You can't corner a madman

Question 1

To be in a corner, one needs to be logical in the first place. I am not logical; you cannot force me in a corner. I am so illogical that it is impossible to force me in a corner. Remember this, if you cling to the intellect you can be forced in the corner anytime because you have some. thing to cling to. Once it is proved that that is wrong, illogical, you will be in a corner. If you cannot prove your prejudice logically, you will be in a corner. But I am absolutely illogical - I have no prejudice to prove, I have nothing to prove. How can you put me in a corner? Let me tell you one anecdote:

A man was claiming to be God. He was taken to the Caliph, who said, "Last year someone was claiming to be a prophet - he was executed. Do you know about it?"

"Serves him right," the man answered. "I had not sent him."

Now you cannot put such a man in a corner. It is impossible because the illogical approach is an open approach. In fact there are no corners because there is no room - no walls around it. It is an open sky; one can move anywhere. You can be forced into a corner if you live in a room, walled, and there are corners. If you live under the sky, how can you be pushed into a corner? There is no comer at all.

And that's why I teach you: why cling to prejudices? If you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian you can be put in a corner. But if you are neither - corners have disappeared - there is no possibility to force you anywhere. Then the whole sky is yours. And the moment you understand the beauty and the freedom of the whole sky, you will drop all prejudices, all ideologies.

I have no ideology, nothing to prove. I am here just to give you a glimpse of me.

And I am very illogically here. In fact, I should have left before. Anurag has asked, "Why yesterday morning did you suddenly stop and put your hand to your head? Why?" It happens sometimes: I lose contact with my body. I should have gone, really. I am illogically here - trying somehow to put some weight on me so I can help you a little longer. You may not have been aware, but it has happened many times before. Mind is a mechanism: I am using it, sometimes I lose contact. Body is a mechanism: I am using it, sometimes I lose contact.

Sometimes I start moving into the abyss so fast that I have to stop for a single moment.

Not only that I am illogical, I am illogically here.

And those who want to be argumentative with me will be at a loss. They cannot defeat me because I am not trying to convince them and I am not trying to prove anything. I am not interested in converting you; I am just interested because there is something which I have and I would like to give it to you. If you are ready, open, en rapport with me, you can receive it. Otherwise later on you will repent very much.

It happened:

One drunk staggered into a crowded pub, pushed his way through the customers and approached the bar. Finding a man and woman in his way, he brushed the woman rudely aside, elbowed his way through to the counter and belched loudly. The man he had just pushed past turned to him angrily.

"How dare you push through like that and belch in front of my wife!" he said indignantly.

The drunk looked apologetic.

"I am sorry to belch in front of your dear lady," he said. "I didn't realize it was her turn." I am like that drunk. You cannot corner me.

That's what I am doing with your questions. What answer I give is not important - try to see that I am destroying your question. My answer is not an answer but a strategy to destroy your question.

There are people who answer your questions, they give you certain ideas, they fill you with certain ideologies, theories, dogmas, cults - I am not answering your question that way. If you watch, if you are aware, you will be able to see that I try to destroy your question. Not that you receive the answer, but that you lose the question.

If someday you become questionless, that will be the point of realization. Not that you will have any answer: you will not have any questions, that's all. You can call it the answer, when there is no question.

A Buddha is not a man who has all the answers; a Buddha is a man who has no questions. The questioning has disappeared - the questioning has become absurd, irrelevant. He is simply there without any question. That's what I mean when I say he is a no-mind. Mind always questions, mind is a questioning. As leaves come out of the trees, questions come out of the mind. Old leaves fall, new leaves come; old questions disappear, new questions come.

I would like to uproot this whole tree.

If I am giving you any answer, then many more questions will arise out of it. Your mind will convert that answer into many questions.

I am absolutely absurd. I am not a philosopher - maybe a mad poet, a drunkard. You can love me, you cannot follow me. You can trust me, you cannot imitate me. Through your love and trust something tremendously valuable will be transferred to you. It has nothing to do with what I say; it has something to do with what I am. It is a transmission beyond the scriptures.

So never in my life have I been cornered. It is impossible - you cannot corner a madman.

