Without any choice of your own

The first question:

RUDOLPH STEINER WAS A GREAT MIND, but mind you, I say 'a great mind', and mind as such has nothing to do with religion. He was tremendously talented. In fact, it is very rare to find another mind to compare with Rudolph Steiner. He was so talented in so many directions and dimensions; it looks almost super-human: a great logical thinker, a great philosopher, a great architect, a great educator, and so on and so forth. And whatsoever he touched, he brought very novel ideas to that subject. Wherever he moved his eyes, he created new patterns of thought. He was a great man, a great mind, but mind as such, small or great, has nothing to do with religion.

Religion comes out of no-mind. Religion is not a talent, it is your nature. If you want to be a great painter, you have to be talented; if you want to be a great poet, you have to be talented; if you want to be a scientist, of course, you have to be talented; but if you want to be religious, no special talent is needed. Anybody, small or great, who is willing to drop his mind, enters into the dimension of the divine. And of course, great talented men find it very difficult to drop their minds; their investment is bigger. For an ordinary man who has no talent, it is very easy to drop the mind. Even then it seems so difficult. He has nothing to lose; still he goes on clinging. Of course, the difficulty is multiplied when you have a talented mind, when you are a genius. Then your whole ego is invested in your mind. You cannot drop it.

Rudolph Steiner founded a new movement called anthroposophy, against theosophy. He was a theosophist in the beginning, then his ego started fighting other egos in the movement. He wanted to become the very head, the supreme-most of the theosophical movement in the world, the world head. That was not possible; there were many other egos. And the greatest problem was coming from J. Krishnamurti, who is not an ego at all. And of course, theosophists were thinking more and more towards Krishnamurti. He was becoming, by and by, the messiah. That created trouble in Rudolph Steiner's mind. He broke off from the movement. The whole German section of theosophy broke with him. He was really a very, very convincing orator, a convincing writer; he convinced people. He destroyed theosophy very badly, he divided it. And since then theosophy could never become whole and healthy.

Rudolph Steiner has an appeal for the Western mind, and that is the danger - because the Western mind is basically logic-oriented: reason, thinking, logos. He talks about it, and he says, "This is the way for the Western mind." No, Eastern or Western, mind is mind; and the way is no-mind. If you are Eastern, you will have to drop the Eastern mind. If you are Western, you will have to drop the Western mind. To move into meditation, mind, as such, has to be dropped. If you are a Christian you will have to drop a Christian mind. If you are a Hindu, you will have to drop the Hindu mind.

Meditation is not concerned with Christian, Hindu, Eastern, Western, Indian or German, no.

What is mind? Mind is a conditioning given to you by the society. It is an over-imposition on the original mind, which we call no-mind. Just so that you don't get confused, all mind, as such, has to be dropped. The passage has to be completely empty for the divine to enter into you. Thinking is not meditation. Even right thinking is not meditation. Wrong or right, thinking has to be dropped.

When there is no thought in you, no clouds of thinking in you, the ego disappears. And remember, when the ego disappears the 'I' is not found. The questioner says that Rudolf Steiner says, "When the ego disappears, the 'I' is found." No, when the ego disappears I is not found. Nothing is found.

Yes, exactly; nothing... is found.

Just the other night I was telling a story of a great Zen master, To-san. He became empty, he became enlightened, he became a non-being; what Buddhists call anatta, no-mind. The rumor reached to the gods that somebody had again become enlightened. And of course, when somebody becomes enlightened, gods want to see his face - the beauty of it, the beauty of the original, the virginity of it.

Gods came down to the monastery To-san lived in. They looked and looked, and they tried, and they would enter into him from one side, and get out from another side, and nobody was found inside To-san. They were very frustrated. They wanted to see the face, the original face, and there was nobody. They tried many devices, and then one very cunning god, clever, said, "Do one thing": he ran into the kitchen of the monastery, brought handfuls of rice and wheat. To-san was coming from his morning walk and he threw it on his path.

In a Zen monastery, everything has to be respected absolutely; even rice and wheat, stones, everything has to be respected. One has to be continuously careful and aware. Not even a grain of rice can you find in a Zen monastery Lying here and there. You have to be respectful. And remember, that respect has nothing to do with Gandhian economics. It is not a question of economy, because Gandhian economy is nothing but rationalized miserliness. It has nothing to do with miserliness. It is a simple respect for everything, absolute respect. This was disrespectful. This is the original idea of the Upanishads where seers have said, "ANAMBRAHMA" - food is God - because food gives you life, food is your energy. God comes into your body through food, becomes your blood, your bones, so a god should be treated as a god. When those gods threw rice and wheat on the path where To-san came, he could not believe: "Who has done this? Who has been so careless?" A thought arose in his mind, and the story is that gods could see his face for a single moment, because for a single moment the 'I' arose in a very subtle way: "Who has done this? Something has gone wrong."

And whenever you decide what is wrong and what is right, you are there, immediately. Between the right and the wrong exists the ego. Between one thought and another thought exists the ego.

Each thought brings its own ego. For a moment, a cloud arose in To-san's consciousness - "Who has done this?" - a tension. Each thought is a tension. Even very ordinary, very innocent-looking thoughts are tensions.

