Of love of one's neighbor

ZARATHUSTRA HAS MANY original insights. Just a single, original insight could have made him one of the greatest men that has ever lived, but he has so many, about each and everything. His vision is not of the ordinary. Perhaps that is the reason why people have forgotten him.

He has been giving tremendous insights and truths, but they have passed over people's heads.

It seems very easy to understand when Jesus says: "Love your neighbor as yourself." There is nothing original in it. Buddha has said it, Mahavira has said it. There is not anything that you cannot understand. With Zarathustra, you have to be very silent, remembering that you are encountering an utterly unique person who speaks to the depths of your very being, of which you are not aware.

He is not a moral teacher in the usual sense; he is a perfect master. He is not interested in the trivia; his interest is in transforming you into a new man. The world is too burdened with the small man.

He wants the whole of humanity to have wings for the heights, to have courage to go deep down in the earth to find water for its roots.

Zarathustra expects too much, but whatever he expects is possible. He exposes man too much, but whatever he says is absolutely true. It may hurt you, it may destroy your old conceptions, it may destroy you - because only upon your destruction can this new man arrive.

His each word is a seed. If you allow it to settle in your heart, you will never be the same man again.

Zarathustra is the most potential man the world has ever known. It has known great men, and many of them, but they were in a certain way still understandable. They used your language, they used your prejudices. Rather than giving you a new light they have supported you as you are. You call them great because they have supported you, they have made you comfortable with yourself.

Zarathustra creates discomfort, discontent, because without a great discontent the superman is not possible. Your other great men have been teaching you to be contented, to be desireless.

Zarathustra teaches you a divine discontent, and a longing for the stars. And I agree with him absolutely, that unless you have a longing for the stars, you cannot grow, and you cannot become your true self; you cannot achieve your potential to its fullness. Hence, listen to his words, not just as words, but as seeds.

Zarathustra says, YOU FLEE TO YOUR NEIGHBOR AWAY FROM YOURSELVES. Nobody has said that before him, and nobody has said it with exactly the same emphasis even after him. And it is such a great truth, that once you have understood it, you will see how blind we are. We are not even aware of what we are doing or why we are doing it.

YOU FLEE TO YOUR NEIGHBOR AWAY FROM YOURSELVES. It is not for the love of the neighbor; it is just the emptiness of yourself.

You want somehow to remain engaged, because to be alone, unengaged... a great fear of one's aloneness, a great fear of one's emptiness, a great fear of one's darkness, and finally the ultimate fear of death, grips everybody. To avoid all these, one has to avoid coming home. Keep yourself engaged. It does not matter in what.

I have heard that one morning, as the archbishop of New York entered the church, he could not believe his eyes. There stood a young man, looking almost like Jesus. The archbishop had a suspicion that perhaps he's nothing more than a hippy, but he became greatly troubled and asked the young man, "Who are you and what are you doing here?" The young man smiled and said, "Have you not recognized me? You are my representative here, and you don't even recognize your master. I am Jesus Christ. Just taking a look round, seeing how things are going." The archbishop started trembling. Who knows, perhaps he is Jesus Christ - there is no way to be certain about it.

He said, "I am coming in just a minute." From the other room he phoned to the Vatican, to the pope, saying, "I am in a great trouble. There is a man here who looks exactly like Jesus Christ, and he says also that he IS Jesus Christ, and that he has come to have a look around the world, to see how things are going. What am I supposed to do?" There was a silence for a minute, and the pope said, "You have created trouble for me. Nobody knows whether he is Jesus, or just a hippy playing a joke on you. You do one thing: inform the police. And second thing, look busy."

The archbishop said, "The first thing I can understand - informing the police. What do you mean...

what is the purpose of looking busy?" He said, "That will keep you from trembling. Do anything.

Start arranging furniture, one book from here to there, one file from this place to that place, but look very busy until the police arrive. Then let the police settle the matter."

You go to your neighbor, you get married, you want children, you want friends. But have you watched? - it is just being busy to somehow avoid yourself, to not come into contact with yourself.

