Of scholars

One of the most important distinctions one has to make is between knowledge and knowing.

Knowledge is cheap and easy: knowing is costly, risky, needs courage. Knowledge is available in the market. There are special markets for knowledge - the universities, the colleges. Knowing is not available anywhere except within yourself.

Knowing is your capacity. Knowledge is your memory, and memory is the function of the mind that can be easily done by any computer. Knowledge is always borrowed. It is not a flower that grows in your soul, it is something plastic that has been imposed upon you. Knowledge has no roots; it does not grow. It is a dead compilation of corpses. Knowing is a continuous growth, it is a living process.

In other words: knowing belongs to your consciousness and its evolution, knowledge belongs to your mind and its memory system.

The words look similar; hence they have created much confusion in the world. And knowledge is cheap - you can get it from books, you can get it from the rabbis, you can get it from the pundits, you can get it from the bishops - there are thousands of ways of accumulating knowledge. But it is a dead pile; it has no life of its own. And the most significant thing to remember is: all your knowledge, however great, makes no difference to your ignorance. Your ignorance remains intact. The only difference it makes is, it covers up your ignorance. You can pretend to the world that you are no longer ignorant, but deep inside you there is just darkness. Behind the borrowed words there is no experience.

Knowing dispels your ignorance; knowing is just like light which dispels darkness. Hence, remember the difference between the scholar and the wise man. The wise man is not necessarily a scholar and vice versa - the scholar is also not necessarily a wise man.

Most probably the scholar rarely becomes a wise man - for the simple reason that he has so much knowledge that he can deceive people, and if he can deceive many people he is deceived by their deception. He starts believing: if so many people think me a wise man, then I must be. So many people cannot be so foolish. Hence, in the life of the scholar there is no journey, no exploration, no discovery. He lives in the greatest illusion in the world - he knows nothing and he thinks he knows all.

The man of knowing starts by disowning knowledge, because knowledge is a hindrance; it is a false coin. And the false should be removed before the real can be realised. He disowns everything that is not his own. It is better to be ignorant than to be knowledgeable, because at least the ignorance is yours. It needs more courage than renouncing riches, renouncing kingdoms, renouncing your family, renouncing the society, because they are all outside. Knowledge accumulates inside your mind. Wherever you go... deep in the Himalayas it will be with you.

Renouncing knowledge means a deep inner cleansing and that is what I mean by meditation.

Meditation is nothing but renouncing borrowed knowledge and becoming fully aware of one's ignorance. This brings a metamorphosis. The moment you are aware of your ignorance, ignorance goes through such a great change that unless it happens it remains unbelievable. The very ignorance becomes your innocence. The wise man also says, "I do not know."

According to Zarathustra, the highest stage of consciousness is that of a child. You are born a child but then you are ignorant. You will go through much knowledge, much memory and if you are fortunate enough, one day you will see that it is all false - because it is not yours.

Buddha may have known, Jesus may have known, Krishna may have known; but their knowledge cannot become my knowing, their life cannot become my life, their love cannot become my love.

How can their knowledge become my knowledge? I will have to seek and search on my own. I have to become an adventurer, a seeker of the unknown. I have to go on untrodden paths into uncharted seas. And I have to risk everything with a determined will that if others have achieved the truth, there is no reason why existence will be unkind to me.

Very few fortunate people start dropping their borrowed knowledge. And as they start dropping their borrowed knowledge the circle starts moving back toward their childhood. The completion of the circle comes when ignorance becomes luminous. When ignorance meets with awareness the greatest explosion in the whole experience of man happens: you disappear as an ego. Now you are a pure, innocent existence - pure "isness," with no claim for anything.

In this moment Socrates said, "I do not know anything." In the same state Bodhidharma declared, "I know nothing. And moreover, my 'I' is just a linguistic convenience. Inside me there is no entity which can say 'I'. I am just using it, because without it you will not be able to understand. The reality is that I have disappeared and there is only a pure sky, a pure 'isness' - utterly innocent, with no clouds of knowledge."