You see the garden is beautiful, and the sun is rising, and the birds are singing, and an idea arises, "How beautiful!" Even that, that is a tension. That's why if somebody is walking by your side, you will immediately say to him, "Look, what a beautiful morning!" What are you doing? You are simply releasing the tension that has come through the thought. Beautiful morning... a thought has come; it has created a tension around it. Your being is no more non-tense. It has to be released, so you speak to the other. It is meaningless because he is also standing just where you are standing. He is also listening to the birds, he is also seeing the sun rise, he is also looking at the flowers, so what is the point of saying something like "this is beautiful"? Is he blind? But that is not the point. You are not communicating any message to him. The message is as clear to him as to you. In fact, you are relieving yourself of a tension. By saying it, the thought is dispersed into the atmosphere; you are relieved of the burden.

A thought arose in To-san's mind, a cloud gathered, and through that cloud the gods were able to see his face, just a glimpse. Again the cloud disappeared, again there was no longer any To-san.

Remember, this is what meditation is all about. to destroy you so utterly that even if gods come they cannot seek you, they cannot find you. You yourself have found when such a situation arises, that not even gods can find you. There is nobody inside to be found. That 'somebodiness' is a sort of tension. That's why people who think they are somebodies are more tense. People who think that they are nobodies are less tense. People who have completely forgotten that they are, are tensionless. So remember, when the ego is lost, the 'I' is not found. When the ego is lost nothing is found. That nothingness, that purity of nothingness is your being, your innermost core, your very nature, your Buddha-nature, your awareness - like a vast sky with no clouds gathered in it.

Now, listen to the question again.

"I was brought up in the teachings of Rudolph Steiner." Yes, they are teachings, and what I am doing here is not teaching you anything. Rather, on the contrary, I am taking all teachings away from you.

I am not a teacher. I am not imparting knowledge to you. My whole effort is to destroy all that you think you know. My whole effort is to take all knowledge from you. I'm here to help you to unlearn.

"I was brought up in the teachings of Rudolph Steiner, but I could not yet break through my barriers towards him."

Nobody is able to break his barriers towards a person who is himself ego-oriented. It is difficult to break your barriers towards a person who is no more. Even then, it is so difficult to break your barriers because your ego resists. But when you are around a teacher who has his own ego-trip still alive, who is still, who is still trying to be somebody, who is still tense, it is impossible to drop down your ego.

"Although I believe him to be right in the way he shows that for the West, the possibility to free ourselves from maya is to learn to think in the right way."

No, the way for the East or for the West is: how to unlearn thinking, how not to think, and just be.

And it is needed more for the West than for the East, because in the West the whole two millennia since Aristotle have been of conditioning you for thinking, thinking, thinking. Thinking has been the goal. The thinking mind has been the goal in the West: how to become more and more accurate, scientific in your thinking. The whole scientific world arose out of this effort, because when you are working as a scientist you have to think. You have to work out in the objective world, and you have to find more accurate, exact, valid ways of thinking. And it has paid off too much. Science has been a great success, so of course people think that the same methodology will be helpful when you go inwards. That is the fallacy of Rudolph Steiner.

He thinks that in the same way as we have been able to penetrate into matter, the same method will help to go in. It cannot help, because to go in one has to move in just the opposite direction, diametrically opposite. If thinking helps to know matter, nothinking will help to know yourself. If logic helps to know matter, something like a Zen koan, something absurd, illogical, will help you to go in:

faith, trust, love, maybe; but logic, never. Whatsoever has helped you to know the world better is going to be a barrier inside. And the same is true about the outer world also: whatsoever helps you to know yourself will not necessarily help you to know matter. That's why the East could not develop science.

The first glimpses of science had come to the East, but the East could not develop it. The East did not move in that direction. The basic rudimentary knowledge was developed in the East.

For example: mathematical symbols, figures from one to ten, were developed in India. That made mathematics possible. It was a great discovery, but there it stopped. The beginning happened, but the East could not go very far in that direction. Because of that, in all the languages of the world, the numerals, mathematical numerals, carry Sanskrit roots.

For example: two is Sanskrit dwa - it became twa, and then two. Three is Sanskrit tri - it became three. Six is Sanskrit sasth - it became six. Seven is Sanskrit sapt - it became seven. Eight is Sanskrit ast - it became eight. Nine is Sanskrit nawa - it became nine. The basic discovery is Indian, but then it stopped there.

In China they developed ammunition for the first time, almost five thousand years back, but they never made any bombs out of it. They made only fireworks. They enjoyed, they loved it, they played with it, but it was a toy. They never killed anybody through it. They never went too far into it.

The East has discovered many basic things, but has not gone deep into it. It cannot go, because the whole effort is to go within. Science is a Western effort; religion is an Eastern effort. In the West even religion tries to be scientific. That was what Rudolph Steiner was doing: trying to make the religious approach more and more scientific - because in the West, science is valuable. If you can prove that religion is also scientific, then religion also becomes valuable in a vicarious way, indirectly. So in the West, every religious person goes on trying to prove that science is not the only science, religion is also a science. In the East we have not bothered. It is just the other way round: if there was some scientific discovery, the people who had discovered it had to prove that it had some religious significance. Otherwise, it was meaningless.

"By doing this and by meditating, he says we are able to lose our ego and find our 'I'."

Rudolph Steiner does not know what meditation is, and what he calls meditation is concentration.

He's completely confused: he calls concentration meditation. Concentration is not meditation.

Concentration is again a very, very useful means for scientific thinking. It is to concentrate the mind, narrow the mind, focus the mind on a certain thing. But the mind remains, becomes more focused, becomes more integrated.