So do anything stupid. Go to see a movie, go to a sermon in the church, go to the circus, to any restaurant, but keep yourself busy, from the morning till you fall asleep. And in sleep, also keep yourself busy with your dreams; never leave a gap in which you have to face yourself. And to face yourself is the essence of meditation.

People ask, how to meditate? They should simply ask how not to get busy, and they should start cutting out the trivia in which they are continuously wasting their life - out of one hundred percent you will find ninety-five percent of your business is utterly useless and stupid - and then you will have enough time to see yourself, to face yourself in different aspects, to encounter yourself as deeply as possible.

Of course, you will be alone - and that is the fear.

You cannot take a friend with you. In your inner privacy you cannot take anybody, not even God, even if there is a God; you cannot take him into your inner privacy. That is your privilege. That is your grandeur - that your privacy is intact. Nobody can trespass on it.

But you have to be courageous, understanding, alert, because you will be facing things in yourself which you have been hiding from others, and slowly, slowly, from yourself. You will come across monsters which you have pushed aside in yourself; you will come across many repressions. It is not a very beautiful experience; it is bitter. But one has to do it to find one's center.

Zarathustra is saying, YOU FLEE TO YOUR NEIGHBOR AWAY FROM YOURSELVES AND WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A VIRTUE OF IT: BUT I SEE THROUGH YOUR 'SELFLESSNESS'. Have you ever seen through your selflessness? All your selflessness is phony. It has to be phony - one cannot do anything selflessly. But centuries have accumulated in your mind, which have been telling you to be selfless and, at the same time, they are giving every incentive, every motive, to be selfless.

Man is so blind that he cannot see a simple fact. If you are selfless you will be rewarded in heaven.

What kind of selflessness is this? If you are selfless, you will be respected by the society, honored by awards, what kind of selflessness is this? It is pure business. And when you are doing selfless things, perhaps you are still escaping from yourself.

Once a man came to me. He had been with Mahatma Gandhi for many years. It was Mahatma Gandhi who encouraged him to go to the aboriginals who live in the forest and the mountains, and to open schools for them. His whole life he had devoted to opening schools, and collecting money and donations from people.

Just by accident he came to ask me for donations. I said, "Donation? For what?" He said, "I have been working for almost fifty years in teaching the aboriginals. I open schools - they need books, they need clothes, they need teachers. It is a selfless job. Mahatma Gandhi himself encouraged me to do this public service." I said, "The people who are already educated - do you think anything great is happening in them? Do you think they have become better men? In fact, the aboriginals are far more innocent, childlike... no theft, no rape.

"One of my friends, who was a collector told me that he could not believe it, when one aboriginal came and said to him, 'Arrest me, I have committed a murder.' They are so innocent that if you have committed a murder.... And he said, 'Although there was no intention, one thing led to another - we were fighting, and I pushed him from the mountain, and the poor fellow died. I feel sorry for him, but I have committed murder. There is no eyewitness; except me, nobody knows it. And in my parts, in the forest, there is no police station, so I had to come almost one hundred and fifty miles to report.'"

I asked this man, "If he was educated, do you think he would have come to report that he has committed a murder, when there is no eye witness, when there is no police for one hundred and fifty miles? These aboriginals... you think you are doing a selfless service - you are destroying them."

I have been with the aboriginals. They are perhaps the only people in the world - very small tribes left here and there - who don't dream. They have a strange ritual that will look absurd to you: if somebody dreams, he reports immediately to the chief of the tribe, "I have dreamt this." If he has dreamt that he has beaten somebody, he has to take some food, some flowers, to the man, as an apology: "Just excuse me. In the dream last night I have beaten you." The man knows nothing, because he was not present in the dream.

I have asked those aboriginals, "What is the point of this?"

They said, "It does not matter whether he has beaten that man or not, but he has the desire; otherwise, from where did the dream come? And the desire is enough to require an apology."

