Slipping Lazily into Divinity

Question 1:

This old rotten habit of thinking about man and woman separately has to be dropped. They are not separate. Authenticity is authenticity - it does not matter whether a man is authentic or a woman is authentic. Spontaneity is spontaneity - it does not become feminine, it is not masculine.

The very idea of thinking of man and woman as separate beings has created a split in the human mind. Man is a unisex. Each man is woman and each woman is man too. We are human beings.

Nobody is a man as such and nobody is a woman as such.

Once you divide, you are in trouble. Once you divide, then a thousand and one questions arise:

who is superior? and who is to dominate? and who is to be dominate? Then humanity suffered long from male chauvinism. And there is a possibility that sooner or later humanity will suffer again - from female chauvinism. The Lib. people are working hard for it. They would like to do all the nasty things that men have done to them - they would like to do them to men. This is not going to help!

You go on replacing one disease with another disease.

Woman has suffered much, that is true. But just by putting things upside-down, nothing is going to happen. Then man will start suffering. And this way the wheel goes on moving. If we really want to stop all this nonsense then we should start thinking about human beings, not about man and woman. That should be a very basic approach.

So when I am talking about authenticity or spontaneity or love, I am not considering man and woman as separate. They are one. They are parts of one whole, they are together. That's why there is a constant attraction between man and woman - because they both feel half. Man alone feels deprived, something is missing. Woman alone feels deprived, something is missing.

And it is so on many planes. There have been men, there have been women, we can think about them as if they were not in any need of the other. For example, a Buddha or a Mahavir. Now, we can think about Buddha that he does not need a woman, but that is not true. That is only so on the surface. His gestalt has changed - he is the master now, and he needs the disciples. Now the disciples function as the feminine - the active and the passive. He does not need a wife - that is true, that's certainly true - but that does not mean that he does not need the feminine. That simply means that on another plane the feminine has started asserting itself. Now the master needs the disciples, otherwise the master feels something is missing.

The disciple is the feminine. Even male disciples are feminine, because the attitude of a disciple is that of a receiver and the attitude of the master is that of a donor. The master gives, the disciple receives - that is the male/female asserting on a new plane.

It goes on in that way. It will be so always. Don't be deceived by the fact that Buddha no more needs a woman. Now he gets the feminine energy on a more subtle plane. And don't think that a Meera does not need the man. Now the man of her dream has become Krishna himself. She may not need the husband - who bothers about an ordinary husband when you can have Krishna as your husband? Now she lives on another plane; the ordinary husbands have disappeared, the ordinary lovers don't mean anything. But the male is there. Now the male is functioning as pure energy - as Krishna.

This is so. Never does it happen, never can it happen, that a man can be full alone or a woman can be full alone, because man-woman is a unity. Action-passivity is a unity, day-night is a unity, life-and-death is a unity. Life cannot exist without death, and death of course cannot exist without life. And so on and so forth.

So whenever I am talking about spontaneity, authenticity, love, I am not talking about men, I am not talking about women - I don't divide them. That is my fundamental approach. All divisions are dangerous, and all divisions create a kind of schizophrenia. Enough of it! Drop that very idea!

Don't start moving to the other extreme. Man has suffered much - by 'man' I mean 'human being' - humanity has suffered much because of the division. The people who think they are trying to bring a new world, a new humanity, still go on thinking in the same old rotten way of division.

Just think of humanity. Don't think of east and west, don't think of black and white, and don't think of the oppressed and the oppressor. Start thinking in terms of oneness. That very approach will dissolve many problems.

But the question is significant: COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE REAL AND AUTHENTIC WOMAN... Woman or man - that doesn't matter... OR EVEN YOUR IDEAL WOMAN?

I have no ideals. I am a man without ideals. I am utterly iconoclastic - I destroy ideals. I believe that when there will be no ideal, man will be free. When there will be no goal, man will be free - never before it.

All ideals create slavery - because the ideal stands there in the future, it starts dominating you from the future. It starts condemning your present. It starts telling you that you are falling short:

Become perfect! be this! be that! It brings a thousand and one shoulds and should-nots. With all those shoulds and should-nots, how can you imagine to live in freedom? They hamper you from everywhere, they limit you from every direction, they destroy you in every possible way - because they condemn your present. And there is only one way to live and that is in the present.

There is only one life and that is in this moment. If THIS moment is condemned in any way, by any method, your life is being destroyed. That's why there are millions of people on the earth but very few are alive. Ideals have poisoned their life. And the idealists are the great poisoners.

I am not an idealist, I believe in the real. And in fact you need not believe in the real; it is so. Belief is needed only for the ideal. For the real, what belief is needed? The sun rises - you don't say, 'I believe in the sunrise.' And the birds are singing - you don't say, 'I believe in the birds.' You believe in God because you can't see God, because God is not a reality. I don't believe in God, because for me God is as much a reality as the sunrise and these birds singing and these flowers and these trees and these people, you.

I don't believe in God. Belief presupposes that you don't know; belief presupposes ignorance. The very word 'belief' makes one thing certain - that it is not real. I am all for reality. That's what I mean when I say I believe in the real. I don't put any ideal in contrast with reality.