Meditation is not concentrating on anything. In fact, it is a relaxing, not narrowing. In concentration there is an object. In meditation there is no object at all. You are simply lost in an objectless consciousness, a diffusion of consciousness. Concentration is exclusive to something, and everything else is excluded from it. It includes only one thing; it excludes everything else.

For example: if you are listening to me you can listen in two ways: you can listen through concentration; then you are tense, and you are focused on what I am saying. Then the birds will be singing, but you will not listen to them. You will think that is a distraction.

Distraction arises out of your-effort to concentrate. Distraction is a by-product of concentration. You can listen to me in a meditative way; then you are simply open, available - you listen tome, and you listen to the birds also, and the wind passes through the trees and creates a sound; you listen to that also - then you are simultaneously here. Then whatsoever is happening here, you are available to it without any mind of your own, without any choice of your own. You don't say, "I will listen to this and I will not listen. to that." No, you listen to the whole existence. Then birds and me and the wind are not three separate things. They are not. They are happening simultaneously, together, all together, and you listen to the whole. Of course, then your understanding will be tremendously enriched because the birds are also saying the same thing in their way, and the wind is also carrying the same message in its way, and I am also saying the same thing in a linguistic way, so that you can understand it more. Otherwise, the message is the same. Mediums differ, but the message is the same, because God is the message.

When a cuckoo goes crazy, it is God going crazy. Don't exclude, don't exclude him; you will be excluding God. Don't exclude anything; be inclusive.

Concentration is a narrowing of consciousness; meditation is expansion: all doors are open, all windows are open, and you are not choosing. Then of course, when you don't choose you cannot be distracted. This is the beauty of meditation: a meditator cannot be distracted. And let that be the criterion: if you are distracted, know that you are doing concentration, not meditation. A dog starts barking - a meditator is not distracted. He absorbs that too, he enjoys that too. So he says, "Look...

so God is barking in the dog. Perfectly good. Thank you for barking while I'm meditating. So you take care of me in so many ways," but no tension arises. He does not say, "This dog is antagonistic.

He is trying to destroy my concentration. I am such a religious, serious man, and this foolish dog...

what is he doing here?" Then enmity arises, anger arises. And you think this is meditation? - no, this is not of worth if you become angry at the dog, poor dog who is doing his own thing. He is not destroying your meditation or concentration or anything. He is not worried about your religion at all, nor about you. He may not even be aware of what nonsense you are doing. He's simply enjoying his way, his life. No, he is not your enemy.

Watch... if one person becomes religious in a house, the whole house becomes disturbed because that person is continuously on the verge of being distracted. He's praying; nobody should make any sound. He's meditating; children should remain silent, nobody should play. You are imposing unnecessary conditions on existence. And then if you are distracted and you feel disturbed, only you are responsible. Only you are to be blamed, nobody else.

What Rudolph Steiner calls meditation is nothing but concentration. And through concentration you can lose the ego and you will gain the 'I', and the 'I' will be nothing but a very, very subtle ego. You will become a pious egoist. Your ego will now be decorated in religious language, but it will be there.

"The central figure for him is Christ, whom he differentiates from Jesus as a totally different being."

Now, for a meditator there cannot be any central figure. There need not be. But for one who concentrates, something is needed to concentrate upon. Rudolph Steiner says Christ is the central figure. Why not Buddha? Why not Patanjali? Why not Mahavir? Why Christ? For Buddhists, Buddha is the central figure, not Christ. They all need some object to concentrate upon, something on which to focus their minds. For a religious man there is no central figure. If your own central ego has disappeared, or is disappearing, you need not have any other ego outside to support it. That Christ or Buddha is again an ego somewhere. You are creating a polarity of I-thou. You say, "Christ, thou art my master," but who will say this? An 'I' is needed to assert. Look, listen to Zen Buddhists. They say, "If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately." If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately, otherwise he will kill you. Don't allow him a single chance, otherwise he will possess you and he will become a central figure. Your mind will arise around him again. You will become a Buddhist mind. You will become a Christian mind. For a certain mind, a certain central object is needed.

And of course, he is more in favor of Christ than Jesus. That too has to be understood. That's how the pious ego arises. Jesus is just like us: a human being with a body, with ordinary life; very human.

Now, for a very great egoist this won't do. He needs a very, very purified figure. Christ is nothing but Jesus purified. It is just like if you make curd out of your milk, then take cream out of it, and then you make ghee out of the cream. Then ghee is the purest part, the most essential. Now you cannot make anything out of ghee. Ghee is the last refinement, the white petrol. From kerosene, petrol; from petrol, white petrol. Now, no more; it is finished. Christ is just the purified Jesus. It is difficult for Rudolph Steiner to accept Jesus, and it is difficult for all egoists. They try to reject in many ways.

For example: Christians say that he was born out of a virgin. The basic problem is that Christians cannot accept that he was born just like we ordinary human beings. Then he will also look ordinary.

He has to be special, and we have to be followers of a special Master. Not like Buddha, born out of ordinary human love, ordinary human sexual copulation, no - Jesus is special. Special people need a special Master, out of a virgin. And he's the only begotten Son of God, the only. Because if there are other sons, then he is no longer special. He is the only Christ, the only one who has been crowned by God. All others, at the most, can be messengers, but cannot be of the same level and plane as Christ. Christians have done it in their own way, but I would like you to understand Jesus more than Christ - because Jesus will be more blissful to understand, peaceful to understand, and will be of great help on the path. Because you are in the situation of being a Jesus; Christ is just a dream.