Question 2

The intellect is the lowest functioning of your being, but because it is the lowest, it is the most efficient. Because it is the lowest, it is the most developed. Because it is the lowest, it can be educated, disciplined. Because it is the lowest, all the universities, colleges, schools, exist for it.

And every man has it more or less.

It is tremendously useful in the outer world. Without intellect it will be difficult for you to be of any utility. That's why Lao Tzu says to his disciples, "Become useless." Unless you are ready to become useless you will not be ready to leave intellect behind, because intellect gives you utility. You become a doctor - you become useful to the society. You become an engineer, you become a professor - this and that. It is through intellect that you become somebody and the society can use you - and the society can use you as a means. The more utility you fulfill, the more the society values you; hence, the hierarchy - the brahmin, the kshatriya, the vaishya, the sudra.

Highest is the scholar, who is pure intellect - the brahmin. Lower than him is the warrior, the kshatriya, because he has to protect the country. Lower than him is the businessman, be. cause he is the whole blood-circulating system of the society - he is the economics, the belly. And lowest is the sudra, the untouchable, the proletariat, because his work is manual, menial, and not much intellect is needed. The sudra needs the least development of intellect and the brahmin needs the highest development of intellect, but the whole division is because of intellect.

Intellect has its utility, but you are bigger than the intellect, vaster than the intellect. If you become identified with the intellect too much, you will become a doctor or an engineer or a professor, a businessman, a warrior, but you will lose your being. You will not be yourself. You can become identified with your function so much that you can forget your being. You can forget that you are man. You can become so much of an engineer or a judge or a politician that you can forget that you are man. You are losing much; then you are just a mechanism. The society will use you - while you can be used - then you will be retired from the society. Then the society waits for you - when you are going to die.

Retired people die sooner than they would have died if they were not retired; they become old sooner. Their life becomes less by almost ten years. What happens? They become useless. They can feel that everywhere wherever they go they are, at the most, tolerated; they are not needed.

And there is a great need in man to be needed - the greatest need is to be needed. Once you feel you are superfluous, once you feel you can be discarded in the dustbin, once you feel that you don't function as a utility in the society; you start dying. The retirement becomes the date of dying also - you start dying fast. You yourself know that you will be a burden now. People will tolerate you, people may even sympathize with you, but nobody is going to take you seriously, nobody is going to love you and respect you. You are discarded.

If you get identified with the intellect too much, you are becoming a thing - like a mechanism. A good car, but when its utility is finished it is thrown to the rubbish heap. Then you are going to be used and thrown, and your innermost core will remain unfulfilled because you were not meant just to be used. You were meant to flower as a being; that was your destiny.

Higher than intellect is intuition. Intuition gives a little romance to your life, a little poetry. It gives you a few glimpses of the nonutilitarian, of your being a person and not being a thing. When somebody loves you, that love hits your intuition, your moon center. When somebody looks at you with charmed eyes, magnetized, that exhilarates the moon energy within you. When somebody says that you are beautiful, your being feels enhanced. When somebody says you are useful, you feel hurt. Useful?

That doesn't seem to be appreciation. Because if you are useful then you are replaceable. Then you can be thrown, somebody else can replace you. But if you are beautiful then you are irreplaceable, then you are unique. Then when you will be gone from the world, something will always remain empty, something will always lack.

That's why you hanker for love. Love is food for intuition. If you are not loved your intuition will not develop. The only way to develop intuition is to shower love upon you. So if a mother loves the child, the child becomes intuitive. If the mother does not love the child, the child becomes intellectual. If the child lives in an atmosphere of love and care and compassion - if the child is accepted for his own self, not for any utility that he can fulfill - then he grows tremendously inside and his energy starts moving through the moon center.

The moon center is almost nonfunctioning because you have not been loved.

Watch. If you tell a woman, "I love you because you have beautiful eyes," she will not be happy, because tomorrow she can lose her eyes. Eyes are just accidental. Or some disease may happen and she may become blind, or the eyes may not remain beautiful. When you say, "I love you because you have a beautiful face," the woman is not happy, because the face will not remain beautiful forever.

The old age is coming every day, every moment. But if you say, "I love you," then she feels happy because this "you" is something permanent, not accidental, nothing can happen to it. When you say to a woman, "I love because..." then she never feels happy, because the "because" brings intellect in. You simply say, you shrug your shoulders and you say, "I don't know why, but I love you." The moon center starts functioning - the woman flowers.