Down the ages, the ideal has been the most subtle trick to manipulate man - because the ideal creates guilt. You continuously think you are not coming up to the mark - you are falling short, you are below the level, you are not as you should be. And this becomes a rock on your heart. It cripples you, it paralyzes you. It does not allow you to move in freedom, it does not allow you to dance.

How can you celebrate life when there are so many ideals everywhere? And everywhere you feel limited - those limitations are created by the ideals. Whatsoever you do is never perfect. So whatsoever you do, it never makes you happy. In fact, whenever you do something it makes you unhappy - again you have proved your imperfection. Again you failed, again there is guilt, again there is condemnation, again you hate yourself. Each act brings more hatred, each act brings more and more self condemnation, rejection.

And if you don't love yourself, you are virtually dead - worse than being dead! If you don't love yourself, nobody is going to love you. How can anybody love you if you don't love yourself?

And the idealist cannot love himself; he is very hard, he is a masochist. And when a person is a masochist, when a person goes on torturing himself in the name of ideals - 'I should be like this'...

and he is not, so he tortures himself. And he goes on pulling himself towards this impossible ideal.

And all those ideals are impossible - their very nature is such, they cannot be fulfilled. That is the whole trick; if they can be fulfilled, they won't be ideals.

The ideal is by inner necessity unfulfillable; it is not possible to achieve it. Hence, it remains a dangling carrot in front of your eyes. And the donkey goes on moving... and the carrot goes on dangling. It is illusory. It is like the horizon far away - you go on moving, but you never reach; the horizon also goes on moving.

I am a realist. I am very down-to-earth. I want you to be grounded in the earth, it is your home. It is the way God is - God is very earthly. There is no other world, this is the only world. And there is no other way to be, this is the only way to be. This acceptance, this utter joy in being oneself - that's what I call the man of reality or the woman of reality. Utter joy in being oneself, as one is - with no guilt surrounding it, with no condemnation arising, with no idea how you should be. This is the way you are; this is the only way you can be. So you don't bring any opposition - you don't create a conflict, you don't create a friction between your reality and the ideal.

Out of friction, only ego is born and nothing else. The ego exists through friction. Have an ideal, and you will become an egoist. The idealist is an egoist. Have a bigger ideal, and you will be a bigger egoist. The greater the ideal, the greater the ego, because the greater is the friction. The ego is created by friction between the real and the ideal. Now you may have the ideal of egolessness - that doesn't matter. You may say, 'But I have the ideal of being egoless' - it does not matter, the ideal brings the ego. Now your idea of egolessness will bring great ego. So the REAL egoists are those who think they are humble people, who pretend that they are egoless.

The man who is egoless is the man who has no ideals. Let this be the criterion, and you have stumbled upon a fundamental. The man of no ego is the man of no ideals. Then how can the ego be created? - the very energy is missing. The energy comes out of friction, conflict, struggle, will.

When you accept your life - when you take your breakfast, and when you sleep and when you walk and when you take your bath - how can you create an ego out of these things? Sleeping when feeling sleepy, eating when feeling hungry, how can you create your ego? No - if you fast, you can create ego. If you are on a vigilance for the whole night, and you say, 'I am not going to sleep,' you can create the ego.

By the morning, the person who has slept well will have no ego, you will have a great ego. You were awake the whole night, and the sleep tried and tried and tried but you fought it. You are a warrior. You proved to your body, 'Mind over matter.' You proved that 'I am the master. Sleep cannot overtake me.' Then you can have the ego. Somebody is eating well - how can he have the ego?

You are fasting. You are a Jain monk, you are fasting, a twenty-one days' fast. Every day, the ego is becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. And with the ego, obviously, everybody else becomes a sinner. All those people who are eating and enjoying their food are sinners. You condemn them.

Only condemning them can you feel good. Only through condemnation can you feel the ego arising in you.

So first conflict, friction, brings ego. And ego brings condemnation of others, and you start feeling 'holier than thou'.

A man who has understood that the ideal brings the ego will drop all ideals. He will live a very natural life. Yes, natural, I say - not religious. To me, to be natural is to be religious. If your religion goes against nature it is not religion, you are simply in the service of the ego - you can call it whatsoever you like.

So I am all for the real, for that which is. And whatsoever you are, I would like you to accept it with great gratitude, and enjoy, and celebrate that you are. Don't ask for the impossible. By asking the impossible you miss the possible too. I say: Live the possible. And by living the possible, one day the impossible is simply attained with no effort.

If you think of the impossible you miss the possible, because your energy starts moving towards the impossible. If you don't think of the impossible at all, if you have nothing to think of at all, if you live the possible - a simple, natural, innocent life - how can the impossible escape you? Your whole energy moves into the present. And to be in the present is to be at the door of God. Your whole energy goes on knocking at the door... one day or other, like a flood you enter the divine. And the impossible becomes possible.

My idea of a real authentic man or woman is that of a natural being. Simple, not complicated.

Complication comes from ideals. Innocent. And don't make innocence an ideal - remember, I am not talking about ideals. I am simply saying: Be like a child or like an animal, like the trees and the rocks.