First you have to pass through being a Jesus, and only then someday will Christ arise within you.

Christ is just a state of being, just as Buddha is a state of being. Gautama became Buddha; Jesus became Christ. You can also become Christ, but right now Christ is too far. You can think about it and create philosophies and theologies about it, but that is not going to help. Right now it is better to understand Jesus, because that is where you are. That is from where the journey has to start. Love Jesus, because through loving Jesus you will love your humanity. Try to understand Jesus, and the paradox, and through that paradox you will be able to feel less guilty. Through understanding Jesus you will be able to love yourself more.

Now, Christians go on trying somehow to drop the paradox of Jesus through bringing the concept of Christ. For example: there are moments when Jesus is angry, and it is a problem; what to do?

It is very difficult to avoid the fact because many times he is angry, and that goes against his very teaching. He continually talks about love, and is angry. And he talks about forgiving your enemies - not only that, but loving your enemies - but he himself lashes out his anger. In the temple of Jerusalem he took a whip, started beating the money changers, and threw them out of the temple singlehanded. He must have been in a real fury, in a rage, almost mad. Now this... how to reconcile this? The way that Christians have found to reconcile - and Rudolph Steiner bases his own ideology on it - is to create a Christ, which is completely reconciled. Forget all about Jesus; bring a pure concept of Christ. You can say in that moment, "He was Jesus when he was angry." And when he said on the cross, "God my Father, forgive these people, because they don't know what they are doing," he was Christ. Now the paradox can be managed. When he was moving with women he was Jesus; when he told Magdalene not to touch him he was Christ. Two concepts help to figure things out - but you destroy the beauty of Jesus, because the whole beauty is in paradox.

There is no need to reconcile, because deep in Jesus' being they are reconciled. In fact, he could become angry because he loved so much. He loved so tremendously, that's why he could become angry. His anger was not part of hatred, it was part of his love. Have you not sometimes known anger out of love? Then where is the problem? You love your child: sometimes you spank the child, you beat the child, sometimes you are almost in a fury, but it is because of love. It is not because you hate. He loved so much - that's my understanding of Jesus - he loved so much that he forgot all about anger and he became angry. His love was so much. He was not just a dead saint, he was an alive person; and his love was not just philosophy, it was a reality. When love is a reality, sometimes love becomes anger also.

He was as human as you are. Yes, he was not finished there. He was more than human also, but first and basically he was human, human plus. Christians have been trying to prove that he was super-human and the humanity was just accidental, a necessary evil because he had to come into a body. That's why he was angry. Otherwise, he was just purity. That purity will be dead.

If purity is real and authentic, it is not afraid of impurity. If love is true it is not afraid of anger; if love is true it is not afraid of fighting. It shows that even fight will not destroy it; it will survive. There are saints who talk about loving humanity, but cannot love a single human being. It is very easy to love humanity. Always remember: if you cannot love, you love humanity. It is very easy, because you can never come across humanity, and humanity is not going to create any trouble. A single human being will create many troubles, many more. And you can feel very, very good that you love humanity. How can you love human beings? - you love humanity. You are vast, your love is great. But I will tell you:

love a human being; that is the basic preparation for loving humanity. It is going to be difficult, and it is going to be a great crisis, a continuous crisis and challenge. If you can transcend it, and you don't destroy love because of the difficulties but you go on strengthening your love so that it can face all difficulties - possible, impossible - you will become integrated. Christ loved human beings, and loved so much, and his love was so great that it transcended human beings and became the love for humanity. Then it transcended humanity and became love for existence. That is love for God.

"Your way seems different to me."

Not only different; it is diametrically opposite. In the first place, it is not a way at all. It is not a path, or if you love the word then call it a pathless path, a gateless gate. But it is not a path, because a path or way is needed if your reality is far away from you. Then it has to be joined by a path. But my whole insistence is that your reality is available to you right now. It is just within you. A path is not needed to reach to it. In fact, if you drop all paths, you will suddenly find yourself standing in it. The more you follow paths, the farther away you go from yourself. Paths misguide, mislead, because you are already that which you are seeking. So paths are not needed, but if you are trained to think in those terms, then I will say that my way is diametrically opposite. Steiner says right-thinking; and I say, right or wrong, all thinking is wrong. Thinking as such is wrong; no-thinking is right.

"Can you please advise me? because I am somehow torn between you and the way Steiner shows."

No, you will have to remain in that state of tension for a few days. I will not advise and I will not help.

Because if I advise and I help you, you can come and lean towards me; that may be immature. You will have to have a good fight with Steiner before you can come to me, and he will certainly give you a good fight. He is not going to leave you so easily. And I'm not going to give you any help, so that you come on your own. Only then do you come, when you come on your own. When a fruit is ripe it falls on its own accord. No, I will not throw even a small stone at it, because the fruit may not be ripe and the stone may bring it down... and that will be a calamity. You would remain in your torn state of mind.

You will have to decide, because nobody can remain in a torn state of mind for long. There is a point where one has to decide. And it will not be just towards Rudolph Steiner if I help you. He's dead; he cannot fight with me. It is easier for me to pull you towards me than it will be for him. So to also be just to him it is better that I leave it to you. You just go on fighting. Either you will drop me... that will also be a gain, because then you will follow Rudolph Steiner more totally.

But I don't think that is possible now... the poison has entered you. Now it is only a question of time.

