The Bridge but not the Water Flows

Question 1:

The question is from Anand Mohammed.

I am a pagan. There is no god for me, except this existence. God is intrinsic to life; God is not outside life. God is this very life. To live this life totally, is to live a divine life. To live this life partially, is to live an undivine life. To be partial is to be irreligious. To be total and whole is to be holy.

The questioner asks about the past. In the past, all over the world, people were pagans - simple nature-worshippers. There was no concept of sin, there was no question of guilt. Life was accepted as it is. There was no evaluation, no interpretation - reason had not interfered yet.

The moment reason starts interfering, condemnation comes. The moment reason enters in, division, split, starts and man becomes schizophrenic. Then you start condemning something in your being - one part becomes higher, another part becomes lower, and you lose balance.

But this had to happen; reason had to come, this is part of growth. As it happens to every child, it had to happen to the whole of humanity too. When the child is born he is a pagan; each child is a born pagan. He is happy the way he is. He has no idea what is right and what is wrong; he has no ideals. He has no criteria, he has no judgement. Hungry, he asks for food. Sleepy, he falls asleep.

That's what Zen masters say is the uttermost in religion - when hungry eat, when feeling sleepy go to sleep. Let life flow; don't interfere.

Each child is born as a pagan, but sooner or later he will lose that simplicity. That is part; that HAS to happen, that is part of our growth, maturity, destiny. The child has to lose it and find it again. When the child loses it he becomes the ordinary man, the worldly man. When he regains it he becomes religious.

The child's innocence is very cheap; it is a gift from God. He has not earned it: he will have to lose it. Only by losing it will he become aware of what he has lost. Then he will start searching for it.

And only when he searches for it, and EARNS it, achieves it, becomes it - then he will know the tremendous preciousness of it.

What happens to a saint? He becomes a child again; nothing else happens to a saint. He is again innocent. He went into the world of reason, division, ego, a thousand and one ideals; he became almost mad with evaluation. And then one day, finding it all just absurd, stupid, he drops it. But this second childhood is far more valuable than the first childhood. The first childhood was just given to you. You were not even asked, it was a pure gift. And we cannot value gifts. You value a thing only when you make effort for it, when you strive for it, and when it takes a long journey to come to it.

There is a Sufi story: A man, a seeker, came to a Sufi mystic. And he asked, 'I am searching for my master. Sir, I have heard you are a wise man. Can you tell me the characteristics of a master? How am I to judge? Even if I find my master, how am I going to decide that he is my master? I am a blind man; I am ignorant, I don't know anything about it. And without finding a master, it is said, no one can find God. So I am in search for a master. Help me.'

And the master told him a few things. He said, 'These are the characteristics. You will find the master in such a way, with such a behaviour, and he will be sitting under such a tree. And he will be wearing such a robe, and his eyes will be like this.'

And the man thanked the old man, and went in search. Thirty years passed, and the man roamed almost all over the world but he could not find the man who was his master according to the old man's valuation. Tired, exhausted, frustrated, he comes back to his home town and sees the old man. The old man has become very very old, but the moment he comes in.... The old man is sitting under the same tree - suddenly he sees this is the tree the old man had talked about. And this is the robe the old man had described. And these are the eyes, and this is the silence, that the old man had described. This is the benediction in the presence of the master. He is overjoyed.

But a great question also arises in his mind. He bows down, touches his feet, and says, 'Before I surrender to you, just tell me why you tortured me for these thirty years. Why didn't you tell me right then, "I am your master"?'

The old man started laughing, and he said, 'I told you, "He will be sitting under such a tree" - and this is the tree I was sitting under! And I told you, "This will be the robe he will be wearing" - and I was wearing the same robe! I was the same man then, but you were not alert. You could not see me - you needed these thirty years' journeys from one comer to another corner of the world; you needed all this effort to recognize me. I was here, but you were not here.

'Now you are also here, you can see me. And I had to wait for you. It is not only a question for you, that you have been travelling. Think of me - I am so old, and I could not even die before you came back. And I have not changed the robe, in case you missed me again - for thirty years! I have never for a single moment left this tree! But you have come. The journey has been too long - but this is the way one discovers.'

God is always here, but we are not here. A child has to lose track; he has to go for thirty years'

pilgrimage. Every child has to lose track, every child has to go astray. Only by going astray, only by suffering, will he attain eyes, clarity, transparency. Only by going into a thousand and one things, will he start looking for the real.

The unreal has to be searched. The unreal is attractive, the unreal is magnetic. And how can you know the real if you have not known the unreal? The child knows the real - but he has not known the unreal, so he cannot define the real. The child knows God - but he has not known the world, so he cannot define God. Each child comes like a saint, but has to become a sinner. Then the second childhood. If you don't attain to the second childhood you have missed your life.

So don't think, and don't be worried, that you have lost it. Everybody has to lose it - that should not be a problem. The prob!em is only if you go on and on, and you never come back. If this man goes on and on... thirty years, thirty lives, three hundred lives, three thousand lives... goes on and on, and never comes back, and never attains to the second childhood, then something has really gone wrong.

Err - to err is human. That is the way to learn. Go astray - going astray is the way to come back home. Forget God, so that you can remember him. Escape from God, so one day the thirst becomes a fire in you and you have to come to God again... Like a hungry man, like a thirsty man.

This had to happen to humanity too. Now there will be a great assertion of paganism in the world again - the second childhood. That's why Zen has become so important, so significant; Tantra has become such a significant word. Sufism, Hassidism, are more important now than Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism - why? Why Tantra? Why Tao? Why Zen? Why Sufi? Why Hassid? These are the pagan attitudes - they create the second childhood.