And remember, I have to use a language which is very much polluted. So please don't misunderstand me. When I am saying be natural, don't create an ideal immediately in your mind - 'So now I have to be natural.' 'Have to be'? - you missed. You got hooked by the old language. I have to use language, so I say: Be like the trees - but I am not saying to go and stand outside in the garden and become a tree. Otherwise, again you have created an ideal. And again you will look...

the leaves are not growing! So you start feeling guilty. And one never knows - one day suddenly you see leaves are growing. Then you become very egoistic. Then whosoever has no leaves growing is a sinner, destined to be thrown into hellfire. And you are going directly to heaven - you are growing leaves.

Look! Either way you will be in trouble. If you don't grow leaves you will be in trouble, if you grow leaves you will be in trouble. Either way you will be in hell. If you don't grow leaves you feel guilty, frustrated - again and again you open your eyes, and they are not growing yet. Or, one day - and miracles happen, remember - suddenly you see leaves are growing. Maybe they are not growing, you have simply imagined. For long you have been standing there, year in, year out, just thinking of one thing - how to grow leaves, you have to become a tree. And naturally, mind, by and by and by and by, becomes auto-hypnotized. A suggestion, continuous suggestion... by and by you start imagining things. One day you see leaves are growing. You have gone mad - the miracle has happened! Again you are in hell, because now you are mad.

Your saints are mad people. And your sinners are suffering because of these mad people. These mad people are the idealists. If you enjoy your food, there are people who will condemn. Mahatma Gandhi condemns - he preaches ASWAD, no taste. Now if you are tasting you are a sinner. Such a simple joy as taste is condemned. If you are in love with your woman you are a sinner. Down the ages, your mad saints have been condemning love. If you love your child you are a sinner.

I have heard about a Muslim saint, he must have been utterly neurotic. One day he was sitting with his grandchild in his lap - an old man talking to the boy, a small boy, must have been four, or five years old. And the boy asks, 'Grandpa, do you love God more, or me?' Because he sees this old man continuously repeating 'Allah, Allah, Allah!' So he asks, 'Do you love Allah more, or me?'

And the man was going to say, 'Of course, I love you!' The idea had arisen and then he became afraid - what is he saying! So he pushed the boy, threw the boy away from himself, and said, 'You nasty fellow! The Devil is speaking through you. I love God!'

And it is said, since that day he never talked to the boy. And it is praised in the books - that he was a great saint. He lived for twenty years still, but he never touched the boy again. The boy had become devilish, evil.

And the story says he went to heaven when he died. I suspect; I cannot purchase this. He must be in hell. Could he not see a simple thing - that the love of God does not deny any other love? In fact, the love of God is all your loves put together. This is a simple phenomenon. You love your wife, you love your child, you love your mother, you love your brother, you love your friend. These are not against God, these are ways of approaching God through different directions.

To me, that man is religious who can see it in this way. For him, aU love is just like rivers falling into the same ocean. From all the directions love comes and falls into the same ocean.

If I had been there instead of that old man, I would have hugged the boy, kissed the boy. And I would tell him, 'I love you, and that is my way of loving God. You are part of God - there is no conflict between you and God! '

No two loves are ever in conflict, cannot be. If they are, then remember, they are not loves. Love is never in conflict. Other things are in conflict: ego, jealousy, possessiveness - yes, they are in conflict. But love is never in conflict.

Love knows no conflict. I don't condemn anything. When you eat, eat with great taste and sensitivity, and let that taste be your God in that moment. It is God in that moment. If you are eating an apple you are eating God, and this will be sheer insult not to eat with taste. Your mahatmas are always against God - that's my way of looking at things. If you are eating an apple, eat it with total taste.

Be absorbed in the taste - because it is God that has come to you in the form of an apple. It is God!

crystallized as an apple. The juice of the apple is God's juice: receive it in deep gratitude, love, joy, celebration.

Hold the apple in your hand, smell the apple. Hold the apple close to your cheeks and feel the coolness of it. Dance with the apple a little bit... soon the apple will become you. Receive it.

Receive it with prayer and love and gratitude, let your heart be in total thankfulness. God has come to you as an apple, and God wants to become you. Soon you will digest God, and he will be running in your blood, and he will become your bone and your marrow, and he will become your thoughts and your dreams and your meditations and your love and your prayer.

Look in this way! This is what I mean by being real. God, to me, is not an ideal. God, to me, is the fundamental reality of life.

So, to me, there is no ideal man and no ideal woman. The ideal man and woman are neurotics - they need to be hospitalized. I don't carry any idea of perfection. I am very much against the idea of perfection, because that is the greatest calamity that has happened to man. I am for totality. Be total in your acts. Be total, whatsoever you are doing. And never think of perfection - because totality is in the present, and perfection is in the future.

The moment you bring in the future, you bring conflict. The moment you bring in the future, you bring tension, anguish, anxiety. The moment you bring in the future, you open the door of hell. Just be herenow! Be real, and be herenow, and live your life moment to moment in deep gratitude.

And whether you are a man or a woman, how does it matter? Authenticity, spontaneity, totality, are not feminine or masculine.

Question 2:

I don't know anything about you. I know only what I am doing here. About you, you will have to know what you are doing here. You can ask only one thing - what I am doing here.

I would like you to meditate on this beautiful poem of Eustace Owen: A BUTTERFLY. That's what I am doing here. Listen to it carefully.