Watch a woman when nobody loves her and watch her the next moment when somebody has said to her, "I love you." A tremendous difference, of grace, dignity. A tremendous change - her whole face becomes enlightened with something new, a glow comes to her. What has happened? The moon center has released its energy.

You must have heard the name of one great Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. He was ugly, very ugly, and no woman could ever manage to say to him, "I love you." Of course, he remained retarded - the moon center never functioned. He was repulsive. People will look at him and escape. He used to work in an art dealer's shop, and the man, the owner, watched him day in, day out. He looked so dull, as if much dust has gathered on his being, and he will not take interest in anything. Customers will come, he will show the paintings, but he will not take any interest. Continuously burdened, not interested in anything, indifferent. He will walk like a zombie - has to walk, so he will walk, but no zest, no life, no intensity, no passion.

One day suddenly the owner could not believe his eyes. He had come, and it seemed he had taken a bath after many months, or many years maybe. He has taken a bath, he has combed his hair, and his step has a dance in it and he is humming a tune. Impossible. And he has good clothes on him and he is wearing a perfume. Impossible.

The owner called him, "Van Gogh, what has happened?" Van Gogh said, "It has happened - a woman has said she loves me. Though the woman was only a prostitute, but still. She has said so only for money, but still, a woman has said she loves me."

Van Gogh asked the woman, the prostitute, "Why do you love me?" Because that was always a haunting thing in him. Nobody loves him; he knew his ugliness. "Why do you love me?" It was impossible for him to accept that somebody can love him just for himself - "WHY?" And the prostitute was at a loss because there was nothing to say, because whatsoever she will say will look ridiculous.

She cannot say, "Because of your eyes," she cannot say, "Because of your face," she cannot say, "Because of your body" - everything is some. how wrong. She said, "Because of your ears. They are so beautiful." Ears? Have you ever heard? And he was so enchanted that he came back home, cut off one ear, wrapped it in a parcel, went back, and presented the ear to the woman. He said, "Nobody has ever liked anything in me. This is a poor man's present, but keep it." The woman was aghast. She could not believe, what type of madman is this?

But he felt very good - he felt tremendously good. He writes in one of his letters, "That was the peak of my life. Somebody had liked something in me, and I could share my being."

Watch, observe. Whenever somebody loves you, and simply loves you, unconditionally loves you, simply says, "I love you because you are you; I love you because you are," what happens within your energies? The sun has moved towards the moon. Now the sun is not so hot; the moon is cooling it.

And the grace of moonlight spreads all over your being.

If the world exists more in tune with love, people will have more intuition and less intellect, and they will become more beautiful. They will not be like things; they will each be more of a person - alive with zest, with passion, intensity. They will have a flame and a celebration.

Intuition is totally different. It functions without any process - it simply jumps to the conclusion. In fact intuition is an opening towards the reality - a vision comes to it. Logic has to grope in darkness; intuition never gropes, just a vision. It simply sees it.

People who are intuitive become religious naturally. People who are intellectual cannot become religious naturally. At the most, they can be intellectually involved in some sort of a religious philosophy, but not in religion as such. They can be involved in theology, but not in religion. They can talk about the proofs of God, but to talk about God is not to talk about God. To talk about is to miss the target - about and about, they move in a circle. They always go on beating around and around the bush; they never hit the target.

Intellectuals have no natural tendency to become religious. That's the reason you see temples, churches, so full of women. The moon feels naturally in tune with religion. Buddha had three times more women than men as his disciples. The same proportion was with Mahavir: he had ten thousand monks and thirty thousand nuns. You will find the same around Jesus - and when he was crucified, all men followers fled.

When Jesus' body was brought down from the cross, only three women were there. Because those men were watching from the crowd for some miracle. They were trying to convince their sun center that, "Yes, this is God's only son," but nothing happened. They were asking for a proof. They were praying to God and to Jesus, "Show a miracle so that we can be convinced." Once they saw that Jesus died like an ordinary man, absolutely ordinary - there were two other men who were dying on crosses just by the side of Jesus, two thieves, and Jesus died just like them, with no difference at all - the men became skeptical. Then this man was bogus - he was not really a son of God. So he was not a god; they escaped.

