This Very Ancientmost New Commune

The first question:

Question 1:

FOR YOU ARE IT! Knowledge is not possible. Knowledge pre-supposes division, split. The knower has to be separate from the known. That's why God cannot be known. You can be God - you are - but you cannot know Him. The very effort to know Him is based on separation. Knowledge separates, divides; it never bridges you. That's why I insist again and again: Be innocent, not knowledgeable - then you will be in harmony with existence. Then you will be existence! Be ignorant.

Blessed are the ignorant.

Why? Because when there is no knowledge, no effort to know, divisions disappear. You merge...

you meet... you become one.

You cannot know God because God is hiding in you. God cannot be reduced to an object. God cannot become the known. God is the KNOWER; God is your subjectivity. It is not the goal, it is the seeker. It is not at the end of the journey, it is in the beginning - in the very beginning. It is the don't try to know God, otherwise you will fail and there will be great frustration.

Become God! Be God! And when I say become God, I am using language which is not adequate.

YOU ARE GOD! Recognize it - that's all that I mean by becoming it. LOOK within yourself. Don't seek God - FIND Him! Without seeking He has to be found. All search leads astray, because the search starts from the very false idea that He is separate, that He is far away, that He is somebody else.

He is in the seeker - He is the search!

The second question:

Question 2:

SAMBUDDHA, RIGHT-MINDFULNESS IS A STRANGE WORD. First: there is no mind in it - hence it is called 'right-mindfulness'. Secondly, there is nothing right and wrong in it - hence it is called right-mindfulness. This is a Buddhist way of saying things.

It can't be a goal, because when there is a goal you are always in the wrong. Why are you in the wrong when there is a goal? because when there is a goal there is desire, when there is desire you are unhappy, discontented. When there is desire, there is anxiety - whether you will be able to make it or not? Will it be possible or not?

When there is desire there is future, and with the future anxiety enters into your being. With the desire you have lost contact with the present.

Right-mindfulness is not a goal, cannot be a goal - because when ALL desires disappear and all goals disappear and you are herenow... that is the moment of right-mindfulness.

Why is it called 'right'? It is called right be-cause it knows no division between right and wrong.

Nothing is wrong! and nothing is right. All judgements have disappeared. One is utterly innocent.

When you see a roseflower, does the idea arise in you: "It is right, it is wrong"? When you see the morning star disappearing, does the idea arise in you: "Is it right or is it wrong?" When you start looking at life with no judgement, with no prejudice, then you are in the state of right-mindfulness.

Jesus has said: Judge ye not. Jesus has also said: Resist not evil - not even evil has to be resisted, then arises right-mindfulness. When you are neither moral nor immoral, when you are amoral like trees and animals and birds and beasts, when you are like a small innocent child who has just opened his eyes, with no ideas... then, in that silence, in that purity, it is right-mindfulness.

Why is it called right? It is called right be-cause now it knows nothing as right and wrong - it knows no division, it is indivisible. The acceptance is total! - that's why it is called right. You have fallen into the suchness of existence. You are no longer standing there like a judge.

Judging is wrong. To be in a state of non-judgement is right. Right, NOT against wrong right because all wrong and right have disappeared. You have no opinion. You don't carry a philosophy in the mind.

You are simply a mirror!

When you come before the mirror, the mirror does not say, "You are beautiful, you are ugly" - it simply reflects. It reflects without condemnation, without appreciation - it reflects choicelessly. It JUST reflects.

When your consciousness has become a mirror and simply reflects whatsoever is the case, it is right-mindfulness. That mirrorlike quality....

And it is not a goal, because EVERY goal will bring dust on the mirror. Every goal will stir desires, and desires surround your mirror like mist - then reflection is not true, then suchness is not reflected.

When you have some idea, you cannot be true to reality. You distort reality according to your idea.

You try to mould reality according to your idea. You are to modify reality. You go on looking for your idea. You are searching for support: you would like reality to support YOUR idea, you would like reality to agree with you - -and then you distort. Then you start seeing things which are not there, and you stop seeing things which ERE there. Then you start living in a mind-world.