It is a difficult task to disown knowledge, because knowledge gives you respectability, makes you a great man, brings you a Nobel prize. You are known to millions of people, although you know nothing about yourself. It is a very strange state: the whole world knows you except yourself. To disown knowledge means to fall in the eyes of people, to lose respectability, fame, celebrity. And the ego is very much against doing such a thing - because with the respectability, the fame and the knowledge disowned, the ego starts dying. It can live only on the borrowed. It itself is the most false thing in your life.

Zarathustra's statements have to be contemplated very deeply: I HAVE LEFT THE HOUSE OF SCHOLARS AND SLAMMED THE DOOR BEHIND ME. It is not only that he has left the house, the emphasis, it should be remembered, is that he has slammed the door behind him. He is finished with scholarship. This is not the place where truth is found. This is the place where truth is discussed, this is the place where thousands of hypotheses about truth are produced, this is the place where no conclusion has ever been arrived at.

For thousands of years scholars have been discussing, in minute detail, but there has never been a conclusion. Scholars are empty shells - they make much noise but that noise is meaningless. They argue much but the hypothesis they are arguing about still remains a hypothesis; no argument can make a hypothesis a reality. And above all, how can you discuss something which you have never experienced?

The scholars are like the five blind people of Aesop's fable who had gone to see an elephant.

Obviously they had no eyes. They could not see the elephant, so they touched the elephant.

Somebody touched his feet, somebody touched his big ears, somebody touched some other part, and everybody declared, "I know now what an elephant is." The one who had touched his legs said, "An elephant is just like a pillar." And the one who had touched his ears said, "You are an idiot, my experience shows that an elephant is just like a big fan." And so on and so forth. They cannot come to any conclusion. And what they are saying looks absurd: the elephant is not like a pillar, but something in the elephant is like a pillar - his legs. But at least they have touched some part of the elephant.

Scholars are in an even worse condition. They have not touched anything about truth, about love, about silence, about meditation, about ecstasy - not even a partial experience - and they are so prolific in their arguments. They create much noise; they shout at each other. For centuries they have been doing that.

Zarathustra says, I HAVE LEFT THE HOUSE OF SCHOLARS.... It is a mad place - people are talking about things they know nothing about. Blind people are discussing detailed information about light, about darkness, about colors. People who don't have any ears are talking about music.

People who have never known a single moment of silence are creating great philosophical systems based on silence. They are very articulate about words, language, grammar, but that is not the search of Zarathustra.

He slammed the door behind him, forever. Scholarship, knowledgeability is not his way, is no one's way; it is only for fools to deceive themselves.

TOO LONG DID MY SOUL SIT HUNGRY AT THEIR TABLE; I HAVE NOT BEEN SCHOOLED, AS THEY HAVE, TO CRACK KNOWLEDGE AS ONE CRACKS NUTS.

I LOVE FREEDOM AND THE AIR OVER FRESH SOIL; I WOULD SLEEP ON OX-SKINS RATHER THAN ON THEIR DIGNITIES AND RESPECTABILITIES.

I AM TOO HOT AND SCORCHED BY MY OWN THOUGHT: IT IS OFTEN ABOUT TO TAKE MY BREATH AWAY. THEN I HAVE TO GET INTO THE OPEN AIR AND AWAY FROM ALL DUSTY ROOMS.

BUT THEY SIT COOL IN THE COOL SHADE: THEY WANT TO BE MERE SPECTATORS IN EVERYTHING AND THEY TAKE CARE NOT TO SIT WHERE THE SUN BURNS UPON THE STEPS.

The scholar lives comfortably in his invented hypotheses, in his borrowed knowledge, in his respectability. He has no longing to experience life on his own. He loves comfort and respectability too much, which for a real seeker do not mean anything. What can respectability be - respectability from the people who are ignorant, who know nothing. They respect you, thinking that you are wise - you can quote scriptures. But the very idea of being respected by the ignorant is against the pride of an authentic man.

And comfort is a slow death. Soon death will be knocking on your doors; then neither comfort can save you, nor respectability can be a shield. The only thing that can save you is your own realization of truth, is your own knowing of the meaning of life. It is your own taste.