But this idea never arose to the women. They were not looking for a miracle; they were just looking at Jesus. They were not looking for a miracle, they were just looking at Jesus - and they saw the miracle. They saw the miracle: that Jesus died so ordinarily. That was the miracle. He didn't try to prove anything, because people who try to prove are defensive. He was not defensive. He simply said to God, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." That was his miracle. And he said to God, "Forgive these poor people because they don't know what they are doing." That was the miracle - he could pray for those who were murdering him, pray for compassion. He told God, "Put your judgement aside, put your judging attitude aside. Listen to me. These people are innocent; they don't know what they are doing. They are ignorant. Please don't be angry with them, don't be annoyed. Forgive them." That was the miracle.

The women could see it because they were not looking for the miracle. The intellect is always looking for something; the intuition is simply open. Not looking for something in particular, just looking - it is a vision. That is the meaning of the word "intuition."

When Jesus appeared after three days, first he approached the men disciples. He walked with them, he talked with them, but they couldn't recognize him. They had accepted the idea that he is dead - finished. In fact they must be feeling sorry - "We wasted so many of our years with this man."

Now they must be looking for some other miracle monger, some juggler; they must be looking for somebody else. And Jesus walked with them, talked to them, and they did not recognize him. Then he had to approach the women. And when he came close and Mary Magdalen saw him, she ran - she wanted to embrace him. She immediately recognized him. And she did not even ask, "How has it happened?. - three days before, you were crucified." The intuition never asks how and why. It simply accepts. It is a deep acceptability, total acceptability.

If you live in a loving atmosphere.... And you have to create the atmosphere around you - nobody is going to create it for you. Love people, so that they will love you. Love people, so love is reflected back, resounded back. Love people, so you are showered by love. Your intuition will start functioning.

You will start seeing things which you had never seen before. And the world remains the same, but some new meaning ap. pears in it. The flowers remain the same, but some new mystery is revealed to you. The birds go on singing the same way, but now you can understand their language. Suddenly there is communication, suddenly there is communion.

Intuition is closer to truth than intellect is because it makes you a person - more of a person - than does intellect.

And then there is pratibha, that which is beyond both - the supra intuition. Nothing can be said about it because all that can be said can be said either in sun language or in moon language. Either it can be described in a scientific way or it can be sung in a poetic way, but there is no way to describe pratibha. It is beyond. One has to feel it, one has to live it to know it.

People will come to Gautam Buddha and they will say, "Tell us something about God." And he will say, "Keep quiet, be silent. Remain with me - and it will happen to you." It is not a question that can be asked and answered, and it is not a problem that can be solved. It is a mystery to be lived. It's an ecstasy. It's a tremendous experience.

The way of the intellect:

One day Mulla was in the village mill, filling his bag with a little bit of every other person's wheat.

"Why are you doing that, Nasruddin?." someone asked.

"Because I am a fool," Mulla replied.

"Why don't you then fill other people's bags with your own wheat, if you are a fool?"

"Then," Mulla answered, "I would be more of a fool."

Intellect is cunning; intellect is calculating. Intellect is always trying to exploit others. Intuition is just the opposite; it is not exploitative.

Now let me tell you one thing. People think that someday or other the world will come to a point where there will be no classes, no economic hierarchy - no poor, no rich. And the people who have given much thought to this dream, this utopia - Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao - they are all intellectuals, and intellect can never bring this state of affairs. Only in an intuitive world is it possible that classes may disappear. But they are against intuition - Marxians think intellect is all in all, there is nothing beyond it. If that is so then their utopia is never going to be fulfilled - because intellect as such is exploitative; it is cunning. Intellect is violent, aggressive, destructive.

The sun energy is very violent and hot. It burns, it kills.

If really there is ever going to be a world without classes, a really communist world - where communes exist and there are no classes - then that world has to be completely anti Marxist. It has to be intuitive. And the builders of that world cannot be politicians - only poets, imaginative people, dreamers.

I would like to say man cannot be the creator of that world, only woman. The moon can create a world of equality, not the sun.

A Buddha, a Jesus, maybe can be helpful towards that utopia and the fulfillment of it, but Marx? No, absolutely no. He is too calculative, too clever, too intellectual. But the world has been ruled by the sun up to now. That was also natural be cause the sun is aggressive.