To live in the mind is wrong. To live without mind is right, because without mind, the consciousness exists in its purity, mirror-like - it simply reflects. It says nothing! It has NO INTERPRETATION.

It interprets not.

And why is it called mindfulness? This is the translation of a Buddhist term SAMMASATI. SAMMA means right - the translation is not very correct, cannot be. SAMMA IS a very strange word, very significant, has many meanings; 'right' is only one of its meanings. SAMMA IS the root from where SAMADHI arises; the word SAMADHI comes from SAMMA.

SAMMA means many things. One: tranquillity, silence, equanimity, balance, undisturbedness, undistractedness, centredness, groundedness - they are all aspects of SAMMA. 'Right' is a very poor translation of SAMMA.

And SATI - SAMMASATI. SATI can mean mindfulness, can mean remembrance, can mean reflection, can mean recollectedness, can mean presence. All those meanings are involved in it.

Mindfulness is only one of the meanings. It is a very potential and pregnant word - -sammasati.

It is the seventh step in Buddha's eight steps - you are very close to reality. The eighth is samadhi.

The seventh is SAMMASATI. YOU have come very very close; you are just on the threshold of reality - it has to be very very significant. When you are utterly present in the presence, when you don't have any past and don't have any future... when this cuckoo calling, this train passing, this dog barking, is all... when THIS is all and there is no that, when the word 'here' is your whole reality and there is no there, when now contains ALL time and there is no then... then you are in the state of SAMMASATI.

That's what I go on calling 'herenow' - that is SAMMASATI. Then you are utterly present, absolutely present. When something is going on in your mind about the past, you are not here; a part of you is travelling towards the past, and a part of you is travelling towards the future - only a small fragment is here.

When ALL the parts of your being are here, when you are totally at home, nothing is missing, when you are integratedly here, then it is right-mindfulness. In that moment you will reflect reality - as it is, without any distraction, without any distortion. Because you don't have any thought in the mind, how can you distort it? Thought distorts, thinking is destructive. It goes on imposing - it does not allow you to see that which is.

Right-mindfulness is a state of no-mind, no-thought!

And remember: it is also a state of no-feeling - otherwise, you may think it is a state of feeling. No, it is not - because feeling again creates ripples and the surface of the lake is disturbed, and again the moon is not reflected as it is.

Neither thought disturbs you, nor feeling.

These are the three states: one is thinking - the most disturbed state; second is feeling - less disturbed than thinking, but still disturbed; third is being - no disturbance at all. One is in the head, second is in the heart, third is in your guts. Right-mindfulness is a gut-state: no head, no heart. You are simply there undefined, undefinable.

Sambuddha, you ask me:

PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT 'RIGHT-MINDFULNESS' IS. IF NOT A GOAL OR SOMETHING TO PRACTISE, WHAT IS IT?

And, yes, it is not a practice. You cannot practise it, because practice brings goal! Practice is desire, practice is mind. And remember: whenever you practise something, you are imposing something against yourself, otherwise why practise it? against whom are you practising? When you practise truth, what will you do? You will repress the untruth - but the untruth will remain there, deep inside you, ready to explode any moment. It will go on accu-mulating.

When you practise love, what will you do? You will repress hatred. When you practise com-passion, what will you do? You will repress anger. And all that is repressed will go on remaining in you, and all that is practised will remain on the surface, and all that is rejected will go deep into your being.

The rejected will become part of your being and the practised will remain just a coating, a painting on the surface.

And remember: whenever you practise anything, you are angry at it. Naturally so - because all practising divides you, makes you schizophrenic.

One part of you is trying to manipulate the other part. One part of you is trying to enforce some ideas on the other part. And the part that is trying to enforce is a very impotent part, but articulate - your head. It has NO power, but it is very articulate, very clever, very cunning, very argumentative.

And the head goes on imposing on your body, on your heart, which are far more potential, far more powerful; they have energy sources, but they are not articulate, they are not argumentative - they are silent. And the head goes on pretending that it has practised... and then a situation arises and all practice is thrown away - because the head has no energy.