The world is getting ready; humanity is becoming more and more mature. This age is the age of humanity's youth. The childhood is no more; we have lost it, we have become corrupted. But don't be worried by it - that is how one attains to innocence again. And the second childhood is far more valuable than the first, because the second cannot be lost. The first has to be lost, is bound to be lost; no child, not even a Buddha, could retain it. No child can retain it; it is in the very nature of things. When something is given to you - and you were not seeking it, and you were not even asking for it, you were not ready even to receive it...

If you give a child a diamond, a diamond like the Kohinoor, he will play with it a little while and then throw it away. He does not know what it is. The Kohinoor is the Kohinoor, whether you know it or not.

The Kohinoor IS the Kohinoor - knowledge makes no difference. But the child will throw it away; he will become fed-up sooner or later. Just a stone - how long can you play with it? Even if it is very colourful, even if it is very shiny... but how long?

For the Kohinoor to come into your life again, you will need a thirst for it. You will need to feel a great missing - something missing inside your being. You will need a great desire. All desires should become lesser desires, and God becomes the supreme-most desire, the topmost desire. God is always here.

It happens to children, it happens to societies, it happens to civilizations, it happens to humanity at large, too. So don't be worried about Christianity - that was part. Christianity or those kinds of religion are the religions between these two childhoods, the first and the second. They condemn.

They shout that you have gone astray: 'Come back!' They pull you back, they make you afraid. They give you great provocations, that if you come back you will attain great prizes, rewards, in heaven. If you don't come back, you are going to be thrown into hell. Hellfire is waiting for you; for eternity you will be in hell, suffering.

This is fear - creating fear in people, so that they will come back. But out of fear, even if you come, you never come. Because fear can never become love. Fear cannot be reduced into love, cannot be converted into love. Fear remains fear, and out of fear arises hatred.

That's why Christianity has created great hatred against religion. Friedrich Nietzsche is a by-product of Christianity; if Friedrich Nietzsche says God is dead, it is just a reaction to Christianity. Too much emphasis on God, on heaven and hell - somebody has to say it. I am all for Nietzsche - somebody has to say, 'Enough is enough. Stop all this nonsense! God is dead, and man is free' - because man feels in bondage if you create fear.

And greed? Greed again is a bondage. You just see - heaven, paradise, FIRDAUS, the idea of it - what is it? It is such greed, such lust. In the Mohammedan's FIRDAUS, heaven, it seems saints are doing nothing but copulating. Beautiful women are available, and streams of wine are flowing, and all that you need is immediately made available. And those beautiful women remain at the age of sixteen; they never grow.

And one more beautiful thing about that: they again become a virgin. Whenever a saint makes love to a woman - only saints go there - when a saint makes love to a woman, the moment he is finished, again she becomes a virgin. That is the miracle of paradise. And what are your saints doing there?

It seems an orgy, sexual orgy. And streams of wine.... Here you say, 'Avoid wine, avoid women' - for what? To gain better women and more wine in heaven? This seems to be illogical.

But this is how people are provoked, through greed, to come back. Or fear: if you don't come through greed, then fear, then hellfire - and ETERNAL hellfire. You have not done so much sin, eternal hellfire is unjust. Okay, for ten years you are thrown into hell, one can understand - fifteen years, twenty years, fifty years. But eternal? You have not been eternally sinning here, so how can eternal punishment be given to you? It looks too much.

But that is not the point; the point is just to make people afraid. Fear and greed have been the base of many religions. And they have not been helpful; they have destroyed. They have not appealed to the courageous, they have appealed only to the cowards - and when a cowardly person becomes religious the religion is bogus. Because a cowardly person CANNOT become religious; only a courageous person can become religious - religion needs great courage.

It is a jump into the unknown. It is a jump into the uncharted sea, with no maps. It is dropping the past and moving into the future, it is going into insecurity. It cannot be out of cowardice.

And in your temples and in your mosques, in your churches, cowards have gathered together. They are trembling with fear. And they are full of greed - afloat in greed, aflame with greed, agog with greed. These greedy and cowardly people cannot be religious. The basis of religion is to drop all fear and to drop all greed, and to move into the unknown. God is the unknown, the hidden. He is hidden HERE - in the trees, in the rocks, in you, in me. But to enter into that hidden reality, that occult, one needs great courage - it is going into a dark night without any light.

A Zen master was saying goodbye to one of his disciples, and the night was very dark. And the disciple was a little bit afraid, scared, because he had to pass a jungle of at least ten miles. And it was wild. And wild animals were there, and it was night - and a dark night with no moon. And it was getting late, almost half the night had passed. Talking to the master, he had completely forgotten.

Seeing him a little afraid, the master says, 'You look a little afraid, so I will give you a lamp.' He puts a small paper lamp into his hand, lights the lamp. The disciple thanks him, goes down the steps, and the master calls him and says, 'Stop!' And the master comes close and blows the flame out.

And he says, 'A real master gives courage; he does not help cowardice. Go into the dark, be your own light. And remember, nobody else's light will be of any help; you will have to attain to your own light. Be a flame to your own being. Go into the dark, be courageous.'

He says a real master never helps any cowardice. In a small act, by blowing the flame out, the master gives a great message: Religion is only for the courageous.

Those who followed Jesus, they were courageous people. They were not many, they were very few - you could have counted them on your fingers. Those who followed Buddha were courageous people. Christians are not courageous, Buddhists are not courageous.

Those who are with me are courageous people. Once I am gone, your children and your children's children may pay their respect to me, but they will not be courageous.

Religion exists only when there is an alive master to LIVE it for you. When the master is gone then religion becomes dead. Cowardly people gather together around a dead religion; then there is no fear. They worship the scripture, they worship the word, they worship the statue - all dead things.

But whenever a Jesus is there, or a Buddha is there, or a Mohammed is there, they are very much afraid. They find a thousand and one ways to escape; they find a thousand and one ways to rationalize their escape. They condemn the real master - why? The real master will not support your cowardice. He will not give you any more greed - you already have too much - and he will not make you afraid. His whole effort will be to take fear and greed away from you, so that you can become capable of living your life in totality.