These simple human beings... they don't have any prostitution, they cannot have it, their social structure is such that after a boy or a girl becomes mature, thirteen, fourteen.... They have in the middle of their poor village just straw huts, but made so beautifully and so clean, with so much love and art; nothing valuable in them. Just in the middle of the town they have a big hut. After a boy and girl become sexually mature, they cannot sleep in their own homes, they have to sleep together in the hall in the middle of the village. And they have to find their partners, their friends. The only law they have is that you should not be with any girl more than three days, or any girl should not be more than three days with a boy. No sexual inhibition. So almost every boy comes in contact with every girl of the village. Every girl comes to know every man of the village. Then it is up to them to decide with whom they would like to live their whole life. They don't know any divorce.

Because every woman and every man has known each other, they have chosen the best person possible. They cannot find anyone better. They have found the person with whom they fall in rapport.

There is no divorce, there is no prostitution.

And all the missionaries are trying to convince them that this institution, where boys and girls live together, is immoral. In fact, it is one of the most moral institutions - it should exist everywhere. You are choosing a life partner, and you are not given any chance to be with many people, so that you can choose. Your choice remains so stupid, because some girl has a long nose, or some girl has beautiful hair, or some boy is very polite, very nice.

But these are not the things which can keep you together for your whole life. You have to know each other in every possible way. And it is not that one man and one girl can meet only once; one time they can remain three days together. If again they meet, and they want to be together, they can be together again for three days.

I asked one of the old men, "Why three days?"

He said, "It is our experience that after three days some kind of attachment starts growing. To change after three days keeps our whole community free of jealousy."

You need not be jealous of anybody. You know perfectly well your husband has been with hundreds of girls, your wife has been with hundreds of boys - you are one of them. There is no question of jealousy, there is no question of quarrelling. There is no necessity to dig into each other's past: With whom you have been? Am I the first person you have loved?

A strange idea exists all over the civilized countries: every girl wants to be the only one - for what?

Every young man wants to be the only one she has loved. This kind of love is bound to create jealousy. This kind of love is bound to create divorce. This kind of love, if forced, is bound to create prostitutes - just for a change. Otherwise you are boring each other - every day, twenty-four hours a day. Everybody has a limit, then he is bored.

There comes a time when it brings a nervous breakdown. In their tribes there are no psychiatrists, no psychoanalysts. And even if any psychoanalyst comes, there is nobody who is going to be his patient, because they don't have any dreams to be analyzed, they don't have any quarrels and fights with their spouses to be settled.

I was amazed to see that aboriginals don't commit suicide. They don't have much to live for - not the luxuries, not the palaces - but every night the whole tribe dances. Their food consists of the minimum; undernourished they are, but their spirits soar high: on the full moon night, the whole night they will dance and sing.

I asked the man, "What is your teaching going to do for them? You are poisoning them. You can go to your universities where your well-educated people are. What are they doing? In what way have they become a better species?"

He was very shocked. He said, "I have been they working for fifty years with the idea that I am they doing a selfless service. But perhaps you are right."

I said, "You are not doing a selfless service. You are simply escaping from yourself. This whole service is just an engagement; and in the name of public service, it is easy, respectable - here and hereafter. Have you ever meditated? You have been fifty years in the forest, in the mountains.

Have you given any time to yourself?" He said, "I have been working my whole time to create more schools, to find more teachers, to find more students, to cultivate culture and civilization in them."

I said, "Do you think you are cultured, you are civilized? Are you certain about it?"

He said, "Somebody should have told me before. I have wasted my whole life. Now I'm seventy-five."

I said, "It is better to be late than never. At least you drop this word 'selflessness'".

This is one of the words that all the religions are poisoning people with. And people get caught in the net, because they themselves want to forget themselves. In a selfless service... it seems to be the most virtuous way, religious way, respectable way, to forget oneself.

To forget oneself is the only sin in the world.

To remember oneself is the only virtue.

Right is Zarathustra when he says, ... BUT I SEE THROUGH YOUR 'SELFLESSNESS'.

DO I EXHORT YOU TO LOVE OF YOUR NEIGHBOR? I EXHORT YOU RATHER TO FLIGHT FROM YOUR NEIGHBOR AND TO LOVE OF THE MOST DISTANT!