Now the possibility opens that the sun is tired, exhausted, frustrated, and humanity may start looking for another center to work with. That will be the real rise of women in the world: if the moon rises.

But, as I see, in the West there is great excite ment amongst women, great movement, revolutionary think ing, radical thought - the lib movement - but they are all falling and becoming intellectuals.

They are becoming more like men.

If women react to men they will become more like men themselves. That is the danger.

The woman should remain woman, only then is there a possibility of a different world and a different society - the moon oriented society. But if the woman herself becomes aggressive, as she is becoming, then she is learning the nonsense of man and the aggression of man and the violence of man. She may succeed, but the sun will succeed in her again.

One has to be very, very alert in radical times. When changes are going to happen in human consciousness, one has to be very alert. Just a single wrong step, and the whole thing can go wrong. Now the possibility is there that the moon can function and the moon can become dominant, but the woman, if she becomes aggressive, will miss and again man will win through her and the sun will remain in power.

From intellect to intuition and from intuition to beyond. This is the right direction of evolution: from man to woman and from woman to beyond.

Now one question has been asked, that this is understandable as far as man is concerned - what about women? They are on the moon center. What do they have to do?

They will have to absorb the sun center. As man has to absorb the moon center, woman has to absorb the sun center. Otherwise something remains denied in them; then they will not be whole women. So a man has to move from the sun center to the moon, from intellect to intuition. The woman has to learn intellect also, has to learn the logic of life also. She knows the love of life, man knows the logic of life; man has to learn the love of life and woman has to learn the logic of life. Then a balance arises.

Woman will have to absorb the sun center - and she can absorb very easily because her moon is functioning. The moon just has to open in the direction of the sun. The path is going to be just a little different: for man the sun energy has to be brought to the moon; for women, they have just to open their moon towards the sun and the energy will start flowing.

But both have to become total. The conscious has to absorb the unconscious and the division has to drop.

Jesus says, "A man becomes a woman and a woman becomes a man." When you accept your totality and you don't deny any part of your being, everything becomes balanced. And when woman and man are balanced within you, they negate each other. Suddenly you are free. Those two forces negate each other, and suddenly you are no longer in bondage.

You can remain in bondage only if one is more powerful than the other. If the sun is more powerful than the moon, then you will be in bondage with your man - the male mind. If the moon is stronger than the sun, then you will remain in the bondage of woman - the female. When both are equal, balancing, they negate each other; suddenly, your energy is free. You are not in any form now, you become formless. That formlessness is pratibha. Then you start rising higher and higher and higher - and there is no end to this growth.

That is the meaning when we say God is infinite. You go on growing and growing - you go on becoming more perfect, more perfect, more perfect.... Each moment is perfect and each next coming moment is more perfect than that.

Question 3

Swami Yoga Chinmaya, let me tell you one anecdote:

There was a young man in a small town whose nose had been cut because he had done something very wrong. People used to make fun of his cut nose and he was naturally humiliated by these insults. Everyone treated him with contempt. He pondered over the situation and soon found a way to make people honor and respect him.

He went to another village, put on the cloth of a sadhu, obtained other accessories of a sadhu, and sat in "meditation" under a tree. Men and women gathered around him. At last he opened his eyes and the people asked him who he was, and what he could do for them.

"I can do a lot for you," he replied. "I can show you God if only you agree to cut your nose - I did the same and I can see God very clearly, everywhere. Only God is." Three people in the crowd agreed to have their noses cut....

You can always find people more stupid than yourself - they become your followers.

... He took them to a tree some distance away, cut their noses, applied some medicine to stop the bleeding, and whispered into their ears, "Look, now there is no point in saying to them that you have not seen God. They will laugh at you and they will insult you and you will become a laughingstock of the whole village. So listen, you must now go and tell others that as soon as your nose was cut, you began seeing God."

They were so filled with shame at their folly that they accepted the suggestion and went to the crowd and said most enthusiastically, "Of course, we can see God - God is everywhere."

And so everyone in the town got his nose cut and achieved "God-realization."