You think for years that you will never be angry, then one day somebody insults you and in a single moment you have forgotten all that practice. And YOU ARE angry! By the time you come to know that you are angry, anger has already happened. You are burning, you are fire. From where does this fire come? And YEARS of practice! That practice was just on the surface. Mind was pretending; because there was no situation provoking you, mind was able to pretend. Now the situation has arisen and mind is not able to pretend. The reality asserts itself.

That's why down the ages, through the ages, the so-called religious people have been escaping from society, from life. Why? They are escaping from situations where their practice can be proved wrong; nothing else are they doing. Going to the Himalayas they are simply escaping from the world - because the world brings situations! And their so-called practice and their religion and their discipline is broken again and again. Somebody insults, or a beautiful woman passes by, and all their celibacy and all their brahmacharya and all their ideas are gone. A single beautiful woman is enough to destroy all their years of celibacy.

They escape from women, they escape from the world, they escape from money and the market - they know that they can be moral and religious and saintly only when there is no situation which provokes their reality. Then the mind can go on playing the game in a monastery. When there is no challenge, mind seems to be the master. When there is challenge, mind is no more a master.

Whatsoever you practise remains false. Never out of practice has anything real happened. Beware of this. The real happens only through understanding, not through practice. And what is the difference?

Understanding will say: Remain where situations arise, remain where challenges surround you.

Be there where provocations and temptations exist. Test yourself there. Go into situations!

Understanding will say: If anger comes, then go into anger and see what it is. See yourself - don't trust anybody else's judgement about it. Go into it! Be burnt by it. Let it leave scars on your being - because one learns only through the hard way. Only your experience will tell you again and again and again that anger is stupid - not that it is a sin! it is simply stupid. And as the understanding grows deeper, anger will be coming less and less. One day... the understanding has touched your very core of being, the light has penetrated you. You have seen through and through that anger is futile: in that very moment anger has disappeared and there has not been any repression.

Remember this: repression is the pitfall for ALL those people who want to transform their lives - they have to avoid repression. Indulgence is not so bad, because indulgence can one day bring understanding, but repression can never bring understanding. How can you understand something which you go on repressing and you don't look into? - you go on covering it, go on throwing it in the basement of your being.

And remember: the more you practise, the more you pretend, the more you are angry at your own practice. Your real parts, your guts are angry.

The intellectual young man was telling off his girlfriend. "Jane," he remonstrated, "I don't think you are the girl for me. My interests are in art, literature and in music. You are only concerned with sports, with gambling and with common activities that are altogether alien to me. In fact, to be blunt about it - you are downright uncouth!"

"Uncouth!" she exploded. "Me?! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Uncouth? Didn't I go along with you to them operas, them concerts, them lectures, and all that sort of shit?!"

That's what will happen. You can go on practising, but deep down you know that you are repressing, that you are rejecting, that you are denying some essential parts of your being.

Right-mindfulness is the flavour of understanding, not the outcome of practice. Right-mindfulness is the fragrance - the fragrance of seeing into things deeply, the fragrance of insight.

The third question:

Question 3:

Neerjo, ecstasy is only out of agony - and the deeper the agony, the deeper the ecstasy will be; total the agony, total will be the ecstasy. Everything has to be paid for. For ecstasy, we have to pay in agony. One has to go through deep pain to get rid of pain. Pain is cleansing. Pain is a fire; it burns the rubbish in you, it destroys the unessential. Just as we purify gold through fire, consciousness is purified through pain. Pain has something to deliver to you.

Don't avoid pain! If you avoid pain, you are avoiding pleasure. Don't avoid the world! If you avoid the world, you have avoided God. Don't avoid darkness. If you avoid darkness, dawn will never come.

It is out of the dark night that the morning is born. And when the night is darkest, the sunrise is closest.

Remember this fundamental law of life, this paradox.

If I have to cleanse you, purify you, I have to become a fire to you. Jesus has said: I am fire and I have come to burn you! Every Master is a fire. If you come across a Master who is not a fire, but just a kind of ointment, escape from there! He will give you consolations, but he will not be able to transmute your life-energies. He may be able to make you comfortable in life, but he will not be able to help you to transcend life.

The real Master is always a fire. A real Master is always there to destroy.