Christianity and religions like that had to happen. They have to be forgiven; don't be angry about them. But now they have to go, too - now the world is no more in need of them. They are tumbling, they are scattering, they are dying. In fact they are dead. But people are so blind that for them to know that their church or their temple is dead takes such a long time. They are so unconscious, they cannot understand it immediately. Christianity is dead, Hinduism dead, Islam is dead. In Islam, only a small thing lives, still has a flame - that is Sufism. In Christianity, only a few mystics are still alive.

Otherwise the church and the pope and the vatican are just cemeteries, graveyards.

In Hinduism, a few mystics are still alive - a Krishnamurti, somewhere a Raman - but far and few in between. Otherwise, the SHANKARACHARYAS are dead people. But nobody goes to a living master. In Buddhism only Zen is alive. In Judaism only Hassidism is alive.

The organized religion is not the real religion. The unorganized, the rebellious, the unorthodox, the heretic religion is the real religion - has always been so. Religion comes always as a rebellion - its very spirit is that of rebelliousness. The days for Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, are gone. In the future, a totally different kind of religion, a different kind of climate, will surround the earth.

Religions will disappear; there will only be a kind of religiousness. People will find their own religion individually; people will find their own prayer, their own way of praying. There is no need to follow anybody's prescribed idea - that is not the path, that is not the way of the courageous. That is the way of the coward.

And God is available - you just have to become courageous to look into his eyes.

You ask me: AND THEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION BECAME THE RELIGION OF THE WEST.

That's true. Christianity has never been concerned with Christ; it has been more concerned with the cross. It has not worshipped Christ it has been worshipping the cross. The cross is a symbol of death. Why? Because death is the basic fear. Making people alert about their death makes them afraid. If you make a person very much mindful of death, every possibility is there that he will start shaking and trembling. And when a person is shaking and trembling you can victimize him very easily; you can convert him into any nonsense. He is ready to believe anything - if you just promise immortality he is ready.

So followers of Christianity say, 'Those who are in the church will be saved, and those who are not in the church, we don't make any guarantee for them. They are doomed; they cannot be saved.' And that's what all other religions say. This is creating fear. Bring death into their mind, they become afraid - who will not become afraid of death? And then an afraid man is prone to be converted into a slave very easily.

And why resurrection? Death and resurrection became the foundation of Christianity in the West.

Death gives you fear, and the promise of resurrection gives you greed. If you die within the church, you will resurrect. You will resurrect as a divine being, with all that you always wanted, with all that you always needed - beautiful, with a golden body, with an aura around you, you will be resurrected.

These are fear-greed tricks, punishment-reward tricks. This is what B. F. Skinner goes on doing with his rats: make them afraid and they start doing things. This is what you see in a circus: make the elephant afraid - such a courageous animal and such a wise animal, but just make him afraid. And he starts doing foolish things for you - he will sit on a stool, he will bow down to a man... he can kill that man within a second. Even lions, seeing the whip, tremble - just make them afraid, that's all.

Even lions can be tamed, and elephants can be taught and disciplined. Create fear and reward - if the elephant follows you, give him good food; if he does not follow, starve him. A simple technique.

That's what so-called religions have been doing to man. Guilt and sin were taught. Naturally, if you want to make people afraid - and that is the only way to exploit them - teach them that everything is sin, all that you enjoy is sin. Death creates fear, but death is far away. After fifty years or seventy years you will die - who bothers? 'Seventy years? We will see. Right now we are not dying.'

Maybe old people become afraid. That's why you find more old people in churches, temples. Old women, old men - women more than men, because they become more afraid. Old, dying, just on the verge, so they know now something has to be done. Life is going, slipping by; they have to manage something for the future.

Do you see young people in your churches? in your temples? And remember, wherever you see young people, there religion is alive. A young person, if he becomes interested in religion, his religion cannot be that of fear and cannot be that of death. His religion will be of life.

Many times people come to me and they say, 'Why do so many young people come to you?' They come because I teach the religion of life, of love, of joy. I don't create any guilt, and I don't go on conditioning their minds that 'This is sin, that is sin.' There are mistakes, but there is no sin.

Mistakes, certainly, there are - but a mistake is a mistake. If you are doing a mathematical problem and you make two plus two equal five, is it a sin? It is just a mistake; it can be corrected. No need to throw you in hell forever just because you counted two plus two as five. It is simply a mistake, pardonable.

All that you call sin is nothing but mistakes. And mistakes are the way of learning. Those people who never commit mistakes are the most stupid people, because they never grow. I teach you:

Go on committing mistakes, never be afraid. Just remember one thing - don't commit the same mistake again and again, because that is meaningless. Be inventive, commit new mistakes every day - then you learn. Just don't commit the same mistake every day, because that is foolish. You have committed it once, you have known it is a mistake - you were angry, and you have seen what anger is - now being angry again is stupid. You have seen, it is just meaningless. It is destructive - it destroys the other, it destroys you. And it does not bring anything; no flower flowers in you.

You become less by anger, you don't become more. Love, be kind - and suddenly you are more flowing, bigger, higher; you start floating, you have less weight. So learn: when you love, when you are loving, you can fly, wings grow. When you hate, when you are angry, you become like a rock.

Then gravitation is too much on you, you become heavy.

Can't you see that? Simple - just like two plus two is four. Life is a learning, it is a school. That's why we have been sent here, that is the purpose - not to punish you. I would like to change your whole idea about it. You have been taught that you have been sent here to be punished - this is absolutely wrong. You are sent here to learn.

Why should God be such a torturer? Is he a sadist or something? - he enjoys torturing people? And if, as these people say, you have been sent here to be punished, then why for the first time were you sent? There must have been your first life - before that you had not committed anything, because how can you commit sins unless you come here? You cannot have committed any sins - then why were you sent for the first time?

