The un-minding of being

The first question:

THE WORLD has never been in chaos and disorder, only the mind. The world is absolutely orderly. It is not a chaos, it is a cosmos. Only the mind is always in chaos, and will always be in chaos.

Something has to be understood: the very nature of the mind is to be in chaos because it is a transitory stage. From nature to supernature mind is just a transition. No transitory stage can be in order. How it can be in order? When you move from one stage to another, the inbetween is bound to be in chaos.

There is no way to put the mind in order. When you are transcending nature and moving into supernature, changing from the outer to the inner, changing from the material to the spiritual, there is bound to be a gap between the two when you are nowhere, when you don't belong to this world and you yet don't belong to the other. This is the chaos - this has been left, and death has not been achieved yet. In the middle, everything is a disorder. And if you remain in the middle, then you will be always in chaos. Mind has to be transcended. It is not something to live with.

It is like a bridge: it has to be crossed, the other shore has to be attained. And you have made a house on the bridge. You have started to live on the bridge. You have become attached to the mind. You are in a trap because you are nowhere. And how can you settle in the land of nowhere?

The past will go on inviting you, "Come back, come back to the shore you have left." And there is no going back because you cannot move in time backwards. There is only one going, and that is forward, ahead. The past goes on having deep influence on you because you are on the bridge, and even the past seems to be better than to be on the bridge. Even a small hut is better than to be on the bridge. At least it is a house; you are not on the road.

Continuously the past of human beings, the animalhood, has an appeal. It says, "Regress back." It says, "There is no going away." The animal within you goes on calling you, "Come back." And it has appeal, because compared to the bridge it is better. But you cannot go back. Once a step has been taken it cannot be undone. Once you move ahead, you cannot go back. You can cherish the dream and you can waste your energy, the same energy which would have led you ahead.

But going back is not possible. How can a young man become a child again? And how an old man can become a young man again? That's not possible, even if biologically some day it becomes feasible that science helps your body to become young again. That's possible because man is very cunning, and it can deceive the cells of the body. It can give them a new program and they can regress, but your mind will remain old. Your body may become young, but how you can become young? All that you have experienced will be with you. It cannot be thrown back.

One cannot regress. The shore that is left is left forever. You cannot become an animal again. It is better to drop that appeal and infatuation of going back. The sooner you drop it, the better. Man enjoys things which give him a feeling of the past, of animal-hood. That's why sex has so much appeal. That's why people become food addicts, go on eating, obsessed with food. That's why greed, anger, jealousy, hate have appeal: they belong to the animal kingdom. There is the shore that you have left, the shore of the animal kingdom, and there is another shore that you have not yet reached, not even in your dreams - the kingdom of God. And between these two, you stand in the mind. You cannot go back. It is difficult to move ahead because the past goes on pulling you and the future remains unknown, vague, like a mist. The other shore you cannot see; it is not visible not that it is very far away. The shore that you have left is visible. The other shore that you are approaching is invisible by its very nature - not that it is very far away; that's why it is invisible. Even when you have attained to it, it will remain invisible. That is its nature.

The animal is too much visible. Where is God? Has anybody ever seen God? - nobody. Because it is not a question of your seeing or not seeing. God is invisibility, the very unknowability, the very incomprehensibility. Those who have attained they also say they have not seen, and they have attained!

Because God cannot be an object. It is the deepest depth of your own being. How can you see it? The shore that you have left is in the outside world, and the shore that you are approaching is in the inside world. The shore that you have left was objective; the shore that you are approaching is subjective. It is the very subjectivity of your being. You cannot objectify it. You cannot see it. It is nothing which can be reduced to an object and you can see it. It is the seer, not the seen. It is the knower, not the known. It is you in your deepest core of being.

The mind cannot go back, and cannot comprehend where to go ahead. It remains in chaos, always uprooted, always moving, not knowing where, always ongoing. The mind is a search. When the goal is attained only then the search disappears.

Remember: look at the world; it is a cosmos. The sun rises every morning without fault, infallibly. And the night follows day, and again day follows night. And in the night sky, millions and millions of stars move on their path. Seasons follow each other. If man is not there, where is chaos? Everything is as it should be: the ocean will go on roaring and the sky will go on again and again being filled by clouds, and the rain will come, and the winter, and the summer, and everything moves in a perfect wheel. There is no chaos anywhere except within you, because the nature is settled wherever it is. The nature is not progressing anywhere. In nature there is no evolution. In God also, there is no evolution. The nature is happy in its unconsciousness, and God is blissful in his consciousness.