The second question:

When you are with trees, the sky, the river, the rocks, the flowers, and you feel okay, it has nothing to do with you. It has something to do with the trees and the river and the rocks. That okay-ness comes from their silence. When you come close to human beings you start feeling mad, in a madhouse, because human beings are mirrors; they reflect you. You must be mad. That's why you feel when you are with people that you are in a madhouse. I have never felt that way. Even with mad people like you I have never felt that way.

This is one of the basic problems every religious seeker comes to confront.

When you are alone things seem to be settled, because there is nobody to disturb. Nobody gives a chance for you to be disturbed. Everything is silent, so you also feel a certain silence, but this silence is natural. It is nothing spiritual. It belongs to nature. If you go to the Himalayas, to the cool, hushed silence of the Himalayan peaks, you will feel silent. But the credit goes to the Himalayas, not to you. When you come back, you will come back the same man who had gone. You will not be able to carry the Himalayas with you. So many have gone there and remained there forever, thinking that now, if they went back to the world they would lose something that they had attained. They had not attained anything. Because once you attain it, it cannot be lost; and the world is the test. So if you feel good while there are no human beings, it simply shows that amidst human beings your inner madness starts functioning. So don't become an escapist, and don't blame the society, the people, the crowd. Don't say that it is a madhouse. Rather, start thinking that you must be carrying mad tendencies within you which become manifest when you come into relationship with people.

Two psychiatrists pass each other on the street. One says, "Hello." The other says, "Now, I wonder what he means by that?"

Just a small thing like somebody saying hello, and a problem arises..."Now, I wonder what he means by that?"

The patient told his doctor that he kept seeing spots in front of his eyes. The doctor told him to stop going out with freckled women. Then he told him to stick his tongue out as he left. "Why?" asked the patient. "Because I hate my nurse."

Patients and doctors are all in the same boat.

Of course, when you come amongst people, you come amongst people like you. Suddenly, something in you starts responding. They are mad; you are mad - the moment you come close, a subtle dialogue of energy starts happening. Your madness brings their madness out; their madness brings your madness out. If you live alone, you are happy.

Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me, "I and my wife lived for twenty-five years tremendously happily." I asked, "Then what happened?" He said, "Then we met; since then, no happiness."

Even two happy persons meet and immediately unhappiness arises. You are carrying subtle seeds of unhappiness in you. The right opportunity, and they sprout. And of course, for a human being to sprout in all his potentialities, a human environment is needed. Trees don't make your environment.

You can go to a tree and sit silently and do whatsoever you like; you remain unrelated. There exists no dialogue, no language between you and the tree. The tree goes on brooding in his own being, and you go on brooding in your own being. No bridge exists. A river is a river; no bridge exists between you and the river. When you come near a human being, suddenly you see you are bridged, and that bridge starts immediately transferring things from this side to that, from that side to this.

But basically it is you, so don't blame the society, don't blame people. They simply reveal you. And if you are a little understanding, you will thank them for doing a great thing for you. They reveal you; they show you who you are, where you are, what you are. If you are mad, they show your madness.

If you are a Buddha, they show your Buddha-hood. Alone, you don't have any reference. Alone, you don't have any contrast. Alone, you cannot know who you are.

I will tell you one very beautiful story, a sad story.

The situation was not unusual. The boss of a large and successful firm employed a beautiful secretary. The boss, in his early forties, was a bachelor. He had a large car, a luxury flat, and was never short of feminine company. But he met his match in his beautiful secretary. She politely refused his invitations to lunch or dinner, and his offers of expensive presents and salary increases were refused with equal grace and charm. In the early weeks of her employment, he was of the opinion that she was just playing hard-to-get. During the months that followed, he changed his toothpaste, his soap, his after-shave, but all to no avail. Finally, he resigned himself to accept the fact that she was beautiful and highly competent, but that his chances of developing any kind of personal relationship with her were nil. It therefore came as something of a shock when he walked into his office one morning and found his secretary arranging flowers on his desk, and even more of a shock when she looked at him demurely and said, "A happy birthday, sir." He mumbled his thanks and went through the rest of the day in a complete daze. As the time approached five o'clock, the secretary came into the office and confessed that she had ascertained his birthday from the staff files. "I hope you don't mind," she added. He answered that he didn't mind it at all, and she looked relieved. "In that case, sir," she went on, "I wonder if you would care to come round to my flat this evening, at about nine o'clock. I have got a little surprise for you that I think you will find very pleasant." He mentally congratulated himself on the fact that the girl had finally had to admit that she was attracted to him, and tried to appear casual as the arrangements were finalized. Promptly at nine o'clock, a bottle of champagne in his hand, he presented himself at the flat. She was a vision of loveliness, and he hoped that she could not hear his heart pounding as she poured him a large scotch and urged him to make himself comfortable. "Loosen some of your clothes if you are too warm," she said. "I'm just going into the bedroom to get ready. Please come too when I call you."

This was too good to be true. "I must be as desirable to her as she is to me," he thought smugly.

"You can come in now," she called eventually, "but be careful you don't fall. All the lights are off in here." Our hero could take a hint. Quickly slipping out of his clothes, he entered the darkened room and closed the door behind him. As he did so the room became flooded with light and he saw that the whole of the office staff stood in the center of the room singing, "Happy birthday to you...."