You can find many sadhus in India: in some way or other their nose has been cut. When I say "in the bad company of sadhus and yogis" I mean these people. When I say their nose has been cut, I mean they have denied some part of their being. They have not accepted their whole being - their nose has been cut. Somebody has denied his sex, somebody has denied his anger, somebody has denied his greed - somebody something else. But the denied part takes revenge, and these people would like to cut your noses also.

When I say "in the bad company of sadhus and yogis" I mean people who have not understood anything but have tried many things and have really crippled themselves in many ways. If you remain with them, you will become crippled.

Chinmaya has become crippled. When I look at him, I can feel where he has become crippled.

And once he understands it, he can drop it immediately, there is no problem. The nose can grow again. It is not a problem - it is not something that you can really cut. It can grow again, once he understands.

For example, he has lost the capacity of humor. He cannot laugh. Even if he laughs - he tries hard - you can see his face is false. He is very sincere, but there is no need to be serious. Sincerity is one thing - it is honesty. Seriousness is disease. Never mistake seriousness for sincerity. You can become a longface; that is not going to help. In fact, if you become completely humorless, your life will become dry. It will lose juice. Humor is like juice: it gives you a liquidity, a flow.

But in India sadhus arc serious. They have to be serious, they cannot laugh, because if they laugh people will think they arc also ordinary - just like other people they are laughing. How Call a sadhu laugh? He has to remain something extraordinary. That's an ego trip.

I tell you to be just ordinary, Because to try to he extra. ordinary is a very ordinary thing - everybody wants that. And just to be ordinary, accept it, is very extraordinary because no. body wants it. I would like you to be just ordinary, so much so that nobody recognizes you as somebody in particular, so much so that you can be lost in the crowd. You will have a total freedom of being; otherwise you have to continuously hold yourself up. Then you are continuously on display - and that becomes a tension, that creates seriousness, that becomes a heavy burden.

There is no need to be continuously in the show window. You can relax, you can laugh.

I allow you everything that is human. All that is human is yours. Laugh like human beings. Cry, weep, like human beings. Be ordinary.

If you remain ordinary the ego will not arise. The ego arises with the idea of the extraordinary - so whatsoever people are doing, you are not meant to do it. If they walk on their feet, you are meant to stand on your head. Then they will come and worship you; they will say, "You are so extraordinary." But you are simply being foolish. Don't be bothered with their praise, because once you become addicted to their praise, you will he caught - then you will remain standing on your head for your whole life. You will lose all beauty of movement, and of course you cannot dance on your head. Have you ever seen any yogi? At the most you can just stand dead, doing shirshasan, the headstand.

When I say "bad company" I mean you have learned ego tricks from people who are deep in their egos. Avoid and escape from anybody who is on any ego trip because the possibility is he will give you some infection or other.

And people learn to do things by imitation. I have heard about one:

A very well-travelled executive returned from his trip to Italy and called a friend in New York to meet him for lunch.

"Did you do anything exciting over there, while you were in Italy?" the friend asked.

"Oh, you know the old saying," the executive, the American, shrugged. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

"Well, exactly what did you do?" the friend persisted.

"What else?" the businessman replied. "I seduced an American schoolteacher."

Now to go to Italy from America to seduce an American schoolteacher - but that's what Italians are doing, and "do in Rome as the Romans do."

When I say "the bad company" I mean that the mind is imitative. Mind is unconsciously imitative.

You will start learning tricks, and once you have learned them it will be difficult to drop them - and more so if those tricks have a great investment.

If people come and appreciate you, if people start respecting your nonlaughing, nonhumorous face and they think that you are very, very controlled, disciplined, and they come and touch your feet; it will be very difficult now for you to drop your habit of seriousness - because you will be enjoying it.

Now you have invested in your disease.

Drop it. Your life has to be lived from the within, not from the without. Don't be bothered about what people say - empty praise. Just look to what you are! If you are enjoying, delight. ing in your being, if you have a dancing soul inside - enough! Then if everybody condemns you, accept that. But never compromise with your inner delight, because ultimately that is going to decide who you are.

What people say is irrelevant. Who you are is relevant. Always go in and look at what you are doing to yourself.

If you are happy then there is no question. If you feel that you are happy with your seriousness, then too there is no question; then you can be happy that way, then it is your choice. But I have never seen a man who is happy and serious. He will be joyous, he will be celebrating, he will be enjoying and sharing, and he will be laughing.