You are in trouble between the two. You are tense. Neither are you unconscious, nor are you conscious - just hovering like a ghost. You are not anchored anywhere. Without any roots, without any home, how the mind can be at ease? It seeks, gropes - finds nothing. Then more and more you get worked up, more and more frustrated, more and more irritated. What is happening to you? You are in a rut. This will continue unless you learn something which can un-mind you, which can void the mind.

That is what meditation is all about. Meditation is a way of un-minding your being, of dropping the mind, of moving from the bridge, moving into the unknown, taking a jump into the mysterious. That's why I say don't calculate, because calculation is of the mind. That's why I say the spiritual search is not step by step; spiritual search is a sudden jump. It is courage, it is not calculation. It is not of the intellect, because intellect is part of the mind. It is more of the heart.

But deeper you go, the more you will feel it is even beyond the heart. It is neither of thinking nor of feeling. It is deeper and total, more existential than both. Once you start working how to attain no-mind, only then, by and by, peace will settle on you. By and by a silence will descend, and a music will be heard - the music of the unknown, the music of the unuttered. Then everything is in order again. It is the passage of the mind, and it has to be so because you drop the past where you were settled and rooted, and you move into a new future where you will be again settled and rooted.

But in the middle is man. Man is not a being, man is a passage. Man is not something; man is only a journey, a rope stretched between nature and supernature. That's why he is tense. If you remain human, you will remain tense. Either you have to fall to the level of below human, or you have to raise yourself to the level of the beyond human.

Only humanity is in chaos. Look at the nature - the crows caw, the sparrows twitter, and everything is perfect. There is no problem in nature. Problem comes into existence with human mind, and problem dissolves when the human mind dissolves. So don't try to solve the problem of life by the mind itself. It cannot be done. That is the most foolish thing one can do. Understand that mind is a bridge - watch it. It is not eternal, it is momentary.

It is just like when you change a house: the old house was settled; everything was in its place. Then you change the house, then the furniture, then the clothes then the things that... Everything that was settled is unsettled, and you move into a new house. Everything is a chaos. You have to fix it again. When you are changing a house, the one house you lived always, and the other house you have not reached; you are just on the way in a lorry with all your luggage.

This is what mind is: it is not a house, it is just a passage to be passed. And once you understand this something of the beyond has penetrated in you. Understanding is of the beyond; it is not of the mind. Knowledge is of the mind. Understanding is not of the mind. Watch why you are in a chaos and an understanding will start dawning upon you.

The second question:

First: hundreds of lives you have lived in a chaos. It is nothing new. It is very old. Secondly, the dynamic methods of meditation which have catharsis as their foundation allow all chaos within you to be thrown out. That's the beauty of these techniques. You cannot sit silently, but you can do the dynamic or the chaotic meditations very easily. Once the chaos is thrown out, a silence starts happening to you. Then you can sit silently. If rightly done, continuously done, then the cathartic techniques of meditation will simply dissolve all your chaos into the outside world. You will not need to pass through a mad stage. That's the beauty of these techniques. The madness is being thrown out already. It is in-built in the technique.

But if you sit silently as Patanjali will suggest... Patanjali has no cathartic methods; it seems they were not needed in his time. People were naturally very silent, peaceful, primitive. The mind was yet not functioning too much. People slept well, lived like animals. They were not very much thinking, logical, rational... more centered in the heart, as even now primitive people are. And life was such that it allowed many catharses automatically.

For example a woodcutter: he need not have any catharsis because just by cutting the wood, all his murderous instincts are thrown out. Cutting wood is like murdering a tree. A stone breaker need not do cathartic meditation. The whole day he is doing it. But for the modern man things have changed. Now you live in such comfort that there is no possibility of any catharsis in your life, except you can drive in a mad way.

That's why in the West more people die every year through car accidents than by anything else. That is the greatest disease. Neither by cancer nor by tuberculosis... no other disease takes such a toll of lives as car driving. In the Second World War, in one year millions of people died. More people die every year around the earth just by mad car drivers.