I know what I am doing, I don't know what you are doing. You are all caterpillars. And I know you don't trust me, and I know you can't trust me - and I understand. It is impossible to trust me. How can a caterpillar trust a butterfly?

The caterpillar has not known anything like that, it is not his experience. He lives in a totally different dimension, on a different plane, in a separate reality. How can a caterpillar believe that some day he will fly into the skies? He only knows crawling on the ground. He is encaged in his shell, he knows nothing about his possible wings. He knows nothing about his potentiality. And man is an embryo, yet not born, yet in the womb.

And when somebody - a butterfly, a Buddha, a Christ - comes and tells you, it looks like a fairy-tale.

It looks as if the Buddha is Lying. If I tell you 'I am God' it looks a lie, a fairy-tale. And I know why.

You cannot believe that you can be a God - that's why. You cannot believe that you can have wings.

When you cannot have wings, how can you believe somebody else has wings? And I look almost like you....

That was the problem with Buddha, that was the problem with Jesus. When Jesus said 'I am the son of God' people became very angry - caterpillars angry at the butterfly. And the caterpillars gathered together, and they killed the butterfly.

When Buddha said 'I am Bhagwan' the Hindus were very angry. They uprooted the whole Buddhist religion from India; they destroyed it utterly. In that way Hindus are more cunning than Jews. Jews killed Jesus - that is not much of a loss, because Christianity got rooted. Hindus didn't kill Buddha - they are more cunning people - they killed Buddhism. They allowed Buddha. They said, 'Okay, leave him alone. Just be indifferent to him, don't take any notice of him. If you take notice, he becomes important. If you fight against him, you give energy. If you kill him, people will remember him for thousands of years.'

That's what happened to Jesus' story - he was killed. And that's why two thousand years have passed, but Jesus is more alive than anybody else - more alive than Buddha, more alive than Mahavir, more alive than Krishna. Jesus holds more hearts close to him than anybody else. Why?

He was killed. If he had been born in India, Hindus would have simply neglected him. And that would have been a sure death.

It is impossible to believe that which has not happened to you. So I know, if you trust me, that is a miracle. If you don't trust me, that is just natural. If you trust me you are showing great courage - you are adventurous, you are a dare-devil. If you don't trust me, if you doubt, you are simply an ordinary human being. Nothing wrong with it; it is normal, it is how the normal mind moves.

I KNOW what I am doing here. I am trying to bring this consciousness to you that you are a butterfly - that the whole sky is yours, that all the nectar of all the flowers is yours. But I don't know what you are doing here - that you have to decide. If you trust me, then you are using your time in a creative way. If you don't trust me, then you are simply wasting your time and wasting your energy.

Be here only if you trust me.

In a small school, the teacher asked the children, 'Give me one example of what you mean when you say "wastage of energy".' Many examples were given, but I liked one example. A small boy stood up and said, 'Telling a hair-raising story to a bald-headed man. That is wastage of energy.'

I loved it... true.

Don't waste your energy. If you can trust me, be here, come with me, allow me to take you to some unknown lands. If you don't trust me then be somewhere else, do something else. If you have decided to remain caterpillars, it is your decision and I respect it. If you are not happy with being a caterpillar and you dream about being a butterfly, then come with me. It is possible - it has happened to me, it can happen to you. You have just to come out of your shell, you have just to drop your clinging to the shell. You have to drop your defence, your armour. You have to come out of your egg, the ego.

Question 3:

There is a lot of difference - not only a difference, they are diametrically opposite.

Analyzing is a mind phenomenon, understanding is a non-mind phenomenon. Analyzing, you remain in the mind, because you have to think. Analysis is thinking. Analysis is moving into reason, analysis is rational. Understanding has nothing to do with reason, understanding has nothing to do with thinking. Understanding is hovering above reason, moving beyond reason. Understanding is a pure look - just a pure look, with no idea to do anything. Analysis is not a pure look; there is a preoccupation, you have to analyze it.

And that is the whole difference between psychoanalysis and religion. Psychoanalysis teaches you analysis, religion teaches you understanding. If you go to a Freud or a Jung, he will teach you how to analyze your dreams, how to analyze your thoughts, how to sort it all out. If you go to a Buddha, he will simply teach you how to look, without any idea of doing anything - how to just look at the dream.

Don't even call it a dream, because if you call it a dream you have started analyzing. If you call it a dream you have brought in a category of reason. You say it is a dream, it is no more reality - analysis has started. You have categorized it, you have put it into a certain classification, analysis has started. Don't even call it a dream. And if you call it a beautiful dream, more analysis. If you call it a nightmare, more analysis. Don't say anything about it, don't make any judgement. Just watch it, unconcerned; just look into it.

And while looking into it without any concern, a great experience, an incredible experience, arises.

When you simply look, without even a single word standing between you and the object that you are looking at, the object starts disappearing. Like a cloud it starts disappearing. It goes far and far away, it recedes back and back and back, and a moment comes, suddenly it is not there. You are left alone, without any content.

This is what meditation is all about - to be conscious without a content. And the way to drop the content is not the way of analysis, it is the way of the pure look.