Laughter is so spiritual, nothing like it. Have you seen? When you laugh deeply, all tensions disappear. Have you watched? When you laugh deeply, suddenly, as if you have come to an open sky, the walls disappear around you. If you can laugh you can always relax.

In Zen monasteries the monks are taught that the first thing to do in the morning is to laugh, begin the day with laughter. Ridiculous, because for no reason - just getting out of the bed the first thing to be done is to laugh. In the beginning it looks very difficult because there is nothing to laugh at.

But it is a meditation, and by and by one gets in tune with it and one comes to know that there is no reason to laugh. Laughter is such a great exercise in it-self, why wait for any reason? And it relaxes the whole day.

Let me tell you in terms of sun and moon. The sun person is serious; the moon person is nonserious. The sun person cannot laugh, it is difficult. The moon person can laugh easily, naturally, spontaneously. To a moon person laughter arises at every situation; he remains laughing. He does not wait for any excuse. But the sun person is very closed in. It is very difficult - even if you say a joke to him. He will look and listen to the joke as if you are giving him a mathematical problem.

That's why Germans cannot understand jokes. There was one joke, Priya told Haridas - and Haridas has not got it yet!

One man entered a restaurant and he asked for coffee.

And the waiter said, "How do you like your coffee?" The man said, "I like my coffee just as I like my women - hot."

The waiter said, "Black or white?"

It is difficult if you start thinking about it; otherwise it is simple. What can be more simple? But once you start thinking about it, if you are serious, as if you are reading the Vedas, then you miss.

Avoid all serious company; avoid people who are trying to become somebody. Get more and more in tune with people who are simply living their life, not trying to become anybody, who are simply being as they are. Move to them, they are the real spiritual people in the world. The religious leaders are not the real spiritual people in the world - they are politicians. They should have been in politics.

They have corrupted religion very badly. They have made religion so serious that churches look more like hospitals or cemeteries. The jubilation, the enjoyment, is completely lost. You cannot dance in a church; you cannot laugh in a church. The laughter has gone out of churches - but remember, the day laughter goes out of a church, God also goes out of it.

Let me tell you one very famous story:

Sam Burns, a Southern Negro, was refused entrance in a "white" church. The sexton told him to go to his own church and pray and he will feel much better.

The next Sunday he was back again. "Don't get upset," he said to the sexton. "I am not forcing my way in. I just came to tell you that I took your advice and it came out just fine. I prayed to God and he told me: "Don't feel had about it, Sam. I have been trying to get into that church for years myself and I have not made it yet!'"

Once a church is Christian, a temple is Hindu, a mosque is Mohammedan, God is not to be found there - things have be. come serious, politics has entered, laughter has gone out.

Let laughter be your temple, and you will feel in deep contact with the divine.

Question 4

The question is asked by Michael Wise.

Be wise - listen to me. Give the ego to me, that's what sannyas is. If you take sannyas, then the ego can feed itself upon it. I give you sannyas; you simply accept it. You have only to have that much courage, and then ego cannot exist: you have not done anything.

Whenever you come to me, first I try to give you sannyas. But there are very foolish people; they say, "We will think." They think they are clever. They start thinking about it - "someday they will come" - and they come, and they ask for sannyas and I give them. But in the first place what I was going to give them, that would have been totally different. Then it would have been a gift from me, not a doing on your part. If you do something, then the ego can feed on it. It is just a gift from me; then there is no question of the ego. But you miss the gift and then you come and beg; then the whole beauty is lost. You take sannyas because of your decision; then the ego can come in. If you leave it to me, then there is no point then it is my problem. You need not be worried about it.

Give your ego to me and forget all about it and start living, and I will take care of your ego.

So Michael Wise, be wise.

Question 5

If you don't drop it, I am going to make it more and more heavy so it drops on its own accord - so that you cannot hold it. That's what my lectures are all about. I go on putting more weight, more weight.... I am waiting for the last straw so the camel drops down.

It is a competition between me and you.

Hope that you are not going to win.

Question 6

No for all the three. When you become enlightened, the enlightenment says everything, shows everything. There is no need for you to tell me, there is no need for me to tell you. Enlightenment is self evident; it needs no certificate. It is self evident, as if in the night suddenly a ray of light enters. There is no need to say anything about it. You will not really be able to say anything - all your thinking will stop. It is so tremendously silent. And it has such absolute certainty that there is no need to ask anybody. So there is not going to be any need from your side or from my side to tell.