People reveal only that which you are hiding within you. If you feel that you are in a madhouse, you must be mad. Try to be in company more with men; try to be in company more with women; try to be with people more. Try more relationships. If you cannot be happy with a human being, it is impossible for you to be happy with a tree or with a river - impossible. If you cannot understand a human being who is so close to you, so similar to you, how can you hope that you will be able to understand a tree, a river, a mountain, who are so far away? Millions of years separate you from a mountain. You may have been a mountain somewhere millions of lives before, but you have completely forgotten the language. And the mountain cannot understand your language. The mountain has yet to become human: a long evolution is needed. A vast abyss exists between you and the mountain. If you cannot bridge yourself with human beings who are so close, so close, then it is impossible for you to bridge with anything else.

First, bridge yourself with human beings. By and by, the more you become capable of understanding human beings, the more you become capable of an inner dialogue, harmony, rhythm. Then you can move, by and by. Then move to animals; that is a second step. Then move to birds, then move to trees, then move to rocks, and only then can you move to pure existence, because that is the source. And we have been away from that source so long and so far away that we have completely forgotten that we ever belonged to it, or that it ever belonged to us.

The third question:

First thing: womanliness is never a barrier to understanding. In &ct, you cannot find a better opportunity to understand me. It is difficult for a man to understand because a man has an aggressive mind. A man can easily become a scientist, but it is very difficult for him to become a religious person because religion needs receptivity, a passive state of consciousness where you don't aggress, just invite. The feminine mind is exactly the right mind to understand, to be a disciple.

Even a male mind has to become feminine. So don't take it as a barrier; it is not.

The second thing: it is really a great problem because we don't understand it. Problems are there only because we don't understand them. Again and again it is asked of me, that I am always talking about men who become enlightened but never about women. Many women have become enlightened, as many as men. Nature keeps a certain balance. Watch... in the world, the number of men and women is almost always the same. It should not be so, but nature keeps balance. To one person there may be born only boys, ten boys; to another person only one boy may be born; to another, one girl - but on the whole, the world always keeps balance. There are as many men as there are women. Not only that, but because a woman is stronger than a man - stronger in the sense of her resistance, stability, capacity to adjust, flexibility - to a hundred girls, one hundred and fifteen boys are born. But by the time those girls become marriageable, fifteen boys have disappeared.

Boys die more than girls; nature keeps that too. A hundred girls and one hundred and fifteen boys are born, then fifteen boys disappear by the time they become marriageable. The balance is kept completely. Not only that, but in wartime more men die.

The First World War created a problem for psychologists, biologists. They could not believe what had happened. In a war, more men die, but immediately after the war, more men are born and less girls are born. Again the balance is kept. That happened in the First World War. The reason was not clear at all. It was simply a mystery. It happened again in the Second World War. After a war the number of boys becomes greater. More boys are born to replace the dead men, and less girls are born because already there are more girls alive. When the World War is over and the balance is again regained, the number comes back to the same old pattern: one hundred girls to one hundred and fifteen boys - because fifteen boys will die.

Boys are less strong than girls. Men live five years less than women. That's why, in the world, you will always find more old women than old men, more widows than widowers. If the ave-age age for a woman is eighty, then the average for men is seventy-five. It is five years more. But why, why do women live five years more? That too seems to be a great inner balance somewhere. A woman is capable of accepting more than a man. If a man dies first, the woman will cry, weep, suffer, but will be able to accept the fact. She will regain balance. But if a woman dies the man cannot regain balance. The only way he knows to regain balance is to marry again, find another woman again; he cannot live alone. He's more helpless than a woman.

Ordinarily, all over the world the marriage age is somehow unnatural. Everywhere man has imposed a pattern which is unnatural, anti-nature. If the girl is twenty years of age, then we think that the age of the boy who is going to marry her should be twenty-five, twenty-six. It should be just the reverse, because later on girls are going to live five more years. So the age limit for the girls should be twenty-five if it is twenty for the boys. Every man should marry a woman who is at least five years older than him. Then the balance will be perfect. Then they will die almost within six months of one another, and there will be less suffering in the world.

But why has it not happened? - because marriage is not a natural thing. Otherwise, nature would have managed it that way. It is a man-made institution. And man feels a little weak if he is going to marry a woman who is older, more experienced, more knowledgeable than him. He wants to keep his male chauvinist ego: he's greater in every way. No man wants to marry a woman who is taller than him. Nonsense. What is the point? Why not marry a woman who is taller than you?

But the male ego feels hurt moving with a taller woman. Maybe this is the cause of why women don't grow so tall - the feminine body has learned it. They have learned the trick, that they have to be a little shorter, otherwise they will not be able to find a man. It is a survival of the fittest. They fit only when they are not too tall. A very tall woman... just think of a woman seven feet tall; she will not find a husband. She will die without a husband. And she will not give birth to children, so she will disappear. A woman who is five feet five will find a man easily. She will survive: she will have a husband, she will have children. Of course, taller women will disappear, by and by, because they will not have any survival value. That's how, by and by, ugly women disappear from the world - because they cannot survive. The world helps those who can survive, and those who cannot survive disappear. Man has become taller, stronger, but in every way he wants to keep himself a little higher than the woman. He should always be at the top of everything.

Even in the West, people had not heard of any woman making love on top of the man before coming to the East and coming across Vatsayana's sutras on sexology. The West had not known it. And in the East, you may be surprised to know that the man making love on top of a woman is called the missionary posture, because the East for the first time came to know about it through Christian missionaries. It is a missionary posture. Man has to be on top in every way, even while making love.