So there is no need to analyze. If you analyze, you are moving into a process which can continue ad infinitum. There is no end to it - one thing leads to another. If you analyze one dream you will have to analyze your whole life. And then too the process is not finished; you will have to go back into your past lives. That has happened - in India that has happened.

Freud started something which is not a discovery, which is a rediscovery. Freud started analyzing, and then sooner or later many other things came in the wake of it: primal therapy. Once you start analyzing a single dream that you had last night, you will have to go sooner or later to your very birth scream to understand this small dream. Because everything is connected; this dream is not just out of the blue. The dream that you had seen last night is connected with many things in the past - you will have to analyze them. And they are connected in their own turn with something else - you will have to analyze them... and so on and so forth.

If really you want to analyze a man, you will have to analyze the whole of existence. Because if your father was not there in the world, you would not have been here. And your father may have met your mother just accidentally, because they happened to study in the same school. If that school was not there, you would not be here.

Even if the school was there but there was co-education, you may not have been here. Because when there is no co-education people fall in love more - when there is co-education, who bothers?

When there is co-education there is less romance. When children are kept apart - boys separate from girls - girls become fantastically beautiful, boys become fantastically beautiful. The separation creates illusions.

And so on and so forth - you can go backwards to the very beginning of the universe. Not only to the primal scream, you will have to go to God's scream - the first scream, when he said: 'Let there be light!' My own feeling is that when he uttered the first words, they were not 'Let there be light'

- somebody has misunderstood. He said, 'Let there be logic!' And since then man has been in trouble. Light is not such a trouble: 'Let there be logic.'

This world that we live in is a logical construct. Analysis won't help; you can go on for ever. That's why analysis is prolonged. If you fall into the trap of a Freudian, three years, six years, ten years, it can continue - it depends on how much you can afford. The analysis never ends, only your bank balance. When the bank balance is finished the analyst says, 'Now it is finished.' Otherwise it continues, because analysis has no beginning and no end. It is a circle - you can go on moving and moving.

LOOK! is breaking the circle. Just looking, staring into things. Not figuring out what is what, just looking into things as they are. Just looking, a pure look... and suddenly all clouds start dispersing, evaporating. And soon your pure look has created the pure space around you.

Analysis is of the mind; it is an exercise of logic, reason, thinking. Understanding is not of the mind at all; it is a pure witnessing. You simply see. The mind is there all around you, and you see from the center. The mind is all around you, many clouds moving, traffic, rush hour... you see it, but you are the seer. You are not troubled by it; there is nothing to be troubled about. A few empty thoughts floating around you - why be troubled? And why get into analysis? Those empty thoughts are just empty thoughts, forms flickering around. Let them flicker. You remain settled in your being, you remain centered, you remain at the very core.

This is what is called witnessing. And witnessing is the technique, the ultimate technique, of all spiritual understanding. Just SEE.

Zen masters end their talks with a shout: 'San!' San! means Look! That is the final touch to their every talk - and with a shout, so nobody is allowed to remain sleepy. It is almost a lion's roar: Look!

Into what? - that is not the point. Just look - anything will do. When you are looking at the trees, just look. Don't say this is an ashoka tree and that is a cypress tree. Don't say that the tree is beautiful and don't say the tree is green, very green, and don't say that the gulmohr is flowering. Don't say anything, that the flowers are red... don't SAY at all. Just LOOK!

Let words disappear. Let there be you and the phenomenon of the trees. Or you and the phenomenon of your woman or your man, your friend - people. Let there be just reality. And have a look. And suddenly you will start having a few moments, great moments. Great moments of timelessness, great moments of vision, clarity, transparency. Great moments when suddenly everything stops. And when you simply see, a pure vision arises - the same vision that may have been there when you were born, and for the first time you opened your eyes....

There was no word. You must have seen colours, obviously. You must have seen the man standing there, the doctor. You must have seen your mother, or the nurse. You must have seen the clock on the wall, you must have seen the electric light - but there was no way to use any word. You could not have said, 'This is electricity.' The electricity was there, but there was no word forming in you.

You could not have said, 'Beautiful! the room is good, well-furnished' - you could not have said that.

You could not have said to the doctor, 'Hello, Doctor, how are you?'

Everything was there - only words were missing. But you must have seen - eyes were not missing.

That's what I mean by 'look', that's what Zen masters mean when they shout: San!

Bring that look back. It can be brought, because you KNOW it. You HAD it - you have only forgotten, you have put it aside. You are clinging to JUNK, and you have put aside the diamond.

I have heard about a very great king. One day on the road, passing on the road, he came across a beggar. He recognized suddenly that he was his friend - they had studied in the same school. What had happened to this man?

He took him back home. The poor man was given a good massage and a good bath, good food - and the king himself was serving him - and valuable drinks. And the poor man ate too much and drank too much and fell asleep at the table.

At that moment the king felt very sorry for him. They had lived together, they had studied together in school when they were children... he took out a great diamond from his pocket and slipped it into the pocket of the beggar.

By the morning, when he came back from his long sleep, the beggar departed very happy. The king didn't say anything about the diamond because it might be embarrassing to the beggar. And he knew the man, a very proud man - he would not like the idea. So he simply put it in the pocket and didn't say anything.