They don't have any answer. Jainas don't have, Hindus don't have, Mohammedans don't have; they don't have any answer for it. Why has man been sent? Maybe this time you have been sent because in the past life you committed sins. Okay, but what about the first life? And if this is the first life, as Christians say, then why have you been sent here? Now, they have a very absurd idea: because Adam committed sin. You have nothing to do with Adam; this is simply absurd. Somebody you don't know, whether he ever even existed or not, committed sin and the whole humanity is suffering for it.

Your father committed sin and you have been sent to jail. And Adam is not even your father - not even your father's father, not even your father's father's father - he is the first man.

And what he has done does not seem to be a sin at all. It seems simple courage, it seems simple rebelliousness. Each child needs that much spine. God said to Adam: 'Don't eat the fruit of this tree. This tree is the tree of knowledge.' And Adam ate it. I think anybody who has any soul would do the same. If Adam had been dead and dull, then he would have followed. He must have been challenged; in fact, that is the very purpose. Otherwise, on the earth there are millions and millions of trees - just think, if God had not shown the particular tree, it is very very impossible that Adam would have found it. That was only one tree in the whole garden of God, and the garden is infinite.

That was only one tree of which God said particularly, 'Don't eat it. If you eat the fruit of knowledge you will be expelled.'

My own understanding is, God was putting a challenge to him. He was trying to see whether he is alive or dead. He was trying to see whether he is capable of disobeying, whether he can say no - God was trying to see whether he is just a yes-man. And Adam proved his mettle: he ate the fruit.

He was ready to be thrown into the world, but he showed spirit. It is not sin, it is simply courage.

Every child has to disobey his father one day or other, every child has to disobey his mother one day or other. In fact, the day you disobey, that is the day you start becoming mature - never before it. So only stupid children never disobey. Intelligent children certainly disobey; intelligent children find a thousand and one ways to disobey the parents. You can look around: you will always find the intelligent child disobeying. Because he has to grow his own soul - if he goes on obeying you, obeying you, obeying you, when will he grow? how will he grow? He will remain dull and limp. He will not have his own soul, he will not have his own individuality.

No, Adam has not committed any sin; Adam is the first saint. He disobeyed God, and God wanted it. That is exactly what God wanted - that Adam should disobey. Disobeying God, Adam will go far away into the world; he will lose his first childhood. Then he will suffer many many mistakes, and from those mistakes he will learn.

And one day he will come back - as Christ, as Buddha, as Mahavira, as Krishna, he will come back.

This going away is a must for coming back. This is not against God really, this is precisely what God wanted to happen. It was absolutely planned by God himself. So I don't call it sin. Why is Adam called a sinner? He is called a sinner because your religions depend on calling you sinners, on condemning you. The more you are condemned, the more you touch their feet. The more you are condemned, the more you crawl on the earth and beg. The more you are condemned, the more afraid you become. The more you are afraid, the more you need mediators.

You don't know where God is. Your priest knows, your pope knows; he has a direct line with God. If he interferes, only then can you be saved - otherwise your whole life is sin. Only if HE persuades God for you then you can be saved. This is the whole trick, the trick of the priest. The priest is not really the religious man, the priest is the businessman - doing business in the name of religion, exploiting.

The ugliest profession in the world is not of the prostitutes, the ugliest profession is of the priests.

'WHY ISN'T HE LIKE THESEUS OR JASON OR HERMES?' He is. 'IS THE CONCEPT OF SIN JUST A TRICK? TO MAKE MEN MEDITATE?' Yes, it is a trick, but not to make them meditate. It is a trick to make them slaves. Meditation is a totally different thing. Meditation never comes out of fear, meditation comes out of understanding. Meditation comes out of love, out of compassion.

Meditation comes out of living your life in all climates, in all seasons. Looking into each fact of life deeply, understanding it - and if it is meaningless discarding it, if it is meaningful choosing it - by and by, you go on collecting the essential and discarding the non-essential.

Both are there. The chaff and the wheat, both are there. The roses and the weeds, both are there.

And one has to make a distinction between the chaff and the wheat: one has to throw the chaff and collect the wheat.

This much intelligence is needed, otherwise you cannot become a religious person. These fears don't give you understanding. They in fact cloud your mind more, they make you more unclear about life. They don't allow you to go into life totally and experience it - they are against experience.

Meditation comes when you live life, and you see life as it happens. Not because Buddha says anger is bad - that will not help; you will become a parrot, a pundit - but if you see into your own anger and this understanding arises, that anger is meaningless, poisonous. Not because Krishna says, 'Leave everything to God, surrender to God' - no, following Krishna you will not attain to God - but see how your ego is creating all kinds of miseries for you.

Seeing that, one day you drop the ego, and you say, 'Now I will live in a totally surrendered way.

Whatsoever God wants through me, will happen. I will not have any desire of my own, I will not have any will of my own. I drop my will.'

Seeing the misery that ego brings, comes surrender. Seeing the misery that anger brings, comes love. Seeing the misery that sexuality brings, arises BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy. But one has to go through it - there is no shortcut, and these things cannot be borrowed from anybody.

Question 2:

The rational is not rational enough. That is what is wrong with it. If you are a REALLY rational person you will see that many things are irrational in life. A rational person, how can he avoid seeing that there are many irrational things in life? A rational person is bound to stumble upon many irrational facts.

Your love is irrational. You fall in love with a woman; you cannot produce any reason for it. You simply shrug your shoulders, you say, 'It happened.' You may find some ways - you will say that she looks beautiful, this and that. But she does not look beautiful to anybody else; nobody else has fallen in love with her. So it cannot be a simple case - because she is beautiful, that's why you have fallen in love. In fact the truth is just the other way round - you have fallen in love, that's why she looks beautiful. And one day get married to her, and one day suddenly she will no more be beautiful. And you will start thinking, 'Was I mad? Why have I fallen with this woman?' And you will start thinking she is the ugliest woman in the world.