But the scholars don't have courage enough to drop all comfort, all respectability, and to declare to the world that, "I am not a wise man, not yet. Now I am going to search, and I will stake everything to have even a glimpse of the beauty and ecstasy of reality. I have lived too much in words, now I want actual experience."

And actual experience is wordless. It is a taste, it is a nourishment, it fulfills you. The word love is not love. Love is a deep dance of your heart, a rejoicing in your soul, an overflowing of your life juices, a sharing with those who are receptive and available. But the word love has nothing to do with it.

WHEN THEY GIVE THEMSELVES OUT AS WISE, THEIR LITTLE SAYINGS AND TRUTHS MAKE ME SHIVER: THEIR WISDOM OFTEN SMELLS AS IF IT CAME FROM THE SWAMPS.

It smells, it stinks, it is really disgusting. If you have known something on your own, then you can see that the so-called scholars are all carrying corpses. And they are bragging whose corpse is the most ancient. The more rotten a corpse is, the more ancient a scripture is, the greater is the scholar.

Scholars certainly stink. But the innocent man - who is no longer burdened with dusty books, who is no longer living in dusty rooms of scholarship, who has come into the open, under the sky - has a fragrance around him. Innocence has a fragrance, just as knowledge has a disgusting smell, because knowledge comes from corpses, and knowing comes from a living life source.

THEY ARE CLEVER, THEY HAVE CUNNING FINGERS: WHAT IS my SIMPLICITY COMPARED WITH THEIR DIVERSITY? Zarathustra says, "I am just a simple man, I am not clever - no wise man is clever." Cleverness is a poor substitute for wisdom; cunningness is even a perversion. The innocent man is neither clever, nor cunning; but there is tremendous beauty and grandeur in him.

I used to know a very rare human being, an old man, Magga Baba. This statement of Zarathustra's reminds me of him. Nobody knew his name. He had nothing except a jug; and the Hindi word for jug is magga. Because he had a jug to drink water out of, or to have food in - that was his only possession - people started calling him Magga Baba. He was so simple that people would drop money into his magga - he would never beg - and some other people might take money out of his magga, but he would never prevent it. It was none of his concern.

You will not believe me... he was the only man, perhaps, who was stolen many times. A man - and he did not prevent it. People would simply take him and put him in a rickshaw. And he would not say, "Where are you taking me? And why are you taking me?" - he would simply go. They would take him to another village. And when, in the place where he was living, they became aware that somebody had stolen Magga Baba, they would go in search of him, to bring him back. He would not say anything to them either; they just had to put him back into a car or into a rickshaw.

Once he was lost for almost twelve years, because some people took him far away in a train. His followers went around the villages, but he was not found, because he was thousands of miles away.

It was just by chance - a businessman had gone to that place and he saw Magga Baba. He dropped his business, took hold of Magga Baba, put him onto a train and brought him back to the city. There was great rejoicing all over the city: Magga Baba has been found! Twelve years... people had almost forgotten him.

He was so simple, just like a child. He used to speak very rarely - just a word, and that too not in response to your questions or anything. Once he told me, when he was alone.... He used to live in a shed, an open shed, and at night his disciples used to massage him. The whole night, the massage used to go on. He told me, "I need to sleep also, and these disciples of mine, they don't understand that if they continue massaging me...." And not only one - five, six people were massaging him.

Somebody was massaging his head, somebody was massaging his feet.

He said, "How can I sleep? I have not slept for almost twenty years, because these lovers won't let me."

I was always concerned about it, that this stupidity should be stopped, so I told the owner of the shed, "You put some doors on the shed, because this is too much for the poor man. The whole day people are there - and this they call 'serving the master' - and the whole night they are there. There is always a crowd serving the master, and nobody is at all concerned that he needs some rest. You put some doors on, and you close it at ten o'clock at night, and open it in the morning."

He said, "I have been thinking about it."

I said, "There is no question of thinking, it is a simple thing."

So he managed to put the doors on. But by the time he had fixed the doors, Magga Baba had been stolen. His disciples, seeing that doors are being put on, had taken him away to another shed.