Yes, I will touch your wounds again and again, Neerjo. You are hiding them. You are hiding them, That's why they are not healing. They have to be brought to sunlight, to fresh air. They have to be exposed. Only in that exposure will they start healing. And, yes, when I touch your wound it hurts.

The more you want to be healed, the more it will hurt, because much pus is there. You have been hiding the wounds for so long - much pus has gathered there. The pus has to be thrown out of your system, the poison has to be thrown out of your system.

This agony is not a curse, it is a blessing - because out of this agony, slowly slowly you will arise in a totally different dimension. Acceptance is the bridge. Accept the pain, accept the wounds, accept yourself as you are! Don't try to pretend to be somebody else, don't try to show that you are not this. Don't be egoistic, and don't go on pre-tending and laughing while your heart is crying. Don't smile if your eyes are full of tears. Don't be inauthentic, because by being inauthentic you are simply protecting your wounds from being healed. Your whole being will become rotten.

That's how people are! Pus and pus and pus.... And they are somehow managing so that nobody should know how much it stinks inside them. They don't go inside themselves because it stinks too much, it is horrible. And they don't allow anybody to enter their being - that's why they don't love, because love will need exposure. They don't make contact, because if you contact somebody he may smell things that you are hiding. You know. You keep aloof, you go only so far.

You don't go inside yourself, you don't allow anybody else to go inside you. But, Neerjo, when you have come to me you have to allow me to come inside you. That's what sannyas is all about. A declaration that for me your doors are open. By becoming a sannyasin, you have handed the key to me. Now, pain is going to be there, because sannyas is a surgery. Many rotten parts have to be cut and much poison has to be taken out of your system - it is going to be painful. But be courageous.

Go through it and great will be your joy.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

LIFE IS GOD! GOD IS LIFE! those two words are synonymous, synonyms. Forget about God!

Search for life - it is the same search.

Using the word 'God' does not change anything. But I know why the question has arisen. The question has arisen because the priests have been telling you that life and God are not only separate but opposite. They have been telling you that if you want to search and seek God, you will have to renounce life - hence the question. They have been telling you that God is very angry at you because you are living, God is very angry at you because you are loving, God is very angry at you that you are happy here on this earth. Be sad! be miserable! and pray and ask for the other world. Feel yourself a stranger here; feel as if you have been thrown into a prison. This is a kind of punishment, this life.

That's what your priests have been telling you down the ages. They have created the idea, a very false idea and a very irreligious idea, that God and life are not only separate but antagonistic. If you search for life, you will be against God. If you want to search for God, you have to be against life.

Now this is utter stupidity! God is life, God is the very centre of life. Life is the circumference of God's centre. Life is the cyclone and God is the centre of the cyclone.

Searching for God you will come to know the deepest meaning of life. Searching for life you will start falling into God unawares. If you go deep into life, you will find God. If y you go deep into God, you will find life abundant.

But the religious people have destroyed a beautiful word - -'God' is a beautiful word, but it has been used by wrong people. It has become asso-ciated with wrong meanings. When I use the word 'God', I mean the innermost core of life - not that you have to renounce life, but that you have to love life, that you have to dive deep into life.

Why do I use the word 'God'? Why can't drop it and simply use 'life'? The problem is that with life you have the idea that life finishes in the mundane - the market, the money, the power, the prestige, the politics, the family, and the rut and the routine. You think this is life. This is just the very periphery of life. You are standing in the porch and you think this is the palace. It is part of the palace, but it is just the entrance. There are great treasures in the palace.

That's why I don't use just the word 'life', because that will give you again a wrong notion. So I have to go on using both the words: life and God - and go on insisting that they are synonyms.

Search for the centre of life and you will be searching for God.

Jesus has said: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, then all else shall be added unto you. Life comes on its own - all else shall be added unto you. If you seek the centre, then the periphery follows, the circumference follows. When you are standing at the centre, the whole life is available to you. But it is not so if you are standing on the circumference. You may not be even aware of the centre.

From the centre, the circumference remains available; but from the circumference you may not even become alert, you may not be even conscious that there is a centre also.

I have heard a beautiful story:

Once Haroun-Al Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, was celebrating a royal occasion. He ordered a grand display of all manner of jewellery and artwork for the occasion, and invited not only courtiers and nobles but many commoners also.