Wives and husbands never look beautiful to each other - because that love, that so-called love, that illusion, wears fast. If you never get your woman you may love her for your whole life - that's possible. That's why Majanu goes on loving, and crying, 'Laila, Laila, Laila!' - because he couldn't get her. He was a fortunate man. Those who get their Lailas, they know that once you get, then you start praying to God, 'How to get rid of?'

What happens? It is not beauty - something irrational in you, something from your unconscious that you are not aware of, possesses you.

Now the psychology of the unconscious has looked into the matter more deeply. The child, each child, boy or girl, carries two personalities within himself or herself - the personality of the mother and the father, because a child is made from two biologies, two psychologies. A child is a combination of two persons, two personalities - something is contributed by the father and something is contributed by the mother. If the child is a male child the mother-part inside him will go on looking for some woman who is almost similar.

Your woman inside is nothing but your mother part inside you. And when some woman fits with your inner woman, you fall in love - but this is absolutely irrational. And exactly that happens when you fall in love with a man. You carry your father inside you - when some man fits the image.... Nobody can fit the image totally, that's the trouble. You are not going to get your father as your husband ever; your father cannot become your husband, your mother cannot become your wife.

And no two individuals are alike - this is the problem. And you are searching for your mother unconsciously. When you suddenly see a woman as beautiful, that is your mother - in some way she resembles your mother. But in some way only. Maybe her voice is like your mother, maybe her eyes have the same colour, maybe her hair is the same colour. Or maybe the way she walks is exactly the way of your mother. And you don't know it; you don't know it consciously. It is in your unconscious - it is hidden deep there in the darkness. And you fall in love. But no woman can be exactly like your mother, so sooner or later things start coming up which are not like your mother.

Then disturbance starts - the honeymoon is complete.

These are irrational facts. Man, if really rational, is bound to stumble upon many many facts which are irrational. Even your greatest mathematician and logician falls in love with a woman. Irrational, utterly irrational.

Why do I insist for the irrational? Because, to me, reason is just in the middle. Below reason there is the irrational - the irrational of the unconscious. And above reason is again the irrational - the irrational of the superconscious. And the conscious mind is a very small mind, very tiny mind. Below is an ocean: sexuality, anger, greed, possessiveness, jealousy, violence - the whole animal past is there. A whole animal past exists there in your unconscious that is absolutely irrational.

Have you not observed sometimes? - when a man is really angry he looks more like an animal than like a human being. When a man is really mad he barks like a dog or roars like a lion or jumps like a tiger or behaves like a monkey. That's why, once you are out of the anger, you start feeling embarrassed and you say, 'Sorry.' And you say, 'In spite of me... how it happened I don't know.'

It came from below; it came from the basement of your being. You were not aware of it; it took possession of you.

Below your reason there is a vast continent of irrationality. The animals exist there, the vegetables exist there, rocks exist there - the whole past. That is the real meaning of the theory that you have been incarnated in many ways. There have been eighty-four thousand YONIS - YOU have lived eighty-four thousand lives on different planes. Some day you were like a rock - something of it is still carried in your unconscious. Some day you were a plant; something of it is still carried; the flower and the thorn, both. Some day you were like a dog and some day you were a tiger and some day you were a fox. And all that is carried - piled upon each other, they are there. Whenever you lose your rational, the irrational comes up and takes possession of you.

Above it, again there is the superconscious. That too is irrational. There God is hidden. Below is the animal, above is God. If you fall below humanity you become animal, if you go above humanity you become divine. People are afraid of the irrational because they know only one kind of irrational - that which is below. And all great religions teach the irrational which is above. You have to go higher than yourself. You have to drop your logic.

When you meditate, again that happens. When you are angry then too it happens, then too you are below reason. When you are meditating you are above reason - but you go beyond reason in both the ways. When a man is mad he is below reason. And when a man becomes a saint he is above reason. That's why saints and madmen look a little alike - something similar. One thing at least:

they both are not in their rational minds. Below reason is a vast continent of irreason. And above reason is the whole sky of divinity, the infinite sky of divinity.

And Zen particularly is irrational. You cannot figure it out with your reason.

I was reading a book of Aldous Huxley. He talks about a Chinese Zen master: 'The Chinese Zen master was giving a tea-party one freezing night. Kaizenji said to his disciples, "There is a certain thing. It is as black as lacquer. It supports heaven and earth. It always appears in activity, but no one can grasp it in activity. My disciples, how can you grasp it?"

'He was indicating the nature of TATHATA' - suchness - or Tao, or DHAMMA. He was indicating the nature of existence itself. He was saying: 'There is a certain thing...' CERTAIN, he says, because there is no way to specify it; you cannot pin-point it, it is so big. 'It is as black as lacquer' - as black as a dark night. You can be lost in it. It is not like light, it is more like darkness. Why? Because in the light, distinctions are clear: you know that this is a tree and this is a pillar, and this is a man and this is a woman - you know separation, distinction.

In light, multiplicity arises. In darkness, the one. If suddenly it gets dark, then where is the pillar and where is the tree, and where is the man and where is the woman? All disappear into oneness. So that TATHATA - that suchness, Tao, DHAMMA, truth, or God.... Any name will do - all are alike, all mean the same, all are just metaphors.

He was indicating the nature of TATHATA, metaphorically of course...'

And this was no ordinary question; Zen masters ask questions in particular situations. Now it was clear. The night is freezing, the tea is ready, the samovar is humming, the fragrance of the tea is in the tea-room, the master is sitting with his disciples, and suddenly he asked this. Out of the blue.

Now, this is no time to talk great philosophy; the night is freezing and they would like to have hot tea.

And the tea is ready, and now it is a dangerous question, because if it is not answered rightly - that is the practice of Zen masters - he will tell the disciples to go home. The tea-party, which has not even started, will be finished. They are not going to get the tea.