You may have observed if you are a driver, that whenever you are angry you go fast. You go on pushing the accelerator, you simply forget about the brake. When you are very hateful, irritated, the car becomes a medium of expression. Otherwise you live in such a comfort, doing less and less anything with the body, living more and more in the mind.

Those who know about the deeper centers of brain say that people who work with their hands have less anxiety, less tension, they sleep well. Because your hands are connected with the deepest mind, the deepest center of the brain... your right hand with the left brain, your left hand with the right brain. When you work with the hands, the energy is flowing from the head into the hands and being released. People who are working with their hands don't need catharsis. But people who work with their heads need much catarsis because they accumulate much energy, and there is no way in their body, no opening for it to go out. It goes on and on inside the mind; the mind goes mad.

But in our culture and society - in the office, in the factory, in the market - people who work with heads are known as heads: head-clerk, or head-superintendent, and people who work with hands are known as hands, condemnatory. The very word "hands" has become condemnatory.

When Patanjali was working on these sutras, the world was totally different. People were hands. There was no need for catharsis specifically. Life was itself a catharsis. Then they could sit silently very easily. But you cannot sit. Hence, I have been inventing cathartic methods. Only after them can you sit silently, not before.

Now don't create a trouble; let it happen. Now the mind is poking its nose. The mind says, "How it can happen? First I must pass through chaos." This idea can create chaos. This has been my observation: that people hanker for silence, and when it starts happening, they can't believe it. It is too good to be true. And particularly people who have condemned themselves always cannot believe that it is happening to them: "Impossible! It may have happened to a Buddha or to a Jesus, but to me? No, it is not possible." They come to me; they are so much disturbed by silence, that it is happening: "Is it true, or I am imagining it?" Why bother? Even if it is an imagination, it is better than imagining anger, it is better than imagining sex, lust.

And I tell you, nobody can imagine silence. Imagination needs some form; silence has no form. Imagination means thinking in images, and silence has no image. You cannot imagine it. There is no possibility. You cannot imagine enlightenment, you cannot imagine satori, samadhi, silence, no. Imagination needs some base, some form, and silence is formless, indefinable. Nobody has ever painted a picture of it; nobody can paint. Nobody has carved an image of it; nobody can do it.

You cannot imagine silence. The mind is playing tricks. The mind will say, "It must be imagination. How can it be possible for you, such a stupid man that you are, and silence happening to you? - must be you are imagining." Or, "This guy Rajneesh has hypnotized you. You must be somewhere deceived." Don't create such problems. Life has enough problems. When silence is happening, enjoy it, celebrate it. It means the chaotic forces have been thrown out. The mind is playing its last game. It plays to the very end; to the very, very end it goes on playing. At the last moment of enlightenment, when it is just going to happen, then too the mind plays the last, because it is the last battle.

Don't worry about it, whether it is real or unreal, or whether chaos will come after it or not. Because by thinking in this way you have already brought the chaos, and it is your idea which can create chaos. And when it is created, the mind will say, "Now listen, I had told you before."

Mind is very self-fulfilling. First it gives you a seed and when it sprouts the mind says, "Look, I was telling you beforehand that you are deceived." The chaos has come, and it has been brought by the idea. So why bother about the future, whether the chaos is still to come or not, or whether it has passed or not? Right this moment, you are silent - why not celebrate it? And I tell you, if you celebrate, it grows.

In this world of consciousness, nothing is so helpful as celebration. Celebration is like watering a plant. Worry is just the opposite of celebration; it is just like cutting the roots. Feel happy! Dance with your silence. This moment it is there - enough. Why ask for more? Tomorrow will take care of itself. This moment is too much; why not live it, celebrate it, share it, enjoy it? Let it become a song, a dance, a poetry; let it be creative. Let your silence be creative; do something with it.

Millions of things are possible because nothing is more creative than silence. No need to become a very great painter, world-famous, a Picasso. No need to become a Henry Moore; no need to become a great poet. Those ambitions of being great are of the mind, not of the silence. In your own way, howsoever small, paint. In your own way, howsoever small, make a haiku. In your own way, howsoever small, sing a song, dance a little, celebrate, and you will find the next moment brings more silence. And once you know that the more you celebrate, the more is given to you, the more you share - the more you become capable of receiving it. Each moment it goes on growing, growing. And the next moment is always born out of this moment, so why worry about it? If this moment is silent, how the next moment can be chaos? From where will it come? It is going to be born out of this moment. If I am happy this moment, how in the next moment I can be unhappy?