At the height of the celebrations, the Sultan developed a magnanimous mood and all of a sudden he ordered every person present to touch any article they liked, and that article, no matter how precious, would belong to that person. No sooner was the royal command given than a rush was made to possess the costliest thing within reach.

A beautiful slave girl, remaining composed and serene by the side of the throne asked the Sultan to reaffirm his command. On receiving affirmation, the slave girl immediately touched the Caliph himself on the arm saying, "Why should I run after those things when the master of them all is here?"

The Sultan, in admiration of the insight shown by the girl, complimented her and said, "Now that you possess me, the whole of my kingdom is yours."

Life is the circumference: God is the centre. If you touch God, all is yours; if you have arrived at the centre, then the whole belongs to you.

You ask: WHY SHOULD ONE SEARCH FOR GOD? IS NOT LIFE ENOUGH?

You will know life only when you have touched God. By being divine, life will be revealed to you in all its dimensions. It has multi-facets to it, it is multi-dimensional. Just eating, drinking and merrying is not all. And I am not against it, remember! It is perfectly good as it is. It is beautiful as it is, but it is not all.

I am a spiritual hedonist. I am a synthesis of Buddha and Epicurus. Nobody has tried that yet. There have been people who are absolutely concerned with eating, drinking and merrying, and they don't bother a bit about God and all that nonsense. There are people who are absolutely concerned with God and don't bother about eating, drinking and merrying and all that nonsense. I love both. I am totally in love with both. And I don't see any contradiction between the two.

Eating, drinking, merrying, is the circumference. It is good! God IS there too, but very dilute. When you start moving towards the centre, God becomes more concentrated. When you drink, you attain to a forgetfulness which is momentary. When you drink out of God, you attain to a forgetfulness which is eternal. When you fall in love with somebody's body, it is going to be a very temporary affair. When you fall in love with somebody's spirit, it is going to be an eternal phenomenon. Loving the body is good, but nothing compared with the love of the soul. Loving the visible is good, but don't get caught there - there is more to it. Hiding behind it is the invisible.

Eating is joyful, but when you start eating consciousness... that is what meditation is. When you start nourishing consciousness, then you know what real eating is. That's what Jesus said to his disciples when he was departing: Eat me, drink me - -let me be your food. Each disciple has to become a cannibal because he has to eat the Master. And each Master is already a skilled cannibal - he goes on eating his disciples.

There are things on the periphery, and there are things at the centre. The circumference cannot exist without the centre and the centre cannot exist without the circumference. That's why I say they both are together, they are part of each other.

Epicurus lives on the circumference. Buddha lives at the centre. I live together in both the spaces.

And that is my message to you: Be available to the circumference as much as to the centre; and go on moving in and out. Fall in love and meditate! Be in the body and be the soul! Be the visible and be the invisible! And you will be the richest sannyasins that have ever existed on this earth.

Epicurus' followers were rich - they knew how to eat and drink and be merry; but they were a little poor in the sense that they didn't know how to meditate. They knew how to love, how to relate, but they were not aware at all that there exists something like meditation. And they were beautiful people! Their dance was something of the eternal, but they were not awake of the eternal. Their joy was a reflection of something very deep, but they were not *awar e of the depth. They lived on the waves - -although the waves were living on the ocean, in the ocean, but they lived on the waves.

They sailed in small boats, and they were happy with the sun and the sea, and their joy was great, and I am ALL for it - but there are deeper treasures also. There are pearls which can only be found by diving. Buddha's followers dived deep into the sea and forgot all about the sun and the waves and the joy and surfing - they forgot all about that. They were rich; they attained to the centre - but they were poor also.

My own approach is that there is no need to choose - be choicelessly available to all. Sometimes it is good to be on the waves, in the sun, and sometimes it is good to go to the depth, to the pacific depth of life, to those dark silences where the sun has never penetrated. To be available to both the world and God, life and God, is freedom. To me, the Epicureans are not free because they cannot go into the depth; and Buddhists are not free either because they cannot go back to the surface.

Their freedom has limitations.