After three, four days he came across the beggar again, and he was begging in the marketplace. So he came to him, and he said, 'Why are you begging? What is the point of it?'

And the beggar said, 'What should I do? Just because for one day you gave me food and good drinks and a good bed to sleep in, I cannot live on it for ever. I have to beg, I am a poor man.'

And the king said, 'What happened? I slipped a diamond into your pocket.'

And the poor man looked into the pocket and it was there. But for these three days he had not looked into the pocket at all. It is not good to look into your pocket when you don't have anything, it is very embarrassing - again and again to put your hand into the pocket and find nothing, an emptiness.

So he had not looked, he had not bothered. There was nothing; he knew it well, there was nothing.

Exactly that is the case: you have put aside the diamond. You brought it with you. When you were coming from God's house he slipped a diamond into you. He always gives a diamond to everybody who comes to the world - of such great value that all is possible through that diamond. All treasures of the world are possible through that diamond, a man can become a Buddha through that diamond.

That diamond has some magic in it. You came with it - you have not looked inside yourself.

No, analysis is not needed. If you analyze, you will miss the diamond. Only look, just look. Become watchful, become very alert - bring more awareness, but no analysis. Just see. And by and by, small moments will come - valuable moments, precious moments, diamond-like. And they go on growing. Once you have the taste, it becomes easier. Once you know they are there, they come more - because you recognize them more. Then they start growing. Then small intervals come - half an hour, and no thought arises. One hour passes by, and you are simply sitting there and no thought arises.

That's what paradise is! That's what heaven is! You are entering into a different dimension: the caterpillar is growing wings.

But look. Understanding has nothing to do with analysis.

Question 4:

Yes, it has been supposed so - by the sadists, by the people who Like to torture other people. In fact, you have been brought Up with this idea, you have been fed this idea from your mother's milk - that all that is joyful has to be earned by great effort. Joy has to be earned, bliss is a long way away.

One has to travel, and the journey is arduous and uphill.

It is sheer nonsense. Joy is herenow! And one needs only one thing to be joyful, and that is: Be joyful. Nothing else, no other requirement.

Joy is not a goal. God is not a goal, God is already the case. God has happened to you - you are carrying him within yourself. This is the Zen emphasis. Zen does not say that you have to go somewhere to find him. He is not hiding, he is not playing hide-and-seek. He is not sitting somewhere in the caves of the Himalayas, he is sitting in the cave of your heart! Don't go to the Himalayas, look within yourself. And that look needs no preparation, that look needs no requirement.

Nothing is presupposed; as you are, you are capable of it. This is the Zen emphasis, this is the Zen revolution.

Zen does not teach that truth is difficult. Lies are difficult. They have to be difficult, because they are lies - you have to maintain them. For one lie, you have to tell a thousand lies. To protect one lie you have to become a liar, you have to create your whole life according to one lie. Tell one lie, and then see what happens - you are telling a thousand and one lies to protect one. And then what will happen to these thousand and one lies? Each lie will be protected by another thousand and one.

Lies are difficult, truth is simple. Truth is already the case. Truth is there - truth is showering in the sun, truth is raining all over the place. Wherever you are, truth is available. You are not to go, you are not to even take a single step! - and the journey is over. You have to just become silent and aware of it.

Yes, let-go is the door. Drop all that rubbish that you have been taught.

The society is dominated by the sadists - they always say it is difficult; they make everything difficult.

If something is easy, it is worthless. If something is easy, why is it worthless? Because an easy thing does not give you the sense of ego. So everything has to be made difficult. Life is to be made a hurdle race - difficulties have to be created on your path so you can have a feeling that you have achieved.

The ego can arise only when there are difficulties, and the ego is the greatest barrier to God. So God cannot be difficult - one thing is certain, the mathematics is very simple. Ego needs difficulties, ego feeds on difficulties. The more difficult a thing, the more ego feels the pull towards it - more attracted, magnetically pulled. Difficult, hard, unapproachable, unachievable, impossible, and the ego becomes tremendously excited. 'This is the thing to do, because nobody else can do it. If I can do it, I will be at the top.'

Ego needs difficulties, and our whole society is structured according to the ego. The deepest philosophy of all the cultures in the world is ego. Whatsoever they say, notwithstanding that, deep down all societies exist around the idea of the ego: make things difficult, make things as difficult as possible. So the idea has got roots in you.

Truth is not difficult, love is not difficult, joy is not difficult. You have just to start living it. And nothing is missing, not a single thing is missing. Everything is ready, you have to just start.

Don't feel puzzled because it seems so easy. It is the easiest thing in the world - if you are simple, it is the easiest thing in the world. If you are difficult, then of course you make it difficult; if you are complex, you make it complex.

AM I BECOMING LAZY? Laziness is also very much condemned. It should not be so much condemned. Lazy people have not done anything wrong in the world - you can look into history.

Lazy people have been the best kind of people in the world. A lazy person cannot become an Adolf Hitler or a Khan. A lazy person cannot become Tamurlaine, a lazy person cannot become a Nadirshah, a lazy person cannot become this and that. A lazy person can only become Lao Tzu. If he wants to become anything, he can become only Lao Tzu.