If you want the next moment to be unhappy, you will have to become unhappy in this moment, because out of unhappiness, unhappiness is born; out of happiness, happiness is born. Whatsoever you want to reap in the next moment, you will have to sow right now. Once the worry is allowed and you start thinking that chaos will come, it will come; you have already brought it. Now you will have to crop it; it has already come. No need to wait for the next moment; it is already there.

Remember this, and this is really something strange: when you are sad you never think that it may be imaginary. Never I have come across a man who is sad and who says to me that maybe it is just imaginary. Sadness is perfectly real. But happiness? - immediately something goes wrong and you start thinking, "Maybe it is imaginary." Whenever you are tense, you never think it is imaginary. If you can think that your tension and anguish is imaginary, it will disappear. And if you think your silence and happiness is imaginary, it will disappear.

Whatsoever is taken as real, becomes real. Whatsoever is taken as unreal, becomes unreal. You are the creator of your whole world around you; remember this. So rare it is to achieve a moment of happiness, bliss - don't waste it in thinking. But if you don't do anything, the possibility of worry is there. If you don't do anything... if you don't dance, if you don't sing, if you don't share, the possibility is there. The very energy that could have been creative will create the worry. It will start creating new tensions inside.

Energy has to be creative. If you don't use it for happiness, the same energy will be used for unhappiness. And for unhappiness you have so deep-rooted habits the energy flow is very loose and natural. For happiness it is an uphill task.

So for few days you will have to be constantly aware, and whenever there is a moment, let it grip you, possess you, and enjoy it in such a totality... how the next moment can be different? From where it will be different? From where it will come?

Your time is created within you. Your time is not my time. There exist as many times parallel as there are minds. There is not one time. If there is one time, then there will be difficulty. Then amidst the whole miserable human-kind, nobody can become a Buddha because we belong to the same time. No, it is not the same. My time comes from me - it is my creativity. If this moment is beautiful, the next moment is born more beautiful - this is my time. If this moment is sad for you, then a sadder moment is born out of you - that is your time. Parallel millions of lines of time exist. And there are few people who exist without time - those who have attained to no-mind. They have no time because they don't think about past; it is gone, so only fools think about it. When something is gone, it is gone.

There is a Buddhist mantra: gate, gate, paragate - swaha, "Gone, gone, absolutely gone; let it go to the fire." The past is gone, the future has not come yet. Why worry about it? When it comes, we will see. You will be there to encounter it, so why worry about it? The gone Is gone, the not-come has not come yet. Only this moment is left, pure, intense with energy. Live it! If it is silence, be grateful. If it is blissful, thank God, trust it. And if you can trust, it will grow. If you distrust, you have already poisoned it.

The third question:

Because of you! It is not because of Patanjali, it is because of you. You cannot believe that the ultimate can't happen to you without any doing on your part - you cannot believe! You need something to do. Just like children need toys to play with, you need techniques to play with. And because you cannot believe that God is so easy and so immediately possible, techniques have to be devised. Those techniques will not lead you to God. Those techniques will not help you to reach to the ultimate. Then what they will do? - they will simply show your foolishness to you and one day, suddenly realizing what you are doing, techniques drop, and God is there. The God has always been there. It is because of you; you demand.

People come to me, and if I say to them that there is no need to do anything, they say, "Still... something. At least some mantra you can give so we can chant it." They say, "Just sitting silently is impossible - we have to do something." So what to do with these people? If I say to them, "Sit silently," they cannot sit. Then something arbitrary has to be devised. I give them something to do.

Doing it, at least they will be occupied for few hours. They will be sitting doing Ram, Ram, Ram. At least by the help of this mantra, they will not do any harm to anybody. They will be sitting; they cannot do harm. And doing this Ram, Ram, Ram continuously, some day they will realize what they are doing.

One Zen Master went to his disciple. The disciple was a real authentic seeker, and he was continuously doing meditation and he has attained to the last point where meditation has to be dropped. All techniques have to be dropped. They are just toys, because you cannot be without toys. They are supplied in the hope that someday you will realize they are just toys. You yourself will throw them and sit silently.

