- fully on Gurdjieff, or so beautifully on somebody else - but they have not come to me. They are not my people. Even if they are here they will not be able to see me - they have their investments.

The last question:

Question 5:

This is from Arup....

ARUP IF YOU HAD INVITED ME TOO, then I would not have troubled you at all. I had to change suddenly. I was going to start a series of talks on Shankaracharya's Atma-Bodha - self-knowledge.

Looking into the sutras, it looked like an anti-climax to Buddha. The heights that we were flying with Buddha... and then the very ordinary and traditional sayings of shankaracharya I felt it would not be good. It would be like falling from the peaks into the valleys. It would be like one had suddenly cut your wings.

Buddha was talking of no-self; and shankaracharya's statements are very, very traditional Hindu.

I could have managed, but it would have been too much effort. Hence, I thought it was better to say goodbye to shankaracharya - and I have said goodbye to him forever!