Laziness, in itself, has nothing wrong in it. But we are dominated by an ethos of action, work, aggression. We are dominated by people who should be called 'The Achievers'. Of course, if you want to achieve something you cannot be lazy, certainly. If you want to have more money than others, you cannot be lazy - money won't come that way. Money never comes to lazy people, that's certain.

If you want to become a prime minister, it does not happen easily; you have to work hard for it. You have to go to jail, and you have to be beaten by the police, and all that is on the way. Mm? That is how one reaches Delhi. That's how Morarji becomes prime minister. You have to go on a fast, and do a thousand and one things and create trouble and chaos. You have to learn many many things. You have to go on creating disturbance for those who are in power - you have to create such difficulties that they start thinking, 'It will be better if this power is taken away from us.' You have to create such a situation where they will feel relieved if somebody else takes this power from them. If you want to go to Delhi or to Washington or to London, you have to work hard; you cannot be lazy.

If you want to become a Rockefeller or a Morgan, you have to work hard.

But to achieve God, the achiever's mind itself is not needed. You can be lazy and you can slip into divinity. In fact you can slip into divinity more easily if you are lazy. To me laziness is nothing wrong.

I am not saying to you 'Become lazy' - I am simply saying that there is no 'disvaluation' in laziness.

If you feel in tune with laziness, be lazy. If you feel in tune with action, be active. If an active person wants to become lazy it will be difficult, very difficult, for him. If a lazy person wants to become active it will be very difficult - it will be an impossible task.

I am not in favour that you should become anybody else that you are not. I accept you as you are.

If you are lazy, perfectly good, there is a way for the lazy man too. You have to choose your guides rightly - Lao Tzu or me. Then don't choose Mahavira, he won't help. He was a warrior, he was a KSHATRIYA, and he knew only how to fight. So when he finally came across God, he fought with God too. Hence his name, Mahavira - 'the great brave man'. Hence his system is called 'Jaina' - it means 'the system that helps you to conquer'. 'Mahavira' means the conqueror, and 'Jaina' means the methodology to conquer. Even with truth he is a conqueror, a warrior. That is the path of the will and action.

If you are basically in your element a KSHATRIYA, a samurai, a warrior, then choose Mahavir - then he is the right guide. But you need not feel depressed if you are not a KSHATRIYA. If you are a lazy man, perfectly good - there are guides available for you too. And my own feeling is that many more people have attained to God through surrender than through will. It is not an accident that Mahavira could not get many followers; it is not accidental that through Mahavira many people have not attained to truth. Many more attained through Lao Tzu, many more attained through Buddha.

Buddha is a strange case. For six years he was just like Mahavira. For six years he tried hard, he went almost half the way on the path of will. Mahavira worked for twelve years and attained. On the same route, Buddha worked for six years and came to understand that 'This is not for me.' He did hard work. He was also, at least by birth, a born KSHATRIYA, a born warrior. But he seems to be a different kind of man; it was not his natural element. After six years he understood that all this effort is meaningless. He relaxed. And the night he relaxed, he attained. So he is a strange case. He worked for six years, hard - and then one night he dropped all effort, he relaxed, he became lazy.

That night he slept, without any desire to attain anything; he accepted his hopeless state. And in that hopelessness is born his enlightenment. He is half Mahavira and half Lao Tzu.

And Buddha has helped millions of people - more than anybody else. The reason may be this, that for a few people those six years may be helpful - so they go on that, and a path called HINAYANA is created. That is the path of the will. For others, he has the other approach also available, the other door also available - the MAHAYANA. Those who cannot struggle hard, those who don't feel like fighting with truth - those who want to surrender and become receptive, those who want to be feminine, womb-like, and would like to receive the truth whenever it comes, and are ready to relax and wait - yes, they can also attain through Buddha.

Mahavira is one pole, will. Lao Tzu is another pole, surrender. Buddha is just in the middle - half Mahavira, half Lao Tzu. That's the reason he has been able to help many more people - many more than Lao Tzu, many more than Mahavira. He is a great synthesis. A few people who want to struggle, they follow his first six years, they don't talk about the last night. Hence, there are two kinds of stories.

Just the other day, Maitreya asked a question - I was waiting for the right moment to answer it.

There are two stories of how Buddha attained. One story, the HINAYANA story - the people who follow the path of will, that is their story. They say: After six years he sat under the Bodhi tree, with absolute determination that if enlightenment does not happen now, he will not leave this place. He will not move, he will not open his eyes, he will not go begging. He will die, sitting in this place, if enlightenment does not happen. He staked all. And by the morning he became enlightened.

This is the HINAYANA story, the path of the will. For six years he worked hard, but it was not total.

The ultimate culmination comes with total determination, with total will - that now he will die. Either it happens, or he will die - but he is not going to move from here. This utter determination is one story.

The other story is the MAHAYANA story - the story of the lazy people, the story of those who follow the path of surrender, effortlessness. They say: After six years, the same night, he became enlightened. The night is the same but the stories differ; it depends on the interpretation. The same night, they say, after six years - about the six years there is no difference of opinion. The last night is the problem, what actually happened. And Buddha has not said anything of what actually happened. These two stories have been there always. And with these stories, Buddhism divided into two religions, HINAYANA and MAHAYANA - the arduous path, and the path of surrender.