The Master went because now the right moment has arrived, and the disciple still goes on continuing his chanting of the mantra. He has become addicted. Now he is obsessed. He could not leave it. It is just like sometimes you find a certain line of a song goes on and on in the mind. Even if you want to drop it, you cannot drop. It haunts inside; again and again it comes. This is nothing you don't know. When a person does a mantra for years, it is almost impossible to drop it - it becomes his very marrow - he cannot even in sleep. While he is asleep his lips you can watch doing Ram, Ram, Ram. It becomes an undercurrent. It is a toy of course, a teddy bear, but becomes so much closer that the child cannot go to sleep without it.

The Master went and just sat before the disciple, and he was sitting Buddha-like, doing his mantra. The Master took a brick with him and started rubbing the brick on a stone: grrr, grrr, grrr. He went on and on just like a mantra. First the disciple resisted the temptation to look who is doing this disturbance, but then he went on and on; hours passed. The disciple opened his eyes and said "What are you doing?" The Master says, "I am trying to polish this brick, to make a mirror out of it." The disciple said, "You are stupid. I never thought that you, a man who has a reputation of being enlightened, should do such a foolish thing. The brick will never become a mirror, howsoever hard you may rub it on the stone. It may disappear completely, but it will not become a mirror. You stop this nonsense!" The Master laughed and said, "You also stop, because howsoever you rub the brick of the mind, it will never become the innermost self. It may get polished and polished and polished, but still it will not become your inner reality."

Mind has to be dropped. Meditation, techniques, are a trick to help that dropping, and then meditation also has to be dropped. Otherwise, that becomes your mind. It is just like there is a thorn in your feet, and you get another thorn to take the first thorn out of your feet. The second thorn helps, but the second thorn is as much a thorn as the first. The second is not a flower. And when the first has been taken out by the help of the second, what you will do? Will you put the second in the wound because this helped so much and this thorn was so great you have to worship it? Will you worship the second thorn? No, you will throw them both together.

This has to be remembered: mind is a thorn; all techniques are thorns to bring the first thorn out. Meditation is also a thorn. When the first thorn is out, then both have to be thrown together. Even if for a single moment you miss, then the second thorn will be in the place of the first thorn, and you will be in the same trouble.

That's why a Master is needed who can tell you, "Now is the right moment. Drop this meditation and this foolish business." Unless meditation disappears, meditation has not been attained. When meditation becomes useless, only then for the first time you have become a meditator. Techniques have been invented for you because you already had a thorn. Already the thorn is there. Some device is needed to bring it out. But always remember, never forget: the second thorn is as much a thorn as the first, and both have to be thrown.

That's why so much importance is given to a Master and to live with a Master, because you will not be able to know. When the mind drops, immediately the meditation becomes the mind and you are again occupied. In an unoccupied state when there is neither mind nor meditation, in that total unoccupied state of mind, the ultimate happens - never before.

It happened that a great Zen Master, before he was enlightened and has not become a Zen Master and was seeking and searching, went to his Master, and the Master was always saying to people, "Meditate more, meditate more." Whosoever will come will get the same advice, "Meditate more, bring more energy to it." So this disciple has done whatsoever he could do. He was really doing meditation as totally as a human being can do. He went to see the Master; the Master shrugged his shoulders seeing him, his face was not happy. The disciple asked, "What is the matter? If you say to do more, I will try. But why you are so sad looking at me? Do you feel I am a hopeless case?" The Master says, "No, just the reverse - you are doing too much. Do a little less. You are altogether too filled with meditation and Zen. Just a little less will do."

One can be obsessed with meditation, and obsession is the problem. You were obsessed with money, now you are obsessed with meditation. Money is not the problem, obsession is the problem. You were obsessed with the market, now you are obsessed with God. Market is not the problem... obsession. One should be loose and natural and not obsessed with anything neither mind nor meditation. Only then, unoccupied unobsessed, when you are simply flowing, the ultimate happens to you.