'The disciples of Kaizenji did not know how to reply.' Not that they cannot create philosophy, not that they cannot spin words - they can. But a Zen master is not asking for words, he is asking for INSIGHT. Unless you have experienced it, you cannot say anything - and whatsoever you say will be meaningless. Reason can propose many things, but those will not be accepted. The thing has to come from existential experience.

'Then finally one of them, Tai Shuso by name, tried: "You fail to grasp it because you try to grasp it in motion. " He was indicating that when he meditated in silence, TATHATA appeared within himself.'

He is saying that if you are silent, unmoving, if there is no movement of the mind inside - all has stopped, the mind has halted, there is no activity, there is just WU-WEI, inactivity, passivity - then it appears. That Tao, that existence, that God, suddenly fills you, overflows from you. You cannot grasp it while the mind is moving, is in action; you cannot grasp it. But when the mind is not moving, it comes on its own accord. You cannot grasp it if you try to grasp it, because to grasp means activity.

But it comes when you are not even trying to grasp it; when you are just a receptacle, a womb, then it comes. It comes in a state of feminine inactivity, receptivity. He has answered very rationally. But...

'Kaizenji dismissed the tea-party before it had really begun. He was displeased with the answer.'

It is a rational answer, it appeals - you will also think what he is saying is right. But it is half. Unless that tathata can be caught in activity too, it will not be the whole, it will not be the total. If you cannot find God in the marketplace too, and you can find it only in the Himalayas, then that God will be only half God. And a half God is a dead God. You cannot divide God; you cannot say when you are sitting in a Himalayan cave it is there. It arises - you need not grasp it, it grabs you, rather.

This is what many people have done. They say, 'Escape, renounce. Here there is no God: go to the Himalayas.' That silence is of the Himalayas - it has nothing to do with God. It is the silence of the cave. Come back, after thirty years sitting in a cave, to M.G. Road in Poona - and finished is all your silence, and all your attainments are gone.

That's why renunciates become afraid of the world - they don't come there, they cling to their cave.

This is escapism. And this is not God, that you can find only in the caves. God is everywhere.

Only God is: he has to be everywhere. Even in the marketplace he is as throbbing-alive as in the Himalayas. In the Himalayas he is silent, in the marketplace he is noisy - but he is everywhere.

When you are sitting unmoving he is unmoving, and when you are running he is running - but he is there.

So the answer is rational, but not whole; reason cannot answer for the whole. Reason divides, reason analyzes, reason dissects - it has dissected even God. God cannot be dissected. Even while you are ignorant, God is in you. He is your ignorance - who else can be? And when you know, he is your knowing. God is your ignorance and God is your enlightenment. That's what Buddha means when he says: The world is nirvana. It is one; these are two aspects of the same thing. Don't divide - you divide, and you miss.

The master dismissed the party. Aldous Huxley comments on this. He thinks - he is a great philosopher in his own right - he thinks if he had been there in the party, he would have suggested a better answer. What is his answer? He says, 'My own guess is that the tea-party might have been prolonged, at least for a few minutes, if Tai Shuso had answered in some such way as this:

"If I cannot grasp TATHATA in activity, then obviously I must cease to be 'I', so that TATHATA may be able to grasp this ex-me and make it one with itself, not merely in the immobility and silence of meditation - as happens to ARHATS - but also in activity - as happens to BODHISATTVAS, for whom SANSARA and NIRVANA are identical."'

Now this is getting even worse. And it is good that Aldous Huxley was not there, otherwise he would have been beaten! The master has simply dismissed the party. That is great respect towards the disciple who has answered - simply dismissing it. Zen masters keep their staff by their side, and on and off they hit. Sometimes for no reason, no visible reason, they hit. But one thing is always there:

if they see that you are bringing in your head too much, they hit your head. They say, 'Slip out of it.'

They are saying go deeper than the head or higher than the head; don't cling to the head.

This is too heady an answer. A guess won't do, Aldous Huxley. He says, 'This is my guess.' A guess won't do! - only experience. Nobody can guess; nobody can suppose that 'This answer might have helped.' No, guesswork is guesswork - it is rational. It is of the head, of the mind. Aldous Huxley would have gotten really beaten - this much philosophy would not be tolerated by a Zen master.

That's why I insist so much for the irrational height. You have to go above your heads. Always try one small experiment: standing before the mirror, just think you have no head. Every day - just for twenty minutes, thirty minutes, forty minutes - stand before the mirror and just look at the head and say, 'I don't have any head.' Within two or three months, one day suddenly you will see the head has disappeared: you are standing there without a head. Then you will know what the answer can be - not before it; you cannot guess. I know the answer but I will not say. Because it cannot be said.

The master was not asking for an articulate answer; the disciples had to DO something. They have to ACT immediately in some way; they have to SHOW it. Some disciple has to show it - immediately, then and there, in his act, in his being - that it is there. And you cannot deceive a master - if it is not there, it is not there. If it is there, he will immediately feel it is there.

It happens - a disciple comes to a master, the master has given him a koan. A koan is a special method to drive you crazy. It is a riddle which has no answer - the answer is not possible, the answer exists not. The disciple knows it, the master knows it, that there is no answer. And the disciple has to try to find the answer - for months together, sometimes years together. Unless you find the answer, the master will not give you further instructions. The koan has to be solved. And the disciple knows that this is absurd - but it has to be solved. And deep down he knows, he has heard, he has read, that there is no answer. But the master says, 'Go on, find it.'

So when you try to find an answer for something for which no answer exists, by and by you start getting berserk, crazy. You try and try, and it goes on slipping and slipping and slipping. In Japan, it is called 'Zen-madness'. In Japan, even doctors know it - because sometimes it happens to the disciple, and his family may take him to the doctor. Because he goes berserk - he starts shouting, doing things, screaming, shaking, quaking, trembling, for no reason. Or starts laughing or crying for no reason, or starts dancing. Sometimes the family will take the person to the doctor. But in Japan they know.