I told him, "It seems impossible, in this life, for you to sleep. I can ask again, the owner of this shed...

but your disciples will take you away again. Their concern is to serve you. You don't speak...."

Nobody ever asked him what he likes to eat; whatever they brought he would eat. One day I saw that he was smoking two cigarettes.

I said, "Magga Baba!"

He said, "What to do? Two disciples...."

"But," I said, "do you smoke?"

He said, "I don't know, but they have put the cigarettes in my mouth, so what else can I do? I'm smoking - I have never smoked before. Just a competition between two disciples." Such a simplicity.

Zarathustra must have been a very simple man, because his insights prove that. Only a very simple heart, utterly innocent, is capable of knowing the depths of life, and the heights of consciousness, and the mysteries of existence. Innocence is a door that leads you into all the mysteries and all the secrets of life.

THEIR FINGERS UNDERSTAND ALL THREADING AND KNITTING AND WEAVING: THUS THEY WEAVE THE STOCKINGS OF THE SPIRIT!

THEY KEEP A SHARP EYE UPON ONE ANOTHER AND DO NOT TRUST ONE ANOTHER AS WELL AS THEY MIGHT. INVENTIVE IN SMALL SLYNESSES, THEY LIE IN WAIT FOR THOSE WHOSE WILLS GO UPON LAME FEET - THEY LIE IN WAIT LIKE SPIDERS.

THEY ALSO KNOW HOW TO PLAY WITH LOADED DICE; AND I FOUND THEM PLAYING SO ZEALOUSLY THAT THEY WERE SWEATING.

WE ARE STRANGERS TO ONE ANOTHER, AND THEIR VIRTUES ARE EVEN MORE OPPOSED TO MY TASTE THAN ARE THEIR FALSEHOODS AND LOADED DICE. All these things he is saying about the scholars, about the people who are recognized in the world as great men. All the mystics are strangers to the scholars, for the simple reason that the mystic does not believe, the mystic does not think; the mystic experiences. To think about water is one thing.... You can write a treatise on water, and you will be known as a great scholar; you may be awarded a Ph.D. on your thesis. But your book or your knowledge cannot quench the thirst; and the man who drinks water need not know that its chemical formula is H2O - because "H2O" cannot quench your thirst.

The mystic's concern is to quench his thirst, to nourish his being, to explore his interiority and to come into rapport with existence and all that it contains. And it contains all the joys, and all the beauties, and all the blessings, and all the benedictions. The scholar is content only to think about these things. He is not really thirsty; otherwise he would seek water, not a treatise on water; he would go to the well, not to the library. The mystic goes to the well and the scholar goes to the library. They are absolute strangers to each other.

WE ARE STRANGERS TO ONE ANOTHER, AND THEIR VIRTUES ARE EVEN MORE OPPOSED TO MY TASTE THAN ARE THEIR FALSEHOODS AND LOADED DICE. The scholar cannot speak the truth, because he knows nothing about it. Even people who know about it cannot speak it, but at least they can point towards it; they can give a few hints, a few guidelines. They can hold your hand and take you to the window to show you the open sky and the stars. But the scholar is too much involved in language, in theology, in philosophy - he has no time even to look out of the window. He has forgotten living; he knows only thinking.

Thinking is a falsehood, because you think only when you do not know. When you see a beautiful sunset, do you think? Most probably, out of old habit, you start thinking. You start saying within yourself, "What a beautiful sunset." But your words are becoming a barrier. That is not a way to be in rapport with the sunset; all thinking should stop. Then you will be there - utterly in harmony with the sunset, almost a part of it. And then you will know its beauty. Not by repeating, "It is beautiful"

- those words are borrowed. You have heard them, and you are saying them just to show that you have a great aesthetic sense.

But you are not there; your mind is wandering somewhere else. If beauty cannot stop your mind, you don't know what beauty is. If a great dance cannot bring meditation to you, then you don't know how to see a dance. We are loaded with falsehoods.