The fourth question:

The first thing: fear is the other side of love. If you are in love, fear disappears. If you are not in love, fear arises, tremendous fear. Only lovers are fearless. Only in a deep moment of love there is no fear. In a deep moment of love, existence becomes a home - you are not a stranger, you are not an outsider, you are accepted. Even by a single human being you are accepted, something in the depth opens - a flower-like phenomenon in the innermost being. You are accepted by someone, you are valued; you are not futile. You have a significance, a meaning. If in your life there is no love, then you will become afraid. Then there will be fear everywhere because everywhere there are enemies, no friends, and the whole existence seems to be alien; you seem to be accidental, not rooted, not at home. Even a single human being can give you such deep at-homeness in love, what to think about when a person achieves to prayer?

Prayer is the highest love; love with the total, with the whole. And those who have not loved cannot attain to prayer. Love is the first step and prayer is the last. Prayer means you love the whole and the whole loves you. When even by a single individual such deep flowering can happen within you, what to think about when the whole is felt as loving you? Prayer is you love God and God loves you. And if love and prayer are not in your life, then only fear...

So fear in fact is the absence of love. And if fear is a problem for you, that shows to me that you are looking at the wrong side. Love should be the problem, not fear. If fear is the problem, that means you should seek love. If fear is the problem, the problem in fact is you should be more loving so somebody can be more loving to you. You should be more open towards love.

But this is the trouble: when you are in fear you are closed. You start feeling so fearful that you stop moving towards a human being. You would like to be alone. Whenever there is somebody you feel nervous, because the other looks like an enemy. And if you are so much fear-obsessed, it is a vicious circle. Absence of love creates fear in you, and now, because of fear you become closed. You become like a closed cell with no windows, because afraid anybody can come through the windows, and there are all over enemies... afraid to open the door, because when you open the door anything is possible. So even when love knocks at your door, you don't trust.

A man or a woman who is so deep-rooted in fear is always afraid to fall in love, because then the doors will be open of the heart and the other will enter you, and the other is the enemy. Says Sartre, "The other is hell."

Lovers have known another reality: the other is heaven, the very paradise. Sartre must be living in a deep-rooted fear, anguish, anxiety. And Sartre has become very, very influential in the West. In fact, he should be avoided like a disease, dangerous disease. But he appeals because whatsoever he is saying, many people feel the same in their own life. That is his appeal. Depression, sadness, anguish, fear: these are the themes of Sartre, the themes of the whole movement of existentialism. And people feel that these are their problems. And when I talk about love, of course you feel that it is not your problem; fear is your problem. But I would like to tell you love is your problem, not fear.

It is just like this: the house is dark and I talk about light, and you say, "You go on talking about light. Better it will be if you talk about darkness, because darkness is our problem. The house is filled with darkness. Light is not our problem." But do you understand what you are saying? If darkness is your problem, talking about darkness won't help. If darkness is your problem, nothing can be done about darkness directly. You cannot throw it out, you cannot push it out, you cannot put it off. Darkness is an absence. Nothing can be done about it directly. If you have to do anything, you have to do something with the light, not with darkness.

Pay more attention to light-how to find light, how to create light, how to enkindle a candle in the house. And then suddenly there is no darkness.

Remember: love is the problem, never fear. You are looking at the wrong side. And you can look at the wrong side for many lives and you will not be able to solve. Always remember absence should not be made a problem, because nothing can be done about it. Only presence should be made a problem, because then something can be done and it can be solved

If fear is felt, then love is the problem. Become more loving. Take few steps towards the other. Because everybody is in fear, not only you. You wait somebody should come to you and love you.

You can wait forever because the other is also afraid. And people who are afraid they become afraid of one thing absolutely, and that is the fear of being rejected.

If I go and knock at your door, the possibility is you may reject. That rejection will become a wound, so it is better not to go. It is better to remain alone. It is better to move on your own, not to get involved with the other because the other can reject. The moment you approach and take initiative towards love, the first fear comes whether the other will accept you or reject. The possibility is there he may reject, or she may reject.

That's why women never take a step; they are more fearful. They always wait for the man - he should come. They always keep the possibility of rejecting or accepting with themselves. They never give the possibility to the other because they are more afraid than men. Then many women simply wait for their whole life. Nobody comes to knock at their door, because a person who is afraid becomes, in a certain way, so closed that he puts off people. Just reaching nearer, and the afraid person throws such vibrations all around that anybody who is coming closer is put off. The fearful person starts moving; even in the movements...