I give you absolute freedom without any limitations; I make available to you all that God has made available to you. You are the most courageous experiment on the earth hitherto! It needs guts to be available to these two places together - it needs guts to be in love and still be in meditation, to meditate and yet to love. It is very easy, comfortable, to be in love and forget about meditation; it is simple, it has no complexity in it - because when you love, you forget yourself, you remember the other, you become other-oriented. It is a simple process to forget yourself and to become other- oriented. To love and to meditate is difficult, complex, because to meditate means to forget the other and become self-oriented. Now you will be moving between pola-rities - you will have to become a swinger. But out of complexity is richness.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

CHAITANYA HARI, I MUST MAKE YOU AWARE that you are very close to enlightenment. If you want to escape, escape now -otherwise it will be too late!

It is beautiful... the ego is disappearing. That's how it should be! You are melting; you are no more an iceberg. You are becoming a mirror! - so somebody is sad, you reflect sadness; and somebody is ecstatic and you express ecstasy. And somebody is dancing and a dance arises in you. And somebody sings a song and you echo it. You are becoming a mirror!

Don't be afraid, don't be worried, don't create a problem out of it. Relax into it... this is how it should be.

Forget about yourself. Don't ask: AND WHERE IS ME? 'Me' is a false entity, it is a shadow, it is illusion... it is disappearing. You are becoming a hollow bamboo. It will be frightening, because to you it will look as if you are dying. In fact, it is true that you are dying - the ego is dying. It is true that you will not be able to feel your personality. How can you feel your personality? - when somebody laughs, there is laughter in you, and somebody cries and tears come to you. How can you feel your personality?

A personality means resistance: somebody is crying and you are still happy - that is personality.

Somebody is laughing and you are still crying that is personality. You are separate, that is personality - you resist. You demark yourself. You say, "I am THIS, and I will remain this. You can go on laughing - I don't care. I am sad and I won't allow you to disturb my sadness. I will persist. This is me!"

The ego is like ice, frozen. It is a resistance, a continuous resistance.

Now that is dissolving - you are blessed, Chaitanya Hari. Help it to go. Soon greater things will happen. Looking at a tree you will become a tree; you will forget to go back to your room and Krishna will have to come and find you.

It happened to Socrates: one night he went outside and he started looking at the stars and he became a star. He was looking at a star and it was fascinating. It was so beautiful that he could not look away from it. He became one with it. And the snow started falling and he was frozen - he was almost dead by the morning when he was found. His disciples searched for him the whole night; only in the morning was he found, covered with snow... but still his eyes were looking at the sky.

He was not there! They had to shake him and shock him and warm him and massage him to come back. Slowly, slowly, he came back and they asked, "What has happened?"

And he laughed. He said, "This is strange! I became the star."

That used to happen to Ramakrishna almost every day. Anywhere, any excuse, and he would fall into samadhi. For hours. Walking on the road, his disciples were always in trouble. Even somebody passing by, and in India just anybody can say, HARE KRISHNA, HARE RAMA... just any word that reminded him of God. People ordinarily salute in India: JAI RAMJI - hail God! Anybody. And Ramakrishna coming - anybody would say it. Just hearing the word 'Ram' and he is gone! standing on the road, in the middle of the traffic. And the crowd gathers, and the policeman comes and tells the disciples: "Take your Master away from here!"

And they have to carry his body and he is just gone. Enough it was!

Once it happened that for six days continuously he remained like a corpse. His disciples had to feed him, to wash him, and cry and pray to God, "Send our Master back!"

Yes, it is possible. Standing by the side of a pine tree, you can become a pine. Touching a rock, you can become a rock - because really there are no divisions. We are part of one reality. WE ARE NOT APART! - we are one with the whole.

When somebody is crying, you are crying. And when somebody is dancing, you are dancing. We are joined together. We are interlinked. We are not independent, we are not dependent either - we are interdependent. One consciousness, one life, sur-rounds you, within and without. It is oneness.

Something beautiful is very close by - if you can allow it, you will be gone and God will be there. But it almost always happens that in such moments one becomes very frightened. One starts asking: "And where is me?" When resistance starts disappearing and personality starts disappearing, naturally one becomes frightened: "What is happening to me? Am I going mad? Why should I cry if somebody else is crying?" - because you have been taught that you are separate. But that teaching is simply false; it is a make-believe.