Your neighbor is nothing but part of the same crowd that you are. Your neighbor is not different from yourself. He follows the same religion, he speaks the same language, he follows the same morality, the same values, he follows the same idea of God. He goes to the same temple to pray. He's nothing but another copy of yourself.

Zarathustra is saying, I EXHORT YOU RATHER TO FLIGHT FROM YOUR NEIGHBOR AND TO LOVE OF THE MOST DISTANT! - because only the distant can become a possibility of your growth, a possibility of your metamorphosis, a possibility of transformation. The neighbor is nothing but a mirror - you see your own face, and feel perfectly satisfied. He's as cunning as you are, he's as angry as you are, he's as greedy as you are, he's as sexual as you are, as competitive as you are, as jealous, envious, violent, as you are. Look towards a faraway star, towards... LOVE OF THE MOST DISTANT.

HIGHER THAN LOVE OF ONE'S NEIGHBOR STANDS LOVE OF THE MOST DISTANT MAN AND OF THE MAN OF THE FUTURE. The statement of Jesus, "Love your neighbor", is too ordinary. But Zarathustra's statement to love the most distant is certainly a great challenge for everyone who is still alive, who has not become a fossil, a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Jaina - these are all fossils. They have died long ago; just their dead bodies go on breathing, living. Somehow they have forgotten how to stop breathing.

Have you observed the fact that people die less at the age of ninety, even less at the age of one hundred, still less at one hundred and twenty, still less at one hundred and fifty? - they become senile; they forget completely how to die. You will not find anybody who dies at the age of two hundred. By that time he has completely forgotten how to stop breathing, how to stop the heartbeat - he goes on and on.

Somebody was asking me about Morarji Desai. I said, "It is very difficult, he has been senile for many years. It will just be an accident if he dies. He cannot die a natural death."

HIGHER STILL THAN LOVE OF MAN I ACCOUNT LOVE OF CAUSES AND OF PHANTOMS.

Higher still than love of man, Zarathustra accounts love of causes, and love of distant dreams. That which is a dream today, that which is only a cause within you, can become a realization tomorrow.

Never stop: always go on looking forward for better causes, for higher dreams. Be a good dreamer.

Be a good fighter for good causes, for causes which are unpopular, for which the masses will never support you. The masses support themselves, and their way of life is almost fixed. Your forefathers lived the same way, their forefathers lived the same way. They go on repeating the same thing, again and again. Anything strange, and they immediately become antagonistic. Anything new immediately becomes unpopular. Love the unpopular causes, and love distant dreams. That is far better than loving man.

THIS PHANTOM THAT RUNS ALONG BEHIND YOU, MY BROTHER, IS FAIRER THAN YOU; WHY DO YOU NOT GIVE IT YOUR FLESH AND BONES? Give to your dreams, your flesh and your bones. Give to your causes, your life.

BUT YOU ARE AFRAID AND YOU RUN TO YOUR NEIGHBOR. But rather than living a life that can be called truly human, almost touching the divine, you become afraid because you are left alone.

The coziness of the crowd is no longer with you. The support of the crowd is no longer with you.

But to stand alone has a joy of its own. To stand alone like an Everest has a height and has a reach into the highest. But people want to be amongst photocopies of themselves. There they feel at ease - no challenge, no fight, no struggle, no crucifixion. Just be a sheep; never try to become a lion.

This is how for thousands of years man has lived, and it has become habitual.

YOU INVITE IN A WITNESS WHEN YOU WANT TO SPEAK WELL OF YOURSELVES. AND WHEN YOU HAVE MISLED HIM INTO THINKING WELL OF YOU, YOU THEN THINK WELL OF YOURSELVES. This game goes on: I praise you, you praise me. Naturally it is a simple bargain; everybody is praising everybody else. This they call sociability. They meet in clubs; they make Rotary Clubs and Lions Clubs. All those clubs are nothing but sheep clubs, but nobody has the guts to call them their real name.

Everybody is praising each other. Everybody is saying that you are so beautiful, so generous, so intelligent, so charitable, so religious, and hoping that the same compliments will be returned to him.

And they are returned, and everybody goes home very happy. This stupidness is so spread all over humanity that nobody raises a question.