You talk to a woman - if you are in a certain way feeling love and affection for her, you would like to be closer and closer. You would like to stand closer and talk. But see the body, because body has its own language: the woman will be leaning backwards, not knowingly, or she may simply back. You are closing, you are coming closer and she is backing. Or if there is no possibility, there is a wall, she will lean against the wall. Not leaning forward, she is showing, "Go away." She is saying, "Don't come near me."

People sitting, people walking - you watch. There are people who simply put off anybody; anybody who comes closer, they become afraid. And fear iS energy just like love, a negative energy. A man who is feeling love bubbles up with a positive energy. When you come closer, as if a magnet is attracting you, you would like to be with this person.

If fear is your problem, then think about your personality, watch it. You must have closed your doors for love, that's all. Open those doors. Of course there is the possibility of being rejected. But why be afraid? The other can only say no. Fifty percent possibility of no is there, but just because of fifty percent possibility of no, you choose a hundred percent life of no love.

The possibility is there, but why worry? There are so many people. If one says no, don't take it as a hurt don't take it as a wound. Simply take it - it didn't happen. Simply take it - the other person didn't feel like moving with you. You didn't suit to each other. You are different types. He has or she has not said no to you really; it is not personal. You didn't fit, move ahead And it is good because the person has said no, because if you don't fit with a person and the person says yes, then you will be in real trouble. You don't know - the other has saved you a whole life of trouble! Thank him or her and move ahead, because all cannot suit to all.

Every individual is so unique that in fact it is so difficult to find the right person to fit with you. In a better world, sometime in the future, people will have more moveability, so people can go and find the right woman and the right man for themselves. Don't be afraid of making errors, because if you are afraid of making errors you will not move at all, and you will miss the whole life. It is better to err than not to do. It is better to be rejected than simply remaining with yourself, afraid and not taking any initiative - because the rejection brings the possibility of acceptance; it is the other side of acceptance.

If somebody rejects, somebody will accept. One has to go on moving and finding the right person. When right persons meet, something clicks. They are made for each other. They fit together. Not that there will not be conflicts, not that there will not be moments of anger and fight, no. If love is alive, there will be conflict also. Sometimes there will be moments of anger also. That simply shows that love is an alive phenomenon. Sometimes sadness... because wherever happiness exists, sadness is bound to be there.

Only in a marriage there is no sadness, because there is no happiness. One simply tolerates - it is an arrangement, it is a managed phenomenon. When you really move into life, then anger is also there. But when you love a person you accept the anger. When you love a person you accept his or her sadness also. Sometimes you go away just to come closer again. In fact, there is a deep mechanism: lovers fight to fall in love again and again, so they can have small honeymoons again and again and again.

Don't be afraid of love. There is only one thing one should be afraid, and that is fear. Be afraid of fear and never be afraid of anything else, because fear cripples. It is poisonous, it is suicidal. Move! Jump out of it! Do whatsoever you would like, but don't get settled with the fear because that is a negative situation. And if you miss love...

To me, love is not a great problem because I look farther ahead than you. If you miss love you will miss prayer, and that is the real problem for me. To you it may not be yet a problem, because if fear is the problem, then to you even love is not yet a problem, how can you think about prayer? But I see the whole sequence of life, how it moves. If love is missed you can never pray, because prayer is cosmic love. You cannot bypass love and reach to prayer. Many people have tried, they are dead in the monasteries. All over the world many people have tried. Because of the fear, they have tried to avoid love completely, and they have been trying to find a short-cut direct from their fear to prayer.

That is what the monks have been doing all over the centuries. Christian and Hindu and Buddhist - all monks have been doing that. They have been trying to bypass love completely. Their prayer will be false. Their prayer will have no life. Their prayer will not be heard anywhere, and the cosmos is not going to answer their prayer. They are trying to deceive the whole cosmos.

No, one has to pass through love. From fear, move into love. From love, you will move into prayer, and from prayer arises fearlessness. Without love fear; with love fearlessness, and the final fearlessness is in prayer because then even death is not a fear at all, because then there is no death. You are so deeply in tune with existence - how can fear exist?