And, "Is my ego asking the question?" No. The ego never asks about enlightenment. It cannot ask about it, because enlightenment is going to be its death.

When you start meditating, loving, laughing, when you start moving into that dimension beyond, naturally the idea arises, "If it happens, who is going to tell me?" Because up to now, whatsoever has happened, somebody was needed to tell it to you. And this question is from a sannyasin, Ma Prem Jeevan. This is much more so for a moon-oriented person.

When a woman falls in love, she waits for the man to tell her that he loves her. She will not even say it, that "I love you." The moon center is not so certain as the intellectual center always is. The moon center is vague, misty. One feels, and yet one cannot say what it is. A woman remains uncertain about her love until the man comes and tells her and makes her certain that, "Yes, it has happened." That's why women are not known to propose, and whenever a woman proposes to a man, the man will escape immediately - because this woman is no woman; she is already a man. Proposal from a woman looks absurd. The moon never proposes, it waits.

So I know why this question has arisen. If you cannot be certain even about your love, when God is going to happen to you, who is going to tell you? You would need somebody to make you assured.

There will be no need because God never happens on the sun center, people who are foolishly certain; it never happens on the moon center, people who are deliciously uncertain; it happens beyond both. It happens in pratibha. It happens in a suprarational state where it is absolutely mysterious and yet absolutely certain.

The whole world is transformed with your enlightenment. Not only you, your whole past world disappears. A totally new experience, a totally new existence.

Question 7

This is from Swami Ajit Saraswati. This is going to be so for each one of you. You have to come with me, "somehow." That "somehow" is important. You cannot be knowingly with me, because you don't know where you are being led. You cannot be consideredly with me, logically, rationally with me, because I am taking you into the unknowable. I am taking you somewhere where you have never been, to a space that has never happened to you. "Somehow" is the right word - somehow you come With me. In love, in a sort of madness, drunk with me you come with me. Then by and by things start happening. Of course you had never believed that they would happen so soon.

The darkness in which you are is such that you cannot believe that the light can happen to you ever, and when it starts happening it seems almost that the impossible is happening. You cannot trust your own eyes; you feel as if you are moving in a dream. But by and by the dream becomes the real and the real becomes the dream.

Exactly this is going to happen to you all, what has happened to Ajit.

Let me repeat it: "Firstly I did not believe that it was at all possible, but somehow I followed you." Those who can follow me, somehow, are the courageous ones. I cannot convince you to come with me, because there is no way to convince you about something you have never known. There is no way to convince you about something of which you have never heard. You have to trust me; you have to come with me somehow.

I cannot argue because the experience that I am going to communicate to you, the experience that I am going to transfer to you, cannot be argued about. It is beyond argument. If you are not convinced, I cannot convince you. If you are convinced, then I can take you over, then I can possess you.

So only people who are mad enough are ready for me. Those who are very clever, I am not for them. They will have to wander a little longer, stumble in darkness and grope in darkness.

I can give you the gift of the unknown, it is ready, but you have to be ready to receive it. And of course you can only be "somehow" ready. It is a miracle; to be with me is a miracle. It cannot happen logically, but it happens. That's why people will say to you that you are hypnotized. In a way they are right. You are not hypnotized, but you are in a sort of drunkenness.

"Thereafter I did not think that it would ever be so soon, but somehow I persisted with you. And then, through you the impossible has become possible, the distant the immediate.

"Though I know that I have only taken the first few steps, more and more moments are gathering when it feels like the end of the journey. It is painful and yet sweet: painful not to see you there anymore...." T he moment you can see yourself, you will not see me anymore because then two emptinesses will be facing each other, two mirrors facing each other. They will mirror infinitely, hut nothing will be mirrored.

"It is painful and yet sweet: painful not to see you there:anymore, but sweet to feel you everywhere." Yes, the moment you cannot see me here in this chair, you will be able to see me everywhere.

"Lest I disappear without so much as saying thank you to you, may I please say it now... when you are still there for me?"

There is no need. Ajit's whole being has become a thank you towards me. No need to say it... I have heard before you have said it.