And for one reason more there will be fear: because now there are so many people - somebody is crying and somebody is laughing, now what will you do? You will have to cry and laugh together.

And then people will certainly think you have gone mad! It is okay that somebody is crying and you feel empathy and you cry, and somebody is laughing, naturally laughter is infectious and you start laughing. But what will you do when one person is crying and another person is laughing? And if you do both together you are very contradictory - but that's what is possible. That is divine madness; that is the greatest experience that is possible to man. Allow that too!

That is my purpose here. Why am I creating this commune? Just to create a certain milieu where everything is allowed, nobody interferes. If you are crying and laughing together, nobody comes and condemns you; people respect you, they have reverence for you. They know that something is happening to you; they will not interpret and they will not condemn - not even in their eyes will there be any indication that this is not good.

That is a spiritual community: where all is allowed, unconditionally; where everybody is helped into whatsoever space he is moving; where all kinds of spaces are respected; where nobody enforces any particular pattern and particular character. And all kinds of things are going to happen in my commune, because I am making available to you ALL the paths that have happened in the past, AND things which are going to happen in the future too.

So, many things are going to happen. Somebody may become a Socrates and somebody may become a Ramakrishna and somebody may become a Mahavir and somebody may become a Buddha and somebody a Meera and somebody a Jesus - all that is possible. You ALL are carrying seeds for that. Just right soil is needed and you will start sprouting. You need support.

So support! If something is happening to somebody, even if your old mind brings interpretations, drop that mind; be respectful to the person and the space that he is moving in.

Now, if you find Chaitanya Hari somewhere crying and laughing together, help him, tickle him, make him cry, so that he can go as deep as possible. All kinds of experiences have to be gone through, only then one day does one transcend experiences. Then a day arrives when you have passed through experiencing.

Then somebody cries and nothing happens to you, and somebody laughs and nothing happens to you... then simply nothing happens to you because you have become a nothing. But before that this is going to happen, that you will be affected, that you will become very vulnerable, that you will start soaking everything that is around you, that you will start becoming all kinds of things. That you will be very much confused! That there will be CHAOS in you - but remember, only out of chaos are stars born. And one has to be ready to go into chaos.

When you come back, all will be gone. Then nothingness pervades. Buddha has called that noth- ingness 'nirvana'. Then nothing affects, because there is nobody to he affected and there is nobody to affect. Then all is a dream and you are just a witness to it....

The sixth question:

Question 6:

YES, PRASAD, that's how it is. Many of you have been with me in the past. Many of you have been together with each other in the past. It is a meeting of old friends. You have forgotten - I have not forgotten. And sooner or later you will also start remembering.

This new commune is going to be one of the oldest things on the earth, very ancientmost. And travellers from different paths have come - travellers from different directions and dimensions. Jews are here and Mohammedans are here and Hindus and Jains and Buddhists and Christians and Taoists - all kinds of people are here. All cultures are meeting here; all religions pouring into each other. And a natural synthesis will arise. We are not creating any synthesis, but it is happening on its own.

The universal man can be born only out of such a commune - the man who will not be a Christian and will not be a Jew and will not be a Hindu and will not be Indian and will not be Chinese and will not be German. All boundaries are dissolving here.

And you are certainly not new. You have been here long enough, you have lived long enough. Many many lives you have been passing. And you have brought many riches; you have brought great heritages with you. And once all those heritages are poured into one pool, it will be one of the richest phenomena that has ever happened or can ever happen.

The seventh question:

Question 7:

PREM GARJAN, YOU ARE FORTUNATE that you are not in the Lao Tzu house - for many reasons.

One is: those who are in the Lao Tzu house, I torture them very much - you don't know about it outside. They are continuously crucified. Sooner or later, I am going to make my whole campus Lao Tzu house so everybody will be inside - and then you will know.

Meanwhile, enjoy as much as you can.

And secondly, what almost always happens is: when you are too close to me you start forgetting about me. That too is a misfortune. When you are for twenty-four hours in the same place where I am, naturally you start taking my presence for granted. You become oblivious. That's how the human mind functions.