And that has to be known all over the world. In fact, every medical college should teach the doctors a special course - that there are people who are not really insane: don't treat them, otherwise you will disturb them for their whole life. Your medicines, your electric shocks, your tranquilizers, your injections, are dangerous if the person is suffering from Zen-madness. Then you will destroy all his growth possibilities. In Japan they won't treat the person. The moment they feel that this is a Zen disease, the first thing they do is inquire: 'Is the man in any way connected with any Zen master or Zen monastery? If he is connected, then take him to the master, take him to the monastery. Don't bring him to the medical practitioner.'

A koan creates an artificial neurosis. We are carrying much neurosis within. It is repressed - we are sitting on top of it, it is like a volcano. That Zen koan, that impossible riddle, goes on goading, goading - and one day suddenly that volcano erupts, explodes. Then you are no more in control; you go beyond control. You cannot manage yourself; all your reason is gone in fragments. It has been an explosion, and you are thrown away completely. You are no more the same as you were before; something new has happened.

This Zen-madness is the ANSWER. The master will say, 'Good. So it has happened. Now wait, now just be patient.' For three weeks, four weeks, six weeks at the most, the person has simply to wait. Nothing to do, he eats, sleeps, takes his bath, as he feels. He is left alone in the monastery in a small cottage, far away. Nobody goes to talk to him, nobody is allowed to advise him. He simply relaxes there, takes a sunbath, lies on the grass, rolls on the grass. Left alone, whatsoever he feels like doing he does. When he wants to dance he dances, when he wants to shout he shouts.

Only one thing is taken care of - that he should not do any violence to himself. And ordinarily, people never do. Very rarely, somebody can go too far - out of a hundred, only one percent of cases. That care has to be taken - the master and other disciples go on watching from far away. No violence should be done to himself or to somebody else, that's all.

Within three weeks, six weeks, everything cools down. And the man comes with a new face - with his original face. Fresh like dewdrops in the morning. His eyes are innocent. He has passed through madness, he has gone beyond madness; he has entered the superconscious. Before you enter the superconscious you will have to pass through a kind of crisis. This crisis is created by the koan.

This crisis, I am creating it here with many methods. People who come from the outside, just to watch, cannot understand it. It is a Zen crisis. When people go berserk, they think this is driving people mad - 'What kind of religion is this?' They don't know. Religion basically drives you mad so that you can go beyond madness. Once you have passed that barrier you will never be mad; once you have passed that barrier you are a totally different kind of man. A new man is born. A great grace descends, and joy and peace and equilibrium.

It is almost like making love - a millionfold. When you make love, what happens? Sexuality and spirituality are very alike. Sexuality is very small, atomic - and spirituality is vast like the whole sky.

The difference is of quantity, but ultimately quantitative difference leads to qualitative difference too.

Millionfold, great, is the orgasm of spirituality - but it is an orgasm. It is exactly like sexual orgasm.

When you are making love, what happens? First, tension starts mounting. More tension, more tension, tension starts mounting, you start feeling crazy. A moment comes when you feel that if orgasm is not going to happen you will go mad: the energy has to explode. And then the energy explodes - from a certain peak the energy explodes.

When the energy explodes there is great joy. Because in that explosion the ego disappears for a moment. You are no more. God is. You are no more, TATHATA is - only pure existence. Neither the woman is nor the man is; both have disappeared into orgasm. Both are pulsating into a different wavelength.

But that is there only for a single moment - one moment, two moments, three moments - that joy. And then what happens? After the joy has settled, you cool down. Great peace arises, great silence. You fall asleep in a beautiful slumber. This is a very tiny experience, very very tiny, just like a straw. And spirituality is a jungle. The whole jungle. But you can understand from it - this is your experience, and this experience can become a metaphor.

In spirituality the same happens on a very great expansion. On a cosmic scale it happens. In meditation, in koan, in mantra, in chanting, in prayer, you go on creating a tension, a tension, a tension - and tension mounts and mounts and takes months, years, sometimes the whole life. And the mounting goes on and on and on, and the tension becomes so much one day that there is no possibility to bear it any more. Then it explodes.

And that explosion is of great joy, ecstasy. One dances, one laughs. And then the joy subsides into deep silence; one becomes cool, tranquil. One has arrived.

But just as sexual orgasm is irrational, so is spiritual orgasm. All orgasmic experiences are irrational.

That's why I insist for the irrational.

Question 3:

Religion as such has to be paradoxical, there is no other way - because life consists of contradictions. They look like contradictions to us - they are not, in fact. They help each other.

Have you not seen it in an arch? The architect does the same - he puts bricks against each other.

If you put the bricks not against each other, you cannot make an are - the house will fall. Half the bricks face this way, and half the bricks face that way, and they both are there. They are the same bricks - you can put them facing in one line, the house will fall. But when they are put against each other, great energy is created. And that great energy becomes a strength.

That's why man and woman create the child. Man alone cannot create, woman alone cannot create.

Bricks put opposite to each other become a great are; great energy is created.

Life and death, put against each other, create the whole game, the whole play, the LEELA. Life, in every dimension, is paradoxical. So religion has to be paradoxical. If a religion is not paradoxical then it is just poor philosophy. Then it is just man-made, mind-created, just a theology - not religion.

One day, the emperor Liang Wu Ti invited Master Fu Ta Shih to expound the Diamond Sutra. As soon as he had ascended to his seat, the master knocked the table once with a ruler and descended from his seat. As the emperor was startled, the master asked him, 'Does Your Majesty understand?'

'I do not,' replied the emperor.

The saintly master said, 'The Bodhisattva has finished expounding the sutra.'

He has just hit the table with a ruler. And he says, 'I am finished with my discourse. I have said all that can be said on the Diamond Sutra.'