Zarathustra says, THEIR VIRTUES ARE EVEN MORE OPPOSED TO MY TASTE. Their virtues are very strange. Different scholars have different virtues, belonging to different herds. I will tell you one incident in the life of a great philosopher that India has produced - Shankaracharya, the first Adi Shankaracharya. Because now there are successors, like the popes, they are all called shankaracharyas. He preached the philosophy that the world is illusory, that it only appears, it does not exist. It is almost made of the same stuff as dreams are made of.

In Varanasi, which is the Hindu citadel, he was delivering discourses on the illusoriness of the world.

One morning... it was dark, there was still time before the sun would rise... according to the tradition - he was a brahmin monk - he took a bath in the Ganges. He was coming up the steps, there was nobody around, and suddenly a man appeared and, touching his body, passed by his side. The man then stopped and said, "Forgive me, perhaps in the darkness you cannot recognize me, but I can recognize you: I am a sudra, I am an untouchable."

Hindus have the oldest fascist religion. They have reduced one-fourth of their society to an almost animal existence. They call them untouchables because to touch them, or even to be touched by their shadow, defiles you. You have to take a bath immediately to cleanse yourself. For five thousand years they have been torturing these poor people, who do all the dirty work of the society. But they are not allowed to live in the cities, in the towns; they have to live outside. They are the poorest of the poor, the most exploited, the most downtrodden.

Shankaracharya was a high-caste brahmin, and one of the greatest Hindu philosophers. He was really very angry. He said, "You are an untouchable and you recognized me, and still you touched me. I will have to go back to the river and take another bath."

But the untouchable said, "Before you go, you will have to answer a few questions; otherwise I will remain here and touch you again."

There was nobody there, so Shankaracharya was in a fix - what to do? If he goes and takes a bath and comes back and he is touched again, the situation will be the same. So he said, "Okay, what are your questions? You seem to be a very nasty and stubborn person."

He said, "My first question is: Am I real or illusory? If I am an illusion, you need not have another bath; you can go and do your worship in the temple. If I am real, then drop this nonsense that you have been talking."

Shankara was silent for a moment - what to say to this man? He had been discussing his philosophy all over the country. He had conquered all the Hindu philosophers. A book exists, SHANKARA DIGVIJAYA, the victory of the great Shankara. Wherever he went, he logically proved that the world is illusory. But what to do with this untouchable?

He was standing there. The untouchable said, "I am illusory, the river is illusory, your bath is illusory, you are illusory - these are all according to your philosophy. I want to ask a few things more: you call me untouchable. Is it my body that is untouchable? Do you think your body is made with different ingredients? Is it possible to find a difference between the bones of an untouchable and the bones of a brahmin, or the blood, or the skin, or the skull? I can bring skulls and you tell me which one is the skull of a brahmin. Certainly bodies are all made of the same ingredients; you cannot find any difference of superior or inferior.

"Then perhaps, our minds are untouchable. But can you touch my mind? That which cannot be touched should not be called untouchable. Your mind is also untouchable. Or do you think my soul is untouchable? - because I have heard you speaking, that there is only one soul in the whole universe, the brahma, the ultimate soul, and we are all parts of it. What about the untouchables?

Do they have souls or not? And if they have souls, are they part of your ultimate one soul, or do they have a separate, out-of-this-town place?"

Shankara, who was a great logician, for the first time felt defeated. He said, "Forgive me, you have awakened me from a deep sleep. I was living in words; you challenged me by reality."

The people who become accustomed to living in words start living in castles in the air. They forget the real world, the real beings. Their virtues, their religions are derived from their aircastles. Their virtues are not derived from the reality in which they exist. That's why Zarathustra says: THEIR VIRTUES ARE EVEN MORE OPPOSED TO MY TASTE. They are just verbal, logical, linguistic; they have nothing to do with reality. And you can make anything a virtue - you just have to give arguments for it.

It happened to a man: he was always coming late to his house, and his wife was continually telling him, "I know where you go and someday you will repent." But he did not listen - he was going to the prostitutes. That night the wife was really angry, and as he entered the house she cut his nose off with a knife. The man said, "What are you doing?" But by that time his nose was on the ground. The man said, "Are you mad or something? Now, how will I live? What will I say to people?"