The gardener who lives the whole day in the garden has stopped seeing the trees long ago. The man who lives in the Himalayas knows nothing of the beauty of the Himalayas. When you go to the Himalayas, you know the beauty of it. But if you start living there, how long will you be able to know the beauty of it? After a few days the honeymoon is over - and then those Himalayan peaks are taken for granted. Not that they have become less beautiful - they are exactly the same - but you have become insensitive.

The obvious is almost always forgotten.

That's how we have forgotten God! because we LIVE IN HIS HOUSE, and He is ALWAYS around - and we have forgotten about Him.

Go and ask the fish in the ocean - the fish has forgotten about the ocean. The fish only knows, Garjan, when it is thrown out of the ocean, when it is on the sands, in the sun - then it knows what the ocean was, what the ocean is. Now it is thirsty for the ocean. Now there is great longing for the ocean. But it has lived in the ocean for years and it has not even thought for a single moment, it has not even thanked God for the whole ocean that was given to her.

That's how it happens. It is very natural to our minds because our minds are not very sensitive, they are very dull.

You love a woman - there is great joy; you feel so happy. And then the woman starts living with you and after a few days you have forgotten about her! You don't even look at her! Still you touch her hand, but nothing flows. She has forgotten you, you have forgotten her. Familiarity makes people very unfamiliar. And the obvious becomes non-existential.

I have heard:

In an anthropological institute in Vienna, there used to be great interest in the various love postures of the races. Two professors, one a Frenchman and the other a German, devoted most of their waking hours to the matter, consulting such ancient texts as THE KAMA SUTRA and THE PERFUMED GARDEN. When they finally conferred to compare notes, they disagreed on only one point: the German said there were 138 postures; the Frenchman claimed there were 139. A hot argument ensued. It was decided to enumerate the positions.

"Well," the Frenchman began, "first, of course, there is the good old way."

"Ach!" exclaimed the German professor disgustedly. "You win - I forgot about that one."

And the last question:

Question 8:

THIS ANECDOTE:

Sinclair had been married for ten years and had lived all of them in agony. He was unbelievably jealous of his coquettish wife; for years he had suspected she was having an affair with his business partner. Finally, he could stand the tension no longer and hired a detective to trail her.

A few days later, the detective reported to Sinclair.

"Well, did you follow them?"

"Oh, yes," said the detective. "I have the report here. Last night she left your home about eight thirty, and then she met a man on the corner of Reid Street and Montgomery Place. They strolled around for about fifteen minutes, then they got into a car and went down to Patmore Lane. There they parked for a half hour and he made advances to her to which she ungrudgingly responded. Then they drove to the Franconia Hotel; I checked at the desk and found out that they were occupying room 301. Fortunately, room 301 faced the street, so I climbed a tree opposite their window, peered in and saw them both standing there completely nude, fondling each other..."

"And then?!" cried Mr. Sinclair. "What happened then?"

"Oh, well, then they pulled down the shade."

"Oh," moaned Sinclair, "what a tragedy! Always to doubt, never to know...!"

I AM HERE, but that will not make much difference - you have learnt the habit of doubt. It has become ingrained, it has become unconscious. It is not that you doubt - it is that you have become doubt. So even if I am here confronting you, you go on missing me. The doubt goes on arising. If one doubt disappears, you produce another. If that disappears, you produce another. Doubts come to you just like leaves come to a tree.

You will have to see the point. You will have to see me without your doubting mind. What are you expecting? Your expectation is that by and by I will argue against all your doubts, I will prove things so that your doubts are dissolved - then you will be able to see me. That is not going to happen. I can go on and on talking to you, I can go on and on showering myself on you, but that will not help much - the doubting mind will go on creating new doubts, fresh doubts.

If you are waiting for that moment when all doubts are gone, then you will look at me, then that moment will never come - I will be gone. That moment will never come. If you want that moment, then you have to put your doubts aside.

Just once, look at me... without any doubt, and that will suffice. That will trigger a process of trust in you. Only through trust is the meeting with me possible. And only through trust is transformation.