It happened... Dr. Radhakrishnan was one of the presidents of India. Before he became a president he was a vice-chancellor, and before he became a vice-chancellor he was a professor.

Because a professor, a teacher, had become the president, his birthday was celebrated all over India, particularly in religious institutions - schools, colleges, universities - as a teachers' day.

In my university also, a great celebration was made. The vice-chancellor spoke in golden words about Dr. Radhakrishnan, that it is a glory to every teacher, a dignity to every teacher, that a teacher has become the president of the country, and many other prominent professors spoke. I could not tolerate it any longer. I was not supposed to speak, for the simple reason they knew that I am not reliable; what I will say may disturb the whole thing. But I stood up and I said, "Without me speaking this celebration will not be complete." So the poor vice-chancellor, although his face became pale, invited me to speak. I said, "This is such an absurdity that has been told to you by so many people, from the vice-chancellor, from all the deans, from all the senior professors. Cannot you see a simple thing, that a teacher has become a politician? It is a degradation; it is not respect. A teacher does not find himself dignified as a teacher - he wants to become the president of the country. This is not a teachers' day. I will call the day 'teachers' day' when a president resigns and joins a school and starts teaching there. That will be the teachers' day.

The logic is so simple - that he respects teaching, and loves teaching, more than being a president.

The vice-chancellor and the professors who were sitting on the stage were so shocked, because all the students, the whole crowd, clapped. They were agreeing with me. Just these few idiots were not clapping. I said, "You should start clapping. Can't you see, everybody is clapping, and you look so stupid not clapping." And you will be surprised - they started. What else to do? And when they started, then the students started dancing and clapping.

I said, "Now the celebration is complete; otherwise, what celebration was it? And you have been praising a man who was serving the British government - he never fought for India's freedom. He was a professor in Calcutta University, and he stole a student's thesis, the whole thesis. He was one of the examiners, and he went on delaying, saying, 'I am going through it.' Meanwhile, he managed to have it published in England, in his name. And when it was published, then he returned the thesis to the university.

"The student was a poor student, but still he went to the high court. But he was such a poor man....

The case was in the high court for a few months, and Radhakrishnan had not a single word to say, because page after page, chapter after chapter, were verbatim exactly the same as the thesis.

"His whole strategy was that the book had been published before; but the university knew that the thesis has been given to him before the publication of his book. It was certain that he was going to be punished for it. It was such an ugly act. He gave ten thousand rupees to the student - and he was such a poor man, that he thought that it was better to withdraw the case. The case was withdrawn, but that does not make any difference.

"This man has used bribes to become the vice-chancellor; and the whole of India knew about the case, the whole of India knew about his bribery. And still they were praising him as if he was a sage."

When I raised these questions, all their faces fell, and the vice-chancellor uttered to the man sitting by his side, "I was afraid of this from the very beginning. That's why I had not invited him to speak.

But I never thought that he should have been prevented from coming into the conference."

I said, "If you have any answer, you can give the answer. This man has not been a teacher, but a thief. And if he becomes a politician, it is not a credit to the profession of the teachers, it is a discredit. If he has still any sense, he should resign and become a teacher again."

But this is how things are. The vice-chancellor has to praise him. After the meeting he told me, "It is not good for you. They will take revenge." I said, "I am ready for every revenge, but I am not ready to say things which are absolute lies." He said, "But I cannot say it. He has appointed me as vice-chancellor of this university." This way, things go on. He has appointed him as vice-chancellor, so he has to praise him. The whole society lives in a subtle kind of hypocrisy, in a conspiracy. One has to be courageous enough to stand alone. And he was right, that I would be taken into all kinds of revengeful situations; they have happened, they are still continuing to happen. My whole life they will continue to take revenge just because I am not ready to compromise with the hypocrisy that society has decided to live with.

But it gives me immense joy that I am not part of a crowd, and I don't want my people to be part of a crowd. Even if you have to sacrifice your whole life, it is more joyful than to be a slave. It is better to be on the cross than to be a slave of unconscious, fast-asleep people.