The Diamond Sutra is the most precious Buddhist scripture. Only a Zen master can do this - such strange behaviour. But it is very meaningful; he has said all. Because the whole Diamond Sutra goes on repeating only one thing, only one thing, again and again: Be aware. Be aware. Be aware.

That is the whole message of all the Buddhas: Be aware, don't be sleepy.

Now, this is a Zen way. He hits the table with a ruler. The emperor must be sitting there - sleepy, dreamy, mind somewhere else, in a thousand and one places except there where he was sitting.

Now, by this beating of the table, suddenly the emperor is startled - he must have become alert for a moment. And the message has been given. This is a non-linguistic way of giving messages.

And not only this - the master says, 'The Bodhisattva has finished expounding the sutra.' He does not say, 'I have finished.' He says, 'The Buddha has finished.' Only a man who has disappeared into utter silence can say that - 'Buddha has spoken through me.'

Another day, the emperor again asked, 'Sir, come. I could not understand that great exposition - come again.' So the master came.

Wearing a robe, a hat and a pair of shoes, the Bodhisattva came to the palace, where the emperor asked him, 'Are you a monk?'

Because monks don't wear shoes, Buddhist monks don't wear shoes - and the Bodhisattva is wearing shoes, so the emperor asks, 'Are you a monk?'

In reply, the Bodhisattva pointed a finger at his hat. 'Are you a Taoist?' asked the emperor. In reply, the Bodhisattva pointed his finger at his shoes. 'Are you a lay man?' asked the emperor. In reply, the Bodhisattva pointed his finger at his monk's robe.

What he is saying is: 'I am all and I am none. You see, I have the hat of the monk. You see, I have the shoes of a Taoist saint. And how can I be a lay man? You see my robe, of ascetic practices, disciplines. I am all. And I am none.'

The emperor said, 'I don't understand. Yesterday I missed, today I have again missed.' The master says, 'This is my final exposition: listen - and I will never come back again. If you understand, you understand. If you don't understand, you don't understand.' And he said this GATHA:

And he went out of the palace and never came again.

This is absurd, what he says - THE HANDLESS HOLD THE HOE. How can the handless hold anything? But that is how it is happening. That which abides in you is handless, and is holding all kinds of things. God is handless, and is supporting the whole world. And you are handless in your innermost being - you don't have hands or legs or a head, you are formless. But you are holding a thousand and one things.

A PEDESTRIAN WALKS, RIDING ON A WATER BUFFALO. He says: A man is sitting on the water buffalo and still walking. He is saying: God is taking you, you are riding on him - and still you think you have the responsibility to walk.

It is like... a beggar was passing and the emperor came in a chariot. And he took pity on the beggar - an old man, and the town was far away, and the old man would have to drag himself - so he said to the old man, 'You come in, sit in my chariot.'

The beggar was very much afraid, but you cannot say no to an emperor. He was very much afraid - a beggar, and sitting with the emperor? it was too embarrassing. But you cannot say no. So he came up, sat in the chariot in one corner - very much afraid, something might go wrong - but still keeping his bag on his head.

After a little while, the emperor said, 'Why don't you put your bag down?' And the beggar said, 'Sir, it is much too kind of you that you are carrying me in your chariot. I don't want to make more weight on your chariot; I will carry my bag on my head.'

Zen says the doer, the only doer, is God - or TATHATA, or Tao. You unnecessarily have become doers. Riding on a water buffalo, and you are walking - unnecessarily walking, and the water buffalo is carrying you. The rivet is taking you, and unnecessarily you are swimming. Relax!

A MAN PASSES OVER THE BRIDGE; THE BRIDGE BUT NOT THE WATER FLOWS. This is tremendously beautiful. Very paradoxical - THE BRIDGE BUT NOT THE WATER FLOWS. Zen people say the body is a bridge; you pass through the body. You are like water - liquid, ungraspable, formless. You pass through the body; you don't change. The water flows not, your water of life flows not. And the bridge goes on flowing - your body goes on changing every day. One day it was a child, another day it became young, then old. Healthy, ill, the body goes on changing.

Scientists used to say, ten years before, that the body changes completely in seven years - TOTALLY.

After seven years you will not find a single iota of the old. All goes flowing out. Now they say it happens in one year, not seven years - in one year's time you don't have anything of the old, everything changes. The body goes on throwing out the old, and goes on getting the new from food, from water, from air - goes on replacing. The body is a river-like flow.

But the body is the bridge; you are the passer. You don't flow, the body flows - the bridge flows, the water does not flow.

These paradoxical statements are of tremendous value - you can find them in all the world mystics:

in Eckhart, in Kabir, in Dadu, in Boehme, and more so in the Zen masters. Zen is a path of paradox.

Listen to these lines of T. S. Eliot.

These lines are perfect Zen, pure Zen. Meditate over these lines, find out what T. S. Eliot means.

These are very profound. It can be a koan for you.

You don't know yourself, and that is the only thing you know. And if you don't know that, what else can you know? The knower knows only oneself - that is the only thing that can be known, because that is the only thing where we are. Everything else is, at the most, looked at from the outside; it can become only an acquaintance. There is only one thing you can look at from the inside, and that is you.

See the point of it. What you own is the only thing you don't own. You own your house - but how can you own it? It was here, and you were not. And one day you will be gone, and it will be here.

How can you own it? You come and go. And the house remains and the world remains. You cannot own these things, you only pretend.

Seeing this, the Buddha leaves his palace. Seeing this, the Mahavir leaves his kingdom - seeing this, that 'This is not what I own, so why bother about it? It has to be taken away, one day or other, so why be unnecessarily anxious about it?'

Have you watched it? Where are you? People are in their bodies - there you are not. People are in their minds - and there you are not. Your reality is somewhere else beyond the body and behind the mind.

Meditate over these lines.