He has to have a taller height, must be at least a D.Lit.; only then can you marry a Ph.D. woman.

Otherwise, naturally, a woman has to be five years older than the man. And this seems to be a perfect arrangement because the woman needs to be more experienced. She is going to become the mother: not only the mother of her children, but the mother of her husband also. And a man remains childish. Whatsoever the age, he hankers to be a child again. He remains a little juvenile.

Now the same has happened with enlightenment also - nature keeps an exact balance. But we don't hear about many enlightened women - that's true - because the society belongs to men. They don't record much about women. They record much about Buddha; they don't record much about Sahajo.

They record much about Mohammed; they don't record much about Rabia. They record in such a way that men seem to be very prominent. It has happened in India: one Jain Teerthankara, one Jain Master, an enlightened man, was not a man; she was a woman. Her name was Mallibai, but a great following of Jains has changed her name. They call her Mallinath, not Mallibai. Bai shows that she was a woman; nath shows that she was a man.

There are two sects of Jains, swetambaras and digambaras. Digambaras say that she was not a woman: Mallinath. They have even changed her name. It seems to be against the male ego that a woman could become a Teerthankara, a great Master: enlightened, a founder of a religion, a founder of a ford towards the divine? No, it is not possible. They have changed the name.

History is recorded by men, and women are not interested in recording things. They are more interested in experiencing and living them: that is one thing. The second thing is that a woman finds it very easy to become a disciple, very easy to become a disciple, because she is receptive. For a man, it is difficult to become a disciple because he has to surrender, and that is the trouble. He can fight but he cannot surrender. So when it comes to disciplehood, women are perfect. But just the opposite happens when you have to become a Master.

A male can easily become a Master. A woman finds it very difficult to become a Master, because to become a Master you have to be really aggressive. You have to go out and destroy others' structures.

You have to be almost violent; you have to kill your disciples. You have to brainwash them. So a woman finds it difficult to become a Master; a man finds it difficult to become a disciple. But then again there is a balance: women find it easier to become disciples, and by becoming disciples they become enlightened, but they never become Masters. A man finds it difficult to become a disciple, but once he becomes a disciple, is enlightened, it is very easy for him to become a Master, very easy for him, easier. That's why you never hear... but don't be worried about that.

Your own experiences are as a female. Remember, the experience of the ultimate has nothing to do with male and female. The experience of the ultimate is beyond the duality. So when you become enlightened, in that moment you are no more man or woman. In that moment you transcend all duality. You have become a complete circle; no division exists. So when I am talking to you, I am not talking about enlightenment as a man. Nobody can talk about enlightenment as a man because enlightenment is neither male nor female. In India, the ultimate reality is neither male nor female, it is neutral.

You will be in a difficulty: God is male in the Western mind. For God you use 'He' - except for the Lib. Movement women, who have started to use 'She'. Otherwise, nobody uses 'She' for God; you use 'He'. And I also think that 'She' will be better. 'He' has been used enough; now 'She' will be better. 'She' includes 'He' - after 's' there is 'he' - but 'he' does not include 's'. It is better, it makes God a little bigger. 'She' is bigger than 'He'; nothing is wrong in it.

But in the Western mind, God is 'He'. In Western languages there are only two genders, male and female. In Indian languages, particularly in Sanskrit, we have three genders: male, female, and the neutral. God is neutral. He is neither He nor She; He is It, That - the personality has disappeared.

It is impersonal, just energy. So don't be worried about this either.

"Please share with me what you can about how enlightenment is for me as a woman."

Stop thinking about yourself as a woman, otherwise you will cling to the feminine mind. All minds have to be dropped. In deep meditation you are neither. In deep love also, you are neither. Have you watched it?

If you have made love to a woman or to a man, and the love was really total and orgasmic, you forget who you are. It is mindblowing. You simply don't know who you are. In a certain moment of deep orgasmic bliss, oneness happens. That is the whole effort of Tantra: to transform sex into an experience of oneness - because that will be your first experience of oneness, and enlightenment is the last experience of oneness. Making love, you disappear - the man becomes like woman, the woman becomes like man, and many times they change roles. And there comes a moment, if you are both in a total let-go, when a circle of energy arises which is neither. Let that be your first experience. Love is the basic experience of enlightenment, a first glimpse. Then one day, when you and the whole meet in a deep orgasm, that is samadhi, ecstasy. Then you are no more male or female. So from the very beginning start dropping the division.

In the Western consciousness the division has become very, very solid, because man has oppressed woman so much that the woman has to resist. And she can resist only if she becomes more and more conscious of being a woman. When you from the West come to me, it is going to be hard for you, but you have to understand and drop the man/woman division. Just be beings. And my whole effort here is to make you your original being, which is neither.

The last question:

Ordinarily, no. Ordinarily you move like a robot, a mechanical thing, accidental. Unless you become perfectly aware you cannot choose. And there comes the paradox: you can become aware only if you become choiceless: and if you become aware, you become capable of choice. You can choose - because when you are aware, you can decide what to do and what not to do. Ordinarily, you live almost in a state of drunkenness. A somnambulist, that's what you are.

Let me tell you a few anecdotes.

A minister was bemoaning to a friend that he had had his bicycle stolen.

And the friend said, "Well, next Sunday, why don't you use the Ten Commandments as your text and recite them to the congregation? When you reach the one that says 'Thou shalt not steal', have a look at the congregation, and if the thief is present he will probably give himself away by the expression on his face."