The woman said, "Now it is your problem. I have lived enough in anguish, now you live...."

The man thought: it is really a very embarrassing situation. Everybody in the town will be asking, "What happened to your nose?" It is better to escape from this town. But the problem still remains that in the other town they will also ask, "What happened to your nose?"

He was a man who had some interest in philosophy and religion. He found a way: he escaped in the night to the other town, and there he sat under a tree in a lotus posture with closed eyes. People came around. They had seen many saints, but this was a special saint - without a nose and sitting absolutely buddha-like.

Finally somebody asked, "You are new here and we are happy to have a great saint like you" - because he was sitting so still, so silently; although inside there was nothing of the silence, it was just a posture.

He said, "I have found God."

They said, "You have found God? Then we would like to be your disciples."

He said, "There is a condition: unless you cut off your nose.... It is the nose that is the barrier. Once the nose is cut off, immediately you will see God standing before you."

It was a difficult thing. People thought many times... but everywhere you can find idiots. Some idiot came out and he said, "Okay! I am ready."

The man had brought a knife with him. He took him aside and cut his nose off. The man looked around but there was no God. He said, "But where is God?"

The master said, "Don't talk about God, because there is no God and it has nothing to do with cutting your nose off. But if you say to people that you are not seeing God, they will laugh at you - that you are idiot, you lost your nose unnecessarily. It is better that you just go and tell people - go dancing - that, 'This is a simple method, great. The moment the nose came off, God was standing before me.'" The man thought, and he also was convinced that this is the only way to save himself from embarrassment.

The master said, "This is the situation, the same situation with me. I don't know anything about God, but you are my chief disciple, and we will make many disciples - just have a little courage."

So the man went and told people, "I had done everything and I had not found God. This man has found the right key: just a small sacrifice of the nose and immediately... it is as if a curtain has opened and God is standing there. I have seen Him," and he was dancing.

People said, "This is something. We have never heard... there is no scripture in which it is written:

cut your nose off and see God."

But that man was from their own village. He sat by his master's side in a lotus posture, and the line started growing. The trick was the same: he would take them to the side, cut their nose off, and tell them the fact, "There is no question of God, it is a question now of saving yourself from embarrassment. You are free, you can say... but they will only call you an idiot. If you listen to me you will be worshiped like a great saint, as all my followers are being worshiped."

The thing became so infectious that there were hundreds of people in that town without noses; and everybody was touching their feet, inviting them to their home for food, for clothes. The rumor even reached the king.

He was a person very deeply interested in religion. He said, "But I have never heard, never read...

but so many people cannot lie. If it was only one person, that would be one thing, but from our own capital, hundreds of people have seen God. To remain without the realization of God just to save your nose does not seem to be right. I'm going!"

He told the prime minister, "Make arrangements. I'm going. One day one has to die - nose and all - so if just by cutting your nose off you can experience God, it is worth it."

The prime minister was a very intelligent man. He said, "Just wait. There is no hurry. You can cut your nose off tomorrow. Let me first enquire, find out what is happening."

He went... invited the "great master" - because now he had become a great master, who has found the most shortcut way to God. You cannot even imagine that there can be a shorter way. He invited him into the palace and the master was very happy; he went into the palace. He was taken into a room where four very strong wrestlers were ready; he could not see what is going on.

The prime minister said, "You tell the truth; otherwise these four people are going to beat you, torture you, make as many fractures in your body as possible until you tell the truth."

The man saw the situation. He said, "The reality is, my wife has cut my nose off. I have not seen any God or anything. Please don't torture me; I will leave the city."

And the prime minister asked, "What about your other disciples?"

He said, "Nobody has seen... but once somebody's nose is gone, he has two alternatives: either to be a saint or to be a fool. The whole city will laugh, that this idiot has lost his nose and we were telling him, 'Don't do this,' but he didn't listen."

He took the man to the king, and when the king heard that he said, "My God! If I had gone yesterday, by this time I would also have seen God!"

You can find any kind of stupidity, support it by cunningness, by cleverness, and the world is so full of idiots that you will always find followers. All these religions that exist are nothing but different versions of the same story. Nobody has seen God, but by torturing yourself you become a saint.