ONE MAN RUNS TO HIS NEIGHBOR BECAUSE HE IS LOOKING FOR HIMSELF. Alone, one tends to forget who one is. Your name, your profession, your qualifications, your degrees, your beauty, your strength, your respect - alone one tends to forget all this, because all these are false things surrounding you. But when you go to the neighbor he reminds you, he compliments you, you compliment him. You both rejoice that you have found yourself - he has found himself.

One emperor had gone to see Nan-in, a Zen master, and he had brought for him a very valuable robe, studded with diamonds, worthy of a king, and made of the costliest material that was possible in the country. After visiting Nan-in, when he was going, the emperor offered him the robe, saying, "Don't refuse; it is just a present from me." He said, "I can take it, but I cannot use it, because there are no neighbors around. What is the point? Moreover, the deer will laugh, the peacocks will giggle:

'Look at this old fellow. In old age he has gone insane.' So, please take it back. I have accepted it - you take it back. It is needed in the crowd. They will compliment you for it, they will praise you, they will say what a beautiful thing it is. But here in the forest I live amongst wild animals and they are all naked. Sometimes I even hear them giggling at my clothes and saying, 'What kind of animal is he? When everybody is naked, why you are so afraid of the rain, so afraid of the sun, so afraid of the wind? You could enjoy.'"

ONE MAN RUNS TO HIS NEIGHBOR BECAUSE HE IS LOOKING FOR HIMSELF, AND ANOTHER BECAUSE HE WANTS TO LOSE HIMSELF. When you are in anxiety, anguish, trouble, life seems to be dark and a failure, you want to go to the neighbor somehow to lose all your anxiety with a few drinks, a good chitchat, gossiping, whose wife has run off with whom, whose husband is chasing after whose wife. One wants to lose oneself because the anxiety is too much.

YOUR BAD LOVE OF YOURSELVES MAKES SOLITUDE A PRISON TO YOU - because you don't love yourself. That's why your solitude appears almost like a prison, and you want to get out of it.

Run in any direction, do anything, but don't be alone.

Solitude is the most beautiful experience, the most glorious treasure that you have, but you have never explored it, because you have never loved yourself. Nobody has told you to love yourself. Love your mother, love your father, love your brother, love your sister, love your wife, love your children...

except yourself.

Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." But his understanding is not very big, because who loves oneself? "Love your enemy as you love yourself, " - but who loves oneself? He has no teaching for that - first love yourself.

Zarathustra is a great psychologist: I DO NOT TEACH YOU THE NEIGHBOR BUT THE FRIEND.

And the difference is great. The neighbor is accidental; it happens that he is your neighbor. The friend is a conscious choice. It is not accidental; you have chosen it.

MAY THE FRIEND BE TO YOU A FESTIVAL OF THE EARTH AND A FORETASTE OF THE SUPERMAN. Love the friend so much that the very friendship becomes a festival, and in your friendship is born the superman. Love is the fire that purifies the gold, that purifies ordinary human beings into superman.

I TEACH YOU THE FRIEND AND HIS OVERFLOWING HEART. BUT YOU MUST UNDERSTAND HOW TO BE A SPONGE IF YOU WANT TO BE LOVED BY OVERFLOWING HEARTS. He is saying an immensely important thing: that you should learn to be like a sponge, not begging for love, but when love comes, overflowing, you are capable of absorbing it. Not asking for it. He is not telling you to become a begging bowl, which almost all so- called lovers are - begging bowls: "Give me more love, a little more...." It is almost like two blind beggars standing before each other with their begging bowls. "Give me something, I am hungry." But they can't see that the other is also hungry, with a begging bowl.

I have heard: two astrologers used to meet everyday at a crossroads, from where they went, in different directions, for their work. But at the crossroads they used to show each other their hands, saying "Just tell me how today will be." He himself is an astrologer; he is going to predict people's futures. The other is also an astrologer, the same business, but both will ask each other, "Just look at my hand, my hand lines, what do they say? How is the day going to be, successful or not?"

Don't be a beggar. Be like a sponge.

I TEACH YOU THE FRIEND IN WHOM THE WORLD STANDS COMPLETE. Friendship is the highest quality of love, where love transcends biology, physiology, chemistry, hormones, where love only becomes a spiritual phenomenon.