The following week the same friend saw the minister cycling through the village and stopped him. "I see that you got your bike back. My idea worked then?"

"Well, not exactly," said the minister. "I started on the Ten Commandments, but when I got to the one that says 'Thou shalt not commit adultery', I remembered where I had left my bike."

Another anecdote.

An eminent businessman went to the doctor. "Doctor," he said, "I wish to consult you about my son.

I believe he has got measles."

"There is a great deal of it about at the moment," said the doctor. "No family seems to be safe from it."

"But doctor," he went on, "the boy said he got it from kissing the maid, and to tell the truth, I'm afraid I'm also in danger from the same disease. And what is worse, every night I kiss my wife, so she may be in danger."

"Good heavens!" said the doctor. "Excuse me, I must go and get my throat examined at once!"

Get it?

Everybody is moving in an unconscious circle, and people are exchanging their illnesses, diseases, their unconscious, sharing only their unconsciousness with each other.

Ordinarily you live as if you are asleep. You cannot decide while you are asleep. How can you decide?

A man came to Buddha and said, "I would like to serve humanity." He must have been a great philanthropist. Buddha looked at him, and it is said that tears came to Buddha's eyes. It was strange. Buddha crying? - for what? The man also felt very uncomfortable. He said, "Why are you crying? Have I said anything wrong?" Buddha said, "No, not anything wrong. But how can you serve humanity? - you are not yet. I see you fast asleep; I can hear your snoring. That's why I am crying.

And you want to serve humanity? The first thing is to become aware, alert. The first thing is, to be."

The beautiful but dumb secretary got away with murder as far as her boss was concerned. But one etween you ae really lost his temper with her. "You are late again!" he thundered. "Why don't you use the alarm clock that I bought for you?"

"But I do use it," she pouted prettily. "Every night."

"Well," said the boss, "why don't you get up when it goes off?"

"But it always goes off when I'm asleep!"

This is what's happening. You are asleep, and when you are asleep even an alarm clock cannot help much. Have you sometimes observed the fact that if you are asleep and the alarm clock goes off, you start dreaming some dream: a dream that you are in a temple and the temple bells are ringing?

To avoid the fact that the alarm clock is ringing, you create a dream around it. Then, of course, you continue asleep; now there is no alarm clock. That's what is happening continuously to you. You go on listening to me, but I know that you will create a dream around it. If you listen to me you are bound to awake, but the problem is, will you listen to me? Will you create some dream around what I say?

And you create dreams. You can create a dream about enlightenment. You can start dreaming about enlightenment; you have missed me. And people go on missing. The message has to be interpreted by you; that's the trouble.

I have heard: The owner of a large company bought a sign which said "Do it now", and hung it up in the office hoping it would inspire his staff with promptness. A few days later a friend asked him if the notice had had any effect.

"Well, not in the way I had hoped," admitted the boss.

"The cashier absconded with 10,000 - Do it now -- the head bookkeeper eloped with my private secretary - Doitnow - three clerks asked for a raise, a typist threw her typewriter out of the window - - Doitnow - -and the office boy has... just ... aah ... poisoned my coffee ... aaah!"

You listen through your sleepiness; you will interpret it in your own way. So if you really want to listen to me, don't interpret.

Just the other night, a new young man became a sannyasin. I told him, "Be here for a few days."

He said, "But I am going, just within two or three days." I said, "But that is not right. Much has to be done, and you have just come. You have not had even any contact with me yet. So at least be here for the camp and a few days more." He said, "I will think it over." Then I told him, "Then there is no need to think; you go. Because whatsoever you will think is going to be wrong. And the whole point of sannyas is that you start listening to me without thinking about it. The whole point is that I say something to you, and it becomes more important than your own mind. That is the whole meaning of sannyas. Now if there is a conflict between what I say and your mind, you will drop the mind and you will listen to me. That's the risk. If you continuously go on using your mind to decide even whether what I say has to be done or not, then you remain yourself. You don't come out. You don't bring your hand close to me so that I can hold it."

Ordinarily, everything is happening to you; you have not done anything.

"I feel as if I had no choice in coming to you."

That's perfectly true. You must have drifted in some way. A friend was coming to me and he told you, or you just went to a bookstall and you found a book of mine.

One sannyasin came and I asked him, "How did you come to see me? How in the first place did you become interested?" He said, "I was sitting in Goa, on the beach, and just in the sand I found a sannyas magazine that somebody must have left. So, nothing to do, I started reading it. That's how I have come here." Accidental....

You have come to me accidentally, but now there is an opportunity to be alertly with me, to be with me with full awareness. It is good that accidentally you have come to me, but don't remain here accidentally. Now drop that accidental-ness. Now, take charge of your awareness. Otherwise, somebody will take you again, accidentally, somewhere else. Again you will drift away from me - because one who has come drifting cannot be relied upon. He will drift; something else will happen.

Somebody is going to Nepal and the idea occurs to you, "Why not go to Nepal?" and you go to Nepal. And there you meet a girlfriend who is against sannyas, so what to do? You have to drop your sannyas.

Now that you are here, use this opportunity. People also use opportunities only in a very unconscious way. Use it consciously.

The magistrate said, "What induced you to strike your wife?" The husband said, "Well, your Honour, she had her back to me, the frying pan was handy, the back door was open, and I was slightly drunk, so I thought I would take a chance."

People use their opportunities also in an unconscious way. Use this opportunity in a conscious way, because this opportunity is such that it can be used only consciously.