And then it looks foolish to say that this torturing has been useless... I have not seen God. Now it is better to keep quiet. You have become so respectable - God or no God. You were of no use, worthless, nobody ever respected you; now thousands of people respect you. It is better to keep quiet and enjoy the respectability.

Logic, argument, philosophy, in the hands of cunning and clever people, can create all kinds of virtues and moralities in which you cannot see what is moral. But they can give evidence, and they can always bring witnesses to say, "Yes. It is happening."

Hindu monks use a wooden sandal. It is very torturous because it has no support - you have to hold it between your big toe and your second toe. It is heavy and walking becomes unnecessary torture.

But ask the Hindu monks, "Why are you doing it when more comfortable, convenient sandals are possible?"

One great Hindu saint, Karpatri, told me that there is a secret in it. I said, "What is the secret?"

He said, "The secret is that it keeps a man celibate."

I said, "Great! The wooden sandal?"

He said, "You don't understand. There is a nerve in your big toe that controls your sexuality."

I said, "Now, man's whole physiology has been completely explored - there is no nerve there which controls sexuality. You can even cut the whole leg off, then too sexuality will not be controlled." But millions of Hindu monks believe in it. And there is another thing: every Hindu wears a sacred thread around his neck; and when he goes to the urinal, he has to put that thread around his ear.

I asked the shankaracharya of Dwarika - I was staying in Dwarika - "I don't see the point." I had to ask him because he himself had made a man look so foolish amongst the people.... A young man had stood up and he wanted to ask something, but the shankaracharya said, "Before you ask anything, answer my few questions." The man was wearing Western dress - long pants, a coat, and a tie - and that had infuriated the shankaracharya.

He asked, "Do you have the Hindu thread, the sacred thread, inside your shirt or not?"

The man said, "No, I don't have it."

The shankaracharya was very angry, and he said, "The moment you stood up, I knew - with those kinds of clothes, you must be urinating standing up and that is against Hinduism. First get a sacred thread. Change this dress, and when you are urinating put the thread round your ear." The people laughed and the poor man looked stupid among those idiots.

I had just heard about it, so I asked him, "What is the science of your sacred thread? And in what way is it spiritual to put it around your ear while urinating?"

The same answer... that in the ear there is a nerve which controls your sexuality. So when you wind the sacred thread round and round the ear, that nerve is caught. It helps a man to remain celibate.

Millions of Hindus believe this. And it is not only Hindus - in every religion you will find the same kind of stupid ideas have been propagated for thousands of years. Nobody raises any question because nobody wants to fall apart from the crowd, lose the respect of the crowd.

And the crowd can be very nasty; it can misbehave with the person. The person may have to lose his job. Even his family will become against him; his own friends will turn their backs on him. He will become lonely in the very crowd, and condemned. But if he were doing those stupid things that the crowd believes have some spirituality in them, some virtue in them, the crowd would have been respectful.

As far as I see, to be respectable in this society means you are cunning, means you are a hypocrite.

It means that just to remain respectable you are pretending many things, which you know perfectly well are just either useless or stupid or even harmful.

AND WHEN I LIVED AMONG THEM I LIVED ABOVE THEM. THEY GREW ANGRY WITH ME FOR THAT. I know it from my own experience. I have made so many religious people angry around the world - religious heads, saints, sages - just for the simple reason that I showed them that what they understand as character, as virtue, as religion, is mostly rubbish. They don't have any answer. Their answer is anger; but anger is not an argument. It does not prove anything - in fact it disproves. If you become angry, that simply shows that you have been exposed; and you don't have any evidence, any proof, any rationality in your actions.

AND WHEN I LIVED AMONG THEM I LIVED ABOVE THEM. THEY GREW ANGRY WITH ME FOR THAT.

THEY DID NOT WANT TO KNOW THAT SOMEONE WAS WALKING OVER THEIR HEADS; AND SO THEY PUT WOOD AND DIRT AND RUBBISH BETWEEN THEIR HEADS AND ME.