I TEACH YOU THE FRIEND IN WHOM THE WORLD STANDS COMPLETE, A VESSEL OF THE GOOD - THE CREATIVE FRIEND, WHO ALWAYS HAS A COMPLETE WORLD TO BESTOW.

AND AS THE WORLD ONCE DISPERSED FOR HIM, SO IT COMES BACK TO HIM AGAIN, AS THE EVOLUTION OF GOOD THROUGH EVIL, AS THE EVOLUTION OF DESIGN FROM CHANCE.

MAY THE FUTURE AND THE MOST DISTANT BE THE PRINCIPLE OF YOUR TODAY: IN YOUR FRIEND YOU SHOULD LOVE THE SUPERMAN AS YOUR PRINCIPLE.

Love can become an alchemical process. If you love someone, it transforms the other person.

In my village there was one man who was a well- known thief. He used to call the jail his home. He was a jailbird; almost half his life he was in jail. But when he was released from jail, he would come directly to see me. Of course my father was worried, my teachers were worried, and they said that this friendship is not good, this man is dangerous.

I said, "The friendship you are afraid of is a double-edged sword. Only time will show whether my love changes him or his love changes me. It is a question of who loves more." They said, "It is difficult to argue with you, but we say that he is a confirmed criminal, and he cannot drop his habits." I said, "Who is trying to change him? Who is trying to get him to drop his habits? I love him as he is. I have never said a single word about his stealing, about his being imprisoned. I'm not concerned about that, that is his business. But the man is beautiful. And the man is very reliable, very trustworthy."

They said, "You will not listen, until he corrupts you."

I said, "Somebody is going to be corrupted, either him or me, but give it a chance."

One day he said to me, "You never say anything about my stealing."

I said, "That is your way of life. You are master of your own life. If you have chosen to steal, I have no wish to interfere in it."

He said, "You never even say that I go to jail. Nobody in the whole village is ready even to be friendly with me, because it is dangerous. The police may see that I was standing with him, talking with him.

He may get into some trouble."

I said, "Don't be worried about that. In trouble I am going to get! My ways of getting into trouble may be different - your ways are different - but trouble is going to be there. So completely forget about trouble. I love you, I trust you." There were tears in his eyes, and he said, "It is just because of you that many times I prevent myself from stealing. In the jail I only remember you, that there is someone outside, that somebody must be remembering me; otherwise, the outside world does not exist for me. And it is only a question of a few months. I will manage. Soon I will be out, and next time I am not going to steal."

I said, "That is up to you. But never for a moment think that I am preventing you, because in my conception, if love cannot give freedom, it is not love. If love interferes in the life of the beloved, of the friend, of the lover, then it is not love. I simply love you as you are; you should not try to change yourself because of my love." But slowly, slowly, his stealing dropped.

The people were amazed. One of my teachers, who had been very insistent that he would make me a thief, was absolutely astonished when two years passed and he did not steal, and he did not go to jail. My teacher called me and said, "I am sorry; perhaps I don't know that love has a power of its own."

In the university, one of the students, who was my colleague for two years, murdered somebody.

He was caught and jailed. Years after, when I became a professor, the governor was very much interested in me, so he wanted me to go to the central jail every Sunday to talk to the prisoners, to help them to meditate. And there I met that young man who had murdered somebody. He was trying to hide in the crowd of other prisoners, but I went directly inside the crowd.

The superintendent was preventing me, saying, "These are dangerous people. You should not go amongst them."

I said, "They may be dangerous - they cannot be dangerous to me. I have not done any harm to anybody." And I got hold of the boy and I told him, "This is not good that you should hide. I have specially come to see you. When the governor asked me, I remembered only you, that I will be able to see you again."

He said, "I was feeling so ashamed. I betrayed you, your love, your friendship. I am not ashamed of the murder - the man I murdered needed it! I am ashamed that I betrayed your love and your trust."

I said, "Forget about it. You have not betrayed anything. I love you as much as I loved you before - perhaps more, because you had to pass through such a torturous ordeal."