So please don't get obsessed with fear. Just jump out of it and take a move towards love. And don't wait because nobody is interested in you; if you are waiting you can go on waiting. This is my observation: you cannot bypass love, otherwise, you will be committing suicide. But the love can bypass you if you are simply waiting. Move! Love should be a passion. It should be passionate, alive, vital. Only then you attract somebody to fall towards you. Dead, who bothers with you? Dead, people would like to get rid of you. Dead, you become a boring phenomenon, a boredom. All around you, you carry such dirt of boredom, that anybody who comes across you will feel that it is a misfortune.

Be loving, vital, unafraid - and move. Life has much to give to you if you are unafraid. And love has to give you more than life can give, because love is the very center of this life, and from that very center you can pass to the other shore.

I call these three steps: life, love and light. Life is already there. Love you have to attain. You can miss it because it is not given; one has to create. Life is a given phenomenon; you are already alive. There stops natural evolution. Love you have to find. Of course there are dangers, hazards, but they all make it beautiful.

You have to find love. And when you find love, only then you can find light. Then the prayer arises. In fact, deeply in love, the persons, the lovers, by and by start moving unconsciously towards prayer. Because the highest moments of love are the lowest moments of prayer. Just near the boundary is prayer.

It has happened to many lovers. But lovers are very rare that while they are deep in love, suddenly they have started praying. Just sitting by each other's side in silence, holding each other's hand, or lying together on a beach, suddenly they have felt an urge, an urge to move beyond.

So don't pay much attention to fear, because that is dangerous. If you pay much attention to fear you are feeding it, and it will grow. Turn your back to the fear and move towards love.

The fifth question:

If you can sit, there is no need for meditations. In Japan, for meditation they have the word "zazen". It means just sitting, doing nothing. If you can sit, not doing anything, this is the ultimate in meditations. There is no need for any other thing.

But can you sit? There is the crux of the whole problem. Can you sit? Can you just sit doing nothing? If that is possible - just sit, do nothing - everything settles by itself, everything simply flows by itself. You are not needed to do anything. But the problem is - can you sit?

It happened on a small hillock near a village, a man was standing. Just it was morning and the sun has arisen, and three persons had gone just for a morning walk and they looked at the man. And, as minds go, they started talking about what this man was doing there. One man suggested that he must be there looking for his cow. "Sometimes his cow gets lost. Then he goes to the hilltop and looks for it. From there you can look on all sides." The other man said, "But he is not looking on all sides. He is simply standing, so that cannot be the cause. I feel he must have come for a morning walk with a friend, and the friend has been left behind, so he's waiting for him." The third one said, "This is not right. Because if you are waiting for someone, sometimes you look back. He's not looking back at all." The third said "I think he is meditating. And look at his robes; he is a sannyasin. He must be meditating." Their discussion become so hot that they said, "Now we will have to go to the hilltop and ask this man himself, 'What are you doing here?' "

They walked miles to reach to the hilltop. The first man asked, "What are you doing here? I think you have lost your cow and you are looking for it." The man opened his eyes and he said, "No." The second man stepped forward and asked, "Then I must be right. Are you waiting for somebody who has been left behind?" He said, "No." Then the third was happy. He said "Then I was absolutely right. Are you meditating?" The man said, "No." All the three were at a loss, and they all three said, "What are you saying? You say 'no' to everything. Then what are you doing?" The man said, "I am just standing here doing nothing."

If it is possible, this is the ultimate in meditation. If it is not possible, then you will have to use techniques because through techniques only this will become possible. Through techniques, one day you will realize the whole absurdity. All techniques of meditation are just like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Meditation is absurd but one has to realize it. It is a great realization. When one realizes that his meditation is absurd, then it simply drops.

There is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: technique-oriented, as if technique is all. And there is Krishnamurti, absolutely against techniques. And here I am - for techniques, and against also. A technique leads you to a point where you can drop it. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is dangerous. He will start many people on the path, but they will never reach the goal because the path is thought to be so important. He will start millions of people on technique, and then the technique becomes so important, and there is no way how to drop it. Then there is Krishnamurti-harmless, but useless also. He can never harm anybody. Because how can he harm? - he never starts anybody on the path; he talks about the goal, and you are very, very far away from the goal. You will fall in the trap of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Krishnamurti may appeal to you intellectually, but will not be of any help. He cannot harm. He's the most harmless man in the world.

And then I am here. I give you a path just to take it away. I give you a technique - not a technique, many techniques - like toys to play with. And I wait for a moment when you will say to all the techniques, "swaha, go to the fire!"