The MAHAYANA story is that Buddha, after six years, came to realize that all effort is meaningless.

Truth cannot be achieved by achieving, because in the very idea of achieving, ego remains - the achiever remains. Understanding this, he dropped the very idea. He forgot all about achievement, he relaxed. He said: 'No more.' He had dropped out of the world one day; money, power, prestige - he had dropped those goals. Then he had put all his energies into one goal - enlightenment, NIRVANA. Now he saw the point, that this is again an ego-goal, again an ego-trip: 'I am again trying to achieve something.' Seeing this, he must have laughed. He dropped that idea too; he relaxed.

That night a young woman had come to worship the tree. She was a worshipper of the tree, a pagan.

And it was a full-moon night and she had come with KHEER, a sweet made from milk and rice, to pour on the roots of the tree. The full moon was there, and she saw this beautiful man, this utterly beautiful man, sitting there. And she thought, she imagined, 'It must be the god of the tree who has taken this form, who has become real for me.' For years she had been worshipping the tree, and she thought, 'My prayers have been accepted.'

So she presented the KHEER to Buddha. Had she gone one day before, he would have thrown it away - KHEER IS a luxury for an ascetic, an ascetic does not eat things like KHEER. He would have said no. He would not have even looked at the woman - an ascetic does not look at women. But he accepted it, he drank the kheer. His body must have felt, after many many years, very satisfied.

And then he fell into a great sleep.

When you are too desirous of attaining something, sleep is always disturbed, because the desire goes on disturbing it - it remains a constant hangover there. Buddha slept for the first time. No desire left, no dream is possible any more - because dreams are there only because you have some desires to fulfill. Your desires stir dreams in your consciousness.

That night, the body satisfied tremendously, after many years... the cool breeze, the full-moon night, the shade of the tree... he fell asleep, with no dreams, with no disturbance. The sleep was total. And when in the morning he opened his eyes.... The mahayana sutra does not exactly say 'He opened his eyes', the mahayana sutra says 'When he found his eyes opening' - so relaxed that he will not even open his eyes any more.

When he found his eyes opening - because out of rest, naturally a moment comes when the eyes will open - when he found his eyes opening, he saw the last star disappearing in the sky. The morning was coming, the last star was disappearing... and with the disappearance of the last star, his ego also disappeared. He became enlightened.

Enlightenment happened on the same full-moon night. How it happened, there are two interpretations. My own choice is for the second. But if you are a man of will and action, you can choose the first - nothing is wrong in it. My own choice is of the second.

Question 5:

Because this is an ashrama for human beings. Not for men, not for women, - we don't make any distinction. Differences are there between men and women, but there are no distinctions.

Differences are there, and those differences are beautiful. Because of those differences they remain interested in each other, and the whole play of life continues.

You may have visited ashramas, those ashramas don't belong to this century. Those ashramas are hang-ups from the past, they are not contemporary. They should have disappeared at least three thousand years before. They are relics of the past, museum-pieces at the most, utterly meaningless.

This ashrama belongs to this moment. And this ashrama is the ashrama of the future, too. Here, something new is opening, something utterly new - something that is needed, something that humanity needs now. This ashrama is a contemporary place.

So, coming from Sivananda's ashrama in Rishikesh to this ashrama you are not only travelling by train, you are travelling in time. Three thousand years you have travelled from Rishikesh to Poona!

It is difficult - the train journey is only of twenty-four hours, but to travel three thousand years is a difficult thing. Unless you are very very alert, you will not be able to enter into this place.

This place is a new place. It is not a traditional place, it is a potential place. It is not a by-product of the past, it is a seed for the future and a source.

People who are afraid of women are afraid of reality, are afraid of themselves. People who are afraid of women are really afraid of life itself - because the woman IS life. People who are afraid of women are afraid of love. This kind of people is basically unintelligent, stupid. They don't have any possibility to grow into intelligence, awareness, into radiance. They cannot become celebrants.

They may become celibates but they cannot become celebrants, they cannot celebrate life.

And, to me, celibacy comes only after celebration. It is the culmination of celebration. When you have loved each other, when the man has known the woman and woman has known the man - absolutely known - then there comes a transcendence. Then the man is no more man, and the woman is no more woman. This is what we call the Buddha-state, the enlightened state. Then you are no more part of any duality; you have become whole.

And remember always, wherever there is life there is love. And wherever there is life, and all the play of life, and the LEELA of life, men and women have to be together. Men alone become sad, women alone become sad. Together, energy flows. Together, energy dances. Together, it is natural that the energy should flow.

I have heard:

The professor was a sworn enemy of co-education. 'It is impossible,' he told a group of friends, 'to teach a young man mathematics if there is a girl in the class.'

'Come now, professor,' someone objected, 'surely there must be an exception to that?'

'There might be,' snapped the professor, 'but he would not be worth teaching.'

Yes, that is right. If a man is not interested in women, he is not interested in beauty, he is not interested in grace, he is not interested in passivity, he is not interested in rest. He is not worth teaching; he is not an intelligent being at all.

An intelligent being never escapes from anywhere. Whatsoever God gives him, he uses that opportunity, he uses it to its very core. He uses EVERY opportunity in a positive way. And then every stone on the path becomes a step towards God.