THUS THEY MUFFLED THE SOUND OF MY STEPS: AND FROM THEN ON THE MOST SCHOLARLY HEARD ME THE WORST.

BUT I WALK ABOVE THEIR HEADS WITH MY THOUGHTS IN SPITE OF THAT; AND EVEN IF I SHOULD WALK UPON MY OWN FAULTS, I SHOULD STILL BE ABOVE THEM AND THEIR HEADS.

FOR MEN ARE NOT EQUAL.

This is such a great statement. Particularly today, because communism has made it almost universally accepted that all men are equal. And it is not right at all: not even two men are equal.

Equality is a false idea.

Every man is unique.

He is a category in himself.

I conceive that everybody should be given equal opportunity to grow in his uniqueness, but no men are equal. Equality is our contemporary superstition - the latest and the most widely accepted, even by those who are not communists. They have also accepted it, because they have not denied it.

Even the non-communists don't have the guts to say that men are not equal, because they are afraid that the crowds will be angry. Crowds are very happy to know that men are equal, that you are equal to Albert Einstein, that you are equal to Bertrand Russell, that you are equal to Martin Buber, that you are equal to Jean-Paul Sartre. The masses are very happy with the idea. It is so ego-fulfilling that even those who are not communists are afraid to say that men are not equal. But I am absolutely in agreement with Zarathustra: men are not equal.

THUS SPEAKS JUSTICE. AND WHAT I DESIRE they MAY NOT DESIRE! My likings are different, your likings are different; my talents are different, your talents are different; my destiny is only my destiny, your destiny is only your destiny. In fact, only cattle are equal. Man is the only being on the earth who has uniqueness. But you will create anger in them....

When I said, twenty years ago, that men are not equal, the Communist party of India passed a resolution against me, condemning me. And the president of the Communist party of India, S.A.

Dange, declared that soon his son-in-law, who is a professor, is going to write a book to confute my idea that men are not equal. He has written a book against me; although there is no argument except anger, abuse and lies - but not a single argument to prove that men are equal.

Zarathustra is right: THUS SPEAKS JUSTICE. I have my own conception of a better society: it will provide equal opportunity to all, but the equal opportunity will be for them to be unequal, to grow in their uniqueness.

To me, communism means equal opportunity for all, not equality of man. Zarathustra had the insight twenty-five centuries ago. It is absolutely just and fair that man should not be sacrificed again in the name of equality. He has been sacrificed many times, in different names, in different temples, before different gods. Now he is being sacrificed in the temple of communism - before a holy book, DAS KAPITAL, before a trinity of gods, Marx, Engels and Lenin.

It is such a simple thing; everybody knows that nobody is equal. But man's jealousy... jealousy of the small man against the great, jealousy of the little ones against the giants, makes them shout loudly - and of course they are in the majority - that man is equal, and equality is man's birthright. And they know not that they are saying something which is synonymous to committing suicide. Equal opportunity to grow is perfectly right. And the acceptance of the uniqueness of individuals makes the society rich, gives it the variety of all kinds of flowers, of different colors, with different fragrances.

Zarathustra is rare, in the sense that he has seen faraway things, because nobody was talking about equality of man in his day. Marx was yet to come, after twenty-four centuries. But the more meditative you are, the more silent, the clearer becomes your vision, and it can see far away in the future. This statement is against Karl Marx; although Zarathustra is not aware of any Karl Marx in particular.

Karl Marx was just a scholar and nothing else. He spent his whole life in the library of the British Museum. He was there before the library opened, and he was almost pushed out, every day, when the library closed - and sometimes even carried out, because in his old age he would continue reading and reading, and he would become unconscious. By the time the library was going to be closed they would find that his head was on the table and he was unconscious. He had to be carried out and an ambulance called to take him home. And tomorrow morning he was back again. A perfect scholar! Not metaphorically, but really a bookworm. All his experience was only with books - not with people, not with existence, not with himself.

FOR MEN ARE NOT EQUAL: THUS SPEAKS JUSTICE. AND WHAT I DESIRE THEY MAY NOT DESIRE!

... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.