I went there every Sunday, and after six or seven weeks the superintendent told me, "There has been a strange change in the man you always meet before you talk to everybody. Before, he was the most dangerous person here. He was always creating trouble, always problems; he was always beating, hurting somebody. But during these seven weeks, something has happened to him. He is meditating. Others only meditate when you come, every Sunday, but he meditates every day."

Within a year, he was a totally different man, and the superintendent recommended that he should be released; otherwise it was a life sentence.

He asked me, "I am recommending him to be released. If you can put a word into the governor's ear it will help immensely; otherwise, he will not believe that a man who has been sentenced for his whole life can be released. He has served almost six, seven years, but that is nothing."

I told the governor that I had a friend there, and told him the whole story. I said, "The superintendent wants him to be released. I would love that he is released, because that will create a great incentive and encouragement in the other prisoners. And you yourself would love to see that man. This whole year he has been meditating - whenever he had time he was meditating."

He was released, and I asked him, "What has happened in your meditations?" He said, "Now I feel perhaps it was good that I murdered. If I had not murdered, I would have never come so close to you. In my meditations I was so close to you, I could hear your heartbeat. And strangely, the meditations transformed all my energy. That which was violence became love, that was anger became compassion; and I was not even concerned that for the whole of my life I have to live in the jail "In fact I was happy to have no worries of life, no responsibilities of life. Just do your work the whole day, and meditate. I was reading your books, meditating, and slowly, slowly, a group of meditators was formed. We were reading together, discussing together. Out of jail I feel a little lost, because for this one year it has become almost a temple to me. And on the outside, it is just the ugly marketplace I had left before."

Love has a chemical quality to transform people's energies. It changes the person you love; it changes you simultaneously.

He says, I TEACH YOU THE FRIEND IN WHOM THE WORLD STANDS COMPLETE, A VESSEL OF THE GOOD - THE CREATIVE FRIEND, WHO ALWAYS HAS A COMPLETE WORD TO BESTOW. Love creates in people creative energies. And you must have watched, if you have fallen in love with someone, suddenly you become creative.

You want to create something for the beloved - and this is ordinary love.

If your love is out of your meditations, you would like to create poetry, music, sculpture, painting, a garden. All whole energies will take a shift from being destructive towards creativity.

If the people in the world knew only one religion, love, the world would be paradise.

AND AS THE WORLD DISPERSED FOR HIM, SO IT COMES BACK TO HIM AGAIN, AS THE EVOLUTION OF GOOD THROUGH EVIL, AS THE EVOLUTION OF DESIGN FROM CHANCE.

MAY THE FUTURE AND THE MOST DISTANT BE THE PRINCIPLE OF YOUR TODAY.

Your eyes should be fixed on the distant and the future, and this should be your principle today. It will pull you to heights unknown, to spaces untraveled before, to experiences you had not even dreamt about.

IN YOUR FRIEND YOU SHOULD LOVE THE SUPERMAN AS YOUR PRINCIPLE.

Love so totally that the friend has to become a superman.

Love so totally that it leaves no possibility for the friend to be less than superman.

And his love towards you will transform you, also. It is a simultaneous process, it is a synchronicity.

Zarathustra is right: don't be bothered about the neighbor. Be concerned about a friend, and create as much love as you are capable of. And the more you create love, the more you will find you are capable of.

There is no limit, no boundary, for your being loving - you can love infinitely.

And if you can shower somebody with your love totally, you are going to change him - and his being, and his soul.

His emphasis moving from the neighbor - neighbor means the crowd - to the friend is significant: the friend means "the chosen one." The neighbor is accidental; the friend has to be looked for, searched for. And the principle should be: Look for a man who has the capacity to fulfill the distant goal of being a superman.

There are so many people... just nobody has loved them so much that they have become their ultimate actualities. Nobody cared about them, nobody showered love on them so that they can blossom. Your love should be a spring to them.

This world needs not neighbors but friends - friends who love but don't interfere, friends who love but have no conditions, friends who love but leave you absolutely independent.

A world full of love and friendship should be the goal. Less than that is not going to save